Senate Bill: Atlasian Education Modernization Act (Rejected)

[TNF]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Doesn't this line make this piece of legislation essentially toothless? Why shall the regions determine which policies of the legislation shall apply? If this is education reform at the federal level, should not the federal government lead and the regions follow?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Section 1 is another area that bothers me because it gives the regions a lot of leeway in implementation that may mean the policies that follow never get enacted or are enacted in a way that makes them essentially toothless. The idea of public funding for private schools as a possibility also rubs me the wrong way in that it will basically cause the degradation of our public education systems for lack of funds. Not to mention that regions deciding to fund private education would be ridiculously cost ineffective and bilk the taxpayer to pay for some fatcat education inc. ceo's salary.

If the state is going to pay for schooling, the schools should be publicly owned and administered, period. No public funds should be accorded to any private educational facility for any reason. The idea that the regions or municipalities will be able to adequately provide equal educational funding to all schools is likewise naive; the only way you're going to level the playing field for our schools is by adopting fully federal funding for education.

I move to amend this section with the following text:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[TNF]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Section 5 is better, though I'd like to break it down some before offering my own amendment.

The right of teachers to organize is protected as Senator Napoleon has noted, but I think that we could use this section as an opportunity to give teachers far more opportunity to control their working environments. I'm going to propose an amendment below that will flesh that out more, but I think that we should introduce a mechanism that allows teachers to have more control over not only their classrooms but the schools themselves.

Choosing textbooks is nice, but they go out of date often and a lot of the time (at least in my experience) there are situations in which you never get new ones or you don't have enough for the children you have. I believe we should amend that section not only to provide for a textbook for every child at no cost to the student (because I remember having to pay a fee for ours), frequent and guaranteed renewal of textbooks (perhaps every four years?), and price controls on textbooks for college students. Textbooks having more teacher input in their design and a preference for the use of e-textbooks would probably be a good idea too.

Why not just bite the bullet on the next subsection and mandate federal standards for teachers? Let's require everyone who wants to be a teacher to get a BA/BS and a master's degree within five years of getting a job. But let's also take it one step further and make it free for anyone who wants to go to college to be a teacher. Those who want to dedicate themselves to public service shouldn't pay a dime for their education.

I don't like this no specific curriculum bit either. I'll go into more detail in my amendment, but I think that we need at the very least a national outline of a curriculum designed by teachers themselves, with input from parents, students, and educational experts.

I cannot express my opposition to Subsection 5 of Section 5 enough. The idea that a principal would be given all that power to review the status of teachers and that the regulatory departments would have the final say on hiring, firing, and pay is egregiously wrong and unfair to the skilled professionals that teachers are. Teacher pay should be higher than it is now, for sure, (AFAIK a starting salary around these parts is ~$35,000/year) but allowing a regulatory agency to set that salary, without any input from teachers themselves, is ludicrous. I am all for setting a floor, but I am opposed to setting a ceiling on teacher pay to be determined by some bean counter in one of the regional capitals. I will outline an alternative in my amendment.

I move to amend Section 5 with the following text:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[TNF]

Whew. On to the next section.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I think this section needs to be clarified a bit. When we reduced the workweek to 32 hours, did we also reduce the number of days students spent in school per week? Not doing so in tandem seems a bit assbackward, but I want to offer an amendment doing just that while readjusting the days required in school to reflect that. I think that a prohibition on schools opening before a certain time would likewise be helpful in that it would minimize some of the problems that come with working parents trying to get their kids to school. And no less than eleven years? Surely we can make than thirteen, which would include kindergarten through 12th.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that we should abolish all fees associated with school lunches. This would make for a great bit of economic stimulus and surely the Republic of Atlasia can afford to pay for the feeding of it's children.

I move to amend this section with the following text:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

And for the final section (so far)

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I move to amend this section with the following text:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[TNF]

TNF: Banning tuition fees AND public funding for private school is not possible. They will go bankrupt very quickly in that case.

I oppose the moratorium on standardized testing. It's needed to allow a comparison to allow universities to pick the best candidates. I'll not accept leveling down our system.

I would be completely fine with that.

[TNF]

Keep in mind that in Finland, the use of tuition fees is strictly prohibited and all schools are well-funded.  The prohibition of tuition fees hasn't stopped schools in Finland from ranking highest in the world, let alone existing.

I don't understand why we should subsidize private schools to make up for banning tuition, though. Why subsidize the private education sector when we could simply just pump more money into the public sector and drive the perceived need for private schooling out altogether? I'm all for banning tuition fees and private schools, but I don't want the state to make up the difference. We shouldn't pay a dime for people to educate their children outside of the regular public school system.

[TNF]

Keep in mind that in Finland, the use of tuition fees is strictly prohibited and all schools are well-funded.  The prohibition of tuition fees hasn't stopped schools in Finland from ranking highest in the world, let alone existing.

I don't understand why we should subsidize private schools to make up for banning tuition, though. Why subsidize the private education sector when we could simply just pump more money into the public sector and drive the perceived need for private schooling out altogether? I'm all for banning tuition fees and private schools, but I don't want the state to make up the difference. We shouldn't pay a dime for people to educate their children outside of the regular public school system.

I want private schools to still exist, but at the same time I would like to de-emphasize our nation's emphasis on competition and instead improve the quality of all schools, be they public or private.  I don't think simply driving private schools out of business is going to help anyone.

You can't have quality schools if you have school segregation by income, which is what private schools essentially are.

[TNF]

Keep in mind that in Finland, the use of tuition fees is strictly prohibited and all schools are well-funded.  The prohibition of tuition fees hasn't stopped schools in Finland from ranking highest in the world, let alone existing.

I don't understand why we should subsidize private schools to make up for banning tuition, though. Why subsidize the private education sector when we could simply just pump more money into the public sector and drive the perceived need for private schooling out altogether? I'm all for banning tuition fees and private schools, but I don't want the state to make up the difference. We shouldn't pay a dime for people to educate their children outside of the regular public school system.

I want private schools to still exist, but at the same time I would like to de-emphasize our nation's emphasis on competition and instead improve the quality of all schools, be they public or private.  I don't think simply driving private schools out of business is going to help anyone.

You can't have quality schools if you have school segregation by income, which is what private schools essentially are.

Which is why I would like to replace school tuition with public funds, not the private schools themselves.

Why bother keeping the school 'private' then? If you're going to pay for kids to go there, just make them all into public schools and be done with it. Why continue to allow parasites to rake profits off of the top?

[TNF]

TNF, would your proposal prohibit charter schools? It seems to me that what Scott suggests would effectively require that all private schools become charter schools. That doesn't seem that problematic to me, although I would support specifying that all private schools must be operated as non-profit organizations. (This is our current policy with regard to higher education.)

Essentially.

[TNF]

TNF, would your proposal prohibit charter schools? It seems to me that what Scott suggests would effectively require that all private schools become charter schools. That doesn't seem that problematic to me, although I would support specifying that all private schools must be operated as non-profit organizations. (This is our current policy with regard to higher education.)

Essentially, that is what I'm proposing.  I don't want the private schools to cease from existence, but I would like them to operate without charging tuition.

Forgive me, but I still don't understand the rationale behind having two school systems funded by the state. It's a waste of taxpayer resources when we could simply have one well financed public school system.

[TNF]

Then why not operate them like normal public schools?

[TNF]

Then why not operate them like normal public schools?

They would run like normal public schools.

Then why retain private ownership of them?

[TNF]

Then why not operate them like normal public schools?

They would run like normal public schools.

Then why retain private ownership of them?

Because the government shouldn't just remove people from their jobs as long as they're complying with the law?

Their job of doing what exactly? Making money without actually doing anything other than presiding over a publicly funded private school?

[TNF]

Then why not operate them like normal public schools?

They would run like normal public schools.

Then why retain private ownership of them?

Because the government shouldn't just remove people from their jobs as long as they're complying with the law?

Their job of doing what exactly? Making money without actually doing anything other than presiding over a publicly funded private school?

Just because a school's publicly funded doesn't mean it doesn't have/need administrative oversight.

So why not do it ourselves, through the state, rather than pay someone in the private sector to do it?

[TNF]

I'm with MaxQue and Napoleon on this. We shouldn't be in the business of funding private schools.

[TNF]

I would just like to note that I am willing to support the majority of this bill if we remove public funding of private schools.

[TNF]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Local funding will never be able to address the disparities in education. This is why Atlasia is so far behind -- the federal government won't accept its responsibility to fund education.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council

'Too much federal control' is kind of rich when you consider that my amendment basically turns control of the schools over to the teachers themselves. That's a lot more 'small government' than whatever it is being proposed elsewhere in this thread.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Why?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Why?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Sorry, but the Regions are far too prone to inactivity or mismanagement to trust with such a vital issue as the education of Atlasian children.

[TNF]

I concur with Yankee. Currently, it's way too hard to get rid of incompetant teachers. They are a big problem in the system, yet, unions protect very much.

Should not teachers have a guaranteed position, provided they are doing their jobs and not breaking the law after a certain amount of time? I don't see how making it easier to fire teachers will make the quality of Atlasian education improve. This is a trojan horse. The issue is funding. If we fund our schools appropriately, we will have educational improvement. We won't have improvements in education by attacking teachers; I'm surprised a fellow Laborite is making that fallacious claim.

[TNF]

I concur with Yankee. Currently, it's way too hard to get rid of incompetant teachers. They are a big problem in the system, yet, unions protect very much.

Should not teachers have a guaranteed position, provided they are doing their jobs and not breaking the law after a certain amount of time?

I don't think anyone here disagrees with that, but if the unions are protecting incompetent teachers, don't you think that's a problem that should be addressed?

Are the unions protecting incompetent teachers?

[TNF]

I concur with Yankee. Currently, it's way too hard to get rid of incompetant teachers. They are a big problem in the system, yet, unions protect very much.

Should not teachers have a guaranteed position, provided they are doing their jobs and not breaking the law after a certain amount of time?

I don't think anyone here disagrees with that, but if the unions are protecting incompetent teachers, don't you think that's a problem that should be addressed?

Are the unions protecting incompetent teachers?

Well, as Max said, unions are making it hard for schools to replace incompetent teachers.  That practice shouldn't continue.

Do you have any proof to back this accusation up?

[TNF]

I concur with Yankee. Currently, it's way too hard to get rid of incompetant teachers. They are a big problem in the system, yet, unions protect very much.

Should not teachers have a guaranteed position, provided they are doing their jobs and not breaking the law after a certain amount of time?

I don't think anyone here disagrees with that, but if the unions are protecting incompetent teachers, don't you think that's a problem that should be addressed?

Are the unions protecting incompetent teachers?

Well, as Max said, unions are making it hard for schools to replace incompetent teachers.  That practice shouldn't continue.

Do you have any proof to back this accusation up?

http://blog.timesunion.com/schools/firing-bad-teachers-nearly-impossible/1459/

No quantifiable data, just anecdotes here. What percentage of bad teachers are kept on the job because of their union, Scott? Actually, I'd like to know what this bill defines as a 'bad teacher', because nowhere does it define what are the grounds by which a principal may fire a teacher, it just gives a principal the right to terminate a teacher without regard to due process. You mention an evaluation procedure, but why should teachers not have a say in how they are evaluated? Surely a teacher-created or even co-created evaluation process is far more fair than a process determined by some bean counter at the DoIA or a school principal.

[TNF]

Aye.

I would like to withdraw Amendment 56:05 and Amendment 56:07 in favor of a revised version of Amendment 56:05, with text as follows:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[TNF]

Aye.

[TNF]

I could possibly go for tying a properly worded 180 day requirement to federal funding, with a mechanism for an exception to be granted to a particular LEA or Region provided they can prove that a model under that number can yield greater benefit to the students in the quality and/or content of the education being received.

 Would that require me to withdraw this amendment and offer another one?

[TNF]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

How does this look?

Add back the original second section (providing for an entitlement to lunch) and this will have my full support. I could go for an income based entitlement, but I want to make lunch as free for as many kids as possible. Scott originally had it for kids whose parents make under $25K. I'd like to see that a bit higher if possible.

[TNF]

So is there a vote going on right now, or?