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Re: [Phys-L] Private schools



On 7/10/2012 4:02 PM, LaMontagne, Bob wrote:
Why would you not extend it to "anyone"? The idea of a voucher system is that every stakeholder has the ability to vote with their feet. I would assume that every school (public, private, charter, magnet, etc.) would have certain minimum state mandated standards relating to content, number of meeting days, number of contact hours, etc. - but after that I would hope that it is up to the parents to determine where their child is to attempt to attend. Many assume that if vouchers are used then the public schools will empty out and people will send their kids to schools run by cults and the like - sucking up all the money. In reality, most people want to send their kid to a neighborhood school, even if it is not the best school in the system. There are only so many teachers available, and only so many people willing to invest private money in schools that are going to lose money.

I have never understood the argument that all the disciplinary problems and academically untalented will end up back in the public schools. These same kids are in the public schools right now. What happens to them? They either never graduate because they drop out, or they get an "attendance prize" diploma. How would that be different with vouchers? There might be a small redistribution of where these problem kids end up, but it won't be dramatically different. One would need an infinite number of alternative schools for that to happen. Others on the list have described what happens in their own systems when problem students are encountered - I won't rehash that here.

BTW, Deborah Gist, who is superintendent of Providence Schools proposed a three tiered diploma system a few years ago. The lowest tier would have "attended" stamped on the diploma, while the upper would have "distinguished" written on it. That concept was roundly squashed by the teacher union and others who did not want students to graduate with the stigma of a lower tiered diploma. So now they just drop out as they have done in the past.

Bob at PC

In Lynn, where I teach, we have two comprehensive high schools and one
vocational high school. Students have to apply to be able to attend the
voc. Students who don't attend voc attend one of the comprehensive
("regular") high schools, which are Lynn English High School (where I
teach) and Lynn Classical High School.

The Massachusetts Accountability System groups schools into five levels:

Level 1: meets regulations (which usually means made AYP either in the
most recent year or the previous one)
Level 2: at risk
Level 3: needs technical assistance
Level 4: needs intervention" (bottom 20% in the state)
Level 5: needs substantial intervention

Based on AYP data, English is a level 1 school (though we may move to
level 2 based on the most recent MCAS data). Classical is a level 3
school. The city has two level 4 schools, so we're officially a level 4
district. One of the results of this is that by law, families in the
city are allowed to choose which schools their children attend. (Sounds
a lot like the voucher system, doesn't it?)

The fallout from this is that the physical Lynn English High School
building has a capacity of about 1400 students. However, we have over
1700 students, 300 of whom live in the portion of the district
"assigned" to Classical. Every classroom at English is in use every period.

My classroom is a mixed-use lab/classroom with a total of 960 square
feet of floor space. This means that by NSTA safety standards (60
square feet per student for a mixed lab/classroom), the room can safely
accommodate a maximum of 16 students doing a lab at once. The room has
six lab benches that can accommodate four students each, which means
there is physical lab bench space for 24. I will have a student load of
165 students next year, which means an average class size of 33. If the
school weren't 20% over capacity, my classes would theoretically be 20%
smaller, which would mean 26 students per class instead of 33.

So the problem from my vantage point isn't so much that only the worst
students are left at the underperforming schools, but that the exodus
from the underperforming schools is overwhelming the higher-performing
schools.

--
Jeff Bigler
Lynn English HS; Lynn, MA, USA
"Magic" is what we call Science before we understand it.