Ron Paul, does he stand a chance?

[Fammaden]

I thought someone said he does support vouchers somewhere in the thread. I'm not really a huge Paul fanboy no matter what assumption my posts may create.

[Sabolin]

Pretty sure his plan includes tax breaks for teachers and vouchers for sending kids to school, although I am not familiar with the plan in it's entirety as I don't follow politics probably as much as I should. I'm 22, almost 23, and haven't voted once or gotten involved at any level in politics, I just never cared.. Ron Paul may get me to change that.

Hell, this may be the first political thread I've ever posted in.

[Tolanin]

Problem with vouchers is letting the 'smart' kids take their share of the money and go to a private school fucks over the really dumb kids.

You have to understand how the spending works, all teachers in public schools earn the same pay, in the sense that a top step physics professors makes the same as your top step gym teacher. The thing that fucks that up is if you have special needs kids who get more than their share because they get private tutors, so if all the smart kids left and went to private schools with their share of the money divided equally they are actually taking more than the school would have really spent on them... and the school is now running with less money than before.

Whether you think the system of spending the most on the worst students is dumb or not (i think it is) thats how it is and the same goes for teachers, its hard to convince good teachers to come in and work because their contract system is beyond retarded. Now private schools might solve some of that and bring the brighter harder working kids a better education, but it will fuck over an equal number of kids who cant get into the private schools and are stuck in public schools that have no money. Atleast thats how it would work unless we increased taxes for schools, which would make it a whole new ballgame.

[Soriak]

The simple advantage of private schools is that they can choose whom they accept - they don't have to deal with the kids who never learned to behave, pay attention or show any respect. It's the same here - you can have one asshole who'll dominate the class room and little can be done to deal with it; then you have private school where someone like that would simply get kicked out.

btw: I'm no friend of NCLB either, but I'm fairly certain that came from Bush and congress, not the DoE. I don't see why the DoE would want the personal information (name, address, phone number) of students sent to military recruiters, which is one provision of NCLB.

[Zerai]

Originally Posted by Soriak

The simple advantage of private schools is that they can choose whom they accept - they don't have to deal with the kids who never learned to behave, pay attention or show any respect.

I was reading an article from Fark about a teacher that was fired based on the words of a disruptive child. Why? Because the father was donating several million to the private school.

Private schools can choose who to accept, but 9 times out of 10, money can fix anything. I went to the American School of Paris for a couple years when my father was transfered overseas and there was quite a few fuckwit kids, but their parents being CEOs, diplomats, so on and so forth meant that it was completely irrelevant to the school as long as the parents 'donated'.

[torrent495]

All these things you fear happening are happening already and have been for decades. I fail to see how throwing more money and manpower at the federal level will change that.

Well, it certainly won't help if we throw LESS money and manpower, right? I totally agree with you, the current system is pretty fucking broken. Where I don't agree is that we should just give up. We should be realistic, but that doesn't mean we should be defeatist. The U.S. indisutably does have the monetary and intellectual resources to tackle education, probably the most important policy issue of our time.

I agree more money is not the answer. We need a new, comprehensive, workable, tested, proven strategy for reforming public education in this country. And things will follow from that strategy. Now, I'm mostly concerned with inner-city schools and schools with lots of poor and black/latino students (they overlap a great deal). Suburban school districts and to a lesser extent rural school distrcts are relatively fine, I think--lots of money, involved parents, O.K. teachers. It's the bottom third or so of the student population that is fucking up the average, and things can only get worse for those people in the future if something isn't done. The intervention needs to begin in the early grades too, starting in Pre-K and kindergarten, which studies have shown to be the most effective years to influence future academic performance. Any effective reform is also going to have to involve the parents, who in many cases are single, poor, low-educated, and generally clueless. I'm envisioning a very targeted, large-scale federal program aimed at these sort of schools and people.

This stuff costs more money, but not as much as you might think. In terms of raw funding a majority of school districts are funded with enough school supplies and things of that nature. What's needed is above all smart policy. Ideally most of the additional money would go towards increased teacher salaries, with directed incentives towards more disadvantaged schools and merit pay, and coupled with a reform of the teachers unions.

More generally the federal government can mandate longer school hours and longer school years, with a tradeoff in significantly reduced homework. If students spend more time learning, they'll learn more stuff. Vouchers and school choice are good ideas too, as long as it's done right (by which I mean you need to make sure the private schools in the program are properly regulated). Having public schools compete with each other for students is one innovative if somewhat fanciful idea I've heard.

I would emphasize that none of these things are "solutions," per se. Nobody's going to wave a magic wand and make all the problems go away. Government can't do everything, or even most things. The larger culture and economy matters more. But government *can* help, somewhat, partially. And that's where I disagree with Ron Paul. He wants the government to leave everyone alone. I just don't think that's the right way to deal with the challenges of globalization in the 21st century.

Oh, and the first damn thing I would if I were President is repeal NCLB. It was maybe a good idea at the time but it's now a proven failure on multiple levels--funding, execution, and the law itself has fundamental flaws.

[voodoochile78]

True story - Conservatives only started talking about school vouchers when they made white kids share their schools with black kids in the 1960s.

I love watching you people trying so carefully to not say what you all so desparately want to say...

[Dabamf]

Originally Posted by voodoochile78

I love watching you people trying so carefully to not say what you all so desparately want to say...

I hate blacks?

[voodoochile78]

That would be it...

[Dabamf]

News to me. Thanks for letting me know, now I can start treating them poorly. I believe one should always act in accordance with one's beliefs.

[rinthea]

The government does 2 things with education, finances it and administrates it. No one is doubting the benefits of financing it. The problem is with the government administrating it.
It is not hard to see that efficiency of governments is terrible. There is a reason education has deteriorated in the US over time. Its nationalization. Thats why its fucked.
Vouchers are about privatizing the administration of education, dramatically increasing its efficiency.

Its not about hating blacks or the poor. Its about removing socialism from education.

[Lejina Bloodbath]

You lill exercise in logic against socialism falls short when you realise the countries on the top of the list in term of education are socialists.

[Mimirswell]

UN Human Development Report - Education Index
Norway 0.99
Netherlands 0.99
Finland 0.99
Denmark 0.99
New Zealand 0.99
Australia 0.99

Source: Human Development Report 2006 (ranked by overall HDI and not Education)

The United States Education system has a problem, the problem is not Socialism.

[rinthea]

A fitting example is US education was number 1, 20 years ago, now its slipped significantly as its become increasingly nationalized.

[Mimirswell]

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. That's a correlation, not a causation. In fact, given the evidence from the HDI, you could conclude (just as conclusively as you just did) that the increased socialization slowed the decline instead of accentuated it. The probability is the same either way.