Working-class parents often express interest in vouchers. But in Arizona, the nation’s school choice capital, these families aren’t using them due to the inaccessibility of private schools and the costs of transportation, meals and uniforms.
We already don’t try to hold onto them for funding. I would love smaller classes so I can focus more on each student. It’s the admin and that we’re funded by attendance.
I’m just worried that admin will put pressure on teachers to retain as many students as possible to keep funding, when teachers should be focusing on providing the best education they can. Some schools could conceivable have larger class sizes (i.e. if the focus for that school is independent learning), while others could have smaller class sizes, and there shouldn’t be pressure for any class to retain students who would do better in a different environment.
E.g. I would have done better in a larger class of independent learners, because I preferred to work ahead of the class anyway and the teacher was more distracting than anything (I learn better on my own with occasional accountability), whereas some of the kids next to me really benefited from more interaction with the teacher. Everyone learns differently, and school should be designed in such a way that every child can learn in the way that works best for them.
The problem for that is logistics. It would be more effective to have those different sized classes taught in the same building rather than different schools so that we wouldn’t have to be bussing people all around the district. It would also require both an increase in counselors who can help with identifying learning styles and in teachers who can be matched with the class that suits their teaching style as well.
That would also require an increase in pay for many of these positions since people already don’t want to do them because the workload is significant, and that would have to be without increasing the workload because that just keeps the imbalance in place.
That would also require an increase in pay for many of these positions
Sure, and probably a reduction in administrative staff since we’d move a lot of those responsibilities onto more local staff. I honestly don’t see a ton of value in school districts as a concept, and instead think we should be thinking in terms of what makes an individual school stand out. If we shift money from the districts to the schools, we could probably fund a lot of this w/o changing revenue.
One huge part of this, though, is replacing school buses with city transit. If kids are taking city transit to get to school, transferring to a different bus to go to a different school shouldn’t be a big deal (just ride w/ the kids the first few times and they’ll get it). This is where a lot of the cost savings should come from IMO, we shouldn’t be maintaining two separate fleets of transit vehicles and employees, we should instead expand and improve city transit to cover both use cases.
One of the benefits of districts is that you can then afford to have magnet type schools that specialize in one specific field, like performing arts, science, etc. That allows for students who are excelling in that district to get more specialized instruction.
As for the transit bit, yes doubling up is troubling but we would need to provide additional routes and runs on each route to improve coverage to the point that school buses become moot. I’m not sure which would be easier to do, though I do want to support the swap to public transit.
we would need to provide additional routes and runs on each route to improve coverage to the point that school buses become moot
And if school buses are moot, then districts are largely moot. Why rely on a district to provide specialized services when you can just let the schools themselves decide what to specialize in to attract students? That works really well for universities, and the main limitation for K-12 schools to operate that way is transit. Moving students to specialized schools within a district is incredibly rare, and I’ve only seen it in one place (where I grew up, which spent a ton on schools and had an advanced placement school). In my current area, the only way you’re getting school choice is if the parents bring the kids to/from school, because the buses only run for students in their boundaries.
I think this type of system would work pretty well in densely populated areas like city centers, though it would break down for smaller towns and whatnot. So we should probably keep the traditional model for rural areas, and migrate to school choice for urban areas.
But yes, transit is absolutely the key. And I think killing bus service would kick-start transit service, since parents would quickly get annoyed if they had to take their kids there every day.
You’re incorrect there. The main limitation for schools k-12 to specialize is funding. To get the equipment and staff necessary takes a lot of money (which is why universities use funding not just from grants that aren’t available to public k-12, like from their research sides that do not exist in public k-12).
The salary is also a huge problem for specialists since they can easily make more with less stress and more validation on the private sector side.
Even if all that got sorted, you would still want to use districting to consolidate some positions in admin, and to make it easier to plan specializations of k-12 schools (so there’s less overlap if it’s not needed and you don’t have a bunch of waste expenses).
The main limitation for schools k-12 to specialize is funding
That may be true w/ the current system where specialized programs are add-ons to the regular programs, but if we’re replacing a current class, maybe funding isn’t as much of an issue. If we use your example, universities specialize and students apply to the school that supports their desired specialty. The university I went to had no medical program but had an awesome law program, whereas the school an hour away had the opposite (awesome medical, no law), so if I wanted to go into law or medical, I would choose the school appropriately.
But when I say “specialize,” I generally don’t mean things that require more equipment, like IT or trades, I mean teaching style. For primary education, here are some examples:
democratic education - kids choose what to learn, within certain guard-rails
independent learning - kids largely teach themselves, so similar to home-schooling, but with a professional teacher available
traditional learning - teacher-guided education in a traditional classroom setting
None of these really change equipment requirements, but they do require a different type of curriculum and teacher development.
Secondary education could also change, but this gets a lot more into equipment. I’m thinking some schools could stop general education at grade 10, with the last two years preparing kids for the workforce in specific areas (e.g. trades, IT, etc). They’d still have some traditional classroom instruction, but a significant portion of the day (half?) would be dedicated to whatever their focus is. They would invite local businesses to fund the more expensive programs in return for access to the students as a form of recruitment. Other schools would do the traditional college track and focus more on writing essays, reading literature, etc. All of the tracks would hit base learning standards, I just think kids can learn a lot more effectively if they attend a school that matches their ideal learning style.
I think we’re wasting a lot of kids’ potential by forcing everyone through traditional education. This isn’t the fault of teachers either, and I think most teachers agree that many of their students would do better in another environment, but that other environment doesn’t exist. I think the school bus system is holding us back, and if we had better mobility between schools, we could specialize schools to get better outcomes for all.
What experience do you have to back up any of your ideas? I have a degree, certification, and about a decade of teaching experience and I do not see it working the way you describe.
First off, it seems you’re sampling from the Arbitur system (German system of last two years being work related, which only really works because the school system segregates children based on scores for their elementary and middle schools, and which we do not do here and which you did not mention)
Secondly, you say that the school bus system is holding us back and would allow for schools to specialize but we already have that occurring in school districts with normal school bus systems. The bus system clearly isn’t preventing magnet schools from existing so that’s not the issue.
Thirdly, there are only so many seats at each campus and so how are you going to discriminate as to who gets entry? Will it be based solely on teacher/counselor recommendation, or will there be testing requirements? If you look at private schools which are not in districts and have significantly more funding to specialize, they also do not let the majority of applicants enter. How do we make education accessible without creating these hurdles to allow for specialization that will literally do the opposite for the majority of students (skewing mostly towards lower income/immigrant families who will have issues either with the language or with educational support at home since time has to be allocated towards survival earning instead of spending more time on reinforcement for the student)
Fourth, how do you propose these individual schools get funding to allow for these specializations without tying it to attendance and creating a huge fight over who gets which student (thus going against what might be best for the student)?
With district’s, at least the money can get moved from one school to the next if there is excess or you need to specialize a school in the district. You can also share physical resources between schools in district’s, not so much between individual schools across town.
Fifth, which schools aren’t going to have sports fields? Those are typically district property to be used by multiple schools to cut down on costs.
That’s just off the top of my head, there’s a lot of moving parts and shared resources that look easy to split from the outside while actually being incredibly interconnected.
We already don’t try to hold onto them for funding. I would love smaller classes so I can focus more on each student. It’s the admin and that we’re funded by attendance.
I’m just worried that admin will put pressure on teachers to retain as many students as possible to keep funding, when teachers should be focusing on providing the best education they can. Some schools could conceivable have larger class sizes (i.e. if the focus for that school is independent learning), while others could have smaller class sizes, and there shouldn’t be pressure for any class to retain students who would do better in a different environment.
E.g. I would have done better in a larger class of independent learners, because I preferred to work ahead of the class anyway and the teacher was more distracting than anything (I learn better on my own with occasional accountability), whereas some of the kids next to me really benefited from more interaction with the teacher. Everyone learns differently, and school should be designed in such a way that every child can learn in the way that works best for them.
The problem for that is logistics. It would be more effective to have those different sized classes taught in the same building rather than different schools so that we wouldn’t have to be bussing people all around the district. It would also require both an increase in counselors who can help with identifying learning styles and in teachers who can be matched with the class that suits their teaching style as well.
That would also require an increase in pay for many of these positions since people already don’t want to do them because the workload is significant, and that would have to be without increasing the workload because that just keeps the imbalance in place.
Sure, and probably a reduction in administrative staff since we’d move a lot of those responsibilities onto more local staff. I honestly don’t see a ton of value in school districts as a concept, and instead think we should be thinking in terms of what makes an individual school stand out. If we shift money from the districts to the schools, we could probably fund a lot of this w/o changing revenue.
One huge part of this, though, is replacing school buses with city transit. If kids are taking city transit to get to school, transferring to a different bus to go to a different school shouldn’t be a big deal (just ride w/ the kids the first few times and they’ll get it). This is where a lot of the cost savings should come from IMO, we shouldn’t be maintaining two separate fleets of transit vehicles and employees, we should instead expand and improve city transit to cover both use cases.
One of the benefits of districts is that you can then afford to have magnet type schools that specialize in one specific field, like performing arts, science, etc. That allows for students who are excelling in that district to get more specialized instruction. As for the transit bit, yes doubling up is troubling but we would need to provide additional routes and runs on each route to improve coverage to the point that school buses become moot. I’m not sure which would be easier to do, though I do want to support the swap to public transit.
And if school buses are moot, then districts are largely moot. Why rely on a district to provide specialized services when you can just let the schools themselves decide what to specialize in to attract students? That works really well for universities, and the main limitation for K-12 schools to operate that way is transit. Moving students to specialized schools within a district is incredibly rare, and I’ve only seen it in one place (where I grew up, which spent a ton on schools and had an advanced placement school). In my current area, the only way you’re getting school choice is if the parents bring the kids to/from school, because the buses only run for students in their boundaries.
I think this type of system would work pretty well in densely populated areas like city centers, though it would break down for smaller towns and whatnot. So we should probably keep the traditional model for rural areas, and migrate to school choice for urban areas.
But yes, transit is absolutely the key. And I think killing bus service would kick-start transit service, since parents would quickly get annoyed if they had to take their kids there every day.
You’re incorrect there. The main limitation for schools k-12 to specialize is funding. To get the equipment and staff necessary takes a lot of money (which is why universities use funding not just from grants that aren’t available to public k-12, like from their research sides that do not exist in public k-12). The salary is also a huge problem for specialists since they can easily make more with less stress and more validation on the private sector side.
Even if all that got sorted, you would still want to use districting to consolidate some positions in admin, and to make it easier to plan specializations of k-12 schools (so there’s less overlap if it’s not needed and you don’t have a bunch of waste expenses).
That may be true w/ the current system where specialized programs are add-ons to the regular programs, but if we’re replacing a current class, maybe funding isn’t as much of an issue. If we use your example, universities specialize and students apply to the school that supports their desired specialty. The university I went to had no medical program but had an awesome law program, whereas the school an hour away had the opposite (awesome medical, no law), so if I wanted to go into law or medical, I would choose the school appropriately.
But when I say “specialize,” I generally don’t mean things that require more equipment, like IT or trades, I mean teaching style. For primary education, here are some examples:
None of these really change equipment requirements, but they do require a different type of curriculum and teacher development.
Secondary education could also change, but this gets a lot more into equipment. I’m thinking some schools could stop general education at grade 10, with the last two years preparing kids for the workforce in specific areas (e.g. trades, IT, etc). They’d still have some traditional classroom instruction, but a significant portion of the day (half?) would be dedicated to whatever their focus is. They would invite local businesses to fund the more expensive programs in return for access to the students as a form of recruitment. Other schools would do the traditional college track and focus more on writing essays, reading literature, etc. All of the tracks would hit base learning standards, I just think kids can learn a lot more effectively if they attend a school that matches their ideal learning style.
I think we’re wasting a lot of kids’ potential by forcing everyone through traditional education. This isn’t the fault of teachers either, and I think most teachers agree that many of their students would do better in another environment, but that other environment doesn’t exist. I think the school bus system is holding us back, and if we had better mobility between schools, we could specialize schools to get better outcomes for all.
What experience do you have to back up any of your ideas? I have a degree, certification, and about a decade of teaching experience and I do not see it working the way you describe.
First off, it seems you’re sampling from the Arbitur system (German system of last two years being work related, which only really works because the school system segregates children based on scores for their elementary and middle schools, and which we do not do here and which you did not mention)
Secondly, you say that the school bus system is holding us back and would allow for schools to specialize but we already have that occurring in school districts with normal school bus systems. The bus system clearly isn’t preventing magnet schools from existing so that’s not the issue.
Thirdly, there are only so many seats at each campus and so how are you going to discriminate as to who gets entry? Will it be based solely on teacher/counselor recommendation, or will there be testing requirements? If you look at private schools which are not in districts and have significantly more funding to specialize, they also do not let the majority of applicants enter. How do we make education accessible without creating these hurdles to allow for specialization that will literally do the opposite for the majority of students (skewing mostly towards lower income/immigrant families who will have issues either with the language or with educational support at home since time has to be allocated towards survival earning instead of spending more time on reinforcement for the student)
Fourth, how do you propose these individual schools get funding to allow for these specializations without tying it to attendance and creating a huge fight over who gets which student (thus going against what might be best for the student)? With district’s, at least the money can get moved from one school to the next if there is excess or you need to specialize a school in the district. You can also share physical resources between schools in district’s, not so much between individual schools across town.
Fifth, which schools aren’t going to have sports fields? Those are typically district property to be used by multiple schools to cut down on costs.
That’s just off the top of my head, there’s a lot of moving parts and shared resources that look easy to split from the outside while actually being incredibly interconnected.