What is going to happen to schools in trouble?

[LDAHL]

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?

[ApatheticNoMore]

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)

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.

[LDAHL]

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.

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.

[bae]

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

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.

[iris lilies]

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? ....

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.

[ApatheticNoMore]

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.

[goldensmom]

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.

[sweetana3]

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.

[sweetana3]

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.

[early morning]

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

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.