Nosy government and schools ?

[Hacp]

You are delusional. Yes, people without children would want to have more money in their pockets than not. BFD. A tax to support public schools (property tax or otherwise) is necessary for any nation to be successful in modern times. Such a system was one of the first set up here in the US because it was such a good idea.

Private schools, although they provide valuable service, are not a wholesale substitute for educating a population. Within a generation of disbanding public school systems, we would have enrollment at private schools surge and yet we would still have the unwashed uneducated newly illiterate masses knocking at your door, and rightfully so. Public education is a GOOD thing.

Edit: This has nothing to do with illegals or the children of illegals. That is a red herring. As long as Amendment 14 is still in the constitution, we must educate these citizens. Noncitizens? That is deserving of another thread.

Why is that so? Why is it necessary? Can you prove it mathematically? Or are you just talking out of your ass? You're like the people that just accept it when people say "diversity is good". Why? What logic are you using? The same logic that they used to come up with Marxism?

 

[Kanalua]

Depends. Some places (here in Hawaii) you can choose what public school your child goes to. District exemptions are generally granted. There are also a ton of private school choices here, on Oahu, at least. You can always home school. We have one unified school district for the whole state, run under the State DOE. School workers are represented by multiple Unions (HGEA, UPW, ILWU, etc). It is a mess here. And there is no money for public education (we had furloughs last year).

 

[Patranus]

The public school system (especially in California) is a joke.

Here we have districts bussing children away from their community schools into other communities in the name of "diversity".

What a joke.

 

[werepossum]

Some clarification of what's been said. You can choose to which school you send your children, but if you are a property owner your taxes still go to the public school system. (When we say "public school" we mean government school, not a public school as England would have.) Besides the government schools we have two sorts of private (meaning non-government, but generally open to anyone with the money) schools, secular and religious. Religious schools are run by a particular religion and sect (e.g. Muslim Sunni, Christian Baptist, Christian Korean Methodist, Beth Torah) and get very little to no government funding. They generally spend less per pupil than do government schools; class sizes may be slightly smaller or slightly larger, but generally track similar. They may also be quite expensive, especially to those out of the religion. (Many people choose to send children to a religious school because of the quality education.) Secular private schools are almost without exception more expensive and generally provide a much better education. People also like the more expensive religious and secular private schools because they keep out the riff-raff - which generally means your children will be associating with other children who, because of their parents' resources, will tend to be in more influential positions later in life. Both religious and secular private schools also award some scholarships for sports, academic achievement, and the pursuit of diversity.

Within our government schools, we have several things that drive us away from quality education. In many (though not all) areas, teachers' unions actively fight qualifications and consequences for poor performance. Many school systems are stressed by older facilities; when your average building is forty or fifty years old, maintenance eats up a lot of your budget. We suffer from extreme political swings as well - progressives will achieve power and bring in math books with no math, which ushers in ultra-conservatives who bring in science books about how the Great Flood created the Grand Canyon 5,000 years ago, which ushers in progressives . . .

Probably our worst problems are societal. We simply no longer value hard work, or math or science. Our heroes tend to be celebrities and athletes, people whose talents contribute only marginally to society's prosperity. Our parents tend to want to be their children's friends, so that a parent whose child is disciplined at school is more likely to raise hell with the school board and the school than with the child. And we've developed a systematic bias for boosting children's self-esteem rather than giving them achievements deserving of high self esteem. But students who actually try - whose parents drive them to success and hard work - can still get a pretty good education in most school districts.

 

[zsdersw]

Some clarification of what's been said. You can choose to which school you send your children, but if you are a property owner your taxes still go to the public school system. (When we say "public school" we mean government school, not a public school as England would have.) Besides the government schools we have two sorts of private (meaning non-government, but generally open to anyone with the money) schools, secular and religious. Religious schools are run by a particular religion and sect (e.g. Muslim Sunni, Christian Baptist, Christian Korean Methodist, Beth Torah) and get very little to no government funding. They generally spend less per pupil than do government schools; class sizes may be slightly smaller or slightly larger, but generally track similar. They may also be quite expensive, especially to those out of the religion. (Many people choose to send children to a religious school because of the quality education.) Secular private schools are almost without exception more expensive and generally provide a much better education. People also like the more expensive religious and secular private schools because they keep out the riff-raff - which generally means your children will be associating with other children who, because of their parents' resources, will tend to be in more influential positions later in life. Both religious and secular private schools also award some scholarships for sports, academic achievement, and the pursuit of diversity.

Within our government schools, we have several things that drive us away from quality education. In many (though not all) areas, teachers' unions actively fight qualifications and consequences for poor performance. Many school systems are stressed by older facilities; when your average building is forty or fifty years old, maintenance eats up a lot of your budget. We suffer from extreme political swings as well - progressives will achieve power and bring in math books with no math, which ushers in ultra-conservatives who bring in science books about how the Great Flood created the Grand Canyon 5,000 years ago, which ushers in progressives . . .

Probably our worst problems are societal. We simply no longer value hard work, or math or science. Our heroes tend to be celebrities and athletes, people whose talents contribute only marginally to society's prosperity. Our parents tend to want to be their children's friends, so that a parent whose child is disciplined at school is more likely to raise hell with the school board and the school than with the child. And we've developed a systematic bias for boosting children's self-esteem rather than giving them achievements deserving of high self esteem. But students who actually try - whose parents drive them to success and hard work - can still get a pretty good education in most school districts.

Having worked in public education (in IT, which is usually considered "administration") for most of my career, I can say that post is entirely correct.

Wisconsin's public schools are, for the most part, quite good. The biggest problem, funding-wise, for Wisconsin is the QEO (qualified economic offer) that was instituted in 1993. It has several worthy goals, such as slowing and reducing the huge cost increases of union contracts, but the primary flaw is its provisions for how much money each district gets from the state, per pupil, in aid. That amount was frozen at whatever the amount was at the time the QEO went into effect. This essentially punished districts that were fiscally conservative and rewarded districts that spent liberally. Philosophically, it also said that a child in one district was worth more in the eyes of the state than a child in another district.. and that's a huge fundamental flaw, if there ever was one. Since 1993 they've tried to mitigate these things, but it has nowhere near leveled the playing field.

Having said that, though, I've worked for some amazing school districts in Wisconsin... and all of them were on the low end of the state funding formula. Great education isn't about how much money you spend, it's about engaging all of the stakeholders; parents, teachers, students, administration, the Board, and the rest of the community. Everyone has a role to play, but the key is in getting them to recognize it and choose to play it.