Reply to Another article about the magnet programs in Washington Post

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Another article about the magnet programs in Washington Post "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The best way to give lower SES students a shot is to provide state and county funding for vouchers for lower SES students to attend private schools. The public school system is too much of a bureaucracy, too many wasted dollars overpaying unqualified staff, and most importantly no mechanism to hold anyone in MCS accountable for anything is always going to mean that for every additional dollar spent a good portion might as well be thrown out the window. Unlike public school, private schools have to compete and deliver to survive. [/quote]

Let's see. 156,000 students this year in MCPS. Since you're talking about &quot;lower SES&quot;, let's use the ever-FARMS rate, which is 43%, so 67,080 students. I wonder how many open spots there are at the private schools in the area? Plus, of course, the good private schools cost $30,000 a year, so &gt;$2 billion a year for vouchers for lower SES kids just in Montgomery County. And then somebody still has to pay for school for the other 57%. And then, of course, people will want to know where that $2 billion in public money is going...

Well, I think I foresee some difficulties in implementation here. Or do you have a magic wand we could borrow?[/quote]

I agree that MCPS is inefficient and not effective enough in dealing with low SES students.  I also agree that sending kids en masse to private school is completely unrealistic.

What seems more reasonable is to look at what private and charter schools do right and copy that.  I realize that there are confounding variables in such an exercise.  Private schools deal with vastly different populations and that needs to be factored into any comparison.  Charter schools have widely varied success rates, but there are some that are highly successful, even though they teach low SES and minority children.

In terms of private schools, I'm especially curious about Catholic schools (I am not Catholic, nor have my kids attended any private schools since preschool).  I don't know the logistics, but my understanding is that Catholic schools serve a wide SES with good results.  [b]Can anyone confirm this?[/b]  If so, I would assume that tuition is supplemented by the Catholic Church, but it hardly seems like they would have the funding of the exclusive private secular schools that seem to be frequently discussed on DCUM.

I think a review of proven curriculum/methods would be more effective than MCPS continuing to write and revise an ad hoc curriculum.  Let's find something that works and use it.
[/quote]

https://ace.nd.edu/catholic-school-advantage/catholic-school-advantage-fact-sheet[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics