In a State With School Vouchers For All, Low-Income Families Aren’t Choosing to Use Them : longreads

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago

Its because these schools are all run by unscrupulous types. Yeah you get the voucher, good luck paying for tuition and the rest. Its clear this is a way to damage public schooling in my state while also giving a back handy to some friends. Axe that shit, and give the money to public schools. The only thing wrong with education is what we allow to happen by underfunding them

[–] taladar 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Aren't school vouchers just the extremists' way to get their religious indoctrination centers funded as public schools?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Yes. Religious parents would love to save money on tuition for their private schools, and they would love even more to take money away from public schools.

And some rich parents want to send their kids to expensive private schools because they think, possibly accurately, that some of those schools provide high quality education. So if you give them money, of course they're going to take it.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

School vouchers suck.

I'm a huge fan of school choice, but to me, that means:

multiple school options w/ no cost difference (so all tax funded, for example)
sufficiently robust mass transit so kids can get to whatever school they want
incentives for teachers to find a better fit for a student

"Vouchers" are a lazy approach here, and I would assume they would largely benefit wealthier families.

[–] Oni_eyes 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Teachers already have enough shit to do. How about properly staffed support positions like counselors to do that considering it's already part of their job?

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Sure. Teachers would just recommend students meet w/ the counselor if they think they'd have more success in another environment. The main thrust here is to not incentivize teachers to try to hold on to students for better funding or whatever.

[–] Oni_eyes 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We already don't try to hold onto them for funding. I would love smaller classes so I can focus more on each student. It's the admin and that we're funded by attendance.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I'm just worried that admin will put pressure on teachers to retain as many students as possible to keep funding, when teachers should be focusing on providing the best education they can. Some schools could conceivable have larger class sizes (i.e. if the focus for that school is independent learning), while others could have smaller class sizes, and there shouldn't be pressure for any class to retain students who would do better in a different environment.

E.g. I would have done better in a larger class of independent learners, because I preferred to work ahead of the class anyway and the teacher was more distracting than anything (I learn better on my own with occasional accountability), whereas some of the kids next to me really benefited from more interaction with the teacher. Everyone learns differently, and school should be designed in such a way that every child can learn in the way that works best for them.

[–] Oni_eyes 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The problem for that is logistics. It would be more effective to have those different sized classes taught in the same building rather than different schools so that we wouldn't have to be bussing people all around the district. It would also require both an increase in counselors who can help with identifying learning styles and in teachers who can be matched with the class that suits their teaching style as well.

That would also require an increase in pay for many of these positions since people already don't want to do them because the workload is significant, and that would have to be without increasing the workload because that just keeps the imbalance in place.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That would also require an increase in pay for many of these positions

Sure, and probably a reduction in administrative staff since we'd move a lot of those responsibilities onto more local staff. I honestly don't see a ton of value in school districts as a concept, and instead think we should be thinking in terms of what makes an individual school stand out. If we shift money from the districts to the schools, we could probably fund a lot of this w/o changing revenue.

One huge part of this, though, is replacing school buses with city transit. If kids are taking city transit to get to school, transferring to a different bus to go to a different school shouldn't be a big deal (just ride w/ the kids the first few times and they'll get it). This is where a lot of the cost savings should come from IMO, we shouldn't be maintaining two separate fleets of transit vehicles and employees, we should instead expand and improve city transit to cover both use cases.

[–] Oni_eyes 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

One of the benefits of districts is that you can then afford to have magnet type schools that specialize in one specific field, like performing arts, science, etc. That allows for students who are excelling in that district to get more specialized instruction. As for the transit bit, yes doubling up is troubling but we would need to provide additional routes and runs on each route to improve coverage to the point that school buses become moot. I'm not sure which would be easier to do, though I do want to support the swap to public transit.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

we would need to provide additional routes and runs on each route to improve coverage to the point that school buses become moot

And if school buses are moot, then districts are largely moot. Why rely on a district to provide specialized services when you can just let the schools themselves decide what to specialize in to attract students? That works really well for universities, and the main limitation for K-12 schools to operate that way is transit. Moving students to specialized schools within a district is incredibly rare, and I've only seen it in one place (where I grew up, which spent a ton on schools and had an advanced placement school). In my current area, the only way you're getting school choice is if the parents bring the kids to/from school, because the buses only run for students in their boundaries.

I think this type of system would work pretty well in densely populated areas like city centers, though it would break down for smaller towns and whatnot. So we should probably keep the traditional model for rural areas, and migrate to school choice for urban areas.

But yes, transit is absolutely the key. And I think killing bus service would kick-start transit service, since parents would quickly get annoyed if they had to take their kids there every day.

[–] Oni_eyes 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You're incorrect there. The main limitation for schools k-12 to specialize is funding. To get the equipment and staff necessary takes a lot of money (which is why universities use funding not just from grants that aren't available to public k-12, like from their research sides that do not exist in public k-12). The salary is also a huge problem for specialists since they can easily make more with less stress and more validation on the private sector side.

Even if all that got sorted, you would still want to use districting to consolidate some positions in admin, and to make it easier to plan specializations of k-12 schools (so there's less overlap if it's not needed and you don't have a bunch of waste expenses).

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The main limitation for schools k-12 to specialize is funding

That may be true w/ the current system where specialized programs are add-ons to the regular programs, but if we're replacing a current class, maybe funding isn't as much of an issue. If we use your example, universities specialize and students apply to the school that supports their desired specialty. The university I went to had no medical program but had an awesome law program, whereas the school an hour away had the opposite (awesome medical, no law), so if I wanted to go into law or medical, I would choose the school appropriately.

But when I say "specialize," I generally don't mean things that require more equipment, like IT or trades, I mean teaching style. For primary education, here are some examples:

democratic education - kids choose what to learn, within certain guard-rails
independent learning - kids largely teach themselves, so similar to home-schooling, but with a professional teacher available
traditional learning - teacher-guided education in a traditional classroom setting

None of these really change equipment requirements, but they do require a different type of curriculum and teacher development.

Secondary education could also change, but this gets a lot more into equipment. I'm thinking some schools could stop general education at grade 10, with the last two years preparing kids for the workforce in specific areas (e.g. trades, IT, etc). They'd still have some traditional classroom instruction, but a significant portion of the day (half?) would be dedicated to whatever their focus is. They would invite local businesses to fund the more expensive programs in return for access to the students as a form of recruitment. Other schools would do the traditional college track and focus more on writing essays, reading literature, etc. All of the tracks would hit base learning standards, I just think kids can learn a lot more effectively if they attend a school that matches their ideal learning style.

I think we're wasting a lot of kids' potential by forcing everyone through traditional education. This isn't the fault of teachers either, and I think most teachers agree that many of their students would do better in another environment, but that other environment doesn't exist. I think the school bus system is holding us back, and if we had better mobility between schools, we could specialize schools to get better outcomes for all.

[–] Oni_eyes 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What experience do you have to back up any of your ideas? I have a degree, certification, and about a decade of teaching experience and I do not see it working the way you describe.

First off, it seems you're sampling from the Arbitur system (German system of last two years being work related, which only really works because the school system segregates children based on scores for their elementary and middle schools, and which we do not do here and which you did not mention)

Secondly, you say that the school bus system is holding us back and would allow for schools to specialize but we already have that occurring in school districts with normal school bus systems. The bus system clearly isn't preventing magnet schools from existing so that's not the issue.

Thirdly, there are only so many seats at each campus and so how are you going to discriminate as to who gets entry? Will it be based solely on teacher/counselor recommendation, or will there be testing requirements? If you look at private schools which are not in districts and have significantly more funding to specialize, they also do not let the majority of applicants enter. How do we make education accessible without creating these hurdles to allow for specialization that will literally do the opposite for the majority of students (skewing mostly towards lower income/immigrant families who will have issues either with the language or with educational support at home since time has to be allocated towards survival earning instead of spending more time on reinforcement for the student)

Fourth, how do you propose these individual schools get funding to allow for these specializations without tying it to attendance and creating a huge fight over who gets which student (thus going against what might be best for the student)? With district's, at least the money can get moved from one school to the next if there is excess or you need to specialize a school in the district. You can also share physical resources between schools in district's, not so much between individual schools across town.

Fifth, which schools aren't going to have sports fields? Those are typically district property to be used by multiple schools to cut down on costs.

That's just off the top of my head, there's a lot of moving parts and shared resources that look easy to split from the outside while actually being incredibly interconnected.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

What experience do you have to back up any of your ideas?

Mostly a handful of books I've read, documentaries I've watched, and discussions with teachers in my family. For democratic learning, I cite Sir Ken Robinson's You, Your Child, and School (I think, I read a few books around that time), and for independent learning, I cite myself and my friends, who were perennially bored and much preferred to just teach ourselves throughout K-12 school (college was great because I could skip classes if I knew it was going to be a waste of time). The main saving grace for me was a concurrent enrollment program at the local community college, so I got my AA a couple months before my high school diploma.

And yes, the Arbitur system in Germany (I never remember what it's called). I see so many kids drop out here around 10-12th grade because they feel like school is pointless, and some years later they end up in the trades. My school opened up a machine shop, and I think that reduced high school dropouts some (not sure, I've since moved and never bothered checking before/after stats).

My current district doesn't offer as many of those programs, though they do have a few classes here and there (e.g. a programming class as an elective). My current school district is considering a split (we're the largest in the state, by a lot) largely to "keep costs local," and my main concern is that we'd have even less opportunity for specialized programs because each school needs to be a complete unit. We also have charter schools, but those are only available for privileged kids, which doesn't really solve the wider problem of poor test scores (privileged kids would likely succeed regardless due to parental support. We do have concurrent enrollment at a local university, which is nice, but that only helps college-bound kids.

the school system segregates children based on scores for their elementary and middle schools

We kind of do. I'm in the US (Utah specifically, grew up in WA), and we absolutely do a form of segregation. My kids go to a charter school (so not sure how public school works), and they split kids roughly by ability, and have them learn independently if they're ahead of the class (both my kids are). They have a separate class as well for kids who are at the top (we call it "compass club," which both my kids attend). Where I grew up, we had a special program called "STEP" for "highly capable" K-5 students (my friend was invited, I wasn't) where kids are bussed from around the district to a single school, and we had "honors" classes in 6-12, which basically taught material a year ahead for math, and went more in depth for humanities classes (english and history). We also did and do state testing pretty much every year to determine outcomes, which impacts funding for schools.

I think we should take that a step further and split schools based on teaching style. I have three elementary schools and a charter school within 3 miles of my house, but they all offer basically the same approach to education, each being a little silo. We chose the charter school (enrollment is based on a lottery) because our assigned school had a crappy principle who seemed to scare away teachers (most teachers stayed for 1-2 years and moved on), whereas other parents moved their kids to one of the other schools in the area. So at least in my neighborhood, only about 30% stayed with the assigned school, and the other 70% have to take their kids themselves, which is incredibly wasteful. And I'm in a very privileged neighborhood, the less privileged kids in the boundaries are basically stuck where they're at.

The bus system clearly isn’t preventing magnet schools from existing so that’s not the issue.

No, but it's preventing access to those magnet schools. Given the choice between a free bus and having to drop off and pick up your kid every day, which do you think a busy family is going to choose? What ends up happening, at least in my area, is that privileged kids get to take advantage of those programs, while poorer kids don't. Some areas will bus between those schools, but that's hardly an efficient system.

there are only so many seats at each campus

If a certain program is popular, your options are:

expand the school/add teachers
transition other schools in the area to that system
increase class sizes
lottery system

Denying kids is a temporary problem and probably only relevant in the first couple years it's offered while teachers skill up to teach whatever that program is. So I recommend doing the last two as much as possible before the first two. If the program is successful, the other two will happen naturally as schools rebalance to meet shifting needs.

how do you propose these individual schools get funding

Funding is always an issue. In general, funding should be applied based on need, and teachers reallocated and paid based on ability. So if you're teaching disadvantaged kids in broken homes, that teacher should get paid a lot more than a teacher largely teaching independent learners, and perhaps school hours should be extended for the former and reduced for the latter (the latter probably has support at home). Teachers would fight for the role they'd prefer (i.e. lower pay and easier students, or higher pay and more challenging students/longer hours).

which schools aren’t going to have sports fields?

Honestly, most schools wouldn't have sports fields. Ideally, most of these would be remitted to the cities as parks, and after school sports would fall under the city's purview (most cities already do this anyway). I really liked after-school sports, but it's hardly required for schools to fund and only really benefits a relatively small percentage of the student body. They could be subsidized for lower-income kids as well, and transportation for competition w/ other teams would be handled through mass transit.

That's how it worked where my SO grew up (E. Asia), so I don't see why we couldn't do that here.

there’s a lot of moving parts and shared resources

Certainly, and as an outsider, I don't have that larger context. My aim here is to propose an alternative to our current system that better serves the needs of kids instead of trying to force them all into the same mold. Oh, and also gives more control to teachers, as well as offers more opportunities for experimentation.

Things like "no child left behind" and "common core" push hard on that "one-size fits all" approach, which I really think does our kids a disservice. We should have a "one size fits most" approach by default, with different options available for the rest of the kids.

[–] Oni_eyes 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So you are coming from a place that has:

no experience with how this system works
Your kids are not actively in the public system and you yourself admit you don't know what it's like in your area
You have no understanding of the current teacher shortage by saying that people will just train up to fill new roles (we already have a shortage in stem, with overloaded classes, but sure there will magically be people who want to train to enter this low income career that you're suggesting take on either lower pay for small classes or more pay for even larger classes in another section...)
You're advocating for a charter model while talking about the public system despite there being a huge gap between the two in terms of responsibility towards the entire student population in their area (charters don't have to follow all the rules that are tied to federal funds thanks to the Supreme Court, so they can deny the difficult to teach students, not even talking about behavior or grades but disability, which I guess is fine by you as long as it's not your kid getting excluded)
Common core is simply the idea that there needs to be a standard set of knowledge taught to everyone as a baseline for well educated citizens. That's not a bad idea conceptually though it does get messed with a lot because there isn't enough funding to actually follow through on it vis a vis teaching staff and support.

I'd be happy to keep going with this but you're missing a lot and I already am overworked with my current students.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 1 points 1 month ago

correct - though I do consider myself more well-read on the topic than the average person
they technically are, though testing is different (we have entrance and exit tests, whereas public schools only have exit tests); but charter schools are privately run, publicly funded schools that must meet the same standards as public schools (and can't discriminate on applications)
I certainly do, seeing as I have family members in the school system; i think teacher salaries should be dramatically increased to encourage more applications, and this is especially acute in my area where teachers are paid particularly poorly; so this shift comes with the assumption of increasing teacher salaries at the expense of spending on buses and admin staff
yes, basically a charter system, but I don't think it necessarily needs to work that way; I think school admin should be allowed to specialize their school in any way they see fit, and if it doesn't work, they'll be replaced by someone with different ideas; whether that's offered as a public school or charter school is irrelevant, but the current model would support that as a charter school thing
I think it's too granular, I honestly don't care if my kid is falling behind in English but excelling in Math in a given year, I just care that they exit the school system meeting certain expectations; and that's what a democratic classroom system would do, it could delay certain subjects until kids are interested, and then go hard once they are (so kids could be 2 years ahead in one area, and a year behind in others); this can work well for some kids, but really poorly for others (as Sir Ken Robinson describes)

they can deny the difficult to teach students

I honestly don't know much about this, but I do know they are required to use a simple lottery, with priority only allowed for family of existing students (i.e. my second kid was accepted because my first kid attends there). It's not a private school that has an application process, you simply fill out some details (mostly name and age) and students are randomly selected. We applied to two, and were accepted to one. If we weren't accepted to either, we would have appealed to the district to allow us to move to a different public school (two of three in the area are acceptable to us, we just really didn't like our local principle, nor did the teachers in my neighborhood).

you’re missing a lot

If you have some good resources (e.g. books), I'd love to educate myself better. But just saying, "you're wrong because you don't have experience" isn't particularly helpful. I understand you're busy, and I am grateful that you've responded as much as you have, but surely there's something you could point me at so I could correct whatever mistaken assumptions I have.

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