Tell me, MrGone - for whom would an alternative be worse than the present system? What groups of people do you think would get a worse deal out of it than they do now?

Starving, I think our "bad" kid schools were really for troubled kids they thought they could turn around. They expelled the ones that they couldn't. I think after they got expelled, they went to detention homes or something because the police/authorities were involved at that point, but I'm not sure.

My wife has work in public and private special needs programs.

Private here: http://www.tkds.org/
Specifically this campus: http://www.tkds.org/cfa.html

And also for an Autistic program in the Tennessee public school system.

MrGone care to guess which is the better program for students?

The public school system goes further Left every year, and gets worse every year.

Sorry Karl, that was not equality of result and you know it. I think you are really reading into my statements that which is not there. You want to ban me, do it. I have violated no rule, no restriction, no nothing. You just don't like folks like me around. There is nothing but your will that could justify this. If that's what you want then just do it. I suppose it helps tune the echo chamber.

You see. my wife is a teacher. Not at a public school. No pension, no medical. Less than half of what the PS teachers get. Pretty much what folks here on TF love in a job - NO NOTHING. The class sizes are 10-13 per grade per section and you know what? These kids get a jammin' education. What's the cost? 23k/yr. Now I hear an awful lot about getting rid of the .gov in education. Fine. Then no money for ED. Ok, my taxes will drop dramatically, about half or so. So what then? Everyone is now on the hook for educating their own kids? Very nice. My model suggests very few will go to school including many of the TF kids. We have times in our history where this was the case so it is a fact, not a "liberal" idea. So now what do we have? A bunch of uneducated folk looking for work or more likely looking for trouble. Great. Here's a job at Dell. Oh you need to know something, sorry your not useful. How about Home Depot? Sorry you can't read or operate a cash register. Thanks but no. So in the end what are "we" supposed to do with all these people who have no education, no skill? That's the real question isn't it?

Yes, the ED system has a lot of problems and needs a lot of work, some brought on by its very nature. But I am simply suggesting that we need to be careful of what we wish for. So if this opinion is bannable then do so. I'm sorry if you feel this way.

My kids were going to a private school that kicked the public schools ass for $4900 per year. But a few recovery summers later we had to put them back into the public school. The public schools around here get $8000+ plus per student in tax dollars, so instead of spending $8K in tax money per student, give school vouchers for $5k to the parents of the student. Then find a private school that you want to send YOUR kids to. You could send YOUR kids to Algore's UN World Government School to learn about Global Warming and how Freedom is Slavery. I could send MY kids to the Free Market School of Math and Science.

Do you even know what a SCHOOL VOUCHER is?

If we had them where I live the Government would be SAVING $6000+ per year for my 2 kids and they would be getting a MUCH better education.

New York spent $17,173 per student for public education in 2007-08 Who knows what in 2011-12
and The $10,259 was the national average in 07-08 http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2....

in 08-09... by STATE

State Per student spending (2008-09) ranking (2011) D.C. $16,408 Maryland $13,449 Virginia $10,930 U.S. average $10,499 State Per-pupil spending New York $18,126 District $16,408 New Jersey $16,271 Alaska $15,552 Vermont $15,175 Wyoming $14,573 Connecticut $14,531 Massachusetts $14,118 Rhode Island $13,707 Maryland $13,44

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/dc/2....


"Only four states spent less than Tennessee in fiscal 2009. The Volunteer State spent $7,897 per student in elementary and secondary public school systems, while the national average was $10,499."
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/se....

or.... Kindergarten $4,960.00
Grades 1-5 $5,760.00
Grades 6-8 $5,975.00
Grades 9-12 $6,130.00 http://zioneagles.org/page.aspx?id=15643....

Chicago public schools are the perfect case study for this; ever since the liberal enlightenment of the last few generations the quality of education there has been in freefall. As long as the freeloaders, public employee unions and corrupt politicians form an iron triangle the system will continue to rot.

Ah yes, privatization has worked so well in so many situations. Well there must be a few right? It simply must be true that private companies will control costs and treat you better than those stupid .gov union employees or anything related to .gov. Please share your stories. We'd all love to hear. I'd be particularly interested in any stories of reduction in actual costs after privatization of public services. Probably a good topic for a thread don't you think?

That's enough. Leftist political polemics belong in the correct place. Next infraction will be your last.

"after privatization of public services"


game over

next question

Who is our resident egalitarian?

http://tickerforum.org/akcs-www?singlepo....

Corrections Corporation of America

A new Reason Foundation-Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Foundation study finds that California's soaring prison costs ($47,000 per year per inmate) could be curbed by $120 million a year for each 5,000 inmates it sends to private prisons in other states.

http://www.cca.com/cca-research-institut....

Mrgore, I'd be happy to share the stories of about half the folks in this neighborhood, who have moved here from Ill., mostly from Crook county. In a nutshell they came here for the higher quality of life, dramatically lower taxes, and the number one reason: exceptional schools, both public and private. They had their fill with the workers' paradise to the west.

Good for Indiana. Now that's being progressive. If the public system doesn't work there are alternatives. The unions destroyed the public education system.

Quote:

Privatization of essential services has NEVER worked out well and I dare you to show otherwise.

I wish you could dare me, unfortunately I can;t afford my school taxes AND private school tuition.

So lets talk about people who CAN take you up on that dare: namely Liberal politicians who live in Wash. DC. Man do they ever take you up on that dare as they eschew the DC public school system and send their kids to Sidwell friends, Emerson Prep, etc Tell the Obamas and the Clintons and all the other rich Libs how privatization doesn't work. Watch how they ignore you!

I don't think in Mrgone's world there would be any "screwing the kids who are of average or better intelligence" because there wouldn't be any kids that were below average.

http://tickerforum.org/akcs-www?singlepo....

I would think that facilities in a public system should be covered by taxes that everyone pays but the actual teachers and administration should be covered by the parents. So the parents pay for the facilities and admin-teachers once the child is in school. If only the parents paid for the facilities and admin-teachers then a lawsuit could happen once a school district decided to sell land that only parents actually were ever taxed for.

Mrgone wrote..

The cost of private education dwarfs what the public school system costs. Are the outcomes better?

I dunno what sort of private school your wife teaches at (you mentioned $23k/year) but here each and every child in our District nets them $11,800 per year. Yes, that is the price tag on top of my kid's head. For that kind of money, I could find a damn good private school around here.

Mrgone wrote..

I'd be particularly interested in any stories of reduction in actual costs after privatization of public services.

Our PSD just cut over $50M out of the budget by privatising ALL non-instructional services. Buses, food, janitorial, etc., etc. has all been privatised. Works better than ever at $50M less.

Mr. Gone wrote : ...........................

Awwww who cares what he wrote ? He doesnt get it and never will. Dont waste your time with him.

I, for one, hopes Karl keeps Mrgone around long enough for me to kick his ass, yet one more time. He serves as a great foil to show the sheer, unbridled failure of secular-Progressivism.

I served on the BOD of my kids' school for the last 4 years and was very familiar with our operating budget, revenue, and expenditures.

State of Washington spends somewhere in the neighborhood of $8000/pupil-yr, and this does not include capital expenditures, only operating expenditures.

We were able to run a small school, where economy of scale would help dramatically, on $5900/pupil-yr. Our kids routinely went on to the 9-12 grades and scored in the top third of their classes, including having well more than our fair share of valedictorians, including the quasi-elite HS (Bainbridge Isl) and the county's only private HS of any consequence. Not bad for a small, Christian school in a small town.

I must emphatically state that we don't screen for aptitude. You must be able to pass onto the next grade, but we don't kick out kids for bringing down the curve. Granted, we also don't have problems with the social pathology seen at the local middle schools, such as sexual assault on the school bus, other physical assault, temper tantrums, etc. Any child with such problems would be expelled, and in my entire tenure at that school (6yrs) we had not one such instance.

We are not in a wealthy community. Avg household income is in the $50K range, so a $6K/kid charge is not inconsequential. The property taxes go to support the schools they do not use, so let's just dispense, right here-right now, with this whole idiotic notion of how the .gov schools are at a disadvantage because of "privatization of public services." These parents pay for education twice, not once like everyone else.

On that score, we were not able to use these services Mrgone is insinuating we do. We can't use their phys-ed facilities, so we make due with a gym built in the 1950s and is flat-out butt ugly and below par, compared to the facilities that look like they are trying to bid for the 2016 Olympic Games - at taxpayer expense.

We don't get to use public textbooks, even the secular subjects. I understand the state balking at buying a Christian based social studies program that highlights 18th-19th Century missionaries, but you would think that they would at least spring for a math cirriculum.

We don't get to bolster enrollment by having the taxpayer subsidize the cheese wagons to bring the kiddies to school. After all, the state has a compelling interest in the education of children, and what does it matter if the state drives a kid to the local .gov school, or the private school down the street? It isn't like we are asking them to sing "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know..." on the way to school. Granted, since the middle school bus is accurately discribed as "Crime On Wheels," I think the arrangement works just fine.

Bottom line: Our parents also incur, not only the subsidization of .gov school transportation, they are paying $4./gal to drive their kids to school.

Would vouchers help? Probably. The cost would go up, as aggregate demand would shift out, but the economy of scale would also drive down cost per pupil. This is a model that makes private schools viable. Schools would then be in a competitive position with other private schools, driving down margins and ultimately cost. This savings would eventually be passed to the taxpayer.

It comes down to the teachers unions not wanting this. They want the whole thing to themselves, so they can bugger kids at 30X the rate of Catholic priests, and an $85K/yr salary to work 900 hours in a tenured environment. This is why Obama and Clinton killed off vouchers, even though the people (as viewed by race) that would benefit the most are Latins and Africans trapped in dysfunctional (Prog dominated) communities. Teacher union money is more valuable than the votes of people that will vote Prog anyway.

Mrgone doesn't want to see his primary evangelical enterprise challenged. His religion is the official religion of the public schools, so to take away from the Temple, and the Priesthood is strictly forbidden. His god is just as jealous as the one discribed in the Bible.

Progs can't reproduce as fast, because they are all concerned about gays, pedophiles, abortion, drugs, and all other contributors to the Nihilistic culture of Death. They need recruiting efforts and Big ED is a great revival preacher of the Prog religion.

So, we deliver more with less on a playing field tilted against us. We don't have the economy of scale the .gov schools have, and still win.

Not every school is Sidwell Friends (the tony school the Dem presidents send their kids). We are a bunch of parents driving 15 yo cars, not eating at restaurants, and working second jobs to keep our kids out of the cesspool of .gov schooling.

I think Mr.Gone is thread banned.

You are the one to thread ban him. It's pushing 2am where he lives.

If Mr.Gone is thread banned it was not me. I wouldn't thread ban a poster.

How does a poster thread ban another poster?

If it is your thread, you can ban for that thread only.

All bull**** aside #1 issue facing public schools as with many things is lobbying. Without that there is little incentive to maintain lowest common denominator, no ballooning expenses, and minimized self-reinforcing campaign circle jerk.

Till that gets removed more pandering for public money will continue. Big grants, subsidized programs, and special incentives. Look at education/public servant lobbying numbers. In some years they outpace defense industry spending.

Value