Reply to Proposed Property Tax Increase for Schools?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I propose:

1) Close down the bottom 10% of underperforming schools

2) Once there's a rigorous and independent process in place to approve good charter schools, lease those school building to them.

3) Give parents a $12,000 voucher per kid to decide where they want to send their children (before you ask -- that is LESS than it costs now to "educate" a kid in PG using the system we have today

[/quote]

HORRIBLE idea.   Charter schools that do well, only do so because they hire young, idealistic teachers and make them work many hours.   A great model, but one that burns through young teachers at an incredible rate.   This model works well for the few charter schools it works for, but is not replicable for more than a few schools in any one area.  MANY charter schools in fact are failing schools.

PGCPS spends more like $10,000 per pupil.   And guess what?   Your private schools and religious schools do not want the 10% of our student population that comes from underperforming schools.  You know why?   The vast majority of underperforming schools (by which I presume you mean, schools which do not meet targets for AYP on state tests) have many students are not passing state tests because they are English Language Learners.  There simply aren't enough private schools willing to take $10,000 (or even $12,000) dollars to educate large numbers of ELLs.   And even if they did, they would not have any more success bringing these children up to grade level quickly.

Of course, you would never know that the private schools were failing to educe the ELLs because private school do not have to take part in state testing.

If you changed your proposal to require all private schools to take all applicants, and participate in state testing, in order to get that tuition money, I might agree with it.   But the private schools never would.   They KNOW they cannot educate all students.

Private schools do a good job for the population they are willing to educate.   But they wouldn't be able to continue their model if they were help to greater accountability for all students (take away their ability to counsel out kids who are failing for example.)[/quote]

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