Tulsa Public Schools Spending

[nathanm]

The pedigree of being able to show interested parents statistics illustrating that 98.8% of all students went to college, and 45% to graduate school, and the wall of photos of doctors, and lawyers, and such is important, as well as references from other parents and students. The individual product and service is, as in any other business, important.  The lines between administration and teaching are blurred and in many cases non-existant.

What? Are you high? Are you not aware of how it is that schools come to have those impressive numbers? They do it by kicking the little bastards out if they aren't good enough. Those kids don't count toward the numbers. At my high school there was a district policy that "transferred" dropouts from the "good" high school to the alternative school so as to protect their graduation rate. The same thing happens in private schools, but they aren't forced to serve as the educator of last resort.

[Gaspar]

Keep in mind, most of the area private schools have pretty low overhead due to a high degree of donations for their land, buildings and other improvements as well as even funds for their utilities, etc.

Why is that?

[AquaMan]

In this case I am closer to seeing a clear understanding of organizations in Conan's remarks than with yours Gas. I asked you those two questions for a specific reason and I'm glad you finally chose to address them. In the end both organizations are fighting for and making pleas for support based on money. It doesn't matter whether it is public money or private tuition money, they are basing their success/failure and futures on money. You seem to think that a private school is using different teaching methods to get better results. Yet the teachers mostly come from the same colleges and are learning the same techniques. So, their administrations are better? Well, certainly easier to run a religious oriented private school with 400 students from solid middle/upper class heritage than a huge public school system free and open to the masses for sure. You have me there.

And how do you measure those results? The same way public schools do, testing, college admissions and puffery. The same way Gas. Only for some odd reason you throw in $$$ as some kind of teacher incentive. Private school teachers tell me they don't make any more money and have to put up with more pressure from prima dona parents whose tyrannical demands are in excess of norms at public schools. They should be getting paid real well if they are succeeding above public school levels wouldn't you think? So perhaps there is no $$$ incentive to perform only the risk of losing your position if you don't. Yes, that is a truly business approach.

Then I would ask how and why some public schools show major improvements, high graduation rates, high college admission rates, high ACT/SAT test results, NHS memberships and merit finalists yet they come from this flawed model of risk you assure us can't work? The teachers move around in the system so it can't be just outstanding teaching. Administrators vary but TPS is famous for finding the good ones and squeezing them into under performing positions or schools. The magnet schools are used as teaching models to spread new teaching concepts around. But wait, wouldn't that entail high risk for the administrators if it doesn't work? It does and they stand to make little increase in pay if either way. So, there goes your model.

In reality vouchers are an effort to move public dollars into a private system that already works pretty well and subtract them from a system that needs the funding desperately. I wouldn't welcome that if I were an administrator of a well operated private school. Too much risk that I would be forced to mimic the measures that public schools have had to adopt to survive in a republican run state.

Zyx, it is kind of you to refer to me as a sensible contributor. A decade ago I would have thought my remarks to be extreme. It is becoming clear that with Fallin & co. you cannot be too extreme. It pains me to see the state graciously invite the bloodletting of its school system in favor of political dogma. But they did it with guns, gambling, alcohol and income tax. They actually believe their dogma. My last kid goes to OU this fall so in effect, I have no dog in this race. My oldest is saving his money to send his kids to private school and if I could have sent mine to Holland Hall I would have as much for the great relationship potential as for education.

[Gaspar]

In this case I am closer to seeing a clear understanding of organizations in Conan's remarks than with yours Gas. I asked you those two questions for a specific reason and I'm glad you finally chose to address them. In the end both organizations are fighting for and making pleas for support based on money. It doesn't matter whether it is public money or private tuition money, they are basing their success/failure and futures on money. You seem to think that a private school is using different teaching methods to get better results. Yet the teachers mostly come from the same colleges and are learning the same techniques. So, their administrations are better? Well, certainly easier to run a religious oriented private school with 400 students from solid middle/upper class heritage than a huge public school system free and open to the masses for sure. You have me there.

And how do you measure those results? The same way public schools do, testing, college admissions and puffery. The same way Gas. Only for some odd reason you throw in $$$ as some kind of teacher incentive. Private school teachers tell me they don't make any more money and have to put up with more pressure from prima dona parents whose tyrannical demands are in excess of norms at public schools. They should be getting paid real well if they are succeeding above public school levels wouldn't you think? So perhaps there is no $$$ incentive to perform only the risk of losing your position if you don't. Yes, that is a truly business approach.

Then I would ask how and why some public schools show major improvements, high graduation rates, high college admission rates, high ACT/SAT test results, NHS memberships and merit finalists yet they come from this flawed model of risk you assure us can't work? The teachers move around in the system so it can't be just outstanding teaching. Administrators vary but TPS is famous for finding the good ones and squeezing them into under performing positions or schools. The magnet schools are used as teaching models to spread new teaching concepts around. But wait, wouldn't that entail high risk for the administrators if it doesn't work? It does and they stand to make little increase in pay if either way. So, there goes your model.

In reality vouchers are an effort to move public dollars into a private system that already works pretty well and subtract them from a system that needs the funding desperately. I wouldn't welcome that if I were an administrator of a well operated private school. Too much risk that I would be forced to mimic the measures that public schools have had to adopt to survive in a republican run state.

Zyx, it is kind of you to refer to me as a sensible contributor. A decade ago I would have thought my remarks to be extreme. It is becoming clear that with Fallin & co. you cannot be too extreme. It pains me to see the state graciously invite the bloodletting of its school system in favor of political dogma. But they did it with guns, gambling, alcohol and income tax. They actually believe their dogma. My last kid goes to OU this fall so in effect, I have no dog in this race. My oldest is saving his money to send his kids to private school and if I could have sent mine to Holland Hall I would have as much for the great relationship potential as for education.

The problem is not funding, it's funding linked to achievement!!!!!!!!!!

I don't really care about "some public schools."  Some public schools are excellent, just like some McDonald's are excellent.  Overall the concept of continuing to increase funding for public education as a panacea is flawed.  Because the money is not directly linked to achievement, it is as in any government enterprise, diverted to building more bureaucracy and sustaining administrative structure and growth.



Since 1970, inflation adjusted public school spending has more than doubled http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d08/tables/dt08_181.asp?referrer=list . Over the same period, achievement of students at the end of high school has shown no improvement, and high school graduation rate has declined by 4 or 5%, according to Nobel laureate economist James Heckman.
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ltt/
http://ftp.iza.org/dp3216.pdf

Taxes for education have increased by $300 Billion without improving outcomes. Researchers at Stanford University and the University of Munich have come to the same conclusion that academic achievement is directly related to economic growth, and quantity of education spending is no substitute for quality of education.  http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG07-01_Hanushek_Woessmann.pdf

Public schools could correct this problem if individual student academic performance and improvement was directly tied to funding.  Unfortunately this flies in the face of how any unionized, or government agency works, because to accomplish this paradigm shift you would need to incentivize performance among employees, cut wasteful bureaucracy, and eliminate employees who fail to perform. 

There are several reasons this will never happen (we can discuss that if you like but I think you already understand why), so the more reasonable option would be to transition education from government bureaucracy to private enterprise.

I really enjoyed your reference to the public school system as "a system that needs the funding desperately."  It's like an alcoholic pleading for one mor drink. Public schools have no need to factor profit into the equation, so if you look at a public school that spends $14,000 per student per year, that's $14,000 that is spent on the student, materials, administrative/payroll costs, and facilities.  Now if you look at a private school that charges $12,000 per student, that amount covers the same expenses right?. . . but it also maintains a profit margin for the operators of the enterprise and pays bonuses, marketing, and recruiting expenses.  So in reality, our private school may only spend $7,000 per student cost less in total tuition, and still outperform the school spending twice as much!

The nature of government in general is to grow.  Every agency, bureaucracy and department's primary function above any service they provide is to increase funding.  That is just the nature of the beast.  Throw in a unionized labor force, and you introduce other factors such as the resistance to individual incentivization, and an inability to impose performance measures.

We've now had decades to observe this, yet the alcoholic keeps asking for one mor drink, and promising that everything will change.  An intervention is in order.

[Conan71]

Why is that?

Bishop Kelley is owned by the Tulsa Diocese of the Catholic Church.  Budget shortfall through it's own operations? Go to The Church.  Property tax?  Do churches pay property tax in Tulsa County?  The property has been paid off for years and I would suspect it may well have been a donation from a prominent Catholic family some time back.  I'm sure there's information available somewhere.  Assuming there are still priests and nuns within the administration and teaching staff, that saves somewhat on overhead attributable to the operations of the school.

Cascia Hall, it's run by the Augustinian Order of the Catholic Church.  The Augustinian instructors and members of the administration are given food and board, a communal car and a modest stipend.  IIRC, most all the land was donated to the school many years back by a wealthy oil family.  At least when I was there, Cascia did it's capital expansions via donation and fund-raising drives within the school community.  They also have a very strong alumni association.

Holland Hall is affiliated with the Episcopal Diocese in Tulsa.  I know nothing of how they came to own the land they are on.  Aside from having probably the highest tuition rates in the city, I believe they also have a really good foundation of alumni and parents who help fund capital projects.

Grace and Victory I would assume are heavily subsidized by their parent church operations which, I believe, would also give them certain tax advantages and lower operating costs when you can share grounds-keeping, custodial, and other services and again, if there is a budget short-fall make a plea and pass the buckets one more lap around the sanctuary on Sunday morning.  I know nothing of Metro's operation, but IIRC, they got a pretty sweet deal from TPS on their building.

Unless a for-profit private school were given the sort of tax breaks the other schools apparently enjoy and can develop a donation base for capital needs, they simply won't be able to compete.  Where's the benefit to Cascia, Holland Hall, BK, or Metro to double their student population?  It's not going to make them more money, it just becomes a logistical nightmare of where to put the kids and having to double the staff to maintain classroom ratios they are comfortable with.

Holland Hall and Cascia require you to test in for admission (at least they did +/- 30 years ago) because, as alluded to by Nathan, they want the best students.  They don't want the public school rejects.  They want to keep their standards higher.  Certainly there are students in the community who would do quite well there whose parents simply cannot afford to send them there, but neither school has near the capacity to add new students.

Vouchers are an interesting talking point, and I'm the first to admit I have paid little attention to what they purport to do since my kids are both college age (and one will be post college in another month!) and Jenks was a great fit for them after they left Montessori.  If you have apathetic parents with no interest in their kid's education who move their kids to private schools with vouchers, their disruptive and poor student just followed your child to private school and you have the same situation we have now in the public schools.  Vouchers to me sounds like nothing more than a funding shift.  If you apply certain academic standards to qualify for vouchers then you end up with all sorts of discrimination claims and suits because you have drained all the best achievers from the public school system and left the public schools looking somewhat like a reform school.

You and I are 100% on the same page as far as more funding for public schools not being tied to achievement is a complete bust.  Look at the Washington DC school district.  Either the highest or close to the highest spending per pupil and some of the worst results in the country.

Feel free to better educate me on the topic, I simply have never jumped on the bandwagon for it because it doesn't seem workable to my private school educated mind.

[Gaspar]

Bishop Kelley is owned by the Tulsa Diocese of the Catholic Church.  Budget shortfall through it's own operations? Go to The Church.  Property tax?  Do churches pay property tax in Tulsa County?  The property has been paid off for years and I would suspect it may well have been a donation from a prominent Catholic family some time back.  I'm sure there's information available somewhere.  Assuming there are still priests and nuns within the administration and teaching staff, that saves somewhat on overhead attributable to the operations of the school.

Cascia Hall, it's run by the Augustinian Order of the Catholic Church.  The Augustinian instructors and members of the administration are given food and board, a communal car and a modest stipend.  IIRC, most all the land was donated to the school many years back by a wealthy oil family.  At least when I was there, Cascia did it's capital expansions via donation and fund-raising drives within the school community.  They also have a very strong alumni association.

Holland Hall is affiliated with the Episcopal Diocese in Tulsa.  I know nothing of how they came to own the land they are on.  Aside from having probably the highest tuition rates in the city, I believe they also have a really good foundation of alumni and parents who help fund capital projects.

Grace and Victory I would assume are heavily subsidized by their parent church operations which, I believe, would also give them certain tax advantages and lower operating costs when you can share grounds-keeping, custodial, and other services and again, if there is a budget short-fall make a plea and pass the buckets one more lap around the sanctuary on Sunday morning.  I know nothing of Metro's operation, but IIRC, they got a pretty sweet deal from TPS on their building.

Unless a for-profit private school were given the sort of tax breaks the other schools apparently enjoy and can develop a donation base for capital needs, they simply won't be able to compete.  Where's the benefit to Cascia, Holland Hall, BK, or Metro to double their student population?  It's not going to make them more money, it just becomes a logistical nightmare of where to put the kids and having to double the staff to maintain classroom ratios they are comfortable with.

Holland Hall and Cascia require you to test in for admission (at least they did +/- 30 years ago) because, as alluded to by Nathan, they want the best students.  They don't want the public school rejects.  They want to keep their standards higher.  Certainly there are students in the community who would do quite well there whose parents simply cannot afford to send them there, but neither school has near the capacity to add new students.

Vouchers are an interesting talking point, and I'm the first to admit I have paid little attention to what they purport to do since my kids are both college age (and one will be post college in another month!) and Jenks was a great fit for them after they left Montessori.  If you have apathetic parents with no interest in their kid's education who move their kids to private schools with vouchers, their disruptive and poor student just followed your child to private school and you have the same situation we have now in the public schools.  Vouchers to me sounds like nothing more than a funding shift.  If you apply certain academic standards to qualify for vouchers then you end up with all sorts of discrimination claims and suits because you have drained all the best achievers from the public school system and left the public schools looking somewhat like a reform school.

You and I are 100% on the same page as far as more funding for public schools not being tied to achievement is a complete bust.  Look at the Washington DC school district.  Either the highest or close to the highest spending per pupil and some of the worst results in the country.

Feel free to better educate me on the topic, I simply have never jumped on the bandwagon for it because it doesn't seem workable to my private school educated mind.

The point I wanted to make in asking that question is that Parents, alumni, private individuals, and religious organizations support these institutions through donations, and those donations are spent responsibly. What a wonderful way to mitigate overhead.  Pride from the community that these institutions serve results in low overhead.  So for someone to claim that they have an unfair advantage just because the community chooses to support them is rather entertaining.

It's like saying "the only reason McGill's food is so good is that people pay more for it."  It's a backwards economic assumption.  People are willing to pay more because the food is good!

If Holland Hall had a track record of producing deplorable performance marks and produced decades of welfare recipients and dropouts, you would probably not see those folks donating vast sums of money back to the school that helped them to achieve dependence!  You would also not experience the affiliation and funding from organizations.

The private schools to pay Tulsa County property tax, because only land and facilities used primarily for worship are exempt.  However, I personally can see no better reason for tax exemption than offering it to private schools that provide exceptional education of our children, and I think that should certainly be another incentive in building a successful voucher system.  It's a win-win for the city and the operators.  Great idea!

[Conan71]

The point I wanted to make in asking that question is that Parents, alumni, private individuals, and religious organizations support these institutions through donations, and those donations are spent responsibly. What a wonderful way to mitigate overhead.  Pride from the community that these institutions serve results in low overhead.  So for someone to claim that they have an unfair advantage just because the community chooses to support them is rather entertaining.

It's like saying "the only reason McGill's food is so good is that people pay more for it."  It's a backwards economic assumption.  People are willing to pay more because the food is good!

If Holland Hall had a track record of producing deplorable performance marks and produced decades of welfare recipients and dropouts, you would probably not see those folks donating vast sums of money back to the school that helped them to achieve dependence!  You would also not experience the affiliation and funding from organizations.

The private schools to pay Tulsa County property tax, because only land and facilities used primarily for worship are exempt.  However, I personally can see no better reason for tax exemption than offering it to private schools that provide exceptional education of our children, and I think that should certainly be another incentive in building a successful voucher system.  It's a win-win for the city and the operators.  Great idea!

There's really two reasons private school students excel.  One is they are pretty much hand-picked for academic excellence.  Secondly, and as you expanded on:  is that the parents have more of an investment in their child's education and typically higher-income families are going to be more involved at home and at school with their child's education.  People who had high standards of their own when they were in school will expect no less from their children and will help them to achieve their goals.

That said, please enlighten me on who could participate and how a voucher program would be implemented if the existing private schools had no interest in accepting vouchers or simply could not fund the expansion required to do so.

[Gaspar]

There's really two reasons private school students excel.  One is they are pretty much hand-picked for academic excellence.  Secondly, and as you expanded on:  is that the parents have more of an investment in their child's education and typically higher-income families are going to be more involved at home and at school with their child's education.  People who had high standards of their own when they were in school will expect no less from their children and will help them to achieve their goals.

That said, please enlighten me on who could participate and how a voucher program would be implemented if the existing private schools had no interest in accepting vouchers or simply could not fund the expansion required to do so.

Like any smart business, if you have a line of folks out the door, that represents unrealized profit.  If you fail to take advantage of the demand, someone else will.  As with any change like this it would have to be phased in over time, and the state would need to work with private institutions and create incentives for the creation of new institutions like the property tax credit we brilliantly devised above.  Public schools would continue to exist, they would simply be phased out over time, and/or purchased by private organizations.  Good teachers will always have jobs, but the poorly performing teachers woud be free to explore new career options. 

I disagree with your statement about private schools hand-picking students for academic excellence.  Again, I have several friends that were sent to private schools specifically because they were failing miserably in Jenks, and Memorial.  Every one of them without exception became successful.

[Conan71]

Sorry I should have clarified Holland Hall and Cascia do hand-pick via entry exams rather than making a blanket statement about all area private schools.  BK, Metro, and others I don't believe have as high of standards.  Us Cascia rats always referred to BK as the "Catholic reform school".  We had some love ups but they were a very small minority of the school population and even the stoners got good grades.

There was one point you made in an earlier post that I was not familiar with: teacher bonus pay for performance.  Personally, it's something I'd love to see at the public level as an incentive for great performance.  At least when I was at CH, there was no such thing.  It was even explained to me by a couple of instructors that the pay scale was one year behind TPS but those two considered the better working conditions at Cascia to be worth the small pay difference.  Oh, and just like the students, CH hand-picked the instructors they wanted as well.  I really do consider myself fortunate to have had that opportunity.  I can honestly say the three years I spent there far better prepared me for the outside world than my spotty college career did

[AquaMan]

The problem is not funding, it's funding linked to achievement!!!!!!!!!!

I don't really care about "some public schools."  Some public schools are excellent, just like some McDonald's are excellent.  Overall the concept of continuing to increase funding for public education as a panacea is flawed.  Because the money is not directly linked to achievement, it is as in any government enterprise, diverted to building more bureaucracy and sustaining administrative structure and growth.



Since 1970, inflation adjusted public school spending has more than doubled http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d08/tables/dt08_181.asp?referrer=list . Over the same period, achievement of students at the end of high school has shown no improvement, and high school graduation rate has declined by 4 or 5%, according to Nobel laureate economist James Heckman.
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ltt/
http://ftp.iza.org/dp3216.pdf

Taxes for education have increased by $300 Billion without improving outcomes. Researchers at Stanford University and the University of Munich have come to the same conclusion that academic achievement is directly related to economic growth, and quantity of education spending is no substitute for quality of education.  http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG07-01_Hanushek_Woessmann.pdf

Public schools could correct this problem if individual student academic performance and improvement was directly tied to funding.  Unfortunately this flies in the face of how any unionized, or government agency works, because to accomplish this paradigm shift you would need to incentivize performance among employees, cut wasteful bureaucracy, and eliminate employees who fail to perform. 

There are several reasons this will never happen (we can discuss that if you like but I think you already understand why), so the more reasonable option would be to transition education from government bureaucracy to private enterprise.

I really enjoyed your reference to the public school system as "a system that needs the funding desperately."  It's like an alcoholic pleading for one mor drink. Public schools have no need to factor profit into the equation, so if you look at a public school that spends $14,000 per student per year, that's $14,000 that is spent on the student, materials, administrative/payroll costs, and facilities.  Now if you look at a private school that charges $12,000 per student, that amount covers the same expenses right?. . . but it also maintains a profit margin for the operators of the enterprise and pays bonuses, marketing, and recruiting expenses.  So in reality, our private school may only spend $7,000 per student cost less in total tuition, and still outperform the school spending twice as much!

The nature of government in general is to grow.  Every agency, bureaucracy and department's primary function above any service they provide is to increase funding.  That is just the nature of the beast.  Throw in a unionized labor force, and you introduce other factors such as the resistance to individual incentivization, and an inability to impose performance measures.

We've now had decades to observe this, yet the alcoholic keeps asking for one mor drink, and promising that everything will change.  An intervention is in order.

As usual you do a lot of work to repeat  other peoples politics without questioning them. For instance, you are assuming that not exceeding 300 on an NAEP test is de facto a failure. Frankly I am not aware of the test so I don't know if thats a good score or a failing score. At some point you can either read or you can't. You can either add/subtract/multiply or you can't. Dump tons of public or private school efforts on increasing past that and it means diminishing returns.

That brings up another important point. Meaningful achievement. Whose tests? What levels? Are tests even relevant as has been pointed out. Memorization isn't learning. Then, what do you do when one teacher shows massive improvement over the others? I want my kid in that class don't you? And next year if she drops I want my kid in the next amazing achiever's class. I am not naive enough to believe that there are no bad teachers, but I want mine with the amazing teacher and I won't take no for an answer. TPS takes that teacher and moves her into administration or to a low performing school to lead others. Your model would likely create a lottery or premium to be in that class.

And then you think you have an airtight case without noting that school systems had built a system to handle the huge demands of the baby boom generation only to have to dismantle much of it in the 1970's-80's then start rebuilding again to process the grandchildren of the boomers. That see saw process means inventory and employment out of synch with needs. Your graph doesn't care about that because it doesn't make for good arguments. These are huge systems that are criticized for bloated operations when the student population drops and underfunded when student population surges. Mostly because they are such an easy target for politicians and union haters.

Then you lump private for profit, private non profit and private religious schools into the same hopper and make business analyses that relate to for profit only. Meaningless to do so without noting that the non profits, and parochial schools rely heavily upon donations and shared buildings and smaller populations.

I know you don't care about some schools. That was an indulgent remark. I'll take the best of TPS any day vs the best of for profit private schools. Eisenhower, Booker T, Thoreau, Lee, Elliot, Mayo etc may not win that battle but they will compete well. The only private school that would consistently exceed BTW is Holland Hall and  I'm pretty sure its at a premium cost per student. These public schools are using the latest in technology and teaching methods, and draw solid parental support to produce the results you think can only be made with private schools. They are working hard to leverage what they've learned into the rest of the system but the legislature listens to your arguments rather than theirs.

Good luck with assimilating the general population into your model with the expectations that business can solve the problems of drugs, poverty, abuse, hunger and criminality that they bring in their baggage. Your naivete will soon result in a system that looks like the old TPS.

[Gaspar]

As usual you do a lot of work to repeat  other peoples politics without questioning them. For instance, you are assuming that not exceeding 300 on an NAEP test is de facto a failure. Frankly I am not aware of the test so I don't know if thats a good score or a failing score. At some point you can either read or you can't. You can either add/subtract/multiply or you can't. Dump tons of public or private school efforts on increasing past that and it means diminishing returns.

That brings up another important point. Meaningful achievement. Whose tests? What levels? Are tests even relevant as has been pointed out. Memorization isn't learning. Then, what do you do when one teacher shows massive improvement over the others? I want my kid in that class don't you? And next year if she drops I want my kid in the next amazing achiever's class. I am not naive enough to believe that there are no bad teachers, but I want mine with the amazing teacher and I won't take no for an answer. TPS takes that teacher and moves her into administration or to a low performing school to lead others. Your model would likely create a lottery or premium to be in that class.

And then you think you have an airtight case without noting that school systems had built a system to handle the huge demands of the baby boom generation only to have to dismantle much of it in the 1970's-80's then start rebuilding again to process the grandchildren of the boomers. That see saw process means inventory and employment out of synch with needs. Your graph doesn't care about that because it doesn't make for good arguments. These are huge systems that are criticized for bloated operations when the student population drops and underfunded when student population surges. Mostly because they are such an easy target for politicians and union haters.

Then you lump private for profit, private non profit and private religious schools into the same hopper and make business analyses that relate to for profit only. Meaningless to do so without noting that the non profits, and parochial schools rely heavily upon donations and shared buildings and smaller populations.

I know you don't care about some schools. That was an indulgent remark. I'll take the best of TPS any day vs the best of for profit private schools. Eisenhower, Booker T, Thoreau, Lee, Elliot, Mayo etc may not win that battle but they will compete well. The only private school that would consistently exceed BTW is Holland Hall and  I'm pretty sure its at a premium cost per student. These public schools are using the latest in technology and teaching methods, and draw solid parental support to produce the results you think can only be made with private schools. They are working hard to leverage what they've learned into the rest of the system but the legislature listens to your arguments rather than theirs.

Good luck with assimilating the general population into your model with the expectations that business can solve the problems of drugs, poverty, abuse, hunger and criminality that they bring in their baggage. Your naivete will soon result in a system that looks like the old TPS.

We both understand that neither of us will change the opinion of the other.  So, lets both accept that.  So let's explore the solution in another fashion and see if we can make the two different angles meet in the middle somewhere?

1. Is the solution simply to throw more money at the problem?

2. Or is the solution to change the structure of the organizations?

3. If it was possible, how would you accomplish a change in structure?


I'll go first:

1. No, money is not the answer. In most cases we already exceed what we know to be necessary to produce a powerful and positive educational experience for a child.  All we need to do is apply that structure to the public system.

2. Yes.  Today they resemble the typical government bureaucracy.  Top-heavy, slow-moving, wasteful, and ineffective in serving the needs of the individual student, and only moderately effective in serving the student community at large.  The product and service they currently provide is of lesser value than the investment they require.

3. You may have more insight into this than I can provide.  My answer is already established. . .eliminate the government bureaucracy by transitioning it out of the hands of government.  Your answer would need to illustrate how, within the public system, a restructure could be possible, and would the unions ever allow it?

[Townsend]

We both understand that neither of us will change the opinion of the other.  So, lets both accept that.  So let's explore the solution in another fashion and see if we can make the two different angles meet in the middle somewhere?

1. Is the solution simply to throw more money at the problem?

2. Or is the solution to change the structure of the organizations?

3. If it was possible, how would you accomplish a change in structure?


I'll go first:

1. No, money is not the answer. In most cases we already exceed what we know to be necessary to produce a powerful and positive educational experience for a child.  All we need to do is apply that structure to the public system.

2. Yes.  Today they resemble the typical government bureaucracy.  Top-heavy, slow-moving, wasteful, and ineffective in serving the needs of the individual student, and only moderately effective in serving the student community at large.  The product and service they currently provide is of lesser value than the investment they require.

3. You may have more insight into this than I can provide.  My answer is already established. . .eliminate the government bureaucracy by transitioning it out of the hands of government.  Your answer would need to illustrate how, within the public system, a restructure could be possible, and would the unions ever allow it?

You don't see how this makes you look pompous do you?

[rdj]

I've skimmed a lot of this.  In the debate about private school vs public school has anyone mentioned teacher tenure?  It is much harder for a public school to fire a teacher than it is for a private school.  IMO, that is a game changer.

[Gaspar]

You don't see how this makes you look pompous do you?

Why?  I'm seeking a solution rather than just hammering at each other.   There may be factors and strategies that I fail to consider because I approach the argument from a single dimension.  What is wrong with seeking other solutions rather than just offering a target for others to shoot at?

[AquaMan]

You do wriggle and wiggle when you can't go point to point. They could have used you in the Spanish Inquisition..."We know, sir, that you have sinned against nature yet we have yet to discern whether it was beast or fowl and what your atonement might be. These are our answers, perhaps you could share your's with us. 1. It was a pig 2. It was a chicken 3.Punishment by hanging. What say you, sir?"

My short answer? Contract out education to another country.