What happens to the children of uneducated parents in the home-school/voucher world? Just curious what their options would be.

There are several options davis.

One, give them vouchers and let their parents decide where they should go.

Two, give those parents such as my wife only a partial rebate and the rest into the low income schools. Pay fewer teachers more money but demand results.

The education world is so huge and so socialized/unionized that you'd have to pay a hundred thousand teachers more to pay any of them more.

I'd like to see a world where you could pay the true talented teachers dedicated to helping society a hundred thousand to go into an inner city and show demonstrated progress in teaching kids facing death, drugs, and jail to see a way out of the cycle and provide them with the educational tools required to make it.

My wife teaches in a decent mid-sized city... she doesn't need $100K for her job, and there's no way she'd travel to inner city LA to get it. Most teachers wouldn't.

How about getting rid of the trouble makers who don't learn anything anyway? How about tossing in some adult education and English classes so the kids have some mentoring at home? And some snacks on hand so poor kids don't get to school in the AM unable to think until school lunch.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

I know someone who teaches at a really rough school. It's not nice.

I know one trouble-maker in school. A real thug. He was on the football team, spit on the ceiling and made a freshman sit under it till it dripped. Had a mean streak. Found out later he's a kindergarden teacher.

But he didn't carry a gun or any of the things going on now.

Found somebody on his own intellectual level to teach.

Sounds like a dedicated teacher now. Kids can be pretty cruel.

Demand results? Please expound with specifics.

Demand results: Whatever you like.

I personally would like to see standardized test scores rise... especially in the low income underachieving schools.

I WANT the low performers to be "taught to the test"... be able to read a passage and answer questions about it and be able to do simple math.

But that IS the key for local control of schools... what is important to me and my children may not be the key desire of parents in Watts or inner city D.C.

If they can't even be taught to the test you know how bad it is. As I said before, I've heard positive things coming from teachers and principals lately, and much of it because the test has put a goal out there for both students and teachers. Maybe not a perfect goal, or the only goal, but at least it's somewhere to start.

Well put, AV -- very succinct.

ditto

Even most of the liberals I know set high standards, but then when you want to make the poor and minorities live up to those standards they want to grant a waiver. That doesn't help anyone, least of all poor kids that end up out on the streets without even a basic education and work ethic.

What is has to do with the subject is that it is a sideways recognition that mom/homemaker/et al, even before adding in homeschool teacher, is the hardest job in the world. Believe me I've worked with more than one who chortles about this, too. They know why they come in early.

I didn't know that home-schoolers were given materials and instructions. I figgered every one made it up as they went along.

If I had a school-age child I would try to get them in Catholic school. Failing that I'm not sure what I would do.

I agree with you about tenure. It is in part responsible for my bitterness about my own k-12 schooling.

Great post, Cap'n Major. You bring a lot to the table. I agree with you about the boondoggle. It seems our schooling is as overpriced as our medicine.

Yes, that is one of the problems with the shrieks for not only higher pay for all teachers but more of them and smaller class size. It is an enormous enterprise, one might say unaffordable (not to mention unworthy when you factor in tenure and the effectiveness of the rent-seeking pay levels already).

I am categorically against the idea of the State or the local school district paying folks to home-school their own kids.

How so?

It is immaterial to the individual student how well he or she does on those tests. There is NO individual incentive, as far as I can see, to do well on the NCLB tests.

We have a charter school here, in a mid sized city in which 60% of the children are on some type of public assistance. It's a beautiful new building, all kids get issued apple laptops, and they have very high standards. Admission is determined by lottery.

It has been so successful, they have japanese educators coming to study it. My friend teaches scence there. I was dropping off a turtle for her classroom the day the Japanese delegation visited.

A lot of the inner-city schools and urban school tend to look more like prisons than institutes of learning. The students are treated with derision and suspicion from day one.

A lot of the problems with public schools come from the attitudes of the public and administrative staff. If you are determined that these kids are a problem, they won't disappoint you.

If you want to teach respect, first you have to show some. A lot of the problem with public schools can be laid at the feet of those who have complained about their ineffectiveness. Maybe if folks started to focus on what goes "right" in the schools there would be more success.

Personally, I like our school system here, as do most of the people in my state. We're justifiably proud of them. We don't screech and complain over every expense increase because we know that there isn't much in this world more important than giving kids a good education.

Maybe if folks started looking at it that way rather than some kind of irritating obligation, things would change. Until then, I think you pretty much get what you expect to.

cptrev, what do you know about the CSET?

http://www.cset.nesinc.com/

My daughter is looking into home schooling for when the time comes for her children to go to school. She has found out that her city has a very large group of home schooled students. They have group events, both sports and social opportunities. They have "field trips" and special art and/or music classes offered. The materials are fantastic and the children do a lot of work either on-line or with DVDs on the computer. They can accomplish a full days work in a matter of hours so they usually advance ahead quickly.

If I had school aged children today, I would home school them. I would do it even if I didn't have public school teaching experience because I don't like the social engineering process in the government schools.

You gotta figure that teaching one kid well ain't gonna take nearly as much time per day as trying to teach 40.

Fair enough. At least you haven't expressed a preference for everybody else picking up the tab for your own personal social engineering process with 'your' kids (metaphorically).

http://www.ade.az.gov/standards/aims/

Accountability Division
Assessment Section Dark blue line
Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS)

Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS), a Standards-Based test, provides educators and the public with valuable information regarding the progress of Arizona's students toward mastering Arizona's reading, writing and mathematics Standards.

I know a young mother who home-schools her 4 children. They each have a computer and are able to get through their studies in a few hours. They are very disciplined and work well. It's not like their mother is standing in front of them at the blackboard. It's a lot more hi tech than that.

Oh, man. I just loved blackboards.

There are other good reasons for home schooling. It makes travel more accessible to the family. The can travel off season and still do their studies. The learning experiences would be optimized for my metaphorical kids.

My metaphorical kids would be in Catholic schools wearing nice little conservative unis and minding as well as learning their Ps & Qs.

Ok, so how does the above demonstrate that individual students have an incentive to do well on the AIMS test?

Perfectly reasonable reasons.

Again, keep paying your taxes for the public school system, and home-school your kids as you please. Or send them to private school or parochial school.

Would your little metaphorical kids look like this:

I can't see 'em.

They're chimera kids.

You trying to poke somebody, Nomarchy?

I think public schools are like medicine in that regard: we pay twice as much as we need to and I am still gonna bitch thankyouveramuch about what we get.

But can't you imagine them?

Nomarchy, You don't pass, you don't graduate.

I imagine them in cute neat little navy blue uniforms.

But you are naked!!!

Only under my clothes.

'Sides, I'm stayin' home waving through the window.

Nomarchy, I don't know that much first-hand about the CSET.

I took and passed the CBEST http://www.cbest.nesinc.com/ and also the SLLA "School Leaders Licensure Assessment" (for administrators) http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/menuite...00022f95190RCRD .

I think the CSET is like the CBEST on a higher level. I've heard the single subject and multiple subject tests are fairly grueling... thus far because it was an alternative to education degrees and no one wanted that to be a realistic alternative.

But then again, I heard the CBEST and SLLA were hard, and I passed them with minimal preparation. (none for the CBEST and a 1-day (it was supposed to be two, but I read ahead and get bored easily) prep class for the SLLA)

What's your opinion of the CSET or what information were you looking for?

Sorry to hear it was so rough on you - I enjoyed raising my child and all the homemaking.

(ignoring sarcasm)

It would be best if it was a "family decision" with everyone giving their input on the subject. Probably, most families do this before making the final decision.

CSET is supposed to substitute for the MSAT. I have some former students who are now secondary school teachers who had taken the necessary college and post-bac courses specifically so as not to have to take the MSAT and then found out that they had done so "too late" so now they have to take and pass the CSET in order to be 'tenured'.

The CBEST was quite easy. The CSET tests, I am told, are, as you say, quite difficult, much more difficult than CBEST.

I hate to say this, but I think the NCLB tests have to become higher-stakes for the individual students themselves who are taking them, so that what I'll call the "a.v. effect" can kick in. I happen to agree with him that it's a desirable effect.



I've been told otherwise. By a former student who's now a secondary school teacher in CA.

In fact, I don't think there's a "pass" score for individual students in those tests.

I would be on board, in fact, support a change in 'your' direction.



Bitch at will. Just don't demand that taxes be first collected (for the provision of a public good) and then redistributed to individuals so that they can 'produce' a private good or with no regard as to whether they're also producing a public good.

Trust me, Nomarchy... if the CSET indeed DOES have to be passed for tenure, it will either be dumbed way down or the passing score lowered massively. When it (or the MSAT at least) was an alternative to teachers' colleges indoctrination program, it was in the union's best interest to keep it almost impassible. But CSET becomes a universal requirement, it will become milktoast so fast the Legislature's heads will spin (or roll if they resist).

My wife was accepted into the University of Texas' school of engineering several years ago but declined to raise our daughter (now 13 and one of 3). Going back a few years ago to finish her B.A. in the education field was so disappointing to her... and I "audited" her education classes vicariously by scanning her textbooks and assignments... sheesh. What a joke.

Is that an incentive?

Depends.

It would be if it were true.

It's not true, so what's your point?



That's all fine and good, and it may be true, cptrev. What will depends on quite a lot. What is ought not be in dispute.

I'll have to ask our staff to tell me about the date the CSET became (or becomes) a requirement for tenure.

Since the hue and cry had not yet reached me, methinks it must be next year!!!

I have a 13-year-old girl, too.

Fun, isn't it?

So long ago since I clipped this quote that it's likely not on the main strain, anymore.

Beat you to your seat, right. Go.

That is just so true.

And every parent should have a bumper sticker on every car saying their kid is a special student.

My dumb kid can beat up your honor student.