Flat tax rate system should be enforced now.

[mrstickball]

Kasz216 said:

PS3beats360 said:

Kasz216 said:

1) Good teachers want to teach.

Public schools are full of bureaucracy... there is so much needless stuff you need to do that teachers are willing to be paid less to work in a private school because all they have to do is teach.

The worse your school district is doing the more Bureaucracy you have to go through as they try different kinds of efforts usually without even bothering to consult the teachers.

The worse your school system is, the less time as a percentage your teacher spends teaching.  So why work for a public school in a bad neighberhood?  The answer... they make more money.  Which isn't the best incentive for those who want to teach.

 

2) Rich kids learn in the summer.   In studies where they test the achivement gap between the rich and the poor... the gap is actually LARGER at the start of the school year and closes by the end of the year... then is larger again at the beggining of the next school year.

Rich kids are more likely to be taken to muesuems, or taken to field trips or be enrolled in some kind of summer tutoring or even just pushed to read more books.

Switch it around, to where a poor kid is doing all that, and a rich kid isn't?  The gap closes more. 

Rich kids can afford private teaching, individual assistance and summer schools. Poorer students do not have the luxury/benefits the rich kids parents buy them.

Rich kids get to go on ski trips, overseas holidays and get everything they demand from their parents. Ivy league College/universities are full of rich kids that end up being the next business leaders. 

Poor kids will make the best with their situation and just try to do with less. Community college or a trade or any full time job will be good for a poor kid to become a worker trying to make ends meet. 

Rich kids from private schools will never mix with poor kids from public schools. Two completely different worlds of Mr Wall Street and Mr Main Street. 

Aren't summer schools free?

Besides that  you don't have to pay to take your kid to the muesuem, or to read books.

Most parents don't spend more for their children's education.  Richer parents are just more likely to push their children in their economic pursuits.  Poorer parents who also push their kids to do things like go to the Muesuem and read more books from the Library get the same results as rich parents.

It's got ZERO to do with money and EVERYTHING to do with parent attitude.  This can be shown by the "New" types of schools that have worked very well in certain areas in NY.

Poorer parents are less likely to be assertive in their childs lives.

I'd suggest

I'll 1 your post.

I was homeschooled my entire life. I stepped in an actual public classroom once in my life. That was when I was 17 and took the ACT to see how I stacked up against public schooler comparisons.

My teacher, my mom, would of been laughed at if she wanted to be a public school teacher. She had absolutely no formal training, no college education, and no real abilities that would make her stand out as being some sort of beacon of education.

Despite that, my brother and I both tested well above average in every standardize test we ever took. We both scored higher on the ACT than the average public schooler. Our mom spent roughly $600/yr on materials and field trips for the both of us (compared to about $10,000/yr for both of us if we were public schooled). We started school a year late, and graduated a year early.

Why did we do well? She cared about our education, which is something that most public school parents do not. If we were failing, we retook a course until we got it.

Because of my experience, I believe 100% that the problem is that parents don't care, and for the most part, teachers do not. If you've ever seen a European or Asian exchange student come to America, they litterally laugh at our schooling, because it is a joke compared to theirs. Yet despite that, no one really cares. Our current education system teaches students to graduate, and score high enough to get out of their hair....Not to actually educate and better their lives. The system is an absolute joke. My wife and I discuss both of our educations often, and she is always amazed at how poor her education was compared to mine. I've retained far more of my education than she has. I care, today, far more about what I learned than she did.

And again, that is why I believe vouchers - forcing schools to compete and do better than the one across the street - would better our uncompetitive, monopolistic school system.