Debate Now School Vouchers; How will the System Look?

[candycorn]

Hello and good morning.

I posted this on the education forum but it didn’t get much traction. I would like to hear what the board thinks of school vouchers and some demonstrations on how they would be implemented.

For example, would the Federal/State government give a parent of two $10,000 (just to pick a round number) for each kid or would it be based on income; i.e. more affluent parents don’t get so much???
Anyway, lets say Ms. Jones gets two $10K vouchers. She sees that the school in Central City has very good test scores so she wants to send her kids there. Will it be “by the class” or for the whole school year?

My goal is to better understand what a voucher system would look like, how it would act, and why this would be better than what we have (a very low standard to be sure). I have no kids and I’m Weeeeeellll past the time when it would affect me so I’m for any model that will work. I’ve heard the topic kicked around for 20 years and have to admit that it sounds like a better idea than what we have now but there doesn’t seem to be any details what the mechanics would look like for Ms. Jones or her kids.

GUIDELINES:

1. Lets just stick to the models of the voucher system and not worry about politics, unions, administrators, etc…
2. No idea (in this case) is too stupid so I will lift “ignore” restrictions on this discussion and debate with any who are serious about the debate
3. Beyond those two; no rules. Just be somewhat serious

 

[320 Years of History]

As you can see from when you posted to when I've finally gotten round to posting, it took me some time to put together a coherent set of remarks. Until you'd asked about it, I truly hadn't bothered to spend any significant period of time thinking about voucher systems for there was never any question in my mind that I would send my kids to private schools, so I never had a reason to think about vouchers. Plus the odds of my actually receiving vouchers were "between Slim and None," and "Slim's plane just lifted off the runway. LOL

My mentorees qualify for vouchers and we've used them to reduce the sums I've had to contribute to enroll them in various private schools. In that sense, sure, I like the availability of vouchers. Of course, with the exception of a handful of Bible schools** driven private schools, the vouchers don't even come close to paying enough of the tuition, fees and incidental costs of attending any private school in D.C. for an abjectly poor parents to send their kids there. (I'm sure from that you can infer one motivation for Congress forcing the vouchers in D.C. If the same situation exists elsewhere, the same motivation may well be in play. But that's not the theme or point of the thread, so I won't expound on that idea just yet.)

Okay...let's see what I can contribute to this discussion....before starting, let me define "voucher system" as a means by which state/local public funds (be they generated by income, property, or other taxes and fees) are effectively (if not literally) transferred to citizens/residents so they can choose the school(s) their kids attend. Also note that there is a ton of scholarly research on this topic, a lot of which you will find in the reference section here as well as in the reference sections of the papers you'll find linked in this post. Also, this document is a pretty good place to start reading for it summarizes and discusses individual voucher programs.

First off, one must consider what be the aim(s) of implementing a voucher system (the list is ranked only to enable, if needed, easy referencing later):

1. Better education overall for students in a given geography?
2. Apply the laws of supply and demand to the delivery of education?
3. Increase or reduce disparities between public and private school curricula?
4. Increase or reduce diversity among student populations, be it at the school, school system or state level?
5. Broaden or shrink the range of experiences to which students in a given area may be exposed at various points in their formative years?
6. Increase or reduce the variety of academic and extracurricular offerings in a given area's public school system?
7. Increase or decrease the range of choices parents have about to which school(s) they send their kids?
8. Expand or contract the scope of academic and extracurricular pursuits/opportunities to which students in a given geography have access?
9. Collect more and better data on the merit of a voucher system?
10. Mitigate some of the ills of an unconstrained vouchering system, including but not limited to the "peer effect?"
11. All of the above?
12. Some of the above and something (some things) else?
13. None of the above?

Of the papers I read, a few struck me as standouts:

• School Vouchers: A Critical View
  
  • Contrary to the claims of many voucher advocates, widespread use of school vouchers is not likely to generate substantial gains in the productivity of the U.S. K–12 education system. Any gains in overall student achievement are likely to be small at best. Moreover, given the tendency of parents to judge schools in part by the characteristics of the students in the school, a universal voucher system would undoubtedly harm large numbers of disadvantaged students.
    
    Although small means-tested voucher programs might provide a helpful safety valve for some children, policymakers should be under no illusion that such programs will address the fundamental challenge of providing an adequate education to the large numbers of disadvantaged students in many of our large cities. At the same time, there are good arguments for giving families, especially those who are economically disadvantaged, more power to choose the schools their children attend. The challenge for policymakers is to find ways to expand parental choices without excessively privileging the interests of individual families over the social interests that justify the public funding of K–12 education
• The Potential Impact of Vouchers
  
  • The question at hand is whether the research base can adequately predict the potential impact of voucher plans. McEwan concluded that the evidence could warrant the implementation of small-scale voucher programs that are targeted at low-income, African American students in urban areas. That earlier conclusion stills holds, albeit with some caveats. The offer of vouchers may lead to small test-score improvements for some African Americans—judging from recent experimental evidence—but this depends on the city, the definition of race, and other analytical assumptions. Whatever the findings, it is certainly worth continuing these experiments for additional years. They provide the best available opportunity to assess whether the offer of vouchers produces effects on long-term outcomes, such as high school graduation, college entrance, and wages. Currently, there is only non-experimental evidence on such outcomes, even though most would argue that they are ultimately more important than test scores.
    
    The mounting evidence on sorting suggests that unrestricted choice—as in large-scale open enrollment plans or Chile’s voucher system—can lead to cream-skimming. The best recent evidence on peer effects suggests that cream-skimming could lower the achievement of remaining public school students. This is not necessarily a concern if the achievement declines from sorting are outweighed by gains from competition. However, most of the literature on private school competition does not suggest that gains would be large. More alarmingly, it is not at all clear that research succeeds in identifying the causal effect of competition. As an alternative, Hsieh and Urquiola estimated the net effect of sorting and competition in Chile’s voucher system and found that it could be simply zero or very small.
    
    The preceding conclusions are most relevant to unrestricted choice plans where flat-rate vouchers are offered to a large number of students with few eligibility restrictions. It is quite plausible that a voucher system could be designed that ameliorates some of the negative effects of sorting and maximizes the benefits of competition. For example, Epple and Romano explored the potential impact of several different voucher schemes (including larger vouchers for some students and restricted add-on payments). Their work suggests that the voucher debate could fruitfully move toward issues of policy design and leave behind a simplistic debate of yea versus nay.
• Private School Vouchers and Student Achievement: An Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program
  
  • Students selected for the Milwaukee program scored a few percentage points higher per year in math.
    
  • Reading scores were mixed, some higher some not higher than those of non-participating students'.
• EDUCATIONAL VOUCHERS AND CREAM SKIMMING -- You will want to look at this paper after having read at least one of the ones expressly cited earlier in the post. The authors here evaluate design alternatives that seek to ameliorate the "cream skimming" effect vouchers can have. One nice thing about their analysis is that it's presented with mathematical rigor. The types of vouchers they examine include:
  
  • Flat rate vouchers
  • Type dependent vouchers
  • Tuition constrained voucher
  • Voluntary participation vouchering
  • Ability linked vouchers

Sorry, but you'll need to read the paper to get their conclusions...the damn thing won't allow me to copy-paste them and I haven't the time to retype them. All the same, I recommend reading the paper for it covers several voucher designs and that's what you specifically asked about.​

What are my thoughts after having read several papers, including some I've not listed above, and availing myself of D.C's voucher program to reduce my own outlay for my mentorees?

Well, for folks on the precipice of being able to afford an elite (aka, non-Bible school) private school in their area, vouchers are a way they can afford them. Now whether those schools will admit their kids is a different matter, but I suppose if a given school participates in the program, sure, the kids at least aren't unavoidably consigned to having to go to sub-par schools. Frankly, however, I think vouchering programs are basically means by which public schools can defer the cost and effort of improving their delivery of education.

I don't like that voucher systems foster inherently the proposition that private school education is somehow better than public school education. Granted there are some areas like D.C. where the public schools are roughly average at best. Then there are areas, such as Alexandria, VA (just outside D.C.) that have excellent public schools like Thomas Jefferson High School. Such schools spend about as much per student as one would pay to send a child to a high quality "day hop" school (Gonzaga; Maret). The thing is that I have yet to see a voucher program that provides that much assistance.

Lastly, I think that it doesn't much matter where one goes to school if one's parents don't actively supplement the school's work by reinforcing for their kids the school's methodology for how to be successful students. What's the point of sending a child to a a high quality school if the kid isn't going to do the work it takes to be successful there?

My best friend of some 50 years went to a posh private school in D.C. His freshman class had 181 students. When he graduated, there were 93. According to him, the school simply expels students who don't perform "up to snuff." That's not surprising to me for though I went to a different school, the teaching approach was quite the same. The teachers always assigned homework, but rarely was it collected or graded. To this day, I can remember how nearly all my classes started: "Does anyone have any questions about the homework?" Unless there were questions, the teacher moved on to the next topic. It didn't take long at all to figure out that if one didn't do or attempt the homework, one was "up the proverbial creek without a paddle." A key point of homework was to provide an active means by which we could discern the nature and extent of one's understanding of the material, but the point was not to contribute to one course grades, that's what tests and quizzes did for they provide an empirical measure of one's subject matter mastery.

That's just one example, but vouchers aren't going to solve the problem whereby parents and their kids haven't a clue of how to be successful students. As a result, I think there are opportunities for improving student performance that have nothing to do with vouchers or where a student goes to school. That said, I won't just out of hand reject the idea of using vouchering. It certainly can help some kids and whatever helps any one kid is a good thing in my opinion; I just don't think it's an across the board solution that will help all kids, maybe not most kids. Some things simply aren't solved by throwing money at them.​

 

[candycorn]

I wrote this on another thread. I’ll re-post it here with some clarifications.

Here is what I think we should do (it will never pass but it’s what I think we should do):

2017: Identify 10 states that would be wiling to participate in a DOE voucher “top to bottom” program that will last from 2020 to 2032 school years. By “top to bottom”, I mean that every student who was slated to go to public school will be in the program. Those who are already going to private schools are not effected. Make it clear that all Federal Funding for education would come in the form of vouchers sent directly to parents during these 12 years. The states, by agreeing to the participation, agree to make up any short-fall with their own Education funds. So if the costs of sending a kid to Private School 123 is X and the federal contribution is 75%, the State agrees to make up the 25%. Basically like they do now with public schools. The difference is that the money will now go to whomever owns the school.

2017: Announce that in 2020, the Department of Education will be uncoupled from the Executive branch and sat up as a separate federal agency. The current term of the Secretary will end in 2020 anyway and a new director will be selected by drawing from the nominees from the governors of the 10 states that are participating. So the governors have some real skin in the game.

Mid 2017: Close the application process on July 31.

2017: Have the DOE come up with a scoring system that actually measures the education received by students in all 50 states. Grad rates, SAT/ACT scores, drop out rates, etc…. Have them put together a matrix that assigns a value 1-10 and rank each state. Alaska may have a 8.7; Nevada may have a 7.55, Missouri may have a 6.2, etc… The key is that the same data is considered; not just one “great” or one “poor” stat. You rank all 50 states as a baseline to measure improvement of the 40 vs the 10 that will be vouchered.

Fall 2017: Select the States that applied to be part of the voucher program: The top 2 scoring get in. The bottom 2 in scoring get in. That is first and foremost. From the applicants that are left…the State with the highest population gets in. The State with the lowest population gets in. The other four applicants are systematic choices where States that haven’t been chosen for the 6 “top to bottom” vouchers can now opt out. High schools in these four states will have very different electives. It’s not all thought through yet (meaning I haven’t thought it out yet) but here is a possibility: One will offer what we have now; football, volleyball, basketball, tennis, band, concert, drama, academic decathlon. One will offer no inter-murals at all. You’d still have PE but you won’t have the “classic” track meets where schools from 70 miles away travel to a site. You’d just race kids in your class. One would offer a mix stressing vocational education and some limited inter-murals and another would offer a mix stressing college preparatory courses offering inter-mural competitions. Essentially, the grades 1-8 will be the same. When HS rolls around, the 4 “laboratory states” will have one state where everything pretty much stays the same then degrees of difference; one state where the kids just compete physically with classmates (limited comp), one state where kids are given a vocational education and limited competition and one where college prep and limited competition.



2018-2020. Schools in the 10 states get grants to help them get ready. To train the teachers. To assist some of the private schools in expanding their classrooms because it’s a given that some will move their kids just on the notion of going to a “private” school. But also for public school teachers who will lose their jobs in a few years at the lack of students. Keep in mind; this will be transformative. Hatfield HS who’s Friday night football games draw 8,000 fans may lose their football team (this is why states can opt-out if they are not a top-to-bottom school) which will hurt the local economy in smaller towns. Sometimes these traditions go back generations with homecoming parades and all of that;

2020-2032. Have the director and their staff ritualistically monitor every school to see what is the outcome from not only test scores but other society factors. I think you’ll see that regardless of how you fund Jenny; if Jenny doesn’t have a good home life, Jenny will suck at education. But this will pretty much eliminate any discussion to the contrary (hopefully). I think there will be winners and losers just like in every case and a whole lot of “Well, Indiana had a tornado that wiped out it’s best school” and stuff like that. Hopefully, the uniformity of the assessment across all 50 states will allow us to see if there is a benefit to a voucher program in some states vs other states but also for larger cities vs. smaller towns or whatever.

During this time, administrators and principals will have carte blanche to do what they want in their schools. The only standard is using the scoring system that was applied in 2017…getting as close to a perfect 10 as you can. So if the 6 States who are totally unfettered have a great State DOE, they can finally do what they want to do. Pay teachers more? Lengthen the school year? Shorten the school year? Scrap the myth that you won’t always have a calculator within a few inches of your fingers in 2020 and focus on teaching kids the concepts of critical thought….Its’ the ultimate laboratory. In the 4 states that are mostly unfettered (the non “top to bottom” states) , you will finally get to see what interests kids more; chunking a football around or turning a wrench and being able to tune up your rig for ultimate superiority on Friday night outside the stadium??? Personally I hope that the lab will show us what we already know; we vicariously live through our kids. This is why there are pre-school beauty pageants, Eddie Bauer car seats and cribs, and Kate Spade school supplies. The meaning is that we can do much of what we need to do (not want; need) without funding Inter-mural sports and sapping time and energy away from what is more important.

At the end of it all, you can look at the state’s individual approaches and have a score that shows what approach worked best. What approach worked worst. How they did overall against the non vouchered states…. And in 2032 when we have the election, those running can look at the stats and decide whether they want to fold the DOE back into the Executive or keep them as free from politics as possible.

 

[candycorn]

As you can see from when you posted to when I've finally gotten round to posting, it took me some time to put together a coherent set of remarks. Until you'd asked about it, I truly hadn't bothered to spend any significant period of time thinking about voucher systems for there was never any question in my mind that I would send my kids to private schools, so I never had a reason to think about vouchers. Plus the odds of my actually receiving vouchers were "between Slim and None," and "Slim's plane just lifted off the runway. LOL

My mentorees qualify for vouchers and we've used them to reduce the sums I've had to contribute to enroll them in various private schools. In that sense, sure, I like the availability of vouchers. Of course, with the exception of a handful of Bible schools** driven private schools, the vouchers don't even come close to paying enough of the tuition, fees and incidental costs of attending any private school in D.C. for an abjectly poor parents to send their kids there. (I'm sure from that you can infer one motivation for Congress forcing the vouchers in D.C. If the same situation exists elsewhere, the same motivation may well be in play. But that's not the theme or point of the thread, so I won't expound on that idea just yet.)

Great. That is what I wanted to know. So your voucher, in theory, represents the costs of instruction from the governmental entity with the amount spent, again in theory, for class room staffing and infrastructure and stuff like maintaining the bus fleet removed. Put another way:

Say Central HS has a $10 Mill budget. They spend 500K on school buses, a million on utilities, a quarter million on landscaping and maintenance, and 3 million on labor. That’s 5 million out of 10 million. The other 5 million goes to instruction, books, desks, dry erase boards, etc…educational costs.

$5,000,000.00 is then divided per student and; if there are 5,000 students, each one gets a $1,000; theoretically?

And there is no “needs test” to get vouchers? Meaning that if Ms. Smith is a single parent working at Wendys; she would get more than Ms. Jones who is an executive at Berkshire Hathaway???

Okay...let's see what I can contribute to this discussion....before starting, let me define "voucher system" as a means by which state/local public funds (be they generated by income, property, or other taxes and fees) are effectively (if not literally) transferred to citizens/residents so they can choose the school(s) their kids attend. Also note that there is a ton of scholarly research on this topic, a lot of which you will find in the reference section here as well as in the reference sections of the papers you'll find linked in this post. Also, this document is a pretty good place to start reading for it summarizes and discusses individual voucher programs.

I agree.

First off, one must consider what be the aim(s) of implementing a voucher system (the list is ranked only to enable, if needed, easy referencing later):

1. Better education overall for students in a given geography?
2. Apply the laws of supply and demand to the delivery of education?
3. Increase or reduce disparities between public and private school curricula?
4. Increase or reduce diversity among student populations, be it at the school, school system or state level?
5. Broaden or shrink the range of experiences to which students in a given area may be exposed at various points in their formative years?
6. Increase or reduce the variety of academic and extracurricular offerings in a given area's public school system?
7. Increase or decrease the range of choices parents have about to which school(s) they send their kids?
8. Expand or contract the scope of academic and extracurricular pursuits/opportunities to which students in a given geography have access?
9. Collect more and better data on the merit of a voucher system?
10. Mitigate some of the ills of an unconstrained vouchering system, including but not limited to the "peer effect?"
11. All of the above?
12. Some of the above and something (some things) else?
13. None of the above?

I think 6-7 are the sweet spots.

As I’ve stated, I have no kids and I am totally agnostic about the education system. Like Home Economics for example. My mother could sew circles around the instructor we had. Probably cook better than her too. Nutrition wasn’t exactly mom’s long suit. But I would imagine mom could have taught me better than Suzy Homemaker in 10th grade. In a voucher system, Mom wouldn’t have to have paid for it so I’m very interested in parents saving money. Also, I’m not sure why I, with no kids, should have to pay the same amount that Ms. Smith pays when she has 3 kids in school district taxes. I understand the “greater good” argument but it seems to me the person using the facilities should pay more.

I’m going to cut the next part out taking about some other papers.

What are my thoughts after having read several papers, including some I've not listed above, and availing myself of D.C's voucher program to reduce my own outlay for my mentorees?

Well, for folks on the precipice of being able to afford an elite (aka, non-Bible school) private school in their area, vouchers are a way they can afford them. Now whether those schools will admit their kids is a different matter, but I suppose if a given school participates in the program, sure, the kids at least aren't unavoidably consigned to having to go to sub-par schools. Frankly, however, I think vouchering programs are basically means by which public schools can defer the cost and effort of improving their delivery of education.

I don't like that voucher systems foster inherently the proposition that private school education is somehow better than public school education. Granted there are some areas like D.C. where the public schools are roughly average at best. Then there are areas, such as Alexandria, VA (just outside D.C.) that have excellent public schools like Thomas Jefferson High School. Such schools spend about as much per student as one would pay to send a child to a high quality "day hop" school (Gonzaga; Maret). The thing is that I have yet to see a voucher program that provides that much assistance.

Lastly, I think that it doesn't much matter where one goes to school if one's parents don't actively supplement the school's work by reinforcing for their kids the school's methodology for how to be successful students. What's the point of sending a child to a a high quality school if the kid isn't going to do the work it takes to be successful there?

My best friend of some 50 years went to a posh private school in D.C. His freshman class had 181 students. When he graduated, there were 93. According to him, the school simply expels students who don't perform "up to snuff." That's not surprising to me for though I went to a different school, the teaching approach was quite the same. The teachers always assigned homework, but rarely was it collected or graded. To this day, I can remember how nearly all my classes started: "Does anyone have any questions about the homework?" Unless there were questions, the teacher moved on to the next topic. It didn't take long at all to figure out that if one didn't do or attempt the homework, one was "up the proverbial creek without a paddle." A key point of homework was to provide an active means by which we could discern the nature and extent of one's understanding of the material, but the point was not to contribute to one course grades, that's what tests and quizzes did for they provide an empirical measure of one's subject matter mastery.

That's just one example, but vouchers aren't going to solve the problem whereby parents and their kids haven't a clue of how to be successful students. As a result, I think there are opportunities for improving student performance that have nothing to do with vouchers or where a student goes to school. That said, I won't just out of hand reject the idea of using vouchering. It certainly can help some kids and whatever helps any one kid is a good thing in my opinion; I just don't think it's an across the board solution that will help all kids, maybe not most kids. Some things simply aren't solved by throwing money at them.​

I totally agree with you.

I also agree with the policy of the “posh private” school your best friend went to and we need to put that into practice in the public school arena. Almost every black youth who listens to rap knows what “187” means…homicide. We need to come up with a code just like that for a kid the schools have deemed a perpetual trouble-maker; perpetually disinterested, and perpetually a waste of resources. Call it a 6-11 or whatever.

We had a police officer at work the other day. He was wounded jumping a fence or something. I went down to the ER and they put him into a special room we keep for VIPs. The cop was talking to one of my friends and I had lunch with her later that evening. He was injured chasing a guy who he had arrested 6 times before for public intoxication. The cop said that the guy was a mental case and that the police are not equipped to deal with mental cases. He compared himself to a “garbage man” picking up society’s trash and taking it to the dump (jail) and the next day, there is another bag of trash there to take to jail too. Our schools are no more equipped to deal with these losers than jails are; meanwhile resources are wasted on the effort. We don’t have those to waste.
I agree with you (if you read my lengthy piece above); at the end of any program you’ll see that the home life is key. This is why vouchers intrigue me. There is a built-in limitation of waste. If your kid is deemed “611”, you don’t get a voucher for him or her and their old classmates benefit by their not being there.

 

[320 Years of History]

I’m not sure why I, with no kids, should have to pay the same amount that Ms. Smith pays when she has 3 kids in school district taxes. I understand the “greater good” argument but it seems to me the person using the facilities should pay more.

Respectfully, understanding the "greater good" is all well and good; however, it's not the sole concept of "good" that informs sage decision making in this context for it's merely a "quick and dirty" synopsis of utilitarian philosophy. The other, arguably more important and inarguably measurable, germane "goods" as go school vouchers come from the discipline of economics: public goods and common goods. Those two concepts incorporate the both the qualitative assessments of utilitarianism and complement them with quantitative measurements.

Accordingly, carefully considering those two concepts leads one to understand why it is economically advisable for folks like you, me, and my kids who don't and/or didn't directly use the public school system, to subsidize educating the kids of others who, for whatever reason, don't avail themselves of public education. Understanding the concepts of public and common goods may not aid one in liking the reasons why, but, as happens often enough, there are things that one sometimes must do because they are better than the alternative(s) but that one doesn't expressly like doing. Not "charging" folks who have more kids more to send their kids to public school is just one of those things.

FWIW, many jurisdictions fund their school systems via property taxes. Accordingly, if one living in such a locality is inclined to minimize one's payments into the school system, the way to do so is to live somewhere that has a low property tax burden. Personally, between living where I want to live and minimizing my contributions to the school system, I prefer to live where I want to live. If that means I pay lot in property tax and thus pay more than I could alternatively have done, well it just does.

We need to come up with a code just like that for a kid the schools have deemed a perpetual trouble-maker; perpetually disinterested, and perpetually a waste of resources.

That "code" already exists. It's call "juvenile delinquent" or "miscreant minor."

If your kid is deemed “611”, you don’t get a voucher for him or her and their old classmates benefit by their not being there.

I can't say to what extent costs factor into what children are channeled into the juvenile justice system, but I am certain that the cost of putting them there is often far higher than the cost of trying to inspire them to be productive and contributing members of society by keeping them in the public school system. Economically and at an average of ~$150K per miscreant per year, it's well worth trying to transform a minor via some means other than "reform school."

 

[320 Years of History]

And there is no “needs test” to get vouchers? Meaning that if Ms. Smith is a single parent working at Wendys; she would get more than Ms. Jones who is an executive at Berkshire Hathaway???

Are you asking me if that's how D.C.'s voucher system works or are you asking that question as an abstraction?

If the former, yes, in D.C. there's a means test. Students with household incomes up to 185% of the federal poverty guideline can receive vouchers. My own children don't qualify for vouchers. My metorees do.

 

[candycorn]

And there is no “needs test” to get vouchers? Meaning that if Ms. Smith is a single parent working at Wendys; she would get more than Ms. Jones who is an executive at Berkshire Hathaway???

Are you asking me if that's how D.C.'s voucher system works or are you asking that question as an abstraction?

If the former, yes, in D.C. there's a means test. Students with household incomes up to 185% of the federal poverty guideline can receive vouchers. My own children don't qualify for vouchers. My metorees do.

Yes I was.

Again, vouchers seem like a good idea to me. If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t let her play soccer. I love soccer but the risk of concussion scares the shit out of me. If I were paying out of pocket for her schooling and the school said Physical Education was $3000 a year, I wouldn’t buy it. We’d be riding our bikes every weekend.

I didn’t know if, in the “world of vouchers” you were given a pre-set amount and told to go shopping or were expected to buy everything .

Likewise, I didn’t know IF you could order courses piecemeal.

 

[320 Years of History]

I didn’t know if, in the “world of vouchers” you were given a pre-set amount and told to go shopping or were expected to buy everything .

First, let me be clear. I wasn't given any vouchers, and neither were my kids. My mentorees, "my kids," were. I call my mentorees "my kids" (in quotes) because I treat them, to the best of my ability, as I treat my kids whom I sired. (Of course, there are differences/limits. I won't pay for any of "my kids" weddings as I did for my daughter, but they all receive the same "life lessons" and guidance from me.)

At whatever private school one attends, the academic courses are there. One takes the required ones along with whatever electives that capture one's interest or that one's parents/counselors recommend based on what they know about the student. It's the same re: extra curricular activities.

 

[candycorn]

I didn’t know if, in the “world of vouchers” you were given a pre-set amount and told to go shopping or were expected to buy everything .

First, let me be clear. I wasn't given any vouchers, and neither were my kids. My mentorees, "my kids," were. I call my mentorees "my kids" (in quotes) because I treat them, to the best of my ability, as I treat my kids whom I sired. (Of course, there are differences/limits. I won't pay for any of "my kids" weddings as I did for my daughter, but they all receive the same "life lessons" and guidance from me.)

At whatever private school one attends, the academic courses are there. One takes the required ones along with whatever electives that capture one's interest or that one's parents/counselors recommend based on what they know about the student. It's the same re: extra curricular activities.

I didn't mean you personally.

 

[320 Years of History]

I didn’t know if, in the “world of vouchers” you were given a pre-set amount and told to go shopping or were expected to buy everything .

First, let me be clear. I wasn't given any vouchers, and neither were my kids. My mentorees, "my kids," were. I call my mentorees "my kids" (in quotes) because I treat them, to the best of my ability, as I treat my kids whom I sired. (Of course, there are differences/limits. I won't pay for any of "my kids" weddings as I did for my daughter, but they all receive the same "life lessons" and guidance from me.)

At whatever private school one attends, the academic courses are there. One takes the required ones along with whatever electives that capture one's interest or that one's parents/counselors recommend based on what they know about the student. It's the same re: extra curricular activities.

I didn't mean you personally.

Okay...TY for the clarification.

 

[320 Years of History]

I didn’t know if, in the “world of vouchers” you were given a pre-set amount and told to go shopping or were expected to buy everything .

First, let me be clear. I wasn't given any vouchers, and neither were my kids. My mentorees, "my kids," were. I call my mentorees "my kids" (in quotes) because I treat them, to the best of my ability, as I treat my kids whom I sired. (Of course, there are differences/limits. I won't pay for any of "my kids" weddings as I did for my daughter, but they all receive the same "life lessons" and guidance from me.)

At whatever private school one attends, the academic courses are there. One takes the required ones along with whatever electives that capture one's interest or that one's parents/counselors recommend based on what they know about the student. It's the same re: extra curricular activities.

I didn't mean you personally.

BTW...to be clear...one can "go shopping" at the school level, but usually not at the course/program level within or among various schools.

For example, Madeira (it's one of the schools to which I linked earlier) offers an equestrian program among other extracurricular activities. Girls who participate in the riding program pay an additional fee, above and beyond tuition, room and board, to do so. On the other hand, the school offers far more academic classes than anyone can ever possibly take during their tenure there. The cost of attending the school does not vary because one takes more (or more rigorous) or fewer academic classes than the minimum required for graduation.

Rereading my earlier post, I felt I'd somewhat elided that component of your question. I hope my earlier answer wasn't vague enough to leave you with a bit of uncertainty about the answer, but if it was, hopefully the remarks above remove whatever ambiguity or vagueness my earlier answer may have left in your mind.

 

[320 Years of History]

I'm now about to through your plan for implementing and testing a vouchering plan. I don't know if you address the following, but I'll be looking to see how you do if you do.

• The very real possibility that the most effective (by current measures and standards) private schools opt not to participate in the voucher program.

That is a pretty important factor to plan for and incorporate into the analysis of the results the program obtains. Why? Because quite often, top high schools have (1) huge endowments and (2) vastly more demand by folks who can afford the tuition than they have places to offer. Such schools will be economically indifferent to whether they participate in the voucher program or don't.

Some figures for the sake of perspective:

• Miss Porter's accepts ~50% of its applicants and has ~$130M in endowments.
• Hotchkiss accepts ~20%, and its endowment is ~$380M.
• Madeira accepts ~55% of its applicants and has ~$60M in endowments.
• Gonzaga has ~$120M in endowments. I don't know what it's acceptance rate is. (Gonzaga has a very large student body -- ~1000 students -- for a private four year high school. They may very well accept a large share of their applicants. Unlike the other schools noted here, but like Prep, Gonzaga has the "off book" financial backing of the Archdiocese of Washington.)
• Georgetown Prep accepts ~20% of its applicants and has ~$60M in endowments.
• Deerfield accepts ~15% of its applicants and has ~$530M in endowments.
• Maret accepts ~60% of its applicants and has ~$35M in endowments.

In contrast, struggling private schools that are financially challenged to provide first rate teachers, facilities, and extracurricular experiences are likely to as well have prescient economic motivations to participate in a voucher program. At such schools, where the education they can provide may not have the highest levels of academic rigor nor scholastic discipline, it may very well be that the student is neither better nor worse off for having attended.
​

• The parochial/"Bible school" dilemma.

Others may have a different name for it, but parochial/"Bible school" dilemma is what I call the trade off between maximizing the likelihood of a student's successful (from the Church's point of view) theological/dogmatic inculcation into unquestioning acceptance the mores and precepts of a given faith and maximizing the nature and extent of secular understandings a student acquires. One doesn't have to deal with that in math classes, perhaps not in music theory either. In pretty much every other discipline taught on a high school level, sooner or later the objectivity and scope of teaching is affected by the school's "Bible school" nature.

Now, I'm not saying one should not choose a school that is affiliated with a given religion. Gonzaga and Georgetown Prep are Jesuit and students must take four years of religion classes. Groton and St. Albans are Episcopal and there again, students are required to study religion. What distinguishes religious instruction at schools like Gonzaga, Prep, Groton, and St. Albans is that students are taught what are the beliefs of the faith with which the school is associated.

To illustrate, at the two Jesuit schools noted, students are even taught the philosophical arguments of Aquinas and Augustine, but they are not taught or told that they should or must accept those beliefs or arguments. They are merely required to understand them and discuss them coherently. In that regard, the religion education is about the Roman Catholic belief system, not inculcation into the Roman Catholic belief system. In non-religion classes, private schools like Groton or Gonzaga don't, for example, teach or hint that scientific theories such as Evolution or Big Bang, or techniques such as carbon dating, are wrong because the Bible says, according to the faith, differently.

Make no mistake, it would not surprise me to find that other Catholic orders take a different approach, but based on having sent five of "my kids" to Jesuit schools, it's my view that the Jesuits do not for none of them was Catholic and none felt compelled to become Catholic during or after their education there. Of course, if a suitable student expresses a desire to become inculcated and or matriculate to Jesuit seminary and novitiate, the Jesuits aren't going to refrain from leading them down that path. That said, it's not particularly easy to become a Jesuit either, so merely indicating a desire to become one doesn't necessarily mean the Jesuits will encourage one's interest to that end.

The consequence of the parochial school dilemma is that the academic content taught there may not lead to students actually being better educated and more intellectually astute than were they to have gone to a public school. I'm not at all suggesting that the parochial school dilemma is present at every such school. What I'm saying is that where it is present, and to the extent parents enroll their kids at those schools, the students' performance may not be materially improved.​

• "The Curve"

"The curve" refers to the reality that a student who is not very well prepared to attend a highly competitive school doesn't belong at a highly competitive (academically) school. Now in most cases, such students won't be admitted anyway; however, at some academically very good schools that also face financial difficulty, they could find themselves getting admitted. In the long run, that's not at all good for the student for they'll spend too much time trying to just keep up and not enough time excelling. The result of that is that the student will suffer when it comes time for the college admissions process because "just keeping up" won't get the student more than a "B-" GPA and decent but not outstanding standardized test scores.

The reason that happens is because teachers teach to the average comprehension level, experiential level and capabilities of the class. Consider a student who isn't used to openly discussing their ideas with others and who isn't conversant with current events and the major issues pertaining to them. That student will be at a distinct disadvantage in freshman composition and history classes. Why? Because both subjects invariably use current event contexts as the basis for one, two or more important assignments, usually research papers and or argumentative (dialectic) essays.

If a student isn't at least fairly well familiar with several major current event issues, in addition to having to learn the new subject matter of course -- compositional writing skills and techniques,or the cause-and-effect implications of a series of historic events -- s/he will have to investigate one or several current events in order to have something to write about. Quite simply, the student will be disadvantaged because they've never considered current events; thus they rightly don't have anything to say about any of them. As you surely know, having something relevant to to talk about is the first step to developing a coherent and cogent essay.

"The curve" can be a brutal thing and voucher systems can expose kids to a breed of brutality they never encountered in their home-area environments. It can be emotionally as well as academically deleterious to a kid's maturation. Deliberately placing a child into such a situation is, IMO, irresponsible and mean. The child is what the child is. It's a parent's job to place their kid into situations where the child can excel and build self confidence. The kid doesn't have to always "win," but s/he must most of the time not be necessarily and unavoidably the clear "loser" in the eyes of his/her peers at school. Let's face it; no kid will every relish being known as "the voucher kid who can "keep up" neither economically nor intellectually."​

 

[candycorn]

I didn’t know if, in the “world of vouchers” you were given a pre-set amount and told to go shopping or were expected to buy everything .

First, let me be clear. I wasn't given any vouchers, and neither were my kids. My mentorees, "my kids," were. I call my mentorees "my kids" (in quotes) because I treat them, to the best of my ability, as I treat my kids whom I sired. (Of course, there are differences/limits. I won't pay for any of "my kids" weddings as I did for my daughter, but they all receive the same "life lessons" and guidance from me.)

At whatever private school one attends, the academic courses are there. One takes the required ones along with whatever electives that capture one's interest or that one's parents/counselors recommend based on what they know about the student. It's the same re: extra curricular activities.

I didn't mean you personally.

BTW...to be clear...one can "go shopping" at the school level, but usually not at the course/program level within or among various schools.

Great. That is good to know. Again, I’m a neophyte to all of this.

For example, Madeira (it's one of the schools to which I linked earlier) offers an equestrian program among other extracurricular activities. Girls who participate in the riding program pay an additional fee, above and beyond tuition, room and board, to do so. On the other hand, the school offers far more academic classes than anyone can ever possibly take during their tenure there. The cost of attending the school does not vary because one takes more (or more rigorous) or fewer academic classes than the minimum required for graduation.

Good stuff. Thanks for the information.

Rereading my earlier post, I felt I'd somewhat elided that component of your question. I hope my earlier answer wasn't vague enough to leave you with a bit of uncertainty about the answer, but if it was, hopefully the remarks above remove whatever ambiguity or vagueness my earlier answer may have left in your mind.

All of the information you’ve given has been appreciated.

But what I’m wondering is whether or not the voucher proponents are “happy” with the Madeira model or they actually want a choice. For example, a district that will “graduate” students with one algebra class but stresses trades. Or a district that has almost no athletics but is big on academics.

I wonder if the school choice will extend to district choice as to where districts more or less make their own graduation standards

 

[320 Years of History]

All of the information you’ve given has been appreciated.

NP...happy to share...

what I’m wondering is whether or not the voucher proponents are “happy” with the Madeira model or they actually want a choice. For example, a district that will “graduate” students with one algebra class but stresses trades. Or a district that has almost no athletics but is big on academics.

I can't say whether all proponents or users of vouchers condone the "college preparatory plus" model that Madeia and the other schools I noted follow. I can say that it's worked and is still working for "my kids."

As for the matter of college prep (+), trade or athletic foci in pre-collegiate education, I have no input to offer. I don't even know whether there are private high schools that offer a non-college prep (+) model....All the private schools I know well or know somewhat well range from being prep schools like Gonzaga and Georgetown Prep to being "prep schools on steroids" like Maret, Miss Porter's, Hotchkiss, and Deerfield.

I wonder if the school choice will extend to district choice as to where districts more or less make their own graduation standards

I don't see that happening. There really must be some universal standard of informational savvy and intellectual adroitness at soundly analyzing that information that defines what having a high school diploma represents. Currently, we have the standard, but, IMO, we don't often enough enforce the requirement that students actually meet it.

 

[candycorn]

All of the information you’ve given has been appreciated.

NP...happy to share...

what I’m wondering is whether or not the voucher proponents are “happy” with the Madeira model or they actually want a choice. For example, a district that will “graduate” students with one algebra class but stresses trades. Or a district that has almost no athletics but is big on academics.

I can't say whether all proponents or users of vouchers condone the "college preparatory plus" model that Madeia and the other schools I noted follow. I can say that it's worked and is still working for "my kids."

As for the matter of college prep (+), trade or athletic foci in pre-collegiate education, I have no input to offer. I don't even know whether there are private high schools that offer a non-college prep (+) model....All the private schools I know well or know somewhat well range from being prep schools like Gonzaga and Georgetown Prep to being "prep schools on steroids" like Maret, Miss Porter's, Hotchkiss, and Deerfield.

I wonder if the school choice will extend to district choice as to where districts more or less make their own graduation standards

I don't see that happening. There really must be some universal standard of informational savvy and intellectual adroitness at soundly analyzing that information that defines what having a high school diploma represents. Currently, we have the standard, but, IMO, we don't often enough enforce the requirement that students actually meet it.

I’m pretty sure it will happen.

It’s a logical progression. If you “don’t want Washington” telling you you need Algebra II, why would you be happy with Austin or Salt Lake City being happy telling you the same thing?

 

[320 Years of History]

All of the information you’ve given has been appreciated.

NP...happy to share...

what I’m wondering is whether or not the voucher proponents are “happy” with the Madeira model or they actually want a choice. For example, a district that will “graduate” students with one algebra class but stresses trades. Or a district that has almost no athletics but is big on academics.

I can't say whether all proponents or users of vouchers condone the "college preparatory plus" model that Madeia and the other schools I noted follow. I can say that it's worked and is still working for "my kids."

As for the matter of college prep (+), trade or athletic foci in pre-collegiate education, I have no input to offer. I don't even know whether there are private high schools that offer a non-college prep (+) model....All the private schools I know well or know somewhat well range from being prep schools like Gonzaga and Georgetown Prep to being "prep schools on steroids" like Maret, Miss Porter's, Hotchkiss, and Deerfield.

I wonder if the school choice will extend to district choice as to where districts more or less make their own graduation standards

I don't see that happening. There really must be some universal standard of informational savvy and intellectual adroitness at soundly analyzing that information that defines what having a high school diploma represents. Currently, we have the standard, but, IMO, we don't often enough enforce the requirement that students actually meet it.

I’m pretty sure it will happen.

It’s a logical progression. If you “don’t want Washington” telling you you need Algebra II, why would you be happy with Austin or Salt Lake City being happy telling you the same thing?

I get that the point of your remark is about one's being told what one's children must study. Think for a moment, however, about what baseline coursework (subject matter mastery) federal and state governments stipulate. With those learning objectives in mind, I bid you to now consider what sorts of "good jobs" are widely available in the U.S. and ask yourself what are the educational/intellectual learning requirements for obtaining those jobs.

For example, I recently posted links to the career pages of several U.S. employers.

• IBM: 8000+ job openings in the U.S. alone
• Boeing: 370 jobs in the U.S.
• Monsanto: 489 jobs
• General Motors: ~750 jobs
• Dupont: 217 jobs in the U.S.
• Intel: 1724 jobs
• Deloitte: 1200+ jobs

Do you really think that a high school diploma is going to enable one to obtain the "good jobs" ($80K+ per year salary) those firms have to offer? I know the ones at IBM and Deloitte cannot be obtained without a college degree. And like it or not, to get a college degree, one must, among other things, study, algebra II/trig, along with a host of other subjects.

Those positions, are, of course, only relevant for folks who have the skills the employers demand. What about jobs for folks who are younger? Well, looking at the existing harbingers of how the demand for human labor will evolve, it doesn't take much to see that the ones that entail material shares of rote activity are the ones that will be "de-humanized," if you will.

• 47% of Jobs Not at Immediate Risk of Being Taken by Robots or Automation
  
• The 12 jobs most at risk of being replaced by robots
  
• The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs To Computerisation?
  
• What Jobs Will the Robots Take?
  
• AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs
  
• Are Robots Taking Our Jobs, or Making Them?

In short, jobs that require one to often and effectively perform lots of well organized yet unstructured thinking, problem solving and activity are the jobs that robots cannot perform. Right now, the most efficient and effective way I know to obtain and hone those skills to the requisite level of proficiency is via a college degree, sometimes and advanced degree. Rarely is it by going to trade school, but there are some trades that don't lend themselves in the foreseeable future to "robotization."

Now what does all that mean within the context of this thread's topic? It means that whether the state (at whatever level) is requiring students to study X or Y subjects isn't at all the thing to be concerned about for the bare minimum the state requires for one to get a "good job" that robots won't perform are subjects one must take anyway. I understand the point you've made, but really...it's principally (albeit not literally) akin to complaining about the oven's not being preheated before addressing the matter that one lacks the eggs and flour to make cake batter.

 

[candycorn]

All of the information you’ve given has been appreciated.

NP...happy to share...

what I’m wondering is whether or not the voucher proponents are “happy” with the Madeira model or they actually want a choice. For example, a district that will “graduate” students with one algebra class but stresses trades. Or a district that has almost no athletics but is big on academics.

I can't say whether all proponents or users of vouchers condone the "college preparatory plus" model that Madeia and the other schools I noted follow. I can say that it's worked and is still working for "my kids."

As for the matter of college prep (+), trade or athletic foci in pre-collegiate education, I have no input to offer. I don't even know whether there are private high schools that offer a non-college prep (+) model....All the private schools I know well or know somewhat well range from being prep schools like Gonzaga and Georgetown Prep to being "prep schools on steroids" like Maret, Miss Porter's, Hotchkiss, and Deerfield.

I wonder if the school choice will extend to district choice as to where districts more or less make their own graduation standards

I don't see that happening. There really must be some universal standard of informational savvy and intellectual adroitness at soundly analyzing that information that defines what having a high school diploma represents. Currently, we have the standard, but, IMO, we don't often enough enforce the requirement that students actually meet it.

I’m pretty sure it will happen.

It’s a logical progression. If you “don’t want Washington” telling you you need Algebra II, why would you be happy with Austin or Salt Lake City being happy telling you the same thing?

I get that the point of your remark is about one's being told what one's children must study. Think for a moment, however, about what baseline coursework (subject matter mastery) federal and state governments stipulate. With those learning objectives in mind, I bid you to now consider what sorts of "good jobs" are widely available in the U.S. and ask yourself what are the educational/intellectual learning requirements for obtaining those jobs.

For example, I recently posted links to the career pages of several U.S. employers.

• IBM: 8000+ job openings in the U.S. alone
• Boeing: 370 jobs in the U.S.
• Monsanto: 489 jobs
• General Motors: ~750 jobs
• Dupont: 217 jobs in the U.S.
• Intel: 1724 jobs
• Deloitte: 1200+ jobs

Do you really think that a high school diploma is going to enable one to obtain the "good jobs" ($80K+ per year salary) those firms have to offer? I know the ones at IBM and Deloitte cannot be obtained without a college degree. And like it or not, to get a college degree, one must, among other things, study, algebra II/trig, along with a host of other subjects.

Those positions, are, of course, only relevant for folks who have the skills the employers demand. What about jobs for folks who are younger? Well, looking at the existing harbingers of how the demand for human labor will evolve, it doesn't take much to see that the ones that entail material shares of rote activity are the ones that will be "de-humanized," if you will.

• 47% of Jobs Not at Immediate Risk of Being Taken by Robots or Automation
  
• The 12 jobs most at risk of being replaced by robots
  
• The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs To Computerisation?
  
• What Jobs Will the Robots Take?
  
• AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs
  
• Are Robots Taking Our Jobs, or Making Them?

In short, jobs that require one to often and effectively perform lots of well organized yet unstructured thinking, problem solving and activity are the jobs that robots cannot perform. Right now, the most efficient and effective way I know to obtain and hone those skills to the requisite level of proficiency is via a college degree, sometimes and advanced degree. Rarely is it by going to trade school, but there are some trades that don't lend themselves in the foreseeable future to "robotization."

Now what does all that mean within the context of this thread's topic? It means that whether the state (at whatever level) is requiring students to study X or Y subjects isn't at all the thing to be concerned about for the bare minimum the state requires for one to get a "good job" that robots won't perform are subjects one must take anyway. I understand the point you've made, but really...it's principally (albeit not literally) akin to complaining about the oven's not being preheated before addressing the matter that one lacks the eggs and flour to make cake batter.

Not to ignore your good works and studious collections of examples…but I know this and you know this. And I think in sober moments, most people know this. But then again, we’re witnessing a political coup de tat of sorts in the Republican party where they have elevated a person with zero governmental experience, who stands in stark contrast to what the party has stood for during the last 30+ years, and have done so, in my view, simply because he’s funny. Maybe you won’t see such pronounced differences between the districts as I indicated before but I can see the literary canon being slashed and burned severely in the hands of a Greg Abbot in Texas or an Arnold Schwarzenegger in California.

Here is one person’s view of what are quintessentially American Novels:

50 Quintessentially American Novels

On it, you’ll find Amy Tan, Toni Morrison, HB Stowe, Twain, Capote, etc… You think either of those governors care if kids are exposed to that sort of diversity of experience? I do not. I even think you’ll have a lot of law makers wonder why kids would read novels at all since they are fiction and “Schools should teach lessons rooted in fact.” I can hear that very easily coming out of the mouthes of some lawmakers.

We’ll continue it later. Gotta go.

 

[320 Years of History]

we’re witnessing a political coup de tat of sorts in the Republican party where they have elevated a person with zero governmental experience, who stands in stark contrast to what the party has stood for during the last 30+ years, and have done so, in my view, simply because he’s funny. Maybe you won’t see such pronounced differences between the districts as I indicated before but I can see the literary canon being slashed and burned severely in the hands of a Greg Abbot in Texas or an Arnold Schwarzenegger in California.

Help me out here...I don't substantively disagree with the "red" comment. I grasp the thematic thrust of the "blue" comment and the related ideas that follow in the post. (I don't know "Arnie" or Gov. Abbott well enough to know just how accurate it is.) For now, however, what I'm struggling with is drawing the connection between the two statements. I'd fully understand the whole post absent the Trump reference. With it there, the post's points become ambiguous; thus I don't know what to make of it or how to respond.

 

[candycorn]

we’re witnessing a political coup de tat of sorts in the Republican party where they have elevated a person with zero governmental experience, who stands in stark contrast to what the party has stood for during the last 30+ years, and have done so, in my view, simply because he’s funny. Maybe you won’t see such pronounced differences between the districts as I indicated before but I can see the literary canon being slashed and burned severely in the hands of a Greg Abbot in Texas or an Arnold Schwarzenegger in California.

Help me out here...I don't substantively disagree with the "red" comment. I grasp the thematic thrust of the "blue" comment and the related ideas that follow in the post. (I don't know "Arnie" or Gov. Abbott well enough to know just how accurate it is.) For now, however, what I'm struggling with is drawing the connection between the two statements. I'd fully understand the whole post absent the Trump reference. With it there, the post's points become ambiguous; thus I don't know what to make of it or how to respond.

Well, what I was stating (or trying to as it turned out...lol) was that in some administrations, you're going to have a governor that turns education over to the teachers and simply lets their education office and the districts do the educating. As I think it should be. And in some cases, you're going to have governors that will get a lot of votes by trying to paint their opponents using the broad brush of the literary canon. If you've read Huck Finn, you are aware of how whites are portrayed. It isn't always in a great light. If you've read "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, it's even worse in some passages. I'm not sure where you live but I'm certain that it's an easy sell to the GOP voters that "these books have no place in a class room" and they "stoke the fires of division and hate" blah blah blah....

To expand on the point, I don't think it's that far out of the imagination that you'd see districts get rid of advanced lit all together since the canon is decidedly unfriendly to unity of thought and the status quo. As I stated, one list of what a scholar thought was worth reading had Morrison's book on there along with Amy Tan's work; The Joy Luck Club.

I doubt it's that far a walk from getting rid of AP Lit to getting rid of AP mathematics

 

[320 Years of History]

we’re witnessing a political coup de tat of sorts in the Republican party where they have elevated a person with zero governmental experience, who stands in stark contrast to what the party has stood for during the last 30+ years, and have done so, in my view, simply because he’s funny. Maybe you won’t see such pronounced differences between the districts as I indicated before but I can see the literary canon being slashed and burned severely in the hands of a Greg Abbot in Texas or an Arnold Schwarzenegger in California.

Help me out here...I don't substantively disagree with the "red" comment. I grasp the thematic thrust of the "blue" comment and the related ideas that follow in the post. (I don't know "Arnie" or Gov. Abbott well enough to know just how accurate it is.) For now, however, what I'm struggling with is drawing the connection between the two statements. I'd fully understand the whole post absent the Trump reference. With it there, the post's points become ambiguous; thus I don't know what to make of it or how to respond.

Well, what I was stating (or trying to as it turned out...lol) was that in some administrations, you're going to have a governor that turns education over to the teachers and simply lets their education office and the districts do the educating. As I think it should be. And in some cases, you're going to have governors that will get a lot of votes by trying to paint their opponents using the broad brush of the literary canon. If you've read Huck Finn, you are aware of how whites are portrayed. It isn't always in a great light. If you've read "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, it's even worse in some passages. I'm not sure where you live but I'm certain that it's an easy sell to the GOP voters that "these books have no place in a class room" and they "stoke the fires of division and hate" blah blah blah....

To expand on the point, I don't think it's that far out of the imagination that you'd see districts get rid of advanced lit all together since the canon is decidedly unfriendly to unity of thought and the status quo. As I stated, one list of what a scholar thought was worth reading had Morrison's book on there along with Amy Tan's work; The Joy Luck Club.

I doubt it's that far a walk from getting rid of AP Lit to getting rid of AP mathematics

TY for the clarification.

I live in D.C. My kids wen't to high school in New England, as did I. All of my mentorees have gone to high school in D.C.

I get what you are driving at now. I'm not sure I have much of an opinion about it, but I understand it. How can I think much one way or another about the theme you just shared and do so in the context of this thread? Governors and governments don't determine what courses or course content is covered in private school curricula, which is what kids partaking in a voucher program would attend. The College Board, not government, determines the general and specific learning goals of AP classes and AP teachers teach to those guidelines.

• AP English Language Course Overview
• AP English Language Course Description (detailed version of the above document)
• AP English Language Sample Exam

Now while I think Huck Finn and Beloved are fine reading choices for high schoolers, regarding the learning objectives students must master, they are hardly so seminal to achieving them that no other texts will do as well. The same is nearly so for pretty much all literature. The same cannot be said of The Bard's works or Chaucer, for example.

As for what texts kids read or don't read, you may want to check online to see what the summer and regular term reading/book lists are at various schools. The lists change from time to time, yet some texts consistently appear and no matter the options or mandated reading, the scholastic objectives remain constant from what I can tell by my kids and mentorees' reading over the years.

• Hotchkiss -- Summer reading list
• Deerfield -- Summer reading list
• Miss Porter's -- Required summer reading by class
• Exeter -- Book list

My personal take on the matter is that I don't care too much what reading a school stipulates so long as the student becomes well read and "well educated" by the time they finish school. And just what is "well educated?" Well, it consists of having two main things, and lots of little things:

• Knowledgeable enough about the scope of human experience and understanding so that as one goes about the business of living, one has enough information at one's beck and call:
  1. To tell what definitely makes sense;
  2. To tell what may make sense (what is plausible, possible and probable or "3P-worthy") but that using one's existing knowledge, one knows how and where to look to to find out for sure whether it does and doesn't;
  3. To tell what is likely not "3P-worthy," but that one needs to check to be sure.
  4. To tell what simply is in no way, shape, form or temporal context "3P-worthy"
• Enough practice at critical thinking and analysis to be able to efficiently, accurately and consistently tell the difference among 1-4 above for any situation in which one finds oneself..

Put another way, so long as one finishes high school having mastered what I think of as the four purposes for obtaining an education, it really doesn't matter whether one read "this" or "that" work. What are the four objectives?

1. To develop the intellect, presumably including linguistic, mathematical, scientific, and historical analytic adroitness.
2. To learn how to be and produce competent, caring, loving, and lovable people.
3. To learn how to create, contribute to and sustain a democratic society.
4. To learn how to invest in producing future workers for the workforce and, ultimately, corporate profits.

Or in short to learn how to become an adept and material performer/contributor to society and to learn how to build upon and pass on those skills and abilities.


The concerns you described above are, however, precisely what I wrote about re: parochial schools. The difference being, of course, that as private schools, they are 100% free to deny their students a liberal education. The governments and their elected an appointed leaders have a great deal of freedom, but not 100%, "screw you and the horse you rode in on; I don't care what you think we should do," freedom that private school administrators do.

That said, I don't have any basis for believing that AP English or AP "anything else" will be dispensed with. If for no other reason, public school systems should broaden their AP course offerings not narrow them for they are a means for lowering the cost of attending college. Students' who score a four or five on an AP exam will receive college credit for the corresponding course. Score four and/or five on any five AP exams and that's the cost of one semester of college paid for by the public school system. Some hard working students actually enter college as sophomores due to AP exam credit.

With the popular appeal of "free college," it behooves government officials to make as many AP classes available as possible and to do whatever to enhance the overall performance of as many students as possible. The more of them who only need to be in college for three years or three and a half years instead of four, the more affordable to taxpayers "free college" becomes.