[MandoMan]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

It's the kids and the education systems as a whole. Federal funding spent by states on "private school" vouchers means less funding in areas where parents can't afford to send their kids to private schools. I'm talking about transportation. Poor folks who live in cities, generally don't have money for transportation for their kids to go to school every day. Poor folks who live in super-rural areas, like the mountains, don't have money for transportation to get their kids to some private or charter school, the closest of which is a 2-hour walk from home.

Public schools are underfunded in both urban and rural areas, and vouchers don't help these kids AT ALL. So you end up with fewer teachers, who will get paid less, have to put up with more red tape, higher risk of actual death, just to do what they love doing - teach kids. There's no incentive for teachers to teach at rural and urban public schools anymore.

Once upon a time the unions were strong enough to ensure that the towns secured a healthy pension and health benefits package for tenured teachers upon retirement. My mom is the recipient of one of those. She taught full-time kindergarten-3rd grade for 35 years. Anyone who thinks she got all summer off, all vacations off, half-days for parent-teacher conferences, etc - has obviously never been a public school teacher. I know what she did, because I was her kid who she took with her to college for her 6th year degree, her Masters degree, her yearly mandatory summer seminar classes (at her own expense), and washed the dishes while she graded papers after suppertime every weeknight.

I'm the kid who spent a week before the end of summer break, and two days before the end of winter break, with mom in the classroom helping her decorate for the next semester and making sure all the supply cabinets were replenished.

Back then, the schools gave her a classroom budget to work with. She'd spend the money and be reimbursed a month later after submitting the receipts and paperwork.

Now, public schools don't have that option. You want your classroom pretty, then make it pretty. Just leave the school budget out of it. Many public schools in underfunded areas have been like this for decades, and it's getting worse and worse every year.

You don’t need to go to a shiny new school to get a good public education. You don’t need new books. What you need is a school full of kids who want to learn and are willing to learn, rather than spending their days trying to avoiding learning. You need kids who don’t talk back, who don’t disrupt class, who don’t think they are funny, who do their homework and want to know more. You need parents who support education, not just sports. Parents who make sure their kids not only do their homework but make sure they understand it all. Parents who restrict cell phone usage to emergency calls. Parents who insist that their kids stay home and study after supper. Parents who can get up and pack their kids a lunch every day. Parents who turn off the television and music and sit at the kitchen table with their kids and help them. Parents who always have interesting things to talk about during dinner. Parents are the major reason why their kids don’t learn. Teachers can work as hard as they can, but they won’t generally succeed unless the parents actively parent their kids. I hate to say this, but garbage in, garbage out. Plenty of high school kids should skip school and go straight to the pen or the tattoo parlor. Throwing $13,000 per kid per year at a school won’t lead to a good education. Charter schools are not the answer if the lousy kids can get in. Parochial schools are not the answer unless they can weed out the troublemakers. What they show is that probably 90% of kids in schools today are improperly parented and are wasting the taxpayer’s money.