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Conservative War on Education

Deacon923 said:
There are a lot of elements wrapped up in this. Mostly this is a land-use and urban planning problem that impacts education as opposed to an education-centric issue. However these far-flung, unwalkable schools absolutely form barriers to integration (socioeconomic or racial, and whether you do it with old-school forced busing or more modern magnet-program efforts). Consider, for a moment, the situation in Greensboro in 1957, before the post-war suburban explosion really got started, when they integrated the schools. At the time, black children had to go to a black school, even though a white school was often closer to their houses. From a transportation perspective, integration was a matter of getting kids from Dudley to Grimsley, which are less than 5 miles apart as the crow flies and about 9 minutes in a car. According to Google, even using GSO's crappy public transit system the distance can be covered in 37 minutes.


Then we had a half-century of sprawl. Broadly speaking, wealthier, mostly white people moved out to the burbs, poorer, disproportionately black people stayed in the urban neighborhoods near Dudley. Guilford County Schools made the decision to build new schools out in the burbs. Thankfully, many of our neighborhood schools have been preserved and relatively well-maintained. That's not the case in many cities. Sprawl increased geographic segregation. That's not the fault of the school system, but how they reacted to is. They built new schools on greenfield way out on the edge of town. By doing so, the school system directly contributed to the "good neighborhood:good school::bad neighborhood:bad school" situation you mention in your post.

The newer high schools are on the edge town, over double the distance and double the time by car, and there is no transit at all. Getting poor children who live in the city, or for that matter in the county, to Northwest or Northern requires a ton of busing. Busing is, obviously, expensive. Parents who don't have cars simply cannot access these schools to be part of the PTA or pick up their kids from after school activities.

School systems did not have to go out and build on the edge of town. They could have expanded existing schools and told the suburbanites to drive their kids in. They could have build new schools as infill development. I understand why they didn't, of course. The growth, the people, the money and the political power were on the edge of town, so that's where the brand new schools got built - meanwhile, the urban schools got stuck with trailers and make-do maintenance budgets.

Now we're reaching the end of the suburban experiment and growth is returning to city cores, to some degree. In this environment, school systems need to at least not repeat the mistakes of the past. That's most relevant when it comes time to make decisions about renovating an old school in a neighborhood or tearing it down and building on the edge of town.

ETA: I'm sure your school was badass. I'm glad you got to experience it. I hope that wherever you grew up, kids without your family's advantages were given good educational opportunities.
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I assume most libertarians and conservatives would be in favor of how this played out. If you bootstrap it, you can live where the good schools are. If you don't give a shit about your kids or their education, just stay where you are and you get whatever schools you get.

Not sure where I land on this...to some degree, I do subscribe to the theory that the neighborhood/community you live in provides the free education. The better that neighborhood, the better that school.
 
It's easier for teachers to supplement their meager incomes over a two month period than scattered weeks at a time.

Traditional school synchs up better with most people's schedules. How many people work for 8 weeks or so then take a few weeks off? Traditional schedule + summer camps and vacations fit well.

How do families in year round schools manage child care during off weeks? I assume after school programs host childcare. Do the schools offer camps?
 
Coach O said:
Tradition. People "remember" summer vacation. It's a thing. Teacher's unions fight it.
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The business community in tourist areas depend on cheap HS labor in the peak seasons. The summer camp industry lobbies against year round school too. And sports. Much of it comes down to the athletic calendar, specifically football.
 
Summer heat in the south too

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Because obviously a teacher should be measured the same as a factory worker. jhmd pounds that drum of 2-parent households until he has to defend the de-funding of public schools, then it's all about bad teachers. You don't need any Windex to see through that conservative hypocrisy.

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WFFaithful said:
Your plan to improve the education system is to keep hiring and firing private companies until something works. Great strategy.
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Even if that was my plan (it isn't), it would still be better than yours.
 
The great Boogeyman of teachers unions and unfireable bad teachers is just too much bullshit to let pass.

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Bad schools have a difficult time recruiting and keeping teachers to begin with, so the idea that not only are they harboring bad teachers, but that they are bad because of those teachers is absolutely ridiculous.

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Coach O said:
I assume most libertarians and conservatives would be in favor of how this played out. If you bootstrap it, you can live where the good schools are. If you don't give a shit about your kids or their education, just stay where you are and you get whatever schools you get.

Not sure where I land on this...to some degree, I do subscribe to the theory that the neighborhood/community you live in provides the free education. The better that neighborhood, the better that school.
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Conservatives, perhaps. Thoughtful libertarians realize that the entire suburban experiment, including the schools, would be completely impossible without massive tax subsidization of the suburban way of life. It involves very large redistribution of tax dollars from high-density downtown uses to low-density development on the edges of town, which can never cover their own costs. Suburbia as we know it today could never have existed, and cannot be sustained, without heavy-handed government interference in the marketplace.

As for the bolded.... I guess it's all in how you define "community", right? If "community" is defined narrowly to mean that poor set of neighborhoods on the wrong side of the tracks on the one hand, and the very wealthy set of neighborhoods around the country club on the other - well, that serves the interests of the country club set pretty nicely. If you define it as a whole city, or a whole county, then the country clubbers might have to sacrifice a little bit to make sure that all children in the "community" get the same education. And if you define it as a state or a nation - well, you get the idea.

I think the history of public education in this country is one long struggle over how to define "community".

[PS: Someone is going to come along and say "you can't complain about downtown subsidizing suburbs but then insist that rich people subsidize poor kids' educations!!" I think there is a very large difference. Society has both a moral obligation and a huge financial interest to try and maximize the potential of its children. It's a core interest of government, or should be, and has been recognized as such for a very long time. Suburban subsidies cannot possibly claim any such moral imperative. Further, it's becoming ever more clear that the suburban experiment cannot sustain itself - it's not financially viable in the long term. Compare that to the financial benefit of educating a child - it's a lot cheaper to educate a kid than to incarcerate them later on, or pay them welfare, or lose out on a lifetime of tax dollars that could have been paid by a productive adult.]
 
It's cheaper to educate. Sure. The problem is that people prefer to incarcerate. Look at the eagerness with which schools allow LEOs to treat students like criminals. That's a choice.
 
PhDeac said:
Evidence to support the title of this thread. Conservatives actually want educational system with winners and losers instead of equal opportunity.
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This. /thread

I'm still waiting to hear about how well pubs have managed education in NC and KS.

And if we are talking about charter-based education reform, then your hero is Obama. If we are talking about testing regimes and administrative glut, then look no farther than GWB.
 
Deacon923 said:
Conservatives, perhaps. Thoughtful libertarians realize that the entire suburban experiment, including the schools, would be completely impossible without massive tax subsidization of the suburban way of life. It involves very large redistribution of tax dollars from high-density downtown uses to low-density development on the edges of town, which can never cover their own costs. Suburbia as we know it today could never have existed, and cannot be sustained, without heavy-handed government interference in the marketplace.

As for the bolded.... I guess it's all in how you define "community", right? If "community" is defined narrowly to mean that poor set of neighborhoods on the wrong side of the tracks on the one hand, and the very wealthy set of neighborhoods around the country club on the other - well, that serves the interests of the country club set pretty nicely. If you define it as a whole city, or a whole county, then the country clubbers might have to sacrifice a little bit to make sure that all children in the "community" get the same education. And if you define it as a state or a nation - well, you get the idea.

I think the history of public education in this country is one long struggle over how to define "community".

[PS: Someone is going to come along and say "you can't complain about downtown subsidizing suburbs but then insist that rich people subsidize poor kids' educations!!" I think there is a very large difference. Society has both a moral obligation and a huge financial interest to try and maximize the potential of its children. It's a core interest of government, or should be, and has been recognized as such for a very long time. Suburban subsidies cannot possibly claim any such moral imperative. Further, it's becoming ever more clear that the suburban experiment cannot sustain itself - it's not financially viable in the long term. Compare that to the financial benefit of educating a child - it's a lot cheaper to educate a kid than to incarcerate them later on, or pay them welfare, or lose out on a lifetime of tax dollars that could have been paid by a productive adult.]
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Well said. For me, I really, really want folks to bootstrap it. Problem is, you CAN'T bootstrap it without a decent education when you are young. So if you happen to be born in the wrong part of town, you need someone to have "helped" you by putting resources that weren't yours (or your local communities) in to the framework that is your educational system.
 
It is always interesting to me what is considered bootstrapping and what is considered a handout.
 
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