Local Government and Schools

[CroSpartacus]

What do you do when you are in a situation where you say "I think we should abolish the Dept of Ed and allow schools to be run by local governments where the money will be managed better and the money will go to their own schools."

And then someone says

"Some communities are poorer than the others and have no money to pay for their schools. Having local government control their education will only allow the wealthy to maintain their good schools with the higher dollars wealthy communities pay, while the poor schools will continue to be poor."

[oyarde]

What do you do when you are in a situation where you say "I think we should abolish the Dept of Ed and allow schools to be run by local governments where the money will be managed better and the money will go to their own schools."

And then someone says

"Some communities are poorer than the others and have no money to pay for their schools. Having local government control their education will only allow the wealthy to maintain their good schools with the higher dollars wealthy communities pay, while the poor schools will continue to be poor."

These schools are supported by property taxes and the money spent should vary and reflect the particular community . An expensive school facility has nothing to do with the quality of education.

[heavenlyboy34]

These schools are supported by property taxes and the money spent should vary and reflect the particular community . An expensive school facility has nothing to do with the quality of education.

+a zillion. Remember the movie (I think it's called "Stand By Me") based on a real-life Math teacher who taught calculus to inner city ne'er-do-wells? Many of his students went on to get scholarships because they were inspired by this teacher.

Hell, I went to a gov'ment school in a rather fancy neighborhood, and the content still sucked. I just became an auto-didact in most subjects. :cool:

[osan]

"Some communities are poorer than the others and have no money to pay for their schools. Having local government control their education will only allow the wealthy to maintain their good schools with the higher dollars wealthy communities pay, while the poor schools will continue to be poor."

Them's the breaks. Either improve your community or move into a better one if this is so all-fired important. Don't expect the rest of us to pull you up by the bootstraps. Nobody owes you that. As someone else pointed out, sums spent do not guarantee outcomes, so rather than sit there whining about po' po' you, get to teaching your kids the right things in the right ways. Fancy buildings and equipment won't cut it. Solid curricula and staff will. Curricula can be easily had for nothing now that we have this "internet" thing. Barring that, make your own curricula. Trust me, it would not be very difficult for anyone to come up with better than most of the drech that's out there now. I've done it.

I will add this last bit: when one is poor, he soon comes to recognize the things he doesn't really need. Kids don't need fancy. They need good. They need relevant. They need education and are not getting a whole lot of that.