Why is the left opposed to school choice?
       |           

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
March 28, 2024, 02:54:49 AM
News: Election Simulator 2.0 Released. Senate/Gubernatorial maps, proportional electoral votes, and more - Read more

  Talk Elections
  General Politics
  Political Debate (Moderator: Torie)
  Why is the left opposed to school choice?
« previous next »
Pages: 1 [2] 3
Author Topic: Why is the left opposed to school choice?  (Read 6989 times)
Mister Mets
YaBB God
*****
Posts: 4,434
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #25 on: June 17, 2015, 02:21:27 PM »

A major aspect of school choice is that it gives parents the resources to go to schools outside the traditional public education system. So Teachers Unions will lose control and teachers would lose some benefits in the long run.
Logged
Del Tachi
Republican95
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 17,709
United States


Political Matrix
E: 0.52, S: 1.46

P P P

Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #26 on: June 17, 2015, 02:44:13 PM »

One key factor to look at, is whether by virtue of students having the option to vote with their feet, and leave the comprehensive public school system, that such competition, and fear of empty desks and loss of public school teacher jobs, will incentivize the public schools to offer a better educational product because they no longer have a captive student monopoly.

The problem is that not all students are able to vote with their feet.

For children living in poverty, without access to a private vehicle, or with two working parents it is oftentimes simply not possible for them to do anything other than be bused to their local public school.  "School choice" would be a much more serious proposal if taxpayers were going to foot the bill for a single student to be bused 90 minutes one-direction twice a day. A student's ability to get a good education should not be dependent on the willingness of his parents to transport him to school.     

Vouchers are a waste of public money - the students who need them the most are often unable to take advantage of them due to a variety of demographic/socioeconomic factors beyond the State's control, and the students who do take advantage of them are often already the most high-achieving students in their respective districts.  The money spent on vouchers would be much better utilized helping to lessen the inherent disadvantages that some students face due to their backgrounds.
Logged
Mister Mets
YaBB God
*****
Posts: 4,434
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #27 on: June 21, 2015, 11:02:54 PM »

Why does the left not favor scholarships or vouchers? Why are they insistent on keeping kids in public schools that are failing? They don't want private or charter schools to exist, despite them doing better than public schools. If they care about the poor so much, they should want poorer kids who generally go to worse off schools to go to better ones, increasing their chance of not being poor in the future.

If I had to guess, I would say its because they're (and by they I mean left wing organizations and big money) a puppet for labor and teacher's unions.

What evidence do you have that public schools are 'failing', relative to charter schools or private schools? The methods that have been invented to test how well schools and students are doing in school always seem to find that schools are 'failing' and students are falling behind precisely because that's what they were designed to do. Pretending otherwise is naive. We have no way of accurately comparing education statistics when the U.S. school system is not comparable between tiered systems like in Germany (and most studies erroneously compare the average American student with students in elite German Gymnasiums or the highest ranked students in Shanghai), and attempts to do so are disingenuous on the very face of it, because you're not using comparable tests. Beyond that, how does one even begin to quantify knowledge?

There's also literally zero evidence that charter schools perform better than public schools. Private schools may perform better in certain cases, but this comes in part from the fact that these schools are well funded by the parents who have the money to send their children to these schools in the first place. Nothing is more of a determinant of how well schools 'perform' than the access these schools have to adequate educational materials, teaching staff, learning facilities, and, most important of all, the socioeconomic background of the students in question. The children of the employing class have no problem paying attention in school on account of say, hunger. You can't say that about kids who grow up in working class towns or ghettos where a lot of them don't get enough to eat, especially when you take into account that half of all U.S. public school students live in poverty.

Education is not going to solve poverty. Poverty is the result of a lack of money, not the result of the lack of an education. There are plenty of PhDs working at McDonald's these days, or, even those who have managed to land a job aren't being paid all that much. Just using that example alone, in academia, the proportion of adjuncts to tenure track professors is heavily weighed in the former direction, which means a lot more workers without benefits, without a retirement plan, without job security, and with low wages. This is purely anecdotal, but I have a friend who works as an adjunct and only makes about $30,000/year. So much for education being a path out of poverty! The United States has plenty of people with college degrees who either can't use them for want of job openings or because they've been certified with skills that are obsolete or unneeded.

The fact of the matter is that the Left favors high quality public schooling for everyone because most people can't afford public schooling and even if they could, there's something inherently unfair about making people pay for the privilege of being educated. This is a debate that we had in the early 1800s and won because most people agree with the left that the circumstances in which a child is born and brought up in should not deny them the most rudimentary abilities of citizenship, i.e. reading, writing, etc.

School choice would ultimately result in private schools jacking up tuition (after all, they've got the voucher, which essentially subsidizes a good portion of their total income, so why wouldn't they try to make even more? They are a capitalist enterprise, after all!) and would result in even more racial segregation, combined with, of course, religious quackery being inserted into the day to day education of students. I for one am not willing to sacrifice millions of people to daily sermons from pedophile priests on piety or snake oil salesmen teaching whatever 'science' benefits the bottom line of the company who owns the schools.

The assertion that the left (which, I assume in reality you're talking about liberals here) is under the thumb of the teachers' unions is cute. The Democratic Party is full of full-time union-haters like Chicago's Rahm Emanuel, who forced the Chicago Teachers' Union into a strike three years ago and has shut down schools across Chicago and appointed his cronies to the Chicago Board of Education. In Philadelphia last year, the city government cancelled its contract with the teachers union and forced a strike, and in Seattle just recently, the Democratic Party controlled local government picked a fight with teachers. Barack Obama, the head honcho of this entire operation, has put in motion the stealth privatization of education via Race to the Top and the Common Core system, and he's backed to the hilt of course by right-wingers Arne Duncan and former DC public school superintended Michelle Rhee. DC, of course, with its entirely Democratic Party run municipal government, was a trailblazer in the effort to destroy teachers' unions and public education.

Andrew Cuomo wants to destroy the 'public school monopoly', and Hillary Clinton has likewise been a big-time backer of so-called 'reform' efforts. Perhaps the actual left is tied to the teachers' unions, but the liberal left, of which you and other right-wingers refer to when you ask these kinds of questions, is certainly not in the pocket of the teachers' unions.

You should do some research before you come in brandishing wild, nonsensical arguments about how much the 'left' doesn't care about poor kids because it doesn't want to subject them to PepsiCola Elementary School or the Church of the Holy Pedophile Middle School.
For all the talk of these politicians forcing teachers unions strikes, if the results were better, there wouldn't be a need to change policies.

While some tuition rates would increase with vouchers, it's a fallacy to assume all costs will increase to the same degree. If parents can suddenly spend a voucher for tuition to any school of their choice, there will be incentives for institutions to provide them with alternatives.

As for the argument that private schools are better because the parents have more resources, that's not going to change. Private schools are not going to get banned. The main discussion here is about helping parents who don't have the money to offer their children the alternative of private school.
Logged
RRProgressive
Rookie
**
Posts: 31


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #28 on: June 27, 2015, 07:29:55 PM »

Because we want all children to succeed not just the privileged children of the rich. But I wouldn't expect a spoiled suburban white kid to understand any of this.
Logged
Atlas Has Shrugged
ChairmanSanchez
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 38,096
United States


Political Matrix
E: 5.29, S: -5.04


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #29 on: June 27, 2015, 08:08:17 PM »

Because we want all children to succeed not just the privileged children of the rich. But I wouldn't expect a spoiled suburban white kid to understand any of this.
I assume you are that, of course.
Logged
CountryClassSF
Jr. Member
***
Posts: 1,530


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #30 on: June 27, 2015, 11:44:31 PM »

We know the answer.  The public sector unions own the modern day Democrat Party, and they are not interested in furthering the education of anyone, just lining their pockets.
Logged
Mister Mets
YaBB God
*****
Posts: 4,434
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #31 on: June 28, 2015, 12:37:06 AM »

Because we want all children to succeed not just the privileged children of the rich. But I wouldn't expect a spoiled suburban white kid to understand any of this.
The spoiled suburban white kids benefit from the status quo.

School choice should in theory help parents who couldn't otherwise afford the alternatives.
Logged
🦀🎂🦀🎂
CrabCake
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 19,188
Kiribati


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #32 on: June 28, 2015, 08:17:22 AM »

Something I've noticed: people generally prefer to respond to idiots making stupid idealogical statements than more well-founded arguments.
Logged
Famous Mortimer
WillipsBrighton
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 6,010
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #33 on: July 04, 2015, 08:15:31 AM »

All schools should be the same. If we're in a situation where choice matters, we're doing something wrong.
Logged
All Along The Watchtower
Progressive Realist
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 15,417
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #34 on: July 04, 2015, 01:42:23 PM »

Something I've noticed: people generally prefer to respond to idiots making stupid idealogical statements than more well-founded arguments.

Path of least resistance.
Logged
muon2
Moderators
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 16,787


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #35 on: July 04, 2015, 05:15:33 PM »

All schools should be the same. If we're in a situation where choice matters, we're doing something wrong.

How would you propose doing that? Geography and demographics are both extremely diverse. I'm not sure one could devise a one size fits all school outside of having every student access the same virtual classroom. Should physical schools all close? Even then the backgrounds of the students would be sufficiently diverse to prevent students from equally benefiting from identical virtual classrooms.
Logged
Famous Mortimer
WillipsBrighton
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 6,010
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #36 on: July 06, 2015, 05:22:08 AM »

Because the left doesn't understand its own position

I would agree with this. The left has no position other than "give teachers more money" because it's in the pocket of the teachers unions.

The right is pushing for deregulation, decentralization, and privatization of public schools because that's their position for everything.

The left should be pushing for regulation and national standards in addition to extra funding but, of course, teachers unions just want a raise regardless, they don't want it to come with any oversight.
Logged
Famous Mortimer
WillipsBrighton
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 6,010
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #37 on: July 06, 2015, 05:24:28 AM »

All schools should be the same. If we're in a situation where choice matters, we're doing something wrong.

How would you propose doing that? Geography and demographics are both extremely diverse. I'm not sure one could devise a one size fits all school outside of having every student access the same virtual classroom. Should physical schools all close? Even then the backgrounds of the students would be sufficiently diverse to prevent students from equally benefiting from identical virtual classrooms.

2+2=4 everywhere. The allies won WW2 everywhere. I don't know why demographics would matter. We need a unified national curriculum. There's no reason Butthole, North Carolina needs a special curriculum different from Chicago.
Logged
ElectionsGuy
Atlas Star
*****
Posts: 21,107
United States


Political Matrix
E: 7.10, S: -7.65

P P
Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #38 on: July 07, 2015, 01:29:36 PM »

All schools should be the same. If we're in a situation where choice matters, we're doing something wrong.

If all schools are the same, how do we find out which methods of schooling are most effective? One of the benefits of school choice is identifying the most successful methods of learning and advancing education.
Logged
muon2
Moderators
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 16,787


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #39 on: July 07, 2015, 07:21:31 PM »

All schools should be the same. If we're in a situation where choice matters, we're doing something wrong.

How would you propose doing that? Geography and demographics are both extremely diverse. I'm not sure one could devise a one size fits all school outside of having every student access the same virtual classroom. Should physical schools all close? Even then the backgrounds of the students would be sufficiently diverse to prevent students from equally benefiting from identical virtual classrooms.

2+2=4 everywhere. The allies won WW2 everywhere. I don't know why demographics would matter. We need a unified national curriculum. There's no reason Butthole, North Carolina needs a special curriculum different from Chicago.

So you don't accept the wealth of data that suggests that learning ability is correlated to parental involvement and family income?
Logged
🦀🎂🦀🎂
CrabCake
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 19,188
Kiribati


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #40 on: July 07, 2015, 07:37:48 PM »

Muon, doesn't the standardisation of education serve to reduce the effects of family background on educational attainment, which is essentially the aim of the left? It is clear that the veritable patchwork of schooling choices produced by educational liberalisation is much easier exploited by upper middle-class families; and so serve to make the issue worse.

Not that I'm delighted with the idea of National Curriculums, because that comes with league tables and standardised testing and all associated silliness.
Logged
muon2
Moderators
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 16,787


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #41 on: July 07, 2015, 08:02:11 PM »

Muon, doesn't the standardisation of education serve to reduce the effects of family background on educational attainment, which is essentially the aim of the left? It is clear that the veritable patchwork of schooling choices produced by educational liberalisation is much easier exploited by upper middle-class families; and so serve to make the issue worse.

Not that I'm delighted with the idea of National Curriculums, because that comes with league tables and standardised testing and all associated silliness.

Standardization doesn't help if communities have high levels of learners that lack support on the home front due to parents or their income. The teaching skills needed are different in those communities. Note, I'm not saying that we can't and shouldn't have common minimum standards for outcomes. I am saying that the skill set of the teachers should be matched to the needs of the students to best reach those minimum standards.
Logged
PJ
Politics Junkie
YaBB God
*****
Posts: 4,789
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #42 on: July 08, 2015, 01:03:37 AM »

TNF, Bedstuy, and Del Tachi all had some pretty good explanations. The evidence that private schools perform 'better' than public schools doesn't really mean anything, because demographics that perform better in school tend to be enrolled in private schools. The mentality that we ought to privatize education because public education has problems misses the point. Of course public education has issues, including an obsession with standardized testing, unequal funding to schools, etc., but these problems don't occur because the educational system itself is public rather than private. Public education is a far better means of educating the populous than private education because it recognizes the rights of all people to an education. School choice isn't going to help poor kids at all because when you introduce a school with tuition fees, versus one without, the poor are obviously going to opt for the school they don't to pay to attend. Tuition fees to pay for an education is an antiquated and backwards concept. I'd support an end to school vouchers, banning homeschooling and other forms of private education, and increasing funding so that schools aren't overly dependent on donations from private philanthropists to receive adequate funding. Public school curriculums need to revamped, with Common Core replaced by a program with less emphasis on standardized tests.

Fun fact: When the KKK controlled Oregonian politics in the 1920's, private education was actually banned in order to eliminate Catholic schools.

As for the argument that private schools are better because the parents have more resources, that's not going to change. Private schools are not going to get banned. The main discussion here is about helping parents who don't have the money to offer their children the alternative of private school.

Banning private schools would do a lot more to help education of the poor than school vouchers. When wealthy parents enroll their children in public schools, they bring their wealth with them in the form of extra volunteer time (because at least one of the spouses probably has more work flexibility) and donations. Making people for their children's education helps the poor how exactly?
Logged
Antonio the Sixth
Antonio V
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 57,959
United States


Political Matrix
E: -7.87, S: -3.83

P P
Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #43 on: July 08, 2015, 03:45:19 AM »

KKK controlled Oregonian politics in the 1920s? Huh How did that happen?
Logged
🦀🎂🦀🎂
CrabCake
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 19,188
Kiribati


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #44 on: July 08, 2015, 04:38:36 AM »

Muon, doesn't the standardisation of education serve to reduce the effects of family background on educational attainment, which is essentially the aim of the left? It is clear that the veritable patchwork of schooling choices produced by educational liberalisation is much easier exploited by upper middle-class families; and so serve to make the issue worse.

Not that I'm delighted with the idea of National Curriculums, because that comes with league tables and standardised testing and all associated silliness.

Standardization doesn't help if communities have high levels of learners that lack support on the home front due to parents or their income. The teaching skills needed are different in those communities. Note, I'm not saying that we can't and shouldn't have common minimum standards for outcomes. I am saying that the skill set of the teachers should be matched to the needs of the students to best reach those minimum standards.

I think I'm catching your drift, although I'm curious about what you're leading to. Low-income families have an observable difference in attainment than high-income families; even if schools are funded the same. Therefore, some kind of mechanism is required to further equality of outcome. Your post (although not your partisan affiliation) would imply that low-income schools need a "subsidy" (for lack of a better word) to attract better, well-paid teachers than high-income schools (which already are effectively being subsidised by the already discussed effect of high income parents).

I'm not sure that voucher schemes (and the like) are an effective way to "subsidise" low-income areas (based on my British experience with the "free school" experiment) but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
Logged
PJ
Politics Junkie
YaBB God
*****
Posts: 4,789
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #45 on: July 08, 2015, 04:38:48 AM »
« Edited: July 08, 2015, 04:45:10 AM by PJ »

KKK controlled Oregonian politics in the 1920s? Huh How did that happen?

Oregon was pretty white supremacist before civil rights hit the mainstream. Southern Democrats got second in the state in 1860, which is pretty remarkable considering they were representing a different region of the country. Even though Oregon was admitted as a free state, that had to do with maintaining a balance of free and slave states more than anything else. Had 'popular sovereignty' been applied in the state, it probably would've voted in favor of slavery. Confederate sympathy was actually somewhat popular, especially in the Southwest part of the state. Oregon also had restrictive laws about even allowing minorities to be in communities: it was illegal for blacks to stay overnight in most towns. I don't have any objective proof of this, but I've always suspected that many migrants who moved out west to Oregon during western expansion were Southerners, more so than most other western states. So when the KKK hit its peak in the 1920's, it was only natural that Oregon was one of its most successful states outside the South, although given that there were (and still are) so few minorities here (although Hispanics are changing that), they were more focused on anti-Catholicism than persecution of African-Americans.

Even today, Eastern Oregon is extremely conservative. Oregon's conservatives are considered more conservative than any other state, and the reason that the state has a liberal reputation despite that is according to the same study, Oregon's liberals are more liberal than any other state. If you drive around rural Eastern Oregon (Burns, Pendleton, Baker City, etc.) you will probably see endless amounts Impeach Obama bumper stickers and at least one confederate flag.

EDIT: Also, the hypothetical state of Jefferson, including Southwest Oregon and Northern California, is named after Jefferson Davis.
Logged
Sol
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 8,051
Bosnia and Herzegovina


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #46 on: July 08, 2015, 12:49:43 PM »

KKK controlled Oregonian politics in the 1920s? Huh How did that happen?

KKK was everywhere in the 20s. They controlled Indiana as well, IIRC.
Logged
Antonio the Sixth
Antonio V
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 57,959
United States


Political Matrix
E: -7.87, S: -3.83

P P
Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #47 on: July 08, 2015, 01:50:25 PM »

Well wow, I had no idea Oregon, of all places, would be the non-Southern State to fall for this sh*t. Thanks for the explanation, PJ.
Logged
Famous Mortimer
WillipsBrighton
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 6,010
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #48 on: July 08, 2015, 04:48:05 PM »

Opposition to standardized testing is illogical. Regardless of if you have a national curriculum or not, you have to have tests to see how the students are doing. If it's a bunch of different tests with different standards, the scores would be meaningless, or they would have a meaning which no would could understand.

Again, it's simply that teachers unions (which like all unions, advocate for their members, right or wrong) don't want anything that could lead to teacher accountability. They just want raises regardless.

Of course, it's fine for them to do that. That's their job. That's what unions do. Democratic policy makers should be smart enough to realize though that while it's a good policy for teachers union members, it's not a good policy for anyone else.
Logged
RFayette
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 9,951
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #49 on: July 09, 2015, 01:08:44 AM »

Anyone who wants to ban standardized tests is truly delusional considering they are the gateway to most professions, but basing teacher pay off of them is complicated.  No one would want to teach in low performing schools at all.
Logged
Pages: 1 [2] 3  
« previous next »
Jump to:  


Login with username, password and session length

Terms of Service - DMCA Agent and Policy - Privacy Policy and Cookies

Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines

Page created in 0.061 seconds with 13 queries.