Will DeVos' confirmation as Sec of Education increase applications to the top private schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't you all Google how much it costs to educate a student in DCPS for a year and try to make sense of those $ against the outcomes? Seems like a system due for a shake up to me.

Much of that money is privatized; i.e., the people who work with children and have the most training in education (teachers) have very little say on where that money goes. As a brief example, I'm a preschool teacher. Every classroom in my building has Promethean boards, but starting wages for assistant teachers are about $1 above minimum wage. As a result, assistants are frequently absent. Substitute assistants are paid just as badly, so when an assistant is gone, no one shows up for the day. We then either end up teaching up to 20 kids on our own (which is against the law but we do it anyway) or picking off students above 10, Hunger Games style, to go to other classrooms. We spend tens of thousands of dollars per student, but it's not going toward making healthy classroom or work environments.

This is the opposite of privatized as privatized implies a competition and a meritocracy. This is an unbelievably frustrating situation for those closest to the kids to be in. It's time to shine some light on this and if Betsy DeVos does nothing else than expose it and show parents the questions they should be asking, and alternatives they may have, it's a win for me

Don't hold your breath.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC already has tons of charters, and had a voucher program before which didn't really impact private or public schools much. Only 4.5% of the MCPS budget, for example, comes from federal funds so her impact will be limited. What impacts are you anticipating that would encourage applications to private schools?

DCPS believes charters skim the best students in parts of the city, leaving DCPS with the difficult kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't you all Google how much it costs to educate a student in DCPS for a year and try to make sense of those $ against the outcomes? Seems like a system due for a shake up to me.

Much of that money is privatized; i.e., the people who work with children and have the most training in education (teachers) have very little say on where that money goes. As a brief example, I'm a preschool teacher. Every classroom in my building has Promethean boards, but starting wages for assistant teachers are about $1 above minimum wage. As a result, assistants are frequently absent. Substitute assistants are paid just as badly, so when an assistant is gone, no one shows up for the day. We then either end up teaching up to 20 kids on our own (which is against the law but we do it anyway) or picking off students above 10, Hunger Games style, to go to other classrooms. We spend tens of thousands of dollars per student, but it's not going toward making healthy classroom or work environments.

This is the opposite of privatized as privatized implies a competition and a meritocracy. This is an unbelievably frustrating situation for those closest to the kids to be in. It's time to shine some light on this and if Betsy DeVos does nothing else than expose it and show parents the questions they should be asking, and alternatives they may have, it's a win for me

It's privatized in the sense that the actual money available is earmarked for all kinds of technological gadgets we have no use for (we are required to receive iPads and laptops) and preferred shoppers we need to use to get school supplies with the meager funds offered to us (we can only shop from a handful of vendors who sell overpriced nonsense). We get lots of brand new books and puzzles and toys that are developmentally inappropriate. It goes on and on. My point here is that the money that goes to public schools is already being funneled to people who aren't interested in bettering public education. This is a problem that can be fixed in a number of ways, but I doubt simply taking money from the public schools and giving it to institutions with even less oversight (i.e., fly-by-night charter operations) will lead to less waste. Experienced teachers tend to have a pretty good idea of where more money needs to be spent and where less needs to be spent to provide a better educational experience. The people who have spent the least time in public school classrooms do not make good minders of where public school money should go. DeVos has never been a part of public education. That is not a mark in her favor.

That said, we've had terrible public education policies for decades. Duncan was almost as bad as DeVos will be, for example, and we know who put him in charge. Unfortunately, the destruction of public schools is a bipartisan goal.

[Anonymous]

If money is earmarked for certain things it is not privatized and not competitive and not based on teacher expertise. For the sake of DCPS and public schools, I'd suggest a new term for this money. Historically, money appropriated the furthest away from the community is the least effective.

[Anonymous]

Becoming the Secretary of Education is a dark day for this country's children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some facts.

DC already has a school voucher program -- mandated by Congress at a cost of $20 million a year.

The vouchers today go to about 1,450 low-income students and 80% of them attend a religious school.

The vouchers provide up to $8400 for K-8th and up to $12,000 for high school.

The schools that accept the vouchers include Beauvoir, Aidan Montessori, St. Peters, GDS and Sidwell.
http://servingourchildrendc.org/our-program/find-a-school/

Why $12,000? I thought DCPS received nearly $20k total per pupil.

Different pot of money. The voucher program is funded entirely out of federal dollars. The local school system isn't involved.

To make DC go along with this Congress gives the District $69 million - and 1/3 goes to vouchers, 1/3 to charter schools and 1/3 to traditional schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Becoming the Secretary of Education is a dark day for this country's children.

Yup. I'm the teacher from above. Most teachers feel the same way about where the actual problems are in public education as evidenced by polls, surveys, and a plethora of blogs and articles by actual teachers. However, folks with a privatization agenda refuse to listen because their end goal is to dismantle the public school system. It's sad. Enrollment in teacher education programs have been dropping now for several years while teachers have been leaving the profession across the country long before retirement eligibility. This too, is a feature, and not a bug.

The Curmudgucation blog is a great read for folks who aren't part of the privatization agenda.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC already has tons of charters, and had a voucher program before which didn't really impact private or public schools much. Only 4.5% of the MCPS budget, for example, comes from federal funds so her impact will be limited. What impacts are you anticipating that would encourage applications to private schools?

DCPS believes charters skim the best students in parts of the city, leaving DCPS with the difficult kids.

Fellow parents and myself believe that DCPS and DC political leaders are corrupt and care more about themselves than about any kid in town (save their own, of course).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If money is earmarked for certain things it is not privatized and not competitive and not based on teacher expertise. For the sake of DCPS and public schools, I'd suggest a new term for this money. Historically, money appropriated the furthest away from the community is the least effective.

Privatization in education simply means that public money is sent to private companies. If a school is required to buy iPads for teachers who don't want those iPads as a requirement for receiving money for, say, paying the electric bill, that is privatization because it means a deal was struck giving a private company a pipeline to school funds. This is the kind of privatization that runs rampant in the public schools. Similarly, schools are often required to use some kind of computer-based assessment system (or a dozen such systems). These systems are invariably made by Pearson or one of its subsidiaries. As a result, a school district may spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on licensing and maintaining programs that, once again, teachers don't want or need and actively despair, with all of that money going directly to one or two companies year after year after year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC already has tons of charters, and had a voucher program before which didn't really impact private or public schools much. Only 4.5% of the MCPS budget, for example, comes from federal funds so her impact will be limited. What impacts are you anticipating that would encourage applications to private schools?

DCPS believes charters skim the best students in parts of the city, leaving DCPS with the difficult kids.

Fellow parents and myself believe that DCPS and DC political leaders are corrupt and care more about themselves than about any kid in town (save their own, of course).

It's common knowledge that one of the universal differences between charter schools and public schools is that charter schools can actively reject students from their rolls (or drop them if they don't meet behavioral or academic standards) because they aren't required to serve all students the way public schools are. The PP didn't need to write DCPS "believes" this; it happens in every school district across the country that shares resources with charter schools.

[Anonymous]

No, relax.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC already has tons of charters, and had a voucher program before which didn't really impact private or public schools much. Only 4.5% of the MCPS budget, for example, comes from federal funds so her impact will be limited. What impacts are you anticipating that would encourage applications to private schools?

DCPS believes charters skim the best students in parts of the city, leaving DCPS with the difficult kids.

Fellow parents and myself believe that DCPS and DC political leaders are corrupt and care more about themselves than about any kid in town (save their own, of course).

How do you speak for every parent when you call every DCPS employee and political leader corrupt? I know plenty of parents who are very happy with the education their kids are getting from DCPS. And they aren't paying 40k/year for it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let me get this straight -- the OP seems to believe that the incoming Secretary of Education (she's still incoming until she's been sworn in) will somehow enact a school choice and voucher program that will immediately have impact at the state and local levels, and will have an immediate impact on private school tuition levels.

I'm just going to let that sink in for a moment.

In the meantime, let's consider this. The American institution that is public education is big. How big? Public schools employed over 3 million teachers in 2016. For comparison, the world's largest employer, Wal-Mart, employs 1.4 million people. The active duty U.S. military clocks in at 1.3 million.

What are the odds that Betsy De Vos, much less any other education activist, can have a lasting impact on public education given the size of the bureaucracy? Heck, the Department of Education reported just last month that the Obama Administration's effort to improve America's worst schools with an injection of $7 billion in federal cash had no effect.

So, back to OP's question. No. There is no chance her confirmation will directly increase private school tuition in either the greater Washington, DC area or anywhere else in the country. You can stop hyperventilating.

Uh, OP was asking about the # of applications, not the tuition.

OP here. Thank you! Clearly some just want to talk about what they want to talk about and not answer the question.

[Anonymous]

OP I think there very well could be a slight bump in # of applications--have already seen social media chatter to this effect among my acquaintances. We are at at a good public in DC, but will be closely watching developments.

[Anonymous]

Too early to tell OP.