Whenever someone says that I think of Social Security. Remember when there was a move to privatize it?.

I wish that had continued. I figured out SS was a loser as soon as I got my first paycheck at 15. How I wish I had been able to invest those funds for 40 years at something better than 1%!

 

I wish that had continued. I figured out SS was a loser as soon as I got my first paycheck at 15. How I wish I had been able to invest those funds for 40 years at something better than 1%!

Yep, but you know what? Nobody did it before.

 

I wish that had continued. I figured out SS was a loser as soon as I got my first paycheck at 15. How I wish I had been able to invest those funds for 40 years at something better than 1%!

Those of the statist mentality don't think we rubes are smart enough to do this on our own without a hired gun pointed at our heads. They are probably right, considering the state of public education.

 

It is pretty conservative, but it's there when you need it.

Imagine retiring in 2007 with your money in the market. Mine was in the market and I'll tell you I'm glad I had SS so I could coast thru it.

 

Are you kidding? There's no lack of evidence that vouchers were successful in D.C. Parents want them, unions don't. It's pretty simple.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs...-vouchers-and-hypocritical-just-like-congress

I can go to the grocery store and pick out a basket of apples and take them to the street corner and put up a sign that says, "higher quality apples than inside the grocery store, they last longer on average". It works the same way with vouchers - especially in the DC area system.

Parents, parents, parent! It is the key factor in success. Only 25% of kids eligible to sign up for the DC scholarship lottery signed up. That means those parents had to care more than the average family. 25% of those kids won a "scholarship" lottery position. There was a huge drop-0ut rate of the system (40% left DC or enrolled in a charter school - another sign a select group had concerned parents).

If parents are concerned and involved, there is little difference on academic performance no matter where the kid goes to school. The double blind test is needed to say, what if the kid did not go to the private school, how successful would he/she be? That is a much better quality test than saying, kids who participated in the program did better than the children whose parents neglected to sign them up for he lottery (equivalent to the aging apples that I left at the grocery store).

Finally (part 1), I do not see a single line in your quoted reference or in the subsequent reference of that author that shows imporoved scores. Your author claims 30% improvement in reading/math scores but I don't see any line item in his referenced report that shows that. He neglects to reference any page or section numbers. Maybe you can point that out for me. Note that your reference is not a US News Article - it is an OPINION/BLOG of a US News Staffer. I don't put much faith in this type of "reporting".

Finally (part 2), The Department of Education study shows no improvement in reading or math scores of Scholarship lottery winners vs. public school attendees. The lottery winners did somehow have higher graduation rates with those same reading/math scores so I cannot tell if the private schools pushed them through or rewarded them for not dropping out. Either way, there is no measure of their success.
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/quick_reviews/dc_final_030811.pdf

 

Are you kidding? There's no lack of evidence that vouchers were successful in D.C. Parents want them, unions don't. It's pretty simple.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2009/04/22/obama-wrong-on-dc-school-vouchers-and-hypocritical-just-like-congress

Also, Claiming "There is no lack of evidence that vouchers were successful..." and the only evidence you post is a Blog? That kind of says, "there is practically no evidence." Please try again.

 

Is anyone here honestly trying to argue that a government-run bureaucracy can out- compete a free market solution? No way.

How is $15M/year of GOVERNMENT handouts for a tuition lottery to private schools a FREE MARKET solution? Sounds like a gravy train for private schools to grow the size of the private school market share by 1500 students per year at $10k each. Who was lobbying for the voucher program?

 

I went to a parochial school for the first 8 years of my education, nine if you count kindergarden. Ninth and Tenth at a public school, repeated Tenth to go to a vocational-technical school and graduated from there. My vocation at the time was Radio-TV repair. I worked my sophmore year doing home service calls. My junior and senior year, I worked doing maintenance at a local radio station and engineered the evening talk shows. Then I went into the military.

So, based on my personal experience, the public schools did not have the same expectations as the parochial school in the academic arena. Private schools, were geared towards college preparatory. Not all public schools can be bad. I lived, a couple of decades later, in a small town where the Senior Class numbered 24 and a slight minority didn't go to college. A nearby school, senior class of 2, both went to college. What does small town America do that their seniors go to college? Parental involvement is one aspect, a major aspect in my opinion.

That Education department study did show that the lottery winners graduated and the non-lottery winners didn't. If the two groups scored essentially the same ... why the graduation disparity. Can one blame the disparity on infrastructure? Sure. Is it the root cause? I doubt it. How did people learn in the past when there wasn't the computers and the internet?

Certainly the tools of the computer revolution changed, but the people haven't. I can remember in the 1980s when I saw a MAC cad program. I told the MasterChief that was using it ... where the hell was that when I was drawing all the diagrams for the class in 1979.

Tools are nice.

On the other hand, the new technology has produced some really good Pokeman GO players.

 

How is $15M/year of GOVERNMENT handouts for a tuition lottery to private schools a FREE MARKET solution? Sounds like a gravy train for private schools to grow the size of the private school market share by 1500 students per year at $10k each. Who was lobbying for the voucher program?

The federal government is throwing money at the public schools left and right. When they decided to relieve the states of educating their citizens, they picked up the tab. When they decided that the lottery was the way for some to escape their chains of poverty, they picked up the tab. Same o same o.

One thing is you can be assured of, if a teacher is under performing in a private institution, they can be terminated alot easier than a public institution.

You decide if that money was wasted. The group that graduated or the group that didn't.

on edit:

Governments throw money at a potential solution. Think of all the Pell Grants, named for Senator Pell of Rhode Island. What percentage of those receiving Pell grants graduate?

Money spent on Pell Grants

from The Hechinger Report
The study found that Pell recipients had a six-year graduation rate of 51 percent in 2013 compared to 65 percent for non-Pell students.

Equal access doesn't mean equal outcome. Spending 30 billion and seeing a result on 15 billion.

The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.
--- May V. Smith

p.s. That's a moot saying because very few people know what a dictionary is .... wait, I know, it's www.dictionary.com

 

The federal government is throwing money at the public schools left and right. When they decided to relieve the states of educating their citizens, they picked up the tab. When they decided that the lottery was the way for some to escape their chains of poverty, they picked up the tab. Same o same o.

Not so much. They did pump money in during the crash but in general not so much.

One thing is you can be assured of, if a teacher is under performing in a private institution, they can be terminated alot easier than a public institution.

And they make less money. But a much better job environment.

Governments throw money at a potential solution. Think of all the Pell Grants, named for Senator Pell of Rhode Island. What percentage of those receiving Pell grants graduate?

Money spent on Pell Grants

Equal access doesn't mean equal outcome. Spending 30 billion and seeing a result on 15 billion.

Not so much. 51% of Pell grants graduate, compared to 65% of non Pell. Some contend the numbers are closer than that.
Not to bad all things considered.

 

The federal government is throwing money at the public schools left and right. When they decided to relieve the states of educating their citizens, they picked up the tab. When they decided that the lottery was the way for some to escape their chains of poverty, they picked up the tab. Same o same o.

One thing is you can be assured of, if a teacher is under performing in a private institution, they can be terminated alot easier than a public institution.

You decide if that money was wasted. The group that graduated or the group that didn't.

on edit:

Governments throw money at a potential solution. Think of all the Pell Grants, named for Senator Pell of Rhode Island. What percentage of those receiving Pell grants graduate?

Money spent on Pell Grants

Equal access doesn't mean equal outcome. Spending 30 billion and seeing a result on 15 billion.

The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.
--- May V. Smith

p.s. That's a moot saying because very few people know what a dictionary is .... wait, I know, it's www.dictionary.com

LOOK AT THE WHOLE picture when you look at statistics. Why do Pell Grant receipients graduate at lower rates than non-pell grant recipients? You're saying, they just do. No, there are many other factors. Pell Grants only fund a small portion of an education. These recipents are expected to work and take out loans. They also have parents/families living in low-income situations. So, if they cannot afford the balance of their education (not covered by Pell grants), they are more likely to drop out than non-Pell Grant recipents (not in severe finanancial need). They are more likely to quit college to take care of siblings, more likely to drop out if offered a job that pays more than $15/hour (than a non-Pell Grant Recipent). Next time, dig in! Enjoy looking at the statistics and LEARN why things are the way they are. Acting like a parrot that repeats things they hear on Fox News FACEBOOK is boring. Discover for yourself. There is plenty of free information out there and difficult issues are difficult to solve. If you have such simple answers, you are not digging enough and don't understand the problem.

Edit: changed source of News

 

Acting like a parrot that repeats things they hear on Fox News is boring.

Amen. Righties drinking the koolaid of talk radio, FNC and right wing blogs is boring. and because that's ALL they read is really sad.

 

I do agree with Gopther. As an outside eye on this matter I can't say that it's easy to solve. Because the harder i look the problem it becomes more convoluted. And I don't know all the facts. One thing I've noticed though is how much you guys battle when (I hope) that you have the same goal and agenda. Different views on how to do so...Sure but yeah you mean well(again I hope)

However there are few things I've noticed and am not sure where to begin. So here goes a little bit of nothing

"Free market", "privatization", "government", "bureaucracy"...

Pretty much just words that can mean whatever to the one enforcing/having affect (on) it.
None of which will solve the "war on cops".

Cops are given great power, greater power than the average citizen. With that power comes stress and in places constant fear for its life(Hey we must admit that cops are one of those people that see people at the worst place/state in their life. Others being. Fire fighters, EMT, nurses, soldiers...I hope you see my point). That is not a good mixture and even worse when some of them(there will (most probably) always be some of them) that have some kind of bias. Racial or other.

What to do,? what to do.? That should be the main focal point I think. But again what do I know.?

 

Different views on how to do so.

Then let people try different things: charter school, voucher, home schooling, public school reforms, ..., as long as you hold them to the same standard. Let the public school try to compete for business, not taking business for granted as a monopoly.

Teachers should be some of the highest paid professions in a society because they are doing the most important jobs -> investing in our future. As such, there should be complete transparency and a great focus on paying for performance (as determined by individual school districts).

What to do,? what to do.?

Very easy: community policing. Take Obama / Holder at their own words: communities decide which laws to enforce and how to enforce such laws. If the people of Furgerson believes it is OK to rob a convenient store, or to burn down a draw store, or to walk in the middle of the street, they should have the right to do so. If the people of Baltimore believes it is OK to sell drugs on street corners and their cops should be OK with that.

On the flip side, if people of other towns want to have the ability to defend themselves when a thug is banging their heads into the concrete, that should be OK;

A free society is just that: people have the right to determine for themselves. If someone wants to crap where they live, they should have that right. If someone wants to have law and order enforced, they should have that right too. Have them all live up to the consequences of their individual decisions.

 

Then let people try different things: charter school, voucher, home schooling, public school reforms, ..., as long as you hold them to the same standard. Let the public school try to compete for business, not taking business for granted as a monopoly.

Teachers should be some of the highest paid professions in a society because they are doing the most important jobs -> investing in our future. As such, there should be complete transparency and a great focus on paying for performance (as determined by individual school districts).



Very easy: community policing. Take Obama / Holder at their own words: communities decide which laws to enforce and how to enforce such laws. If the people of Furgerson believes it is OK to rob a convenient store, or to burn down a draw store, or to walk in the middle of the street, they should have the right to do so. If the people of Baltimore believes it is OK to sell drugs on street corners and their cops should be OK with that.

On the flip side, if people of other towns want to have the ability to defend themselves when a thug is banging their heads into the concrete, that should be OK;

A free society is just that: people have the right to determine for themselves. If someone wants to crap where they live, they should have that right. If someone wants to have law and order enforced, they should have that right too. Have them all live up to the consequences of their individual decisions.

The problem with that plan is that the majority of the people in those places don't want those problems.

 

...as long as you hold them to the same standard.

...people have the right to determine for themselves.

Can you not see your own contradiction? It's gotta be one way or the other. There is no middle ground here.

 

Acting like a parrot that repeats things they hear on Fox News is boring.

Fox news? I haven't seen fox news in years. I cited the website where I got that graphic. I can tell you it wasn't Fox News.

Your telling me as long as your getting free money, you will continue your education. You will not take out a loan for the remainder of the cash you need under another Dept of Education program.

 

Not so much. 51% of Pell grants graduate, compared to 65% of non Pell.

The difference is which group is getting your tax dollars ... The non-Pell 65% don't have their hand in your pocket, unless it's your child, then you can address that one yourself.

 

Your telling me as long as your getting free money, you will continue your education. You will not take out a loan for the remainder of the cash you need under another Dept of Education program.

I don't understand your question - your two sentences seem to conflict. Where are you going with this?

 

The difference is which group is getting your tax dollars ... The non-Pell 65% don't have their hand in your pocket, unless it's your child, then you can address that one yourself.

Nobody has their hand in anyone's pocket. Don't blame the student, they didn't pass any laws to fund the Pell system. Your state universities have done that. Texas schools get a huge share of Pell grants. If you don't like the system, talk to your congressman and don't accuse anyone of putting their hand in your pocket. Students are no more guilty than a billionaire taking his deductions on his 1040 form.