talkpolitics | They Could Always Go Work in Factories

Teri Adams, Head of Independence Hall Tea Party and School Voucher Activist:

Our ultimate goal is to shut down public schools and have private schools only, eventually returning responsibility for payment to parents and private charities. It’s going to happen piecemeal and not overnight. It took us years to get into this mess and it’s going to take years to get out of it.

In other words, Adams would like education to be, along with medical care, available only to those who can pony up the cash for it.

The article I’ve linked to includes a few quotes from people speculating about what drives the American right’s hostility towards public education. The ban on teacher-led prayer is invoked, along with the mercenary desire to funnel the money now paid into public schools into private hands.

I suspect it’s much more simple than that. Without universal education, the far right wouldn’t have to contend with so many pesky arguments about the facts of history, math, science, etc.

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes

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Two of the three major international tests—the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the Trends in International Math and Science Study—break down student scores according to the poverty rate in each school. The tests are given every five years. The most recent results (2006) showed the following: students in U.S. schools where the poverty rate was less than 10 percent ranked first in reading, first in science, and third in math. When the poverty rate was 10 percent to 25 percent, U.S. students still ranked first in reading and science. But as the poverty rate rose still higher, students ranked lower and lower. Twenty percent of all U.S. schools have poverty rates over 75 percent. The average ranking of American students reflects this. The problem is not public schools; it is poverty. And as dozens of studies have shown, the gap in cognitive, physical, and social development between children in poverty and middle-class children is set by age three. (http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781&sms_ss=delicious&at_xt=4d42eb44482289cc%2C0)

That's a lot of correlation without a lot of causation. The class problems in play are significant, for sure, but I'd be wary of hanging our hat on that on its own.

The problem is not public schools as much as the education system itself. That lack of flexibility to deal with the cultural and class issues, IMO, is much more to blame than simply playing the "it's poverty" card.

"It's poverty" isn't just one card, it's several decks' worth. The environment in which children are raised, the effects of nutrition on cognitive development, resources available both in and out of school, extracurricular opportunities that correlate strongly with academic performance, being able to attract (and pay) the best teachers - it's a huge list of things that you dismiss too easily.

I'm not arguing that the education system is perfect, mind you, just that it's generally pretty good.

Is that taking into account poverty in schools internationally or just in the US? I'm seeing that they're only counting schools in the US, versus all schools around the world, which is not a valid comparison.

I don't know if the author adjusted for poverty rates in other countries or not. I didn't see that the report did, but I think it's fair to assume that those countries generally have fewer kids in 25+% poverty areas than we do.

I don't think that's fair to assume at all. Most countries are poorer than we are in general, and it's more fair to assume many of them have larger percentages of impoverished population. Anyhow, I'm not sure it's as cut and dry as the author claims. But we both agree that poverty plays a huge role in the effectiveness of education.

By "those countries" I meant the ones ahead of us, like South Korea, Japan, and Switzerland. I'm pretty sure they have fewer impoverished areas than we do, but I'm too lazy to look up the stats. This wouldn't be a problem if the test results included median scores.

I think the best way to use that article is just to show that maybe education will improve itself if we focus on poverty.

Sine every country measures poverty differently, it's very difficult to make such assumptions. If this study didn't try to correct for this, it is pretty much engineered to come to a certain conclusion.

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I like to re-read it from time to time. It also provides interesting arguments against the private sector having too much influence, even in the form of charities.

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