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June 15, 2012 at 3:59 am #760808
redblackParticipantdollar-for-dollar, compared to taxes, how much does that voucher buy? maybe a semester?
and no soup for you! bring your own lunch!
June 15, 2012 at 4:08 pm #760809
kootchmanMemberDBP… no it is not “community service”.. every non public school requires parental hours.. call it being an involved parent.
Using the state stats Messr Rdblack, the elementary schools average 27 kids, at a cost of 13.141.19 per student. Or, each class generates $345,342.13 HR in West Seattle, full tuition is 6,917 per student. In that tuition you get music, foreign language, art, computer lab and phys ed.
So, under a voucher program, you could educate 2 children for the price of 1 in public school. And have a better outcome too.
Give the state its due.. they are equipped to teach special needs kids, most private schools do not. Also the private school teachers work an hour a day longer. (in this case) All the goodies.
High School …. Seattle Lutheren is $10,800 per student, Holy Names Academy, $13,400 and the rest of them fall in between. Lakeside and the Bush School run above 20K…. but, have a larger scholarship allocation. All of them as far as I know, have income scholarships… but with the voucher.. for most of them it would cover the bean. O’Dea non Catholic is $11,220. Vouchers would get them in. They are scholastically competitive admissions though. All have dress and behavior codes that are more stringent that PS..
June 15, 2012 at 4:15 pm #760810
miwsParticipantDo private school teachers actually work an hour a day longer, or do they simply get paid for that extra hour?
Mike
June 15, 2012 at 4:26 pm #760811
kootchmanMemberThey are salaried. They work an 8 hour day, one hour more in the classroom than SPS teachers. Most consider themselves to be professionals, ie non union.. they aren’t “hourly” workers. The support workers are hourly.. Trust me on this Mike.. I never heard of one leaving and going to the SPS … never. A few have gone to other private schools. My choice was twofold. One, better curriculum choices. Two, safety and classroom decorum. They don’t carry the admin burden of SPS… and you know who does the playground supervision duties, grade school athletic coaches,,, etc.
June 15, 2012 at 4:40 pm #760812
kootchmanMemberDPB.. my error… each parent does 50 hours of parent hours per academic year.. not 150.
June 15, 2012 at 4:44 pm #760813
kootchmanMemberDPB.. my error… each parent does 50 hours of parent hours per academic year.. not 150.
June 15, 2012 at 5:49 pm #760814
miwsParticipantOkay, I get it now.
Union employees are not professionals.
*Adds data to personal copy of kootchionary*
Mike
June 15, 2012 at 10:29 pm #760815
kootchmanMemberReread that again slowly miws.. then quote me, don’t paraphrase.
June 16, 2012 at 1:23 am #760816
kootchmanMemberCongrats to Holy Names Academy.
Voted not “one of” but THE BEST Non-Profit to work for in the State of WA.. read the citations http://mail.aol.com/36445-111/aol-6/en-us/Suite.aspx# Cited for its diversity too!
JoB … here’s why vouchers are so flippin’ important and breaking up the SPS monopoly… because ONE of the ways to insure a great education after HS is….attendance at America’s best colleges…. scholarships. Not federal debt …
Our graduating Class of 2012 collectively received scholarship honors and awards worth $22.5 million, which were offered to more than 89% of the class—both figures are all-time records for a graduating class.
..and this month we learned that HNA’s sports teams of 2011-2012 have collectively brought home the Seattle Metro League’s All-Sports trophy for the fifth consecutive year!. Sounds like they get the notion that team sports and sports teach our young women confidence and competitive spirits.
JoB? They spend less per pupil than SPS.. So when we cross swords about why I don’t and the young women don’t, share your dismal outlook of inherent gender unfairness…they are supremely confident of their life long potential for success and achievement ..they have received that message and that expectation since kindergarten..
We KNOW it can be done… every teacher, instructor lives with an annual contract renewal. No tenure, no teachers union.. and look at the status… #1 Best non-profit to work for… .
Now, if your daughter was in an underperforming SPS HS…. wouldn’t you take a voucher? Parents would be lined up down the block! And ya know…. the peer culture is achieve… they pretty much self encourage. Not perfect.. but pretty damn good.
June 16, 2012 at 1:34 am #760817
JanSParticipantHoly Names is private, not just a voucher school. It’s always been a good school. It has people who donate money/give endowments to keep it running, besides the yearly cost. It’s a great school..but not akin to other voucher schools in the US, I’m thinking. The Catholic Church backs it…
June 16, 2012 at 1:43 am #760818
kootchmanMemberVouchers are unrestricted… the money goes where the kid goes.. that’s how the system works in France, Belgium, Sweden …. that’s the wonder of attaching the money to the student. BUT… no matter how well it supported… the tuition is almost the exact same price as the per capita state contribution for a SPS HS student. Imagine if the SPS had to compete for that voucher money? Nope.. the diocese directly subsidizes K-8. Yea it always has been a good school…ya think after doing it that way since 1880. The oldest continuous operating school in the state. Blanchett, Seattle Prep, O’Dea, Kennedy… there might just be an institutional legacy to learn from. Or not. BTW lots of other states and cities who have failing systems give kids vouchers for parochial schools.. in some cases, they were the only system that could step into the breech and plug the holes. Not just Catholic schools either.
There are currently 91 schools and approximately 8,100 students participating in Milwaukee’s eight-year-old voucher program, the oldest in the nation. Under the program, low-income students receive approximately $5,100 [check] to attend a private school. In 1995, the program was expanded to include religious schools. Today, 63 of the schools in the program, or 69%, are affiliated with religious institutions. Cleveland has a similar program and Florida began the first statewide voucher program this fall.
June 16, 2012 at 2:06 am #760819
JanSParticipantso..tuition at Holy Names is $12,972 according to their website…add on $525 for application and registration, $400 for books (website says $250-$450) and then the extra $140 for the extras like yearbook, etc.($245 for seniors). That brings the total to $14,037….now, what was spent per student in SPS? Yes, students in SPS pay for their own year book and extras, too..and supplies, too.So that’s not figured in ..
http://www.sao.wa.gov/auditreports/auditreportfiles/ar1007826.pdf
June 16, 2012 at 3:37 am #760820
kootchmanMemberha ha ha ha…. yea I buy the critter her books.. used. About 200 – 400 per year. the average SPS child has a state attachment of 13,141,19 … “highly capable” get another 400. so about 13,600. Not only does she pay for her own yearbook, varsity jacket, .. so if they got the full voucher…. they might have to come up with $50 per month….. oh wait… 25% of the students receive income adjusted scholarships. Done specifically to insure a diversity mix where income may inhibit of a diverse student body. Now here is the comparative data.. this is SPS
Less than 36% of 8th graders have achieved grade-level proficiency in math and reading on the NAEP, the national “gold-standard” for assessing student achievement.
About one-third of public high school students fails to graduate from high school.
Over half (52 percent) of students entering community or technical colleges have to take remedial math, English or reading courses to catch up. 37 percent of stduents entering our two-year and four-year collegs must take remedial math or English courses.
My daughters class in 5th grade I believe. 98% of. every single student was proficient in reading and writing. And those that weren’t had a reading speciality instructor. So, as a parent.. given the choice of getting a voucher.. graduating 100% of the freshman class with 88 per cent getting scholarships or getting the results listed above.. how many would take the voucher?
Here’s the bottom line… HNA, Prepm Bellarmine, … et al… have to attract, and retain their students. Ineffective instructors don’t have tenure.. they finish out their contract and it is not renewed. Are their superlative SPS teachers.. ? Hell yes.. great ones. But no merit pay, and they have to live with tenured space fillers, who drag down their fellow teachers and send out a message of resigned mediocrity to their students.
Take a chance people… we have had 40 years of this… increasing funds.. and we are stalled. SAT scores have not improved. EA designed the WASL… and instead of reaching for the goal.. they dropped it in less than three years we had a saying in the Coprs..aim low.. shoot low. JoB thinks money is the answer… that is NOT my experience. And I support BOTH systems… where do I put extras? where it gets the biggest bang for the buck.. parochial schools. That k-8 uniform thing? Saves parents hundreds.. ya got the basic skirt, blouse, sweatshirt, khaki pants… it’s egalitarian and cheaper. Ever k-8 kid brings in a couple of reams of paper, hand cleaner, toilet paper, pencils and pens, emergency disaster food pack, space blanket, et al… no, our teachers do not buy supplies.
In the end.. you measure outcomes.
June 16, 2012 at 6:49 am #760821
JanSParticipantyou cry about Seattle…good thing you aren’t living in the city I grew up in. Here’s a story from back there…it’s super, super sad:
friend told me tonight that they have gotten rid of the security in the schools. The highschool serves the whole city, has thousands of kids. Teachers getting threatened all the time. I’m so glad I’m not there any more. So, when we think we have it bad here? Just look elsewhere…and it doesn’t seem all that bad…
June 16, 2012 at 2:13 pm #760822
miwsParticipantReread that again slowly miws..
Also……..the………private……school….
teachers……work…….an…….hour…….a…….day……longer.
Mike
June 16, 2012 at 4:14 pm #760823
redblackParticipantregarding vouchers: so you’re going to collect taxes, and then send everyone in the state a check for $10,000? for each student? every year?
nope. this is just another way to break teachers’ unions. just admit it, and quit pretending you care about poor people’s educations.
the only thing you voucher fans care about is your property taxes and how you can pay less for the communities you live in. you’re not going to send your precious kids to SPS anyway.
June 16, 2012 at 7:34 pm #760824
kootchmanMemberMany countries do it redblack. But in the case of Cleveland. You don’t understand the voucher system. The schools get the voucher… they do it now redblack, in a de facto way. All the kids that escape SPS and go to Vashon, Mercer Island, Bellevue, and there are hundreds of them, the state pays the schools they go to. All those school districts are unionized, every one of them,.
We still pay the same property taxes. It has no effect on them. What it does is break the monopoly of forcing kids to attend sub standard schools. Imagine.. if Seatlh and West Seattle had to compete for WS students or lose their customers… decision making parents.
Of course I care about education. Persistently poorly educated students cause the most social expense later in life.
You are ok with system that 1/3 of the kids never graduate from? You are ok with a system where college entrance means the student is going to have to take remedial catch up classes. Ya think college entrance don’t take that into account during admissions?
In short Messer redblack.. if you see Ms. Jan and her post.. under a voucher system, those parents would have other choices.
Vouchers do not affect teachers unions. UNLESS they are being outperformed and the taxpayers leave them in droves. I am far more interested in the focus of schools… education. Not the status of the unions.
Mike… they like it.. they like their working conditions. And.. so what? they… get….two…months.. off… for….the….summer… too! It’s the kids Mike… that why they have foreign languages, music, arts, theater, … and SPS doesn’t. Simple question Mike.. if they didn’t in balance like it…. who is chaining them to the classroom? Focus on the outcomes…. the kids.
Yea Jan… I went to Martin Van Buren in NYC….once a jewel in the NYC crown.. it is about to be closed down..the state gave it a “D” rating.. all the ills of an urban school… so a simple question .. hypothetical.. would you send your child to the that school or take a voucher and go to A Montessori, Lutheran, Catholic, non-denominational private school?
Those private schools are a multi-billion dollar bonus to this state… WA couldn’t afford to educate all the kids that are “out” of the public system.
June 16, 2012 at 7:58 pm #760825
kootchmanMemberThis is how unions focus on kids…
Michelle Apperson, recently awarded the title of “Teacher of the Year” for the Sacramento City Unified School District, has lost her job. Union seniority rules.
June 16, 2012 at 10:07 pm #760826
JanSParticipantas far as I know , there is a Catholic High School in Reading , PA. They are/were run by a bunch of nuns, and it was very difficult to get in. But that was a long time ago. It no longer exists. There are 3 private highschools in the surrounding area, all religion affiliated. My choice would be to send my child to a non-religion based school. My child went to a private christian school K-2, when I discovered I wasn’t exactly “christian” enough. It was not a very good experience.
I get what you’re saying about tenure. The kid had a terrible teacher in 3rd grade, under a terrible principal. It was a wasted year, and both of those “educators” should have been selling insurance. Moved her to another school where they had a “Horizon” program….she did well.
I just don’t feel that we need to privatize everything.Public schools should be fostered, not given up on.
In Reading, PA, the crime rate is rampant. My folks still live there in the downtown area, so I hear about it. They are very elderly, and know that moving would not be the best thing for them, so they stick it out. We have to learn that education is everything. That city is doomed if they don’t make their children a priority, vouchers or not.
a quote from Kurt Vonnegut I read the other day: “True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country”
June 17, 2012 at 4:31 pm #760827
redblackParticipantso 1/3 of kids fail to be educated in SPS? i have an idea: get rid of standardized corporate testing, and quit making those union teachers teach to the corporate tests. we could try that approach and save money at the same time without making anyone face austerity.
i have a serious question that i don’t have time to look up. no sarcasm, so please don’t respond with snark:
do private and parochial schools have to teach to the same tests as public schools?
later. hope you all get out and enjoy the day while it’s not raining – which is right now!
edit: one last question: so if you’re not going to tax everyone and then hand each student $10,000 to spend at the school of his choice, then what, exactly, is the plan? my question is about how you go about divvying up all that taxpayer money equitably.
June 17, 2012 at 9:40 pm #760828
kootchmanMemberSure redblack. They will see standardized “corporate testing” again.
I will answer is seriousness… Catholic schools, some, were taking the WASL. I did not allow my daughter to take them. HR was falling into the same “trap”. They are accredited by various accreditation boards.
Locally, they do participate in the ITBS as one metric. The curriculum however, as adopted by the school boards, are the backbone of the teaching process. They do less teaching to the test… because we are participants at will of testing programs. WASL which failed so miserably, was entirely the creation of the WEA and A Dept. of Education. It was not a “corporate” sales job. See the old web sets where WEA aglow with their “achievement”. As you know it died. The disparity between private schools was so dramatic, the state was asking the private schools to withhold their scores from publication so the public school system could not be compared against them.
Their are other accreditation standards for independent districts. They have their own accreditation boards and groups. Same as the university systems. Colgate, UR, Syracuse U etc… are not accredited by NY State Board of Regents.
Here is the bottom line my friend. who gets the better outcome? Not in raw test data… believe me the ACT and SAT gauntlet is still part of private school. But it’s nice to know in your kids Junior year they are pegging above the 90 percentile … of all seniors. The are not “teach to” test… although you do get a peek into what are “fundamentals” baseline information.
Easy… it gets distributed equally as follows. If you are a qualified student, enrolled in system. You as a parent can evaluate what is the mix of best school … when you enroll your kid in a specific school, that is where the voucher goes. You and your child never see the money… the schools do.
You might also understand… and I think it is fair… that universal standards were set as a minimum…. not the objective. It was done so, because the public saw forty years of decline or stagnation with ever increasing taxes. You can’t expect parents and taxpayers to spend more for less in perpetuity. Your work product gets tested. We test to measure. Life will be full of them. Balance sheets are “tests”. ASTM Wrench and Bond tests protocols test mason craftsmanship,
How do you do it equitably. If your street number end up S, NE, N, S. in Seattle.. makes no difference.. you take your voucher to the school that accepts you. Public or private. The metric to use is ITSB… it not a factoid “teach to test” and the schools is measured by relative to others states (currently we are in 25th place) other schools, other school districts. The world is full of tests… are they meaningful…. a P&L statement is a test… it’s ONE measurement… it still takes insight and management to understand why that P&L is what it is.
It’s done now. See the ferry in the morning…. couple of hundred kids go to Vashon… they take the money that would have gone to WSHS or Sealth.. and it goes to VI schools district.
This should interest the SPS… but they won’t….
Q: What is the enrollment of Catholic schools?
A: Total Catholic school student enrollment for the 2010-2011 academic year was 2,065,872 students: 1,467,694 elementary school; 598,178 secondary school.
Q: How many Catholic schools are there?
A: Currently, there are 6,980 Catholic schools in the United States: 5,774 elementary schools; 1,206 secondary schools
And the nonsensical statement that they are “elitist”… brother the are doing the heavy lifting where public schools are struggling, failing, or have been closed entirely (see Cleveland)
Here’s the list of where these results are achieved…. it isn’t the CT suburbs … see in JoB’s data … she neglected to include the results of the largest school system in the country.. Catholic and other parochial schools.
1. Chicago
2. Philadelphia
3. New York
4. Los Angeles
5. Cleveland
6. Brooklyn
7. St. Louis
8. Cincinnati
9. Boston
10. New Orleans
11. Newark
12. Miami
13. Detroit
14. St. Paul/Minneapolis
15. Milwaukee
16. Rockville Centre
17. Baltimore
18. Washington, DC
19. San Francisco
20. Seattle
Now, I dare you to compare the stats… those PS systems against this… we are investing most in urban schools.
Q: What percentage of Catholic secondary school students graduate? How many go on to college?
A: The national Catholic school graduation rate is 99.1% of high school students. Of these graduates, 84.7% go on to college, compared to 44.1% of public school graudates.
June 18, 2012 at 5:03 am #760829
JoBParticipantKootch
busting public schools so you can subsidize private education with tax dollars is mercenary
June 18, 2012 at 7:50 am #760830
kootchmanMemberThe tax dollars are already being collected. You will watch kids fail too preserve a failed system. It’s not your kids failing to graduate, it’s not your kids not getting academic scholarships. it’s not your kids having to spend five years of tuition money because they need to do so much remedial work before they can mainstream into college…. it’s not your kids drawing the short straw. It’s racist too… the burden of that failure falls most heavily on children of color, they are denied choice. Imagine… Put a gender spin on it… if a school system produced male graduates that 84% of the males were college qualified… and only 16% of females were… you would be up in arms. As long as the failure rate is 40% though.. for everyone.. you can live with that!
That is why charter schools and vouchers are blowing up the NEA… they are interested only in one outcome… benefit packages and dues. Taxpayers are not going to subsidize what doesn’t work. Those days are gone.
Tell me if the system is so good… why are democrats so afraid to offer charter schools and vouchers… I mean, if your public school product is so damn good there will be not takers would there?
A: The national Catholic school graduation rate is 99.1% of high school students. Of these graduates, 84.7% go on to college, compared to 44.1% of public school graudates.
Now, I really don’t care how they do it. But, we have given the public school system a free rein for almost 50 years. They have set the agenda, the curriculum, the indoctrination. You say it’s money.. it’s not. Any parent out there would rejoice at those numbers. Those are public dollars.. those are not teacher union dollars and our state is obliged to educate.. it is not obliged to use failed methods. The state sub contracts all the time… it’s not state workers pouring that concrete or boring the new tunnel. Results.
I assure you, when the SPS faces competition for those dollars. they will improve. You can’t make a monopoly reform itself.. there is no incentive to do so. Call it stimulus money if it makes you feel better.
Raising the graduation rate to over 95% is the greater societal good. No confidence your system can rise to the challenge? A fair society would allow equal access… that is what charter schools and vouchers do.
One system puts 85% into college.. the other, 42% …. now, who do you think will be economically empowered 20 years later? One group graduates 99.1 per cent, the other 52%… which group will populate our prisons? Be most represented on public assistance roles? The right… endorses equality of opportunity… the left does not. They want outcome guarantees… and education is the great leveler.
June 18, 2012 at 8:36 am #760831
kootchmanMemberAn excerpt from Great Schools by a Seattle student…
“Just because we are a primarily black school doesn’t mean we can’t learn. Teach us. I don’t want to leave high school knowing almost nothing! I recently attended Business Week, and they taught me alot of things that I did not learn at school. Please give us some things to make us learn. Why get up so early to be treated stupid? I hope someone reads this.”
Give him or her a voucher! A choice.and a chance. tell his or her parent there is an option. Bet they don’t care one damn bit if it is public, private voucher or charter…
June 18, 2012 at 1:32 pm #760832
redblackParticipantyou need to look up the standardized testing thing. i have, and there’s a WSB forum thread about who writes and scores the tests here. teach-to-the-test scoring affects the rankings, school competition, and the appearance of effectiveness. it’s a matter of perspective, and these testing corporations are setting the lens. it might have been supported by the unions at some point, but it isn’t anymore. teachers are frustrated by teach-to-the-test and the talk of basing merit pay on those tests, because people learn in different ways and at different paces.
oh, and over 90% of kids in america attend public school. you guys need a bigger infrastructure.
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