I don’t know if it was politicians that gummed up the works. My feeling is that it started falling apart when someone started changing how basics were taught. Remember New Math? A generation of students who could not do simple multiplication tables in their heads. What the heck happened to English skills? I was taught phonetics and memorization from the first grade. Now people cannot spell or write complete sentences. Basically, I think the problem began with trying to treat all students “the same”. Now, although it is not a recent phenomenum, instead of no child left behind, we have MOST children left behind. There are not enough private schools to fix it. We must fix public schools and it will take a complete overhaul.

geez-o-pete, AJC – would you please set out some rules as to what triggers your idiotic screening so that we could at least be able to carry on a conversation without having our comments pulled …

especially when there’s nothing illegal, immoral or fattening in the content???

wankers.

1. Public schools have the curricula and well-trained teachers. Teachers who are substandard don’t last and generally don’t stay. We take kids at all levels and from every kind of background and try to educate them. Private schools, by their very nature, are more selective and can pick an choose who they take. Thus, they can weed out the “undesirable” element. They don’t have to update curricula or change anything they don’t want to change. Their teachers don’t have to be certified or qualified by any professional standards. Private schools also don’t pay as well, so they have a hard time keeping teachers who find themselves unable to make ends meet on their salaries. The turnover rate among private school teachers is as high as it is in public schools.

2. Private schools succeed because they have a HIGH level of parental involvement. Look at public schools like say, Milton HS for example. Public school, successful, well-known. Parents are involved and pushing their children to succeed much like pricey private schools. Compare that to say, Tri-Cities HS. Lower socio-economic level, less parental involvement, less successful. Simple as that.

3. Vouchers will only allow for the further entrenchment of people in poverty. Those who can afford to pay the difference will use the vouchers to pull their kids out of public schools. Those who can’t will just have to take what they can get. For those who can’t transport the kids, how will vouchers help them? Plus, every time Junior fails a class or whines about a teacher, the parent(s) will simply pull the kid and move him. How long will it take until the parent(s) realize Junior is the problem- after he’s failed his way out of four, five, six schools in a couple of years? All the bouncing around won’t help the kid succeed.

4. Private schools will soon figure out that the voucher dollars matter to the budget. Many will begin lowering admissions standards and forcing teachers to put up with whoever walks in so that the school can get the money. Pretty soon, they’ll be no better than the supposedly substandard public schools. Not all will, but I bet those that are struggling to stay open will do whatever it takes to draw those voucher dollars in. How will that be any better?
All of the previous comments were made by RF and I agree with them to the point that I reposted them because they were so true. My idiot governor supports vouchers and like USinUk said, most of the republicans here in SC don’t support them so it’s not even a partisan issue. This issue was debated last week on a local radio program Sunday night and the guy that actually works in education said very similar things to what RF said. A non-Cobol programmer would not think of telling me how to program in Cobol but non-educators, mainly politicians with an agenda adopt ideas mainly to benefit their pocketbooks and they push education ideas onto educators. Some of the things RF said I didn’t even know and I imagine the general public doesn’t know either. I didn’t know the turnover of teachers was high in private schools but then politicians who do know that won’t tell the general public because they have an agenda unrelated to education.

Are you sure you saw a real turkey and not some Cobb Co. sasquatch in a turkey suit pretending to be a turkey?