Prometheus 6

John Tierney cherry-picks information to argue his case promoting school voucher education. He doesn't mention whether children with special needs are able or do go to private schools using vouchers. If they do, do their parents have to pay supplemental tuition? A special need child can cost much more than the average student to care for and educate. Some special needs children require a full time aide. Do private schools provide for special needs children routinely or are they turned away? Public schools don't have a choice. They are required by law to accept them. Private schools often encourage parents of children with special needs to look else where. Private schools should do well if they only have the children and parents who are motivated to obtain an education. What happens to the children who they or their parents aren't so motivated?

Mr Tierney should look at the public elementry school located in Chinatown in New York City, NY to see how a school can provide an excellent education without having to selectively screen students. This is a school that is one of the highest performers in New York City despite the fact that most of the children are from low income families, either one or both of their do not speak English as their primary language, often both parents work so many of the children are latch-key kids and because their parents often don't speak English, they aren't able to help with home work. Because of this schools reputation for quality education, many parents who don't live within that school district  try to place their children there.

John Tierney displays an ignorance of the major issues facing public schools today. When comparing public and charter schools, the two most critical are parental support of the educational process and class size.

Kids invariably are in the good charter schools because their parents put them there. They want their kids to succeed. These parents have given up on public schools, not because they're not good schools, but because of the apathy of other parents. Face it, gangsters roaming the halls and tagging the bathrooms are not the offspring of concerned parents.

And public schools must accept everyone who applies. Without the sort of funding which Tierney decries - not nearly enough, by the way (although it could be more wisely spent) - class sizes balloon. With that ballooning, student achievement declines. This year, I'm teaching five high school classes ranging in size from 21 to 37 students. Everyone in the smallest class is succeeding; as class size grows, success decreases incrementally.

Wow, a school with 125 students! Class sizes are probably similar to those of an elite liberal-arts university. Without the quality of teaching, that is. The best teachers teach in the public schools because they believe in public education, and they believe that they can make a difference in a child's life. I've seen some of the best charter school teachers in action, and trust me, it's like comparing the Continental Basketball League with the NBA: some fundamentals, no shot.

These parents have given up on public schools, not because they're not good schools, but because of the apathy of other parents.

 

absent contextualizing parental involvement - how do you propose it's even possible for a school to be good? To me, this assertion seems to fly in the face of common sense. a fundamental part of being a good school, is extensive interpersonal communion with parents, or, transfer of parental authority to teachers and administrators a la parochial orphanages, boarding schools, and the marine corps)

The best teachers teach in the public schools because they believe in public education, and they believe that they can make a difference in a child's life. .

 

Other than biased, local, anecdotal examples mustered in support of your generalization, what objective evidence might you offer in support of what appears to be an absurd and unprovable claim?

Oh? Did you ask how? Consider: what would it take to provide all of Milwaukee's children with the same sized classes as those at CEO Leadership Academy? They're in a new wing of a Baptist church...what would it take to bring the Milwaukee public school system's physical plant up to the same spec?

Need more?

The highest performing public schools in the Kansas City School District are the ACE (african centered education) schools.  This small complex of schools (which just so happens  to be topologically proximate to the Learning Center and closely involved with the same) is seeking to go charter this year and acquire a highschool in the process.  

Charter status will result in immediate curricular, economic, and governance autonomy.  Exceeding the MAP requirements - as these schools consistently have done - is simply a matter of course.  The benefits which accrue to the charter include autonomous fundraising by parents and alumni on behalf of the institution.   

Parental involvement in all aspects of the success of the children and of the schools serving our children - is the irreducible sine qua non of  their success.  The ACE schools already function largely as charters because of the cultural protectorate that has been erected around them.  This has been a  ceaseless fight carried out over years to get to where they are today.   Liberation from the district is the final step in this hard-fought campaign.

Having interacted to a great extent now with certified public school teachers and IT personnel, I've frankly never seen or even imagined a higher level of laziness, incompetence, and self-servingness in all my years of corporate servitude - than I've come to see in this public school district.  Moreover, it appears to be normative at all levels of administrative and academic operation.

Case in point- I entered a school not too many months ago to make a presentation on the digital media technologies club I and a couple of partners are now growing briskly out of the Learning Center. While there, I found 4 wireless access points in the computer room and a stack of 30 laptops that had been sitting idle for 6months because the vendor didn't turnkey them, the District IT dept didn't follow up with the school, and the so-called computer teacher had no clue how to plug an access point into an ethernet port, and turn it on.

In less than one hour, I had that school wirelessly networked and those laptops on carts and in circulation to the classrooms for use. 

GODDAMN!!!!!!

THIS IS SO NOT ROCKET SCIENCE!!!!!

it's embarrassing as hell to even have to report it as the state of affairs in any school. 

Do you know what that useless sack of skin computer teacher had the nerve to ask me?  "Are you certified to teach?"   I simply bit my tongue and held back the impulse to ask her if she was certified to steal any more oxygen out the muhfuggin atmosphere.....,

Charter status will result in immediate curricular, economic, and governance autonomy.  Exceeding the MAP requirements - as these schools consistently have done - is simply a matter of course.

I think you overstate the case.

Parental involvement in all aspects of the success of the children and of the schools serving our children - is the irreducible sine qua non of  their success.

I agree. Unfortunately, families that need two incomes to survive are shut out. So you should support social and economic policies that will help free up the parent's time. Right?

For the sake of clarity:

The Learning Center is getting them at the right time...I got no beef with the operation at all. Mad props, in fact.

But to the point of Mr. Tierney's editorial, his purpose is to justify reductions in public education expenditures, regardless of the outcome. This is proven by his lauding a school program which, if applied in exactly the same fashion to all Wisconsin students (small class sizes, 125 students per school, all new facilities) would break the state's budget.

He accuses people of throwing money at the problem, but starving the system to death won't solve the nation's education issues any more than starving the federal government to death will solve our national security issues.

I think you overstate the case.

For how bad the District sucks, or, for how liberating the charter will be from District governance?

Unfortunately, families that need two incomes to survive are shut out. So you should support social and economic policies that will help free up the parent's time. Right?

I believe the majority of homes from which the ACE and DLC children come are single-parent.  I support autodidactic social self-re-engineering to accomplish sustainable fitness within a reduced cost and declining net energy environment.  Making some profound changes that may harsh the phuk out of somebody's status quo mellow - is at the top of my priority list.  It took me 4 years and considerable risk to wean myself from my sarariman status quo.  Now I'm free and beginning to emerge at a good clip from that 4 year tunnel,

Like the illegal migrantes who swarm here to take low-paying high risk jobs cause they're better than what's available in Mexico  - people do some amazing shit in order to get their programme straight.  My focus is strictly on those things that are within my range of actionable control.

But to the point of Mr. Tierney's editorial, his purpose is to justify reductions in public education expenditures, regardless of the outcome. This is proven by his lauding a school program which, if applied in exactly the same fashion to all Wisconsin students (small class sizes, 125 students per school, all new facilities) would break the state's budget.

That it's in that church means that people are putting their money where their mouth is.  It is precisely this level of material seriousness that is lacking as regards our prioritization of education.  With a church on every corner in the hood, phuk, churches outnumbering liquor stores and plasma donation centers 10-1 -and those buildings aren't open and functioning as schools 24/7/365?????

Something is profoundly wrong with our resource prioritization picture, and a starvation level steel-toed boot in the ass may be the type of clarifying stimulus required for us to get our priorities straight.   We can either walk out of the burning house motivated by common sense and self-esteem, or keep on complaining that the house is on fire. I'm all about doing the Elvis thing and leaving the building.

Oh, and since oil is the status quo irreducible constant undergirding our unsustainable security, and the military uses 8 times the American per capita of oil to foist their incompetent mission, by my reckoning, starving that beast might do a hell of a lot of good towards increasing practical and sustainable national security.  I can think of lots of other uses for that half a trillion dollars budgeted for "defense".

That it's in that church means that people are putting their money where their mouth is.

You're sidestepping the point.

This is about dismembering public education...the stupidest policy possible. Fewer educated people is the only possible outcome of current policies.

Fine, prepare for the dismemberment. But I'll ask you the same questions I asked Tierney...what would it take to implement your Learning Center for every student in your city?

what would it take to implement your Learning Center for every student in your city?

It would require 100% volunteer turnout for 8 hours a week by every able-bodied professional man and woman capable of teaching and exemplifying.

100% committment for ~24 hours a week (weeknights and saturdays) of brick and mortar facilities access in those otherwise utterly useless churches..,

~ $1,000,000 to replicate the telehub radio tower times to provide blanket network and applications access to all these sundry buildings

100 Megabit pipes attached to each of those telehub towers at ~3500.00/month each, so an additional $170,000 bandwidth budget + $25K/tower for electricity.

and I'd like to deepsix all the microshizzle and citrix stuff in the server rooms and replace it lock stock and smoking barrels with BSD and open source warez so that it could easily scale up to handle the much higher demand.  mebbe $250K to do a complete software migration.

The current output of the public school system is already so far below what is needful in the impending decades that a wholesale rototilling and replanting would hardly be missed - but for the property tax subsidized childcare that public schools supply.  From what I can see, overall, public schools do far more damage than good. By all means, dismember at will...,

It would require 100% volunteer turnout for 8 hours a week by every able-bodied professional man and woman capable of teaching and exemplifying.

Scratch that wild-assed assertion.

There are only 80 of us at the DLC and we ably serve ~1100 students.

Given 22,600 students or thereabouts in the KC school district, we could get the job done very nicely with a meager 1600 quality volunteers.  Oh, and since the District's annual budget is $300 Million, we could get the job done on a miniscule fraction of the 47% plus that's wasted on non-academic shuffling about by professional oxygen thieves within the District.

Next kwestin please?

we could get the job done very nicely with a meager 1600 quality volunteers.

What are the odds of getting 1600 full time volunteers? Single parents and dual income families...

And the technical infrastructure you supply. What would it take to give every student equal access to such?

How about teachers with your technical knowlege? Or half of it? And a couple of good programming teachers?

What would YOU be doing if public education was starved to death 50 years ago?

Your program is an excellent enhancement to public education, but it's not a substitute...not even for the fraction of all students it services.

What would YOU be doing if public education was starved to death 50 years ago?

Exactly what I'm doing now.  My parents were the product of those allegedly awful pre-Brown vs BOE segregated schools in which instruction was provided by black men and women who after the civil rights act fled pedagogy to the $$$greener$$$ pastures of corporate servitude.

Personally, I'm the product of an ultra right wing John Birch Society private independant school which had to integrate in the late 70's or risk losing its not-for-profit status.  So, effectively for me, nothing much would've changed had the public education system begun its long-overdue demise 50 years ago. 

My son attends a language immersion charter school within walking distance of home and my daughter attends the finest private day-school in this part of the country.  She's a 6th grader in honors math taking algebra. She comes to the learning center to get up on analytic geometry, advanced algebra, and calculus.

What I'm saying to you is that learning is our religion. 

On any sunday morning, I guarantee you there are 3-5000 black professionals - in Kansas City alone - sitting up on their silly asses in church listening to some jackleg phuk up and mistell just-so-stories from another man's ancient hagiography. 

As for the technology interface, I give away dynebolics disks and 1-2 Gig thumbdrives which I'm about to replace with 60 gig western digital USB drives cause we're doing more rich media work. Total cost $99.00 and that shit will boot and run on a 64 meg of RAM P1.

My program is indeed a viable substitute for public education, we just haven't scaled it up quite yet for the evolutionary displacement.

Total cost $99.00

Times how many kids, most likely every year.

And how many machines will you need to plug those thumbdrive into? Plus the other questions you didn't answer...

Why you playing, son?

My program is indeed a viable substitute for public education, we just haven't scaled it up quite yet for the evolutionary displacement.

And what do we do with the rest of the kids in the meanwhile?

And how many machines will you need to plug those thumbdrive into? Plus the other questions you didn't answer...

The Cisco classes set up connectivity and drag wire at the churches and community centers we wire. 20 thus far, capable of serving a far larger populace than the 1100 using our facilities.

We've got hundreds of corporate castoff P3's in the basement just waiting for an opensource UNIX and a loving new home.  Corporate castoff's like these cost less to give away (tax write-off as donation) than to throw away.

It's taken me a while, but I've lined up two superb programming instructors who are young, ruthless, and properly subversive.  Actually getting students past the cultural production and advanced tool use to programming is now the primary bottleneck, not having instruction available on the backend.

And what do we do with the rest of the kids in the meanwhile?

Since they're essentially being warehoused in these public schools here, I mean, we got no Stuyvesant, no Bronx Science or other world-class magnets here in KC - I'd just as soon see many go to a productive trade school.  21st Century A&M starting at an early age - much as they do in Germany and Japan where common sense governs the allocation of finite educational resources.

Skilled trades can be expected to make a comeback in the declining net energy economy of tomorrow.

Since they're essentially being warehoused in these public schools here, I mean, we got no Stuyvesant, no Bronx Science or other world-class magnets here in KC - I'd just as soon see many go to a productive trade school.  21st Century A&M starting at an early age - much as they do in Germany and Japan where common sense governs the allocation of finite educational resources.

So you still see a need for public education. Good.

Now consider the transition costs...moving from the current system to the one you visualize. And keep in mind you once told me scalability is the enemy of sustainability.

Starving the public education system will not work, unless your goal is to limit the number of people smart enough to challenge you.

So you still see a need for public education. Good.

How could it be otherwise given that learning is my religion.  A public education system as good as Cuba's would be a wonderful thang.  This means that 98% of the existing, urban public school apparatus, administration, teachers, and infrastructure would have to be discarded.

Start with the NEA teachers and the overpaid stank-azzed administrators.

Now consider the transition costs...moving from the current system to the one you visualize. And keep in mind you once told me scalability is the enemy of sustainability.

I'm pretty sure I was talking about mass production..., not a mass movement toward the developmental praxis of real learning and real education.

Starving the public education system will not work, unless your goal is to limit the number of people smart enough to challenge you.

That goal was achieved by the warehousing systems' architects quite some time ago.  Continuing and/or seeking to rehabilitate the oxygen theft industry that is comprised of urban public school districts is like pouring new wine into old skins.  It is an institutionally rotten system that should be gutted and abandoned as quickly as humanly possible.  The  only  practical way  I know of  to accomplish  this objective,  is to set up  alternative, competing educational frameworks - and to scale these as quickly as cellularly possible.

I hope you're catching Lori Drummer of the American Legislative Exchange Council on C-SPAN Washington Journal this morning.  An aggregate $420 Billion is being spent nationwide on public education - and the proficiency tests show that that money is not yielding any credible return on investment.  70% increase in real dollar expenditures in public education over the last 20 years, tracking in parallel with dramatic declines in measurable academic achievement.

Best kwestin  so far,  "what do other  countries  spend on  public education, and why do they get such a high comparative return on their comparatively meager investments?" 

I did...got her report too.

Same problem, because the report just compiles data I've looked at before. In fatc, it's the data I used to respond to Mr. Tierney in the first place.

The figures include capital expenditures, interest on loans student transportation and all the economic costs involved with maintaining an aged physical structure. Other countries may get better returns for the same reason Japan's steel industry crushed ours...their capital expenditures went to new tech rather than maintanance.

Since my son's teachers have thus far been Senegalese and Belgian respectively, (language immersion public charter) I can assure you that technology tends not to be a factor at all - at least in the countries of origin of these francophone teachers. 

Moreover, the text and other resources available to them at home were far lesser than what is available to them here.  Yet, their standards and expectations and the administrative and parental enforcement of the same are totally orthogonal to what is normatively expected here.  Frankly, we have had to struggle a little to keep our 6 year old apace of the starkly higher academic expectations he's confronted with - in french - in the first grade.

While I'm aghast at the 47% sucked directly out of the top line for non-academic economics, the differences do not correspond with those sloppy and unconscienable excesses.  Take our poor little neighbors to the south who do so much more with so much less.

Since my son's teachers have thus far been Senegalese and Belgian respectively, (language immersion public charter) I can assure you that technology tends not to be a factor at all

Why should technology be a issue in language?

While I'm aghast at the 47% sucked directly out of the top line for non-academic economics

I'm aghast that the educational budget is inflated by including the financial repercussions of decisions from wholly irrelevant realms (like transportation cost, which is the result of residential segregation) until the point that comparisons of the sort you're trying to make are irrelevant.

The public education system is the source of America' progress...there just aren't enough talented elites to explain all the invention and such that has taken place here. Gutting the public education system guts the future...even of the elites. And gutting the public education system is what Mr. Tierney is all about.

I will not allow diversion from a topic when I am making a specific point, by the way. And the specific point is the hollowness and insincerity of Mr. Tierney's every editorial about educating inner city students.

All you do is point out what you perceive as the hollowness of other commentators..., where are your specific prescriptions for making shit mo better?

All you do

That you can see...

where are your specific prescriptions for making shit mo better?

First you start by weeding out the bullshit that confuses the issue. Until you do that there's no chance of coming to terms on a program with a real chance of changing things. That's what I'm about right now.

Mr. Tierney's writings are prime among those that need exposure.

on further reflection - it occurred to me what you're on about.

now that I get that, I'm curious to know whether you consider Tierney and Brooks to be intentional obfuscators and wicked propagandists, or, do you consider them  true  believers  of  what  they're  peddling?

for example, I consider hassenpfeffer and that dub Bruno on Black and White to be true believers - doing the best they can with what little they have. 

as often as the NYT is targetted for the wrath of the AM radio fair and balanced crowd,  the notion that it's engaged in focused propaganda operations intended to hurt black folks is novel to me.  that'd  put  them  on  a  par  with  music  publishers  promoting  pornographic RaP  while suppressing  conscious hiphop...., or the 10:00 o'clock news with its relentless fish-eye focus on the negative, etc...,

http://www.prometheus6.org/node/12212