Welcome to my blog, Washington Wes. As a rising high school senior in the D.C. area, you will probably be surprised to find that, unlike the majority of D.C. suburbanites--who generally live in large homes, hold a degree from a good school, have a high-paying job, and live unusually pleasant lives--I am a conservative. Why? Well, unlike many of my peers at school, both of my parents came from poor areas--my father grew up in a housing project, my mother in a small town where few people had received a good education and the idea of a woman going to college was so appalling that her family rarely spoke to her for years. Despite this disadvantage, both of my parents have become successful.
I don't live in the wealthy area around D.C. If you go farther out, homes are less expensive and smaller--still nice, but most would rather live in the wealthier areas. Why? Well, my family could certainly afford a home in Potomac or Bethesda (the two premier areas on the Maryland side of D.C.), but instead decided that I should have something they never did: a strong education. This brings me to my first political view that I will post here.
Now, Montgomery County is supposed to have some of the best public schools in the nation. The parents are involved, SAT scores are high. So why not just go to a public school?
For starters, they are all overcrowded. Churchill High School, Maryland's top public school, has SAT scores only slightly below those of many private schools. Since my parents could afford a home in the Churchill district, why not live there instead of paying for tuition? Simple. The freshman class at Churchill is roughly 800 students. Class sizes are high, especially honors and AP courses, which can often reach 35 or 40. The other option is one of the D.C. area's many elite private schools: Maret, Landon, Georgetown Prep, Stone Ridge, Bullis, St. Andrew's, and the list goes on. These schools all have a freshman class of roughly 100 students, yet still offer nearly all the same AP courses. The average class size? Usually somewhere around 16. The largest class I've encountered at my school was 19 students. That same year, I had a classes with 7, 9, or 10 students.
Some, like Ann Coulter, who recently posted on her website:
Not class size, not preschool, not even vouchers, though vouchers would obviously improve the education of all students. You could have lunatics running the schools — and often do — and if the kids live with married parents, they will end up at good colleges and will lead happy, productive lives 99 percent of the time.While I agree that class size is not the most important factor, it certainly makes a difference. But still, that is not the only advantage of a private school. While Churchill's average SAT score rivals many private schools, Churchill has fewer students go to the Ivy League, MIT, Stanford, Duke, and WashU than nearly all private schools. Why? Well, for starters, good public schools usually share a few common characteristics. The grades are inflated--Dartmouth has openly said that they find private high school grades a far better indicator of future performance that public school grades. Teacher quality, despite higher pay, is generally much lower. The high SAT scores are derived from the school's rich parents who can pay the money for SAT tutoring.
Why couldn't Hillary Clinton have admitted that on the YouTube debates? Democrats love telling us Americans that the public schools are failing children--and in many cases they are. What they don't like to do is admit that the teacher's unions get in the way of actually having good teachers at schools. They send their kids to "elite" private schools (Sidwell Friends, where Chelsea Clinton attended, while generally considered an elite school, is also known for having wild rainbow parties, dances where the school allows drinking, and students who physically harm other students simply because they are conservative), but make up excuses. Hillary could have simply said that the D.C. public schools are among the nation's worst. As a white girl, she probably would have been miserable--being at a school filled with black thugs from the D.C. ghetto would make any sane person miserable. She could have said that Chelsea had high hopes of going to one of the nation's elite colleges, all of which accept a disproportionately large number if kids from private schools. Instead, she blamed it on the press. Typical.
1 comment:
Class size linked to grade and class performance is a myth. Look at schools in Asia or in Europe. Class size overseas are just as crowded if not more so than in the U.S. and has not affected performance scores which still topple on average better than American students.
Taking tax funds to pay for vouchers will only leave a hole in education budgets in many school districts. Take for example the premise surrounding this voucher idea is to let parents choose the schools (a better academic one). OK say their children get into a chosen school. But there can only be so much capacity that this particular school can accept and there are definitely not enough schools with high academics or safer one to be around. Building more schools does not solve the problem for it will also require more teachers. Now what do you say to the other students who have to wait because a choice school has maxed out their quota. They'll still have to attend a public school that is academically deficient or in an unsafe neighborhood. Plus now the school district they're in have insufficient funds because tax dollars are now being diverted toward vouchers.
My solution is to have the state take control of all school districts under one entity, thus negating these districts being funded solely on property taxes where as poorer cities will always lag. This will ensure that every child will have an equal amount of educational tax dollars provided for them.
10 years ago President Clinton said he promote an educational funding that will hire 100,000 teachers. In dissent to this was George Will who wrote in his column that it would be better to fire 100,000 bad teachers. I agreed with this assessment and would like to see that a teacher performance review is taken at least every two years. If they fail this test, then that should be enough to revoke their teaching license until retests meets a minimum mark.
Thirdly, I want to see teachers move around to other areas every five years or so. Meaning school districts that have highest academics usually are from wealthiest urban areas thus having better teachers (ie better salary). Take some of these teachers and move them to woefully inadequate school districts so that other teachers can learn from them and vice versa from educators in poor district learning and teaching in better funded districts. What this does is it gives under par teachers to learn from peers with a higher standard. In essence you could say it is the same in learning about leadership and better experiences. Example, veteran Naval pilots coming straight back from the Pacific theater of operations to teach new inexperienced recruited pilots during World War II.
The other ideas I have will more than likely be hated by teachers and the unions. Since my suggestion that the state takes control of all school districts and merge into one governing entity then so goes the pay scale on salaries. It will be much fairer to the ones at the bottom than those who have it always cushy working in wealthier districts whose incomes will certainly drop. Then there are the teachers' unions who will always raise a big stink about it all. I've been rambling on too long; unions will have to wait for my digressions.
-Frothy Afterbirth
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