What is going to happen to schools in trouble?

So every day it seems there is an article about a school district having layoffs. Obviously, some areas like Detroit are in serious trouble. But even areas that are doing ok seem to still be laying off or having hiring freezes. Surely some of what was initially cut was waste or duplication but we are way beyond that it seems. What does the future hold? Taxes certainly can't be raised high enough to cover the education, pension and health care they promised to retirees and other rising costs? You never hear about what a crisis this is. I can't really figure it out.

Chicago is closing 49 schools.

Kids are being seriously under-served, especially in large urban districts, and the problem reaches far, far beyond school funding. Cuts to early childhood programs bring more kids to elementary school further behind than they were before. Cuts to transportation systems leave the parents with fewer options for jobs, access to healthcare, and access to decent, inexpensive foods (there are no Wal-Marts in the hood). General Dollar stores are making inroads around here and are much cheaper than the corner stores but neither have fresh food of any kind. Cuts to after-school programs put more kids on the street and under the tutelage of gang-bangers and other unsavory types. Cuts to social service organizations help ensure that pregnant girls get less medical care and less support when baby is born, leading to more neglected children who are not in early childhood programs. And don't get me started on the "must keep families together at all costs" (which, BTW, is much cheaper than finding good foster homes/training good foster parents...) and then cutting funding to Children's Service Bureaus guarantees that the case workers have so many cases they don't even know their kids and families...

Sorry - apparently I'm in a rantish mood today. I just get sooo tired of our short-sightedness. There are cuts to our youth detention centers and programs too. Almost all of the mental heath centers around here who worked with youth have cut back or closed, at a time when many more young people have been diagnosed with significant mental health issues. Less kids in programing = more disturbed youngsters on the street. And while I am a great champion of these youngsters and love several of them like my own, believe me when I say you DON'T want most of them loose in your neighborhood without treatment and interventions, especially in large numbers.

The schools that are closing in St Louis are doing so because the city is losing population. You've got to look at population served and Detroit is losing population. Hardly makes sense to keep buildings open and teachers employed unless the purpose of the school system is to employ teachers and support their union. Oh, wait...

But on the bright side, the wealthy are enjoying lower taxes than ever! Corporations, who are people after all, pay way less taxes per dollar than us 'regular' people. And, to IL's point, the schools will soon be packed to the gills as women lose their right to control their own bodies with regard to birth control and abortion. Plus arming all the teachers will take care of some of those...er, problems...that early morning mentioned.

Kansas City just threw money at schools, after the desegregation case. Test scores were and are still issues. Money didn't solve their problems (billion dollar lesson)
When they lost accreditation and the schools in Independence were able to pull out of that system, KC tried to saddle Independence with a good chunk of its debt (the court threw that on its head). Volunteers, went in and cleaned up the local (to me) school, pulled out the metal detectors at the door (gave the kids the feeling they trusted them), and the school has made a pretty dramatic change for the better. Money is just a tool, and unfortunately it attracts those who just want to collect that tool.
There are a lot of problems besides it. Shrinking budgets, shrinking or moving populations, teachers who don't care, and are protected by unions, layers upon layers of administration, which can and do affect teachers that do work, etc.
Some schools in trouble, will close. Others will be allowed to fester.

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Originally Posted by peggy

But on the bright side, the wealthy are enjoying lower taxes than ever! Corporations, who are people after all, pay way less taxes per dollar than us 'regular' people. And, to IL's point, the schools will soon be packed to the gills as women lose their right to control their own bodies with regard to birth control and abortion. Plus arming all the teachers will take care of some of those...er, problems...that early morning mentioned.

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LOL, I'm actually quite impressed that so many memes having nothing to do with the subject at hand can be put into one short post. Wealthy people, corporations, war on women and guns.

Well done!

Alan, are you seriously saying there are no connections between any of the issues peggy raised and the OP on what may happen to schools in distress? Or are you saying that we should just be discussing the narrow topic of cuts to school staff/funding?? If the first, I disagree heartily - all things are connected - otherwise we wouldn't constantly be smacked about by the law of unintended consequences! If the second - narrow topics peter out pretty quickly, it seems, and limit the depth of discussion. JMHO.

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Originally Posted by early morning

Alan, are you seriously saying there are no connections between any of the issues peggy raised and the OP on what may happen to schools in distress? Or are you saying that we should just be discussing the narrow topic of cuts to school staff/funding?? If the first, I disagree heartily - all things are connected - otherwise we wouldn't constantly be smacked about by the law of unintended consequences! If the second - narrow topics peter out pretty quickly, it seems, and limit the depth of discussion. JMHO.

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Money has little to do with the overall health of school systems. We currently spend more per student than any other country in the world. We've also seen that many private or charter schools do a much better job educating students than their public brethren do, while operating under tighter budgets. In my state, the per student cost of public education increased approximately 60% between 2001 and 2010, with no measurable impact on outcomes.

Wealthy people, corporations, violence and gender have nothing to do with the problem as the root problem is societal. Prudent voters evaluate the cost/benefit of maintaining failing schools as they check the appropriate box on their ballots, then work to deal with the root problem rather than throw blame on popular, yet unrelated targets, hoping they'll stick.

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Taxes certainly can't be raised high enough to cover the education, pension and health care they promised to retirees and other rising costs?

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Pensions and retirement costs are a problem. Actually that is pretty widely acknowleged, but what they are willing to do about it is another matter .... (It's really kind of a retirement problem rather than an education problem, almost noone's retirement is funded on solid ground in this country - including private pension and 401k holders. SS is one of the better programs). However taxes CAN be raised for education, the people will vote for it .... sometimes, as such an initiative recently passed here. It may not be enough to stop cuts, but it's not true you can't get an increase in taxes for education.

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You never hear about what a crisis this is. I can't really figure it out.

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about pension problems? you hear about it. Or just about the general cuts in funding or deterioration (?) of public schools? I think systems can function badly for many years or really perhaps INDEFINITELY without it being a major issue for however decides on what the issues are. In fact many systems do (like the public school system, the prison system, the hospitals many places etc.). People just learn to live with it, systems that don't work, like cheap products that break right away or something, as in "oh well nothing works well anymore", they navigate around them as best they can (send their kids to private school if they can afford it, hope noone they knows ever ends up in jail, hope noone they knows gets MRSA in the hospital etc.). The myth is you live in some country where things run well, and that's just not true. That's flag waving childhood fiction. But of course things can get worse (long emergency style I guess - slowly). Not wanting things to get worse on the fast track is why the tax increase measure passed here (I'm not sure it had any major vested opposition though - some token anti-tax opposition is all).

If educational outcomes were directly related to financial inputs, the U.S. wouldn't compare so poorly to our competitors around the world. Many other countries spend less and endure worse poverty, yet still seem to achieve better results. Is there some cultural component at work here? Has a generation of everyone-gets-a-trophy dulled our competitive edge? Are we clogging our intellectual arteries with educational junk food because niether teachers nor students have much taste for math and the hard sciences anymore? Has constant texting eliminated a generation's ability to comunicate in anything except banal cliches reduced to acronymns reduced to emoticons?

The federal government can try enforcing standards, but can they mandate actual performance? Will spending more on education be no more effective than spending more on health care has? Should we use vouchers or charter schools to fragment public education into numerous experiments in the hope of hitting the right formula?

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Kansas City just threw money at schools, after the desegregation case. Test scores were and are still issues. Money didn't solve their problems (billion dollar lesson)

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so money alone can't change the effect of white flight (and white flight here was simply MASSIVE after bussing etc..). That's a pretty huge thing to overcome with money. That it mostly actually coincided in CA with actual cuts in funding to schools (prop 13) definitely didn't help anything. I think we pretty much live in that landscape formed a few decades ago as far as education goes. With everyone *still* "fleeing" to get a house in a good school district etc.. There is no free lunch for having a lousy public school system of course, and what you don't pay to try to improve the schools (which may or may not work as so many of the problems are bigger than just the schools - people growing up in poverty etc.) you most definitely *WILL* pay in an extra 100k spent for a house in a good school district.

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Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore

so money alone can't change the effect of white flight (and white flight here was simply MASSIVE after bussing etc..). That's a pretty huge thing to overcome with money. That it mostly actually coincided in CA with actual cuts in funding to schools (prop 13) definitely didn't help anything. I think we pretty much live in that landscape formed a few decades ago as far as education goes. With everyone *still* "fleeing" to get a house in a good school district etc.. There is no free lunch for having a lousy public school system of course, and what you don't pay to try to improve the schools (which may or may not work as so many of the problems are bigger than just the schools - people growing up in poverty etc.) you most definitely *WILL* pay in an extra 100k spent for a house in a good school district.

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I'm not sure our problems are primarily attributable to insufficient numbers of white people or affluent people in a given area. Performance appears to be declining even in elite public school districts. We are doing something wrong, that poorer nations seem to be doing right. I don't know if its a decline in personal responsibility or discipline on both the parents' or students' part, a growing distaste for competition in general, a society that allocates it's best talent to areas other than education, a media-fueled dumbing-down or something else.

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Originally Posted by Alan

Money has little to do with the overall health of school systems.

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Seems the school systems have plenty of money to spend on activities central to the educational mission:

http://www.1011now.com/home/headline...167394325.html

In my county, our schools are largely funded through local property taxes. And we have the highest land prices in the state, pretty much. And lots of rich people. "Wealthy people enjoying low taxes" doesn't come into play - *someone* has to own this expensive land, and there's no way to avoid paying the property tax.

So our schools have, in theory, lots of money. And they do. But they don't seem to spend it particularly efficiently - our school library was closed this year, because they couldn't afford a union member to staff the library. And the union contracts forbid the dozens of parent volunteers from staffing it. And so, a nice shiny library went unused, the books unread, the children forced to sit elsewhere to study and work.

They also had the nerve to ask for a bond increase to build *a new library*. Presumably to sit empty as well.

Our schools here are consistently rated at the top of our state's schools. And yet the science, math, language, and music programs are shameful, IMNSHO. To get AP classes, parents and students fund-raise to pay for teachers and classrooms, because the budget doesn't allow for "extra" activities such as actual education... Plenty of funds for administrators, administrative assistants, and so on. They cut the budget entirely for the maintenance staff though - apparently the plan is to allow the current buildings to decompose by not painting and servicing them, so they can get a new bond measure through to build more new buildings to not maintain.

And we have only ourselves to blame - the locally-elected school board doesn't seem to be able to get things under control, though they've been trying for ages.

Maddening.

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Originally Posted by early morning

Alan, are you seriously saying there are no connections between any of the issues peggy raised and the OP on what may happen to schools in distress? ....

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Please, I invite you to draw a line from "schools closing" to the concept of "women held barefoot and pregnant" that does not touch on hyperbole and broad-brushing of the political right.

Related, the per-pupil cost in my city school system is the highest in the state, yet the test scores and graduation rate is near the bottom. And I can assure you--Peggy-- that the school board and administration have no love of, no relation to, and no truck with the political right. And between you and me, I'm glad of that because I refuse to take responsibility for that cesspool.

The problem of public education is huge and I see no reason to toss in other huge, social problems since the topic isn't too narrow at all.

Yea I'm really not sure the problems are mostly the schools and aren't mostly social problems. But reproductive issues are a bit of a stretch ...

I have no love of the current public schools or even schooling, but I still am hard pressed to see how they could educate given some of the social problems they are dealing with (widespread child poverty etc.). So they produce very mediocre results and we fund them because there doesn't seem any really better alternative and things can always get worse.

I live in the same town where I attended school. There were over 200 in my graduating class and this year there are less than 100 in the graduating class yet the school built a new theater, band room, weight/exercise room and I could name many other what I term ‘non-essentials’ to a proper education. There are more teachers and staff with 50% of the students. Somehow many of the 200 students in my graduating class went on to lead productive lives many with professional and post graduate degrees without the latest and greatest in their school days. Mileages are regularly voted down due mostly to the way the school district is seen spending money. Schools need to close and teachers need to be laid off it the student population does not warrant the need.

Our urban school district gets more money than suburban schools and is losing population. 4 of their schools have been taken over due to serious issue. Problems are more society issues than school issues. Schools cannot substitute for parents and overall culture although some seem to think they can or should.

Too add, I cannot recommend even the magnet or "good" things they are doing in our urban district because a lottery is usually used to determine who goes. Who would subject their child's education to a lottery?

School and grades were the priority in our early life. Now it is much lower on the list that my friends, coworkers and others I speak with seem to find important.

We just returned from Japan and I would not recommend that system either (nor did any of the guides) since it is schooling 10-15 hours a day almost 6 days a week for 12 years. Stress is incredible. There has to be a middle ground.

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Schools cannot substitute for parents and overall culture although some seem to think they can or should.

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I could not agree with this more. And cuts to OTHER programs impact the schools, because they affect the families of the students. I agree there are lots of cultural/societal factors at play here. One of them is loss of manufacturing jobs. Some of that can be explained by tax law that encouraged companies to move offshore, but one of the bigger causes, it seems to me, is the increased use of technology - hardware/software/machinery instead of human labor. To make up for that, we are trying to keep everyone in school until they graduate and enroll in college, when many other countries track kids by ability and have better vocational training schools.

Well everyone has raised great points. I know when we left ny and bought a house for the same amount of money our property taxes went down $6000 a year. We also have no state income tax like n.y. does. We picked this area on purpose, as it was all part of ourearly retirement plan The schools rank close to what they do in ny, poorer urban areas doing poorly, wealthier areas doing better.
I have a hard time with the notion that the educators are in it for the money, As several of my friends who are educators or school nurses work mighty hard, spent a lot of time outsideit just seems to of school hours working, and are not primarily in it for the pay and pension. A school nurse can make much more in many other capacities with less liability. I don't know about the administrators. There still seem to be a lot of them

I used to go to our school board meetings. You learn a lot as the months go by, including some ridiculous state guidelines and some ridiculous decisions. I thought our board needed an overhaul, that was for sure. Many nights, in my district of 4,000+ students, there would be me, a few concerned teachers and a couple crabby people who took issue with everything. Even as they discussed budget cutting, practically no one was there to give suggestions, ( unless it was people trying to savetheir jobs) and few negative and positive opinions. A shame really as everyone complained about it after the fact. I am just so unsure where we are headed and what the outcome will be.

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Originally Posted by Alan

. .. We've also seen that many private or charter schools do a much better job educating students than their public brethren do, while operating under tighter budgets. .

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Actually not true according to latest studies: https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/31-9

But sadly, I foresee education in this country becoming totally for-profit because companies are salivating at the sheer amount of money involved (rivaling jail/prisons/courts for biggest slice of the taxpayer's dollars) and they will convince taxpayers they can do it better.

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Actually not true according to latest studies: https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/31-9

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Is this the best we can expect from charters after billions poured into this new hole in the ground that is being mined by ideologues, tax-evaders, corporate welfare schemers, profiteers, sold-out politicians, and hedge fund operators?

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Yea I've heard that too, and wonder how it is possible since charter schools are supposed to be non-profit. The scams going on if such are subtle ...

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But sadly, I foresee education in this country becoming totally for-profit because companies are salivating at the sheer amount of money involved (rivaling jail/prisons/courts for biggest slice of the taxpayer's dollars) and they will convince taxpayers they can do it better.

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Of course that's not "totally for profit", not if it's government money. I'm not saying totally for profit would be ideal, just that corporatism (public-private partnership/public funding and private profits/crony capitalism) is the worst of all possible worlds. States and localities should experiment - yes, so far so good. P.S. - does this extend to teacher empowerment as opposed to teaching to test? However if the experiments are with a model as badly flawed as public-private partnership the chances of that working are almost non-existent. I would hope for experiments with a model less obviously broken.

OK, well, the right-wing on going war against women's rights was a bit of a stretch, but I'm feeling particularly antsy today. I guess what i was really alluding to was the ridiculous disconnect of right-wing complaining of the state of education, and their constant fight to dumb down the educational standards of schools.
Yeah, let's complain about the lack of science, yet demand that schools be allowed to teach creationism in science class! Or let's applaud the charge that president Obama is a 'snob' when he says he wants everyone to have the opportunity to go to college if they want.
Do you think these mixed messages MAY just be adding to the societal problems we have in valuing education? How about the recent vote by the republican congress to raise the rate on college loans? What do you think that says to young people on how much we value an education?

It is a societal issue. Mainly being, we, as a society, don't value education. When we do, then the kids , schools and communities will. Ask yourself..why do the 'rich' schools do better than the 'poor' schools? If it isn't money, as most of you decided/agreed on, then what? Could it be the 'rich' schools are populated by those who value education more? Why is it that wealthy folks, whose kids really will step into the 'family' business and not need to struggle, still insist their kids go on to university and beyond? Could it be they value education? Could it be that all those republicans who guffaw at 'liberal educations'...the ones who themselves hold several degrees, know the power of education? (cough..Rick Santorum...cough) ...cause, you know, an educated voting public is largely a democratic voting public...

Now, go back to that vote to raise the loan rate for college kids. Go back to all those pushes to teach creationism. Go back to the anti-science, anti-women, anti-information, let's pray to pass our math test voices that scream the loudest. As long as we pretend that Rush Limbaugh/Glen Beck/fox News are 'real' journalist, creationism is the 'other' side of the evolution coin, and science is just a liberal conspiracy, the kids will remain dumb, and the schools won't be able to do a thing, no matter how much money we throw at them.

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Originally Posted by peggy

Do you think these mixed messages MAY just be adding to the societal problems we have in valuing education? How about the recent vote by the republican congress to raise the rate on college loans? What do you think that says to young people on how much we value an education?

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In large part, it IS government interference that is responsible for education inflation, which is higher than healthcare, food, and energy inflation. The cost of a college education has been increasing ever since the government got involved in the student loan business. The schools can jack up tuition knowing that they will get their money. The government knows that it will get repaid (or the banks know when we are talking about private student loans) because school loans ARE NOT DISCHARGEABLE IN BANKRUPTCY.
It is a vicious cycle and holding down interest rates artificially won’t really solve the problem. If you have to pay 7% interest on an education that costs you only $50,000, you are still getting a better deal than a $200,000 education at 3%.

Government interference greater than the GI Bill though? When vast sections of the population had massively subsidized college education? Government interference greater than the days when state colleges were free or nearly so? It's really hard to say we have any more government interference than we had then (which is basically anytime within anyone that is alive lifetime including 90 year olds) - yea the "good old days". That it is done through credit rather than directly well - perhaps adds a layer of corruption is all - banksterism and a profit stream to lenders.

Maybe bidding up education isn't purely about government but also has something to do with the utter disaster that is the economy for most people! It is true that some of the same jobs that didn't require a college education several decades ago do now. But it is ALSO true that many of the jobs that didn't require education several decades ago are *GONE* (the latter of which probably makes the former possibly - flooded labor market means employers can ask for the moon). Now education won't bring the old jobs back or necessarily provide enough jobs to replace them (yea I know we're told it will - and how is that working out?). But it will make people more and more desperate to go to college as the alternative *individually* for not doing so is much more dire than it was in the "good old days".

Agree that holding down interest rates almost certainly won't work. In fact interest rates are kept low pricisely to RAISE the costs of housing. They say as much but somehow think this is a good thing ...

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Originally Posted by Alan

In large part, it IS government interference that is responsible for education inflation, which is higher than healthcare, food, and energy inflation. The cost of a college education has been increasing ever since the government got involved in the student loan business. The schools can jack up tuition knowing that they will get their money. The government knows that it will get repaid (or the banks know when we are talking about private student loans) because school loans ARE NOT DISCHARGEABLE IN BANKRUPTCY.
It is a vicious cycle and holding down interest rates artificially won’t really solve the problem. If you have to pay 7% interest on an education that costs you only $50,000, you are still getting a better deal than a $200,000 education at 3%.

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On this we agree. Universities demand ridiculous prices while wasting money on football stadiums and sports complexes. But raising the rates on the students won't fix that. it will simply put a larger burden on the strapped student, and cause many more to fall out simply because they can't justify paying 50,000 for a career that pays 30,000.
And that speaks to ANM's point. Raising the rates won't bring down the college costs. It will just make it impossible for so many to 'pull themselves up' because the jobs will still demand a degree for what used to be OJT or a tech school at best. The gap will grow between the haves and the have nots even wider than it is now.

So what is the solution? I don't know. As ANM pointed out, getting a degree isn't just a luxury anymore. Trade school jobs are demanding liberal arts degrees. And the universities are drunk with the money, stuffing ridiculous requirements into basic knowledge degrees to get four years (or more) worth of credits. (I could tell you about my daughters 'required' American Folk lore class that was literally her going to a theater once a week to watch slasher movies. I'm talking Freddie Kruger...Really!)
Maybe MORE government interference should be tried. Limits on state universities tuition, or requirements, and a little bit more oversight on the degrees. But many would balk at that sort of interference, and it wouldn't address the issue of degree demanding careers.

Personally, I think there should be way more oversight on public universities, and I mean heavy oversight, and more trade schools for the vast majority of degrees. Get them in, teach them the trade/career, and get them out. With only a reasonable debt for the education.
I'm afraid raising this debt now to 'fix' the problem will be about as useful as expecting people to 'pull themselves up by their bootstraps' by removing food stamps and WIC.

Regarding pre-secondary education, our district is very highly rated and DD2 just graduated from the highest ranked high school in the district last weekend. The teachers were dedicated and involved. The resources available at the school are quite complete. Despite all that her education, had she relied solely on the curriculum and just gone with the flow, would have been pathetic. Luckily she was pretty motivated, had parents who were involved and most of her friends have similar goals. I don't know the exact numbers when it comes to measuring success with vs. without parental involvement, but in my experience there are very few kids who make it on their own. My own cynical POV is that our schools have become a giant, expensive baby sitting service that we, as a society, expect to take over all parental roles. IMO that is a miserable failure.

There was a ratio that used to be tossed around regarding NASA and the space program. Basically it said that every dollar spent on space returned $14 to the economy through innovation that was integrated into life on Earth. I'm not sure if that's exactly accurate, but the point is that innovation isn't possible without education. Even if the figure were only $2 instead of $14 it would still be a compelling reason to get our education system back on track.

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Originally Posted by Gregg

Regarding pre-secondary education, our district is very highly rated and DD2 just graduated from the highest ranked high school in the district last weekend. The teachers were dedicated and involved. The resources available at the school are quite complete. Despite all that her education, had she relied solely on the curriculum and just gone with the flow, would have been pathetic. Luckily she was pretty motivated, had parents who were involved and most of her friends have similar goals. I don't know the exact numbers when it comes to measuring success with vs. without parental involvement, but in my experience there are very few kids who make it on their own. My own cynical POV is that our schools have become a giant, expensive baby sitting service that we, as a society, expect to take over all parental roles. IMO that is a miserable failure.

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I've been thinking along those lines as I read this thread. Parents who are enthusiastically involved with their children's education produce the best outcomes--whether through outright homeschooling, supplemental lessons, or unschooling-type exploration of individual interests. Children whose parents model a love for and a pursuit of learning for its own sake are lucky indeed.

The peers might be just as important as the parents though, so hence the competition to get your kids into a good schol district or private school so than can be around motivated peers etc. ect. Ugh this world is nuts.

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Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore

The peers might be just as important as the parents though, so hence the competition to get your kids into a good schol district or private school so than can be around motivated peers etc. ect. Ugh this world is nuts.

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That's particularly true as they get older; you can only watch and worry, I guess.

Apparently the Feds are trying to push a whole new set of education standards. Lovely, the last time the Feds pushed a bunch of standards (No Child Left Behind), it caused some teachers to quit the profession (they wanted to teach people to think, not "teach to test"). How much role does No Child Left Behind play in the reports people have of lousy education these days I wonder? (No, I don't think everything was wonderful before it, doesn't mean NCLB isn't a problem).

Apparently according to the new standards teachers should teach fact and should stop teaching fictional works. Some of this stuff sounds absurd on the face of it (though I'd have to research more). It sounds like the utopians (or perhaps more accurately dystopians - this is to prepare kids for the marketplace allegedly - and it seems almost an asian not a western model) are just running any old idea up the flagpole again, not that they don't have a larger agenda.

My education did not leave me with a good factual framework to understand the world it is true - which is why I did decide to read a lot of non-fiction and analysis as an adult. Yea of course to understand the world you need both. Facts without analysis are pretty useless - to state the obvious.

The old "education as vocational prep" sets me off no end. Meat widgets, that's us.

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Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore

The peers might be just as important as the parents though...

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In a lot of ways even more so. Peer pressure is very real and very powerful. Our kids were lucky, they had a combination of good schools, involved parents and peer groups who at least wanted to do well in school. Remove any one and its like trying to ride a trike with only two wheels. Unfortunately I think there are a lot more kids with no wheels than with three.

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Originally Posted by flowerseverywhere

So every day it seems there is an article about a school district having layoffs. Obviously, some areas like Detroit are in serious trouble. But even areas that are doing ok seem to still be laying off or having hiring freezes. Surely some of what was initially cut was waste or duplication but we are way beyond that it seems. What does the future hold? Taxes certainly can't be raised high enough to cover the education, pension and health care they promised to retirees and other rising costs? You never hear about what a crisis this is. I can't really figure it out.

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Calif just re-vamped their entire public employee retirement benefits plan to reduce expenses (more employee costs towards pensions and healthcare, older retirement age by 10 years to get a pension, etc...). They also raised sale txes and some other taxes. Now there is a BIG surplus in revenue and I assume much of it will go to schools.

Calif also has a large population of students who are illegal immigrants and they cost quite a bit. This 2004 article from About.com:

Among the key finding of the report are that the state's already struggling K-12 education system spends approximately $7.7 billion a year to school the children of illegal aliens who now constitute 15 percent of the student body

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Peer pressure is very real and very powerful.

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DD went to public science/math "magnet schools" for middle and high school. The magnet programs were held at low-performing schools that were primarily low-income, minority kids - I guess they thought the good stuff would rub off on them. The magnet kids hung out among themselves where being smart was cool. The regular students never integrated, kept to themselves and shunned academics. Not sure that experiment had the intended effect.

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Originally Posted by pinkytoe

DD went to public science/math "magnet schools" for middle and high school. The magnet programs were held at low-performing schools that were primarily low-income, minority kids - I guess they thought the good stuff would rub off on them. The magnet kids hung out among themselves where being smart was cool. The regular students never integrated, kept to themselves and shunned academics. Not sure that experiment had the intended effect.

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Another kind of forced gentrification...it just never works because it never addresses the root problems. It is, however, a typically American response.