Tag: Private Schools

Parents Not Happy with Blue School

Back in April I wrote about the Blue School.  By some measure it’s not doing so well.

Parents are yanking their kids out of the “progressive,” $32,000 per-year private school founded by the Blue Man Group — which has no books and no tests — because their kids are barely learning to read, The Post has learned.

One mother, who is yanking her son at the end of the school year, complained that the school is “unstructured.”

“It’s true,” she said when asked if her kid was struggling to read.

In all, she added, four of her son’s first-grade classmates are leaving the Financial District institution.

Another parent who dropped her first-grade son off yesterday said he’s not coming back next year — because he’s got nothing to do.

“When a 6-year-old says they’re bored, there’s a problem,” the mother said. “I think they bit off more than they can chew.”

via NYPOST.com.

So I guess school choice works then!

Of course, people who can afford $32,000/year tuition do have a lot of choices.  This story shows that they are willing to take their money elsewhere when they do not feel (think?) that they are getting a good value for their dollar.

But what about those who cannot afford private school tuition?  Why do we deny them the same choice?  Just because one is poor does not mean that they’re not interested in their children’s education.

And aren’t so called “public schools” funded with tax dollars?  In sending their children to private schools the rich are in fact double-taxed on education.  This might not be perceived as a problem (they can afford it) by some but that argument missed the point.  When the “rich” pay to have their children in private school they care less about the performance of the public schools.  They’re basically walking away on the taxes they’re paying, accepting it as a loss.  And they invest not only their money but their time and energy in the private school.  This leaves our “public schools” weaker.

I prefer to think about “public schools” as government run schools.  In reality, every member of society has a vested interest in the education of the youth.  In reality, ALL SCHOOLS ARE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.  The difference is that some schools are run by the government, and some are not.

What we find in the end is that government schools are run about as well as the government runs anything.  Which is why everyone, just like those who used to send their children to the Blue School, should have the option of sending the children to the school of their choice.

CPS Teacher’s Union Fights Everything

Having absolutely no logic to defend their position:

With a 90-day deadline on negotiations with the teachers union having passed, Chicago Public Schools can implement a teacher evaluation system that will see student performance count for 25 percent of an elementary school teacher’s assessment, a figure that will rise to 40 percent in five years.

The Chicago Teachers Union has opposed such significant weight on student performance, but even at its highest the CPS proposal for student performance is less than the 50 percent used in states such as Colorado, Tennessee and Ohio.

via Chicago Tribune.

So we’re still going to be behind other states, but yet CTU is still fighting it:

“We don’t disagree on every aspect, but we don’t agree on the plan as a whole,” said CTU’s lead negotiator, Carol Caref.  Currently, teachers are evaluated using a checklist that both principals and teachers have called useless.

I see, the current system sucks and everyone knows it’s worthless but whatever you do, don’t include student performance in any new evaluation method.

Caref said the union thinks having student performance count for 40 percent is too high because of concerns about the test data’s reliability. He said the union believes it’s a mistake to implement a new evaluation system without first trying it on a pilot basis to identify any problems.

Ya, problems like it may show that teachers that suck have been given the green light to continue to not educate children year after year after year.  That would be a problem for the Union.

Big win for the children though.

CTU can’t die soon enough.  CPS has completely failed generations of students nearly entirely as a result of CTU pushing it’s significant weight around.  Can’t evaluate teachers… shear nonsense.

CPS lost it’s moral imperative years ago.  We as a people owe it to our children to build a competitive network of schools which give parents a real choice — a voice — in their children’s education.

If we’re really all in this together, then All Schools are Public Schools.