Reply to I never understood the difference between public and private until today

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Its not so much the schools (ie, the building), but the teachers, parents and students.  I had DS at a MD public elementary school for two years, which felt like a lifetime.

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How is their special education program? [/quote]

For the special ed kids, it looked great.  For my ADHD kid, [b]having the special ed kids was one more unneeded distraction.  (There were 4 autistic kids in his small 32 person classroom.)[/b] [/quote]

Really?  How entitled of you. :roll: 
I’ll bet that your kid was the distraction to everyone ![/quote]

He was!  So we adjusted his meds so he wouldn’t impede the education of the children of other taxpayers.

But entitled?  Well, I pay over $70k per year in Maryland taxes, so I should be able to send junior to a decent public school where his education — and not half-assed social engineering — is the top priority.    [/quote]

It's a common misconception -- particularly among people who pay a lot in taxes, apparently -- that taxes are user fees. But they're not.

Also, what you call social engineering, I call the expectation that ALL children, including children with disabilities, have an equal right to a decent public school where their education is the top priority.[/quote]

Government is a service we buy, like trash removal or dishwasher repair, to do things we cannot do ourselves, generally to resolve collective action problems.  (No one would individually build a road or design an aircraft carrier.)  As such, taxes are indeed user fees -- money we pay for these services.  Every few years we get the chance to change the service provider (I've switched my Internet, cell phone and lawn care company less frequently) through elections. If I am paying a $70k user fee for state-provided services, I expect them to be good.

Public education is one such collective action problem -- I have no intention of opening a little red schoolhouse or home-schooling my children.  And I fully support using my user fees to pay to educate children with disabilities.  However, I do not support structuring the educational environment in such a way that the education of one group materially and negatively impacts the education of another group.  In the case of junior's time in the MD public school system, putting four special needs kids in with 28 other children was a significant distraction to the one already-frazzled 4th grade teacher, who then off-loaded part of the responsibility to care for them to the other non-special needs children, including junior.

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