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Subscribe to RSSJACKSON, Miss. -- When state officials here tried last year to recruit a for-profit company to manage schools in rural Tate County, the community outcry was swift. Concerned residents spoke out in the media, argued their case to lawmakers and circulated a petition against the “privatization” of Tate County Schools.
Patricia Johnson, whose son attends a public high school in the county, described the proposal as “crazy.” For-profit companies, she said, shouldn’t be “getting paid” to run things when parents are having to buy copy paper for teachers in cash-strapped schools.
At first glance, Mississippi would seem an unlikely source of resistance to school privatization. But this year, a coalition of lawmakers and community groups is fighting vigorously against the prospect of for-profit companies opening up charter schools.
“I think people have been astounded that anyone can make money off of public education,” said Nancy Loome, executive director of The Parents’ Campaign, which lobbies for public education in Mississippi. “Our schools struggle to make it on the resources they are provided. If (for-profit management is) trying to make a profit and pay shareholders, they aren’t going to be investing very much in educating children.”
This fierce resistance in Mississippi is but the latest example of waning interest in for-profit school managers across the country. Charter schools of all types continue to spread rapidly. But schools managed by for-profit companies make up a smaller share than they did just a few years ago.
In Mississippi, the debate comes as lawmakers are poised to approve a major expansion of charter schools later this month. At the same time, renewed attention to the state’s lagging test scores and overall woeful performance in education is fueling debate about alternative ways of running schools.
Rick Hess, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said states should at least consider the potential benefits of for-profits. “I think it’s crazy to discriminate against companies because they want to pay taxes,” he said. “The bemoaning of for-profits is one reason we wind up with a system that has enormous difficulty trimming costs, and growth of even successful schools moves at a snail’s pace.”
Charter schools can be divided into two broad groups: ones that are freestanding and ones that are part of larger networks or chains. In 2007, about half of all network or chain charter schools were managed by for-profit companies. Just three years later, that figure had dropped to about 37 percent, according to the most recent data from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
Some states, including New York, have banned for-profit companies from running charter schools. In other cases, companies such as EdisonLearning, which used to focus primarily on managing schools, have shifted away from management after struggling to turn a profit or raise enough investment capital.
The number of for-profit companies has declined modestly, and the number of schools they operate has hit a plateau, said Gary Miron, a professor of education at Western Michigan University who studies charter schools. (At the same time, some of the schools’ enrollment continues to increase, Miron said, and the number of virtual schools is exploding.)
Education leaders say there are two main reasons for the increased wariness toward for-profit operators: philosophical objections to mixing public education and profit, particularly in low-income communities, and mounting skepticism over their record in some cities and states.
“The biases are deeply ingrained, especially in low-income neighborhoods where the notion of profit-making is not welcome and there’s this sense that competition and markets have not benefited these communities,” said Nina Rees, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
Rees said there is nothing inherently wrong with for-profit operators. She pointed to the National Heritage Academies, based in Michigan, which she said has managed to expand relatively successfully; the network now operates about 75 schools in states including Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina, according to its website. Meanwhile, a number of nonprofit operators have performed abysmally.
“The bottom line ought to be quality,” Rees said.
Advocacy groups find a role
But in Tate County, where nearly two-thirds of public-school students live in poverty, the specter of for-profit management has been greeted mostly with skepticism.
“When you draw off funding … it can cause some great concern. It’s basically taking money we don’t have,” said Steve Hale, a Democratic state senator from the county who fielded residents’ concerns about for-profits last year. (Mississippi has only fully funded its K-12 system twice in the last decade.)
In the end, bids from management companies came in two and three times higher than what the state wanted to spend on Tate County’s schools. All were declined, and the state continues to oversee the Tate district through an appointed “conservator” -- a public employee.
But Hale’s concerns haven’t gone away, and two charter-school bills are circulating. One would allow for-profits; the other would ban them. For-profit education providers K-12 Inc., Connections Education and E2020 spent $250,000 on Mississippi lobbyists in 2011 and 2012, with more spending expected this year. That doesn’t include money from numerous advocacy groups (such as the Black Alliance for Educational Options and the Mississippi Center for Public Policy) that have a track record of promoting school choice, including vouchers and charters.
In some cases, advocacy groups are funded directly by for-profits. K-12 Inc. and E2020 contributed to Republican former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, a group that over the past year has worked to craft education policy with Mississippi lawmakers and the Mississippi Department of Education.
Proponents say for-profit management of schools could actually save money. Republican John L. Moore, chairman of the House Education Committee in Mississippi, said privatization has led to cost savings in other governmental sectors.
“We have a system in place within our prison system where for-profit institutions actually have to do it for 10 percent less than the government is doing it,” Moore said.
But in a sign of just how controversial the issue has become, even Moore has compromised on for-profit charter-school managers -- voting in favor of an amendment offered this session to forbid them.
Lessons from Louisiana
Nationally, for-profit school management companies -- as with charter schools more broadly -- have a mixed track record, but limited evidence suggests they perform worse, on average, than their nonprofit counterparts.
One 2012 study from the National Education Policy Center found that nonprofit school operators outperformed for-profits on at least one measure: 48 percent of schools operated by for-profits met minimal expectations for academic growth, compared with 56 percent of those managed by nonprofits. But even Miron, a co-author of the study, said the growth targets (officially known as making “adequate yearly progress”) are a “crude” basis for comparison since they capture only part of a school’s relative success or failure.
New Orleans has become a prime example of how for-profit charter operators’ reach and influence have waned. Eighty percent of the city’s public-school students attend charter schools, the highest proportion in the country.
When public schools in the city reopened during the two years after Hurricane Katrina, for-profit companies were hired to manage five new charters. As of this school year, however, all of the for-profits managers had left the city. Some were fired or left in disgrace.
“Their track record in Louisiana is at best mediocre, and that’s probably being kind,” said Leslie Jacobs, a former state board of education member and charter-school advocate in New Orleans.
Jacobs said that the companies, which usually ask for between 10 and 15 percent of a school’s revenue, struggle to turn a profit while also offering a quality education program with limited funding. In New Orleans, average teacher salaries have gone up considerably since Katrina, adding to schools’ costs.
The for-profits themselves disagree. Michael Serpe of EdisonLearning, one of the largest for-profits in the country, said that requiring management fees while demanding quality isn’t problematic.
“Your bottom line is frankly the outcome and performance of the children in the school,” Serpe said.
The fees could be an even bigger issue in Mississippi, where per-pupil spending is lower than in Louisiana.
But the greatest weakness of for-profits has been a failure to understand local needs, said Matt Candler, the founder of 4.0 Schools, a nonprofit group that works to address a broad array of educational challenges in New Orleans.
“The behaviors of a few for-profits suggested that they were more interested in getting contracts than serving a community,” he said. Candler added that some for-profit companies, including the Michigan-based Leona Group, applied to manage several charter schools right after Katrina. “To even suggest you can take over seven schools in the wake of a disaster so large without anyone on the ground … sends a message about gaining market share over understanding your customer,” he said.
Leona ultimately took the reins at two charter schools. One closed down in 2009, and the board of directors at the second severed relations with the company.
Charter advocates like Candler and Jacobs say it’s not necessary to outlaw for-profit operators as long as there is a rigorous charter authorization process and they can be fired quickly if they perform poorly. In Louisiana, for-profit companies cannot win charter contracts on their own; a nonprofit board gets the contract and then hires the company as a manager. That would probably be the case in Mississippi as well if the for-profit provision goes through. And many charter critics view the debate over for-profit vs. nonprofit as relatively meaningless since they believe all charter schools represent privatization of what should be a government-run enterprise.
If Mississippi decides to allow for-profits to manage charters, Miron said, he’ll worry that the state will attract only the weakest companies because of its low per-pupil spending.
“The bottom-feeders will go into any state,” he said. “They don’t have any problem with compromising their model because of limited funding.”
This story, "New skepticism of for-profit companies managing public schools," was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the Southern Education Desk, a consortium of public media stations reporting on education issues in the South. Read the Southern Education Desk's version of this story here.
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How stupid can politicians be? Or is it, how rich do they want to be? ò¿ó
How is that public education system working for you? Given a choice, such as in New Orleans, most concerned parents want their children in charter schools.
a charter school IS a public school!
Skeptics: Profit and education don't mix.
Reality: For the same reasons profit and health care don't mix either!
Hummmmmmmm .....Profits and education don't mix? How insightful .. Yet we accept lawmakers taking money and selling influence as a matter of fact that affects our whole social system & is bringing it to its knees .. ..
"But this year, a coalition of lawmakers and community groups is fighting vigorously against the prospect of for-profit companies opening up charter schools."
The "For Profit" justice system is a chaotic disgrace, with lawyers making laws to insure that there will be criminals to prosecute to make them wealthy ....The private for profit prison system is the fastest growing private enterprise in the United States (population over 2,000,000) and grows not because of threats to society but because we make laws to criminalize our citizens and employ others.
Stop the disgraceful state of affairs of our nation before it destroys us .... Government creating laws to insure profits to any business, does not benefit our society long term ...
GovHater
Skeptics: Profit and education don't mix.
They do if you structure the profit the right way. If you want to make education affordable for everyone, allow students to attend school for free, but give a percentage of their earnings for life to the educators who trained them. The quality of education would go way up. Courses like women's studies would suffer.
denver
They do, it's called public schools.
Again they do, it's called taxes.
Charter schools work very well when they can limit class room size and
cherry pickhave selective entrance requirement for the students.When they are required to accept all students, including physically, emotionally, socially and mentally challenged, and when the number of students per class room gets above 25 (like most public schools) very few of the charter schools do much better than public schools, and some do worse.
The difference is taking taxpayer money and giving it to private shareholders.
It is an out and out lie that the for profit prisons are a success.
In the state of Mississippi it is kept from the media as much as possible, but several of the jails and prisons that were run by the private companies had to be taken over by the state again or run jointly with the state because of gross misconduct by guards resulting in either deaths or severe injury to inmates, riots at facilities caused by this conduct and by unsafe housing conditions, theft of inmate canteen funds, conspiracy to bring contraband into a restricted government facility...
The list of infractions is endless. Any time the word "profit" enters a conversation, integrity is kicked out the window.
When costs go up to provide public services, like schools, the response is usually; "Cut the fat!" Privatizing public services does that when profit is involved. "Equal value for value" trade covers it all, economic, social and political. When a service isn't being delivered then trade with a vendor that will deliver it.
The problem is that schools should be about educating the next generation so that they are more prepared for their adult life, this is not the goal of a for profit organization, the goal is to minimize money going out, and maximize money coming in. larger class sizes, lowered testing standards, and minimum quality school equipment would all be preferred and all are generally recognized as being detrimental towards education.
We have already seen how the public sector school system is doing, it is failing. Charter schools in New Orleans have turned into a God send. The public school system there was a disaster. Now parents push to get their children into the local charter schools. They want their children out of the public school system and into a school system that is working.
Save your "blame the unions" BS, your blind partisan empty talking points are robbing everything you say of any credibility.
What is seen in schools, operating with very limited cash available to buy supplies and equipment is the same situation seen in local and even state governments. A surplus in tax revenues is seen a "profits" by union organizers and unions want that "surplus" allocated to wages and pensions. In schools, this use of "surpluses" for wages and pensions, means little to no money for supplies and equipment. In local and state governments, it means little to no money for basic services .
I'm not advocating doing away with unions, rather hold unions to be financially responsible. Taking Tax "surpluses" and applying them for wages and pensions has consequences, especially during years of low tax revenue. That's what's gotten most local and state governments in trouble. The monthly budgets keep rising during high tax years and then implode during low tax years.
myname123, your arguments makes no sense! You berate someone below for shopping Walmart and expecting anything but the cheapest worst-made product available on the market, but you want our educators to make Walmart-equivalent wages, but miraculously want the public school systems to provide our students ivy-league equivalent teachers. You get what you pay for, right? Why would a teacher who is one of the best educators our system creates settle for less than competitive wages mandated by people like yourself? These top-notch educators should not bargain for wages that are commensurate with their experience and skill?
Corruption, fraud and theft are not only hallmarks of unions. As we see all the time, the private sector is quite capable of these acts as well. Nobody wants to pay for something and not get what they paid for, but just because something is a for-profit will not ensure that corruption, fraud and theft won't happen. Unfortunately, our children are the guineau pigs in this experiment. With public school unionized instruction, there is some oversight mandated by law, but these for-profits, when they fail, they simply pull out or have their contracts terminated, meanwhile, those 1,2, or 3 years that they were operating, our children's education has been completely neglected or worse. Plus, they walk away quite a bit richer while having providing shoddy service, and messed up our children's education. This should irk you. At least when the public school isn't providing an adequate education to our children, we don't have people walking away with their pockets bulging with tax payer money.
I do believe that education is key but,I am tired of my property taxes going up every year without clear results.If they raise taxes again,i hope it's a sales tax so everyone can share the burden and not just the property owner.
A "for-profit" business is just that; it is there to make a profit for stockholders. Anything else takes a back seat. If it's the education of your children, well that's just the cost of doing business.
Obviously not,Politicians and unions think the American public has bottomless pockets.
When charter schools look better on paper, it's only because they have some opportunity to pick and choose their students. They don't have to accept every student. They can also make demands on the parents requiring their participation. The biggest factor in overall education is the involvement of the parents.
When charter schools are held to the same measurements as regular public schools, they are failures.
And the "Racket" is working it's way into Education more and more, "just pay me and I'll pass them."
A for profit company has only one duty, to maximise profit for shareholders. They pay less wages and get substandard teachers and they don't care. Teaching excellence is not profitable for them, they are most profitable when the students just barely meet the minimum standards.
Will the republicans ever be able to see that not everything should be done for a profit?
Both public and private models have big issues. Unionizing teachers has kept innovative ideas out of public schools and they rarely change as needed. For profit, innovation once again will not take place because maximizing profit does not allow for the inefficiencies created by the innovation process.
Charter schools have also not unequivocally proven they provide a better education. In my city we have several charter schools whose test scores are about equal (very low) with the cities public schools. It is only in the suburbs, particularly the wealthy ones, where the scores rise and these schools are a mix of private (not charter) and public.
C'mon Myname123, you must realize that top Private Universities, such as Harvard, Yale, Colombia, Northwestern, Stanford, all charge MUCH higher tuitions than the state University of .... whatever. Do you not think that professors at Harvard make a pretty good salary? Those excellent educations are provided by high-paid, tenured professors. Certainly no one is arguing that, with enough money, one can purchase the best of anything. I don't think, however, that tax payers are willing to pay top-dollars to public schools teachers. In fact, most tax payers seem to complain about paying our public school teachers a decent salary. So, do you think that we should, rather than paying Walmart-equivalent salaries to our public school teachers, we should pay Harvard-equivalent salaries to our public school teachers so that we can have Harvard-equivalent educated students?
Myname, You obviously don't know what you are talking about. The top colleges you are referring to are all not-for-profit institutions. These must re-invest a large percentage of their enormous profits back into their students/facilities/professors, and they do. Just attend one or visit some of them, it is obvious. This is different from for-profit colleges who charge students through the nose whether they are qualified or not, pay a minimum for mediocre faculty, and whose presidents' salaries average 7 million per year, and where there is no requirement to reinvest into the institution. That is why these colleges prefer online education where they can "educate" tens of thousands with minimal investment and charge them the same high tuition as a fully equipped and staffed university.
The for-profit school management companies operating public schools would have the same budget as the public schools, and given that they must ALSO provide "profits", they have to reduce expenditures somewhere else in operating the public schools. This means that they will probably take that out of wages, which tends to account for most companies' operating expenses. If they start paying teachers LESS, so that they can still generate a profit, then they start attracting lesser quality teachers. The good teachers are going to go to the public school system where they can get higher wages, and benefitis, negotiated through their union.
These for-profit schools that are being hired by the public school systems to manage the public schools are not in a position to pay higher wages, because their operating budgets provided by the county schools' systems is the same as it would be for the public schools.
A private school is an altogether different beast. They can charge whatever they want. And as long as they are providing the State's Congressionally mandated minimal coursework, they can provide whatever classes they want as well. The difference, of course, is that parents pay directly out-of-pocket to these private schools, perhaps getting some scholarships. However, NO public money is used for private school education, at least in k-12.
So, to be clear, we are talking about three different kinds of schools; public, private, and public schools that are managed by for-profit companies.
Myname: they can use the profits to better the schools, but their primary duty is to their stockholders and that will always be their number one priority! If there is excess profit, stockholders get dividends. Sorry, the BS is on your end.
Wrong again, or no teachers would work at private schools, since they earn less than public. Yet they are better teachers 90% of the time, go figure.
No they are not better teachers. My children spent K-6 in a private school with non-union teachers. There was a mix of very new teachers and older. The new teachers would typically last about 2-3 years and then move to the public system as they could not afford to live on the private school salary. About 50% of older teachers should have been fired as they sat around barely teaching. They don't have tenure, but the school could not get rid of them, because the were not enough applicants for the low paying job.
When we switched to the public school, we discovered that even though the old school said that my kids were doing great, their math skills were behind a grade from the public school. And mine were not the only ones that this happened to. Luckily it was caught before HS, unlike other kids. And the other 50% of the private teachers had spouses who helped support their decision to work a low paying job and were able to cover the household costs.
All for-profit companies are beholden to their owners, i.e. stockholders. Their primary goal is to increase shareholder value. Have you taken a business course, Myname? I have an MBA from PRIVATE university (very expensive but a very good education), and all business school students are taught that their primary goal as a C-level executive at a for-profit venture is to increase shareholder (or owner's) value. This sometimes holds true, even at the expense of the environment, your employees, the community, etc. Of course, most companies have to balance their actions with the negative impacts to their companies' reputations of engaging in activities such as dumping toxins into the environment etc., which could consequenty lead to a negative impact on their share price. Cost-benefit analyses are done all the time by private-industry, which is good, as it sometimes prevents really stupid behavior.
No, there are people that love the Catholic school experience. There are others who don't realize the problem until their kids get out. As I said, there are 50% of the older teachers who have spouses with good jobs who can make up the different in salaries. But the school cannot attract the best talent because even teachers need to be able to pay their bills.
We have to educate our kids to take the nation forward. You are not going to get people to be teachers and carry on that mission without paying them a decent salary.
Please, considering their education, they do not make a better than most salary.
And yes, I do know the last part to be true. My husband's family has many teachers in it (public & private) and I know from my children's schools.
Based on your comments, you do not understand the basic facts of any of this topic. You just seem mad that you have to pay taxes for a public school system.
How do you know the teachers are not working? Do you sit in their classes and watch them? My children's teachers have hours before or after school to help students. They work 10 months a year and have to take summer continuing ed classes for weeks. Are there bad teachers, sure. Every industry has good, bad and okay, that is life.
As to decrepit schools, some tax-payers believe that nonsense about cutting the budget to the bone and getting a great education. After the Back to Basics board was voted out in my town, it was discovered that they saved money by putting off most repairs. We had to pass a bond issue to clean up the mess they left, with buildings falling down. It is like the people who buy a I-phone for a great price at a flea market and then can't believe it breaks in a day.
It is stupid to argue with a person like you. Everyone on this vine has tried to educate you in reality, but because of your overwhelming fear and distaste of unions you cannot see the forest for the trees. If a teacher has someone like you in their class, I truly pity that teacher.
“When you draw off funding … it can cause some great concern. It’s basically taking money we don’t have,” said Steve Hale, a Democratic state senator from the county who fielded residents’ concerns about for-profits last year. (Mississippi has only fully funded its K-12 system twice in the last decade.)
Mississippi should fund their system if they are truly concerned about the education their students are getting. All they were looking for was a way to keep doing things on the cheap.
Unfortunately, Charter Schools, Privatization, etc., is a direct result of the poor education the kids are getting in public education, As Well As, many parents, who rather being doing drugs, then helping to ensure that their kids are getting a good education. Many children who cannot even read are being graduated in this country! We should all be embarrased. I'm all for charter schools and privatization if they can do better! Our schools CAN NOT be measured on yearly tests, especially when we have teachers, yes teachers, helping the kids on that test to make their schools, and faculty look better than what they really are!
More power to all those parents, teachers, administrators and other adults who want to ban for-profit schools...that do not work! More power to you all for standing up for scourge known as "for profit schools" or
charter schools".
If government schools would stop with the pro-abortion, pro-homosexuality, anti-America, anti-God and ant-family propaganda and teach the basics (again) there would be no need for the private sector to take over. However,The BEST way to reduce costs and improve education is to privatize.
Please provide your justification for the argument that privatizing education reduces costs and improves quality. How so? What is the mechanism? I don't believe, and facts don't support it. So, please provide your insights.
Citizen Kane, BS, the best way to transfer large amounts of money into the pockets of a very small and select group of people is to privatize. They cut the wages of the people doing the work and they make more money.
Privatization is just another tool of the top 1/10 of 1% to transfer more of the wealth from those of us who work for our money to those who's money works for them.
One thing we know for sure is that government schools do a very poor job of educating our children.
avitw:
the debate about public or private schools overlooks the central issue. teachers do not control the variables. obviously, affirmative action is a “part” of the problem. hiring based on “perceived genetic defects” has drastically curtailed the employment of the “most qualified individuals”.
however, if students come from homes where education is not valued and live with adults who are basically illiterate (parents or not) who cannot (will not?) help them, no teacher in the world can overcome that reality.
the old saw still applies. one cannot make a silk purse from a sows ear. only “population control” can change the course of history, not only in education, but, in the universe.
enjoy, t.o.m.
localnotions.blogspot.com
If you want something run efficiently, run it for profit. If you don't care about efficiency, have the government run it. I don't think it makes much of a difference to the students education. That is a function of the quality of the teacher and the quality of the child.
So private industry is always efficient?
There are no absolutes.
Anyone who thinks our public school system isn't ALL about money and power is a d*mn fool. I live in NJ, and the NJEA has an absolute stranglehold on the education system, and uses all the dues members pay to buy politicians and beat the taxpayers into submission. The leaders of the NJEA make hundreds of thousands a year in salaries, and are completely vested in maintaining the status quo. Don't expect me to get my panties in an uproar about those "evil" for-profit schools. I'm not buying that garbage.
And kids who are stuck in failing schools absolutely deserve a chance at a better education. It strikes me as very peculiar that the very same people - liberals - who claim to be the champions of these people, are the very same ones who are doing everything they can to keep these kids chained to failing schools. Now why on earth would they want to do that? Hmmm.
The majority of public schools in NJ are highly ranked in the nation. So those teachers are doing something right.
huh.... seems to me that government-union run schools do not work. Time to try competition. Unions don't like that.
There are private schools out there. Go out and create demand. Just don't complain about sticker shock.
For profit doesn't work for education, it doesn't work for prison systems, and it doesn't work for health care. But you can't convince those on the right, they just see more American citizens to be exploited for profit.
Child quality is a product of the environment (Home Universe) exposure and positive reinforcement (parents), ultimately to attachment of behavior rules. Inclusion of '1980 Government Syndrome' fears is a parental development, not appropriate to a child's development. In short, the USA society needs to be enlighten by public classes themselves before child birth to judge child development. Public because economic favoritism must be eliminated, as well as any 'class' bias. Personally I believe in public child care to regulate 'child day care' to unload the parents in the early post birth years. Parents should attend as well in a hands on interaction, with proper nutrition, all controlled my municipal level government(s) free to include local customs.
IMHO morbas
The real problem is that they can make money even when doing virtually nothing to educate the kids. They can start a school, make a few million while it crashes and burns, and then repeat.
There are people who have done it many times, they just open new schools in another state after the last one fails. There's no database to check if they've failed at it before, they just get enough local signatures and fill out the paperwork, and boom the money goes through.
Whether we admit it or not education is a product that is produced, sold and bought. Some things are better done by government and some by private industry, so, go with whichever returns a equal value in trade. Man, lol, as many point out daily; It sure isn't government, so, what's the next option aside from Home Schooling up to and including the college level? Private industry. Folks complain daily about how our educational system is failing our children, ok cool, maybe we'll be satisfied with competition in the education market place where we can pick and choose how we want our children to be educated, after all we'll be paying for it.
clearly the public school system has shown without competition and having your skin in the game, your performance will be mediocre. it's like a worker who just work hard enough not to get fired thing. government is good to provide basic needs, but being at "basic" in doing education is just travesty to your own children. free market private for-profit may be the answer to get it to the next level, for the sake of your children.
Business by it nature of Greed is corrupt and unfit for any place where children are concerned.
Warren, I raised four kids, normal kids and kids are the greediest little things around. You can diss "Greed" all you like but in the private sector it has produced more for the most people than anything else. In the private sector if you want more (Greed) you have to earn it In the public sector if you want more you petition, demand more.
btw mellow I raised 5 kids so I hear you.
for-profit should be there, but it should not get any funding from state other than perhaps tax breaks. the nature of for-profit should be free market competition, so let it be.... if it performs like they say, parents will pay, at least those who can afford it. whats the point of for-profit if all it did is feeding off government fund, of course the end result is the current public school.
So now we'll have different levels of education based on how much money one has. That is the beginning of the end for equal opportunities for all Americans.....
Public education is essential for those who wish to go on to higher education and those who choose not to . That's a choice based on the individual. Working ones way through college, getting a free ride or having mommy or daddy pay for it is a decision for adults. It you go, you go where you can afford to go. Dumbing down our youth simply because of their lack to afford a good basic education is where we will fail as a country. More money and technology needs to be invested in education. And public schools shouldn't be forced to educate those who do not want it nor be held accountable for those who choose not to learn. Those are the real problems with our system today.
Airborne Dad, don't discount parental influence, if parents are paying, other than public, for education then they will be motivated to "Ride herd" on their kids, demanding results and if the results don't come then they find a education vendor that will make it work, there wouldn't be anymore sending kids off to school to be babysat. I agree that education is essential and because of that necessity laws governing attendance would remain the same, but using a private for profit system would ensure that the time spent in school would be productive, and if not, get another education vendor. As it is now kids go to school, some get something out of it and some don't. A education vendor that advertises it's expertise, proving with records of results will do a much better job than the present system. The vendor will hire good teachers and pay them accordingly. Ok, but what about the poor, parents who can't afford it? Why not use a voucher system, if you can't afford it then you get a stipend from the government, based of course on results. Some schools will produce better results because they will have attracted smarter kids, well, that is true now with the present system, so, so what?
Mellow: you comment made no sense in response to Airbourne. A parent with a child in a charter school with a voucher is no different than a parent w/ a child in public school. There is no financial buy-in. The only difference is the charter school can kick their child out.
How does using a for-profit system ensure that time is spent productively? A vendor will hire good teachers and pay accordingly? If there is only $100 per child, and you have to pay a good teacher for each system (public & charter), where do you get the profit for the for-profit?
believe it or not, the voucher system sabotages the free market competition advantage you seek by making them private for-profit institution. you can't have it both ways, and yes it is too bad that good education in this country can only be shored up by such mechanism.
either that, or you go do it the way finland does it. problem is, cost aside, when you need a masters degree to be a teacher, well, there aint enough of them to go around in this country in the first place.
and if you enroll your kids in private school, you should be getting your property tax back for the amount earmarked for schools. you pay your private school directly and the school get no funding from govt. that's should be how to do it.
I bothers me to no end that some people would look at my children and see profits and market share rather than young minds with potential to do right by their fellow man.
C'mon Anthony, your children are already seen as profit and market share. Man, lol, that began before they were born. If you're concerned about their attitude toward their fellow man then that's your job to teach at home.
I thought this discussion was about education. Turned into a discussion about unions! OK, let's talk UNIONS. Apparently, the people bashing unions don't know anything about them other than what they read. A union contract is NEGOTIATED. In this case, between a union and the school board. The school board has the money, the union knows the financial status of the school system. If the union is ASKING too much, it's the school boards job to bring demands inline with resources. Teachers making the large salaries are in admin. Unless you consider $50,000 range a large salary. $50,046 is listed as median US income on government site. My daughter graduated college and was going to teach. Pay was so low she couldn't pay her student loan payments. She took a minimum wage job in healthcare, it paid $3000 more than a beginning teachers income. Yea, unions really ripped the school board there. Work 30 years to get to median wages, then get the pension fund stolen by the state to pay for state infrastructure. They don't get paid for overtime, don't get reimbursed for school supplies, and don't get bonuses. Do you work for that?
Right Larry, part of the discussion is about a union or unions negotiating with a school board, and certainly not about unions in general. But, you went on to state; "Let's talk UNIONS." Lol, big difference, to me anyway. I was a member of the IBEW and IAM. No way would I equate those two with educated teacher union members. If we talk unions in general, cool. I remember walking by the Onsrud plant in a Chicago suburb and seeing union members using slingshots to shoot ball bearings through office windows, and another time after being newly hired being told that my contribution to the fund to buy "Manny" a new Cadillac, was not voluntary but based on wage. I had just gotten my new raise, from $2.20 to $2.25. The union had fought hard to get that "New hire" raise. My contribution was assessed at $40, held out of my paycheck. Well, I stayed away from unions for the rest of my blue collar working life. Lol, when I was a production supervisor here in TN a union tried to organize the plant and one ploy was to make public what management people were being paid. Man, if only I had been making what the union claimed I was making, lol. Well, ok but you did say UNIONS.
Zannie 84, reply to your post about there being no difference between a parent with a voucher for a Charter School and a parent with a child in public school (There was no reply on your post.) There's a big difference and it's in that a parent sending a child to a charter school has to seek one out, enroll, and get a voucher. That in itself would generate parental interest and so would the school being able to kick the child out. The point being; Parental interest. A parent simply enrolls a child in a public school that is usually a neighborhood school and the child is set for the day. Some school systems now have "Magnet" schools but they generally have placement according to racial and economic status. I know that for a fact because my daughter was refused admittance to one for racial reasons, she was White and more Blacks were required to fullfil the legal requirements. I would suspect that charter schools are run the same way but I'm not sure about that. My kids haven't been school-age for some time now, the oldest being 46 and the youngest 35. Anyway, a private for profit operation is more responsive to the buyers, especially in a public service operation, discounting of course police, fire and military. Parents (Buyers) have a bit more say in the education (Product) of their children. Lol, a parent can bang on the door of the Department of Education all he wants and get nowhere. As for another issue, the issue of equality, I can only say that I would want my kids to be equally smart, educated, and not equally lacking in education which seems to be the norm in public schools. Just a thought on that; How many teachers today are the product of the '60's and '70's generation when to excell, to succeed was wrong, lol, socially insensitive to the under-achievers? A private for profit operation has only one goal, make a profit and it's made by enrolling students and graduating them with results that the parents are paying for. Does that foster a class of priviledged? Damn right, it's better to be priviledged with the education and skills to back it up than to be under-priviledged with no future except by being one of the "Deserving" class. Anyway, I'm glad that at 72 I don't have to worry about it as a parent, but still, it bugs me when I hear a graduate of high school talk about America winning it's independence in the War of 1812, lol.
Parents have the ability to help out the schools their children go to anytime they would like and I'm sure the public school system would love have all the help they can. Making it for profit means only wealthy people's children can get a good education, and if you are poor you are left with what's left over. Not a good way to educate. No vouchers should be given to parents. There are plenty of alternative schools you can pay to have your children in. Public money should only go to public schools and if you feel you are too busy to help at your children's school then you can pay yourself to put them in a for profit school. It is not the responsibility of the general public to pay for your upgrades because you are too busy to volunteer
mellow; first off, I am a product of the 70's and there was never an issue of failing to succeed. We were taught to be the best at what we could do. That is the same as I have taught my 2 high school children. Our county has 8 magnet schools. Each school district in the county gets a shot at a spot in each school and then it works around the county again until the school is filled. There are no race quotas and it is based on grades. At least 2 county schools, besides the magnet schools are in the top 150 of the state. My children's HS has Honors and AP classes and are hard to get into because so many kids are planning on going to college. Our teachers have impressive backgrounds & education, but our district does not have the lowest paid teachers in the state, nor not the highest. The point is if you pay living salaries you will get good teachers. It is the same as any other industry.
As KrjMc said above, whether your child goes to public, private or charter, as a parent you can get involved. You had better believe that parents get in the BOE's face when there is anything endangering our children's future education plans. All public schools ask for help from their parents. Sometimes they get it and sometimes not. If you are in a district with many 2 job families, the schools are not going to have a high parent involvement. They cannot be at the school and at work, and that would be the same if they have kids in the public or charter schools.
We had a charter school that opened to great fanfare. Everyone was excited, but then the charter school ended because they didn't make the profit they expected. So educating the kids wasn't the priority, it was the profit. So I think the For-Profit Charters are a great scam.
Zannie, I went to high school and graduated June, 1960. I remember the talk about being socially insensitive in Civics classes, about how one must always consider the "Feelings" of those who can't make it. I also learned, when I started working at 14 years of age, that my first obligation was to myself, seeing to my own personal welfare first. Absolutely correct, "Be the best at what you can do." But, not at the expense of the feelings of those who can't, for various reasons, be the best. Lol, it seemed that there was; "Be the best!" And, there was; "Who the hell are you to want to be the best?" I don't know much about Charter Schools, I don't think we had them when I went through the Chicago Public School system, what we had were high schools that appeared to be academically better than others and that was because of the caliber of students and teachers. I knew of people who moved from one neighborhood to another just so a kid could go to a particular school.
Is there nothing in this country that's not for profit. I hope every for profit schools hits the tank and every one of the investors loose money.
What is this country coming too where everything has to show a profit, and not just a profit a gross profit. Will investors stop at nothing. Someone please tell them that he who dies with the most toys does not win. That's why our health care is so expensive, why many people cannot afford homes, and college should be a good example of why education needs to be non-profit, as people spend years trying to get out of the debt.
We need to stop the corporate take over of this country.
Lol, corporate take-over? Hell, America was founded as a corporation with the Constitution as the incorporating document, Congress as the elected Board of Directors elected by the members, the citizens and a President, also elected, as CEO. We operate on a profit and loss basis. Income by taxation and expenses paid to run the corporation. Oh man, how horrible to even contemplate that, lol.