tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20795009.post6559409766436259399..comments2023-09-22T15:44:10.411-04:00Comments on CUUMBAYA: A Modest ProposalJoel Monkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10631333436948102576noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20795009.post-15048438533834606742011-04-01T23:03:08.249-04:002011-04-01T23:03:08.249-04:00I'll write more when I'm in front of a rea...I'll write more when I'm in front of a real computer, suffice to say that my engineer buddies pointed out that some of the weaknesses (e.g. Drafting) can be covered by the community college system.Chalicechickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07781469958573869914noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20795009.post-60566103249889008572011-04-01T19:20:56.482-04:002011-04-01T19:20:56.482-04:001. Yeah, you really could. My brother in law was s...1. Yeah, you really could. My brother in law was sending his kids to an accredited parochial school for $2,700 each just a couple years earlier, although admittedly that's the extremely low end. According to <a href="http://www.wthr.com/story/14039554/committee-to-vote-on-controversial-vouchers" rel="nofollow">this article,</a> from a local television station, the current average price for a Catholic elementary school is $4,000- that's February 2011 dollars! A Catholic high school is $7,000 today- and there are accredited schools cheaper than the Catholic ones. Yes, Virginia, everything in Indiana really does cost less than the East coast.<br /><br />2. & 3. The kids' parents pick the schools, and the money follows. And while yes, many parents won't look much farther than "is it convenient", at least under this plan, each school gets individual attention paid to it for accreditation... the big city public school systems here have played fast and loose with statistics around here. For example, the Indianapolis Public School system was touting a 94% graduation rate a few years back... an investigative reporter discovered they calculated that on how many started and finished the senior year. If you follow individual students from K-12, the graduation rate was about 38%<br /><br />4. Indiana has a state run school for the deaf, independent of any school system. Don't most states? (I really don't know) Same for the blind, and both are pretty highly rated.<br /><br />5. & 6. Currently, those kids go to juvie anyway, because the Indianapolis Public School System sure as <i>Hell</i> doesn't want them. At least with this proposal, there's the possibility that someone would start such an alternative school here. Maybe we could get Marva Collins to come here.<br /><br />7. Community values, expressed through the school board, dictate what gets taught right now. And under the public school system, there's no chance of getting anything different. At least under this system, the parents would have the right to send their kids to a Montessori school, or whatever they wanted, knowing it would be paid for; they just have to find it. And that's tremendous incentive for existing schools to open new ones in new neighborhoods as well. Those fish out of water kids you mention will be no worse off, and possibly much, much better.<br /><br />8. Why would you need standardized grading? We have the standardized achievement tests; the law requires those right now. Antioch college never gave any grades, but Ginj tells me that had some sort of GPA equivalency system they could give prospective employers; I imagine Montessori and other non-traditional schools must do something similar.<br /><br />9. I'm sure the various universities would have to have some remedial programs- they have them right now, because several Indiana colleges cannot refuse an Indiana resident with a valid high school diploma, and many of those diploma holders read at a third grade level.Joel Monkahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10631333436948102576noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20795009.post-17809426314699477462011-04-01T18:23:45.980-04:002011-04-01T18:23:45.980-04:007. I have a sense that in this program, community ...7. I have a sense that in this program, community values will dictate what ends up getting taught beyond the baseline requirements. Maybe it makes sense for farm kids to learn agriculture because that's what their teachers know, inner city kids learn about retail jobs and suburban kids are the only ones who are seriously treated as potential doctors and lawyers. Maybe that's all true now. (As a suburban kid who got a really fine public education, I'm not in the best place to tell you.) <br /><br />But I worry about the kid on the farm who just wants to work in the city and the kid who has wanted to fix cars all his life and is tired of reading Thomas Hardy with his college-bound peers. 12 years is a long time to be educated in stuff <br /><br />I guess the kids who don't conform to their environments are another set of broken eggs. Indeed, such kids usually are in other systems, I'm sure. But it bugs me. <br /><br />8. How on earth would grading be standardized? The simplest solution to me seems to be to send grades with an explanation stating the average GPA of students at that given school. <br /><br />9. Would Indiana Universities need to pick up the slack and have some remedial programs? I think so. The most obvious example to spring to mind is that no tiny country school and very few charter schools are going to bother to teach drafting and engineering schools are hesitant to take students who haven't had it. Again, assuming the kids go to school in Indiana, there can just be a remedial summer program, but I think Indiana kids who wanted to go someplace else would be in trouble. Maybe they could attend the summer programs too, then go on to school out of state. (Can drafting be taught in a summer? I have no idea.)<br /><br /><br />All that notwithstanding, I don't hate this plan and if someplace (like Indiana) with cities and suburbs and rural areas wanted to try it as an experiment, I wouldn't be against that. Real students would be the guinea pigs, though, and that remains a sobering though. <br /><br />CC<br />who could do a whole discussion of the church and state aspects, too, but as you've noted the courts have at least partially settled this.Chalicechickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07781469958573869914noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20795009.post-68006944095169815182011-04-01T18:23:33.104-04:002011-04-01T18:23:33.104-04:00I don't remember this from its earlier posting...I don't remember this from its earlier posting, so I'm reading for the first time. <br /><br />Here are initial thoughts:<br /><br />1. You could get a decent private school education for $4,000 in Indiana in 2004? Really? In these parts, a decent private school runs about 30k per year. I'm sure it was less seven years ago, but I'm sure it wasn't $4,000. Other than that, I'm going to take your numbers on faith, not because I'm absolutely sure you're right but because other parts of the discussion are more interesting to me. <br /><br />2. Do the schools get to pick their students? If not, how do the students end up at each school? If so, what about the kids that nobody wants?<br /><br />3. Do the students get to pick the schools? I assume so from what you're saying and that partly answers question 2. I tend to think that a totally voucher-based system would lead to essentially the same situation that we have now--parents who are really into getting their kids into the right schools and are good at playing the system will have their kids in the best schools, the parents who don't give a shit or don't function will be at the worst schools and everybody else will be somewhere in between. <br /><br />4. What if there's a deaf kid whose parents don't have time to home school her, but there's no school for the deaf anywhere around her? If there's no school board to hold accountable for educating the kid, what happens? <br /><br />5. What if there's a kid who has screwed up a lot in that "maybe he has learning disabilities, maybe he's got a shitty home life, maybe he's just a troublemaker by nature but basically a good kid" sort of way? IMHO, "Alternative Schools" with small classes that are the way school districts sort those kids from the kids who belong in juvie. Without that system, are those kids going to juvie?<br /><br />6. As my concerns with 4 and 5 illustrate, there seem to be a lot of broken eggs with this plan. The homeschooled kids with an untrained teacher is a little questionable as well. At the same time, perhaps that is not a fair consideration given that there are a lot of broken eggs in the current school system.Chalicechickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07781469958573869914noreply@blogger.com