Text 3785, 188 rader
Skriven 2006-07-08 21:59:00 av Robert E Starr JR (4258.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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* * * This message was from Josh Hill to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
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On Thu, 06 Jul 2006 16:33:05 -0700, Charlie Edmondson
<edmondson@ieee.org> wrote:

>Josh Hill wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 05 Jul 2006 10:28:46 -0700, Charlie Edmondson
>> <edmondson@ieee.org> wrote:

>>>So, why are the poor urban districts still too bad?  Could it have 
>>>anything to do with the people who live there?  Or the environment 
>>>outside the school, with drugs, gangs, and other influences?  Of course 
>>>not!  Or that many teachers don't like working where there are serious 
>>>health threats from the student body, so you have to offer more money, 
>>>so you get some teachers more interested in money than teaching...
>> 
>> 
>> Seems to me you've just listed some of the reasons why urban school
>> districts need more money than suburban ones, rather than less.
>> 
>Ah, I see that either I mis-stated the argument, or you are creating a 
>strawman...

Not a straw man, just, I think, just a response. It doesn't deny the
role of the factors you mentioned, which are real and I think
frequently underestimated, but it /does/ deny that this somehow
justifies spending less on the students in those schools than the
suburbs do. I've had teachers who worked in those schools tell me
exactly the opposite: they have kids who need serious help and they
just can't give them the attention they need.

>Actually, why does everyone always assume that, without the benefits of 
>the central control, the urban school districts will be underfunded? 
>Actually, IMHO, they have plenty of funds, and would probably have more 
>if there were not so many 'interested' parties taking their cut.

Urban school districts have much less per student than suburban ones.

>  After 
>all, they should have a huge tax base to draw from...

Huge tax base? Charlie, every city in the country has the same problem
-- they've been stuck with the costs of paying for the nation's poor.
So if you're middle class and you live in a city, you pay not only for
the services you use, but for the services used by the poor -- and
they use a /lot/ of expensive services. And that has a snowball effect
since the high taxes and poor services push businesses and prosperous
residents out of the city, further straightening the tax base and
reducing the opportunities of the poor people who remain.

To make matters worse, states suck the cities' economies dry and the
Feds suck the economies of the urban states. New York City, for
example, would be much better off if New York State were independent
of the nation, and much much better off if New York City were
impendent of the state, and much much much better off if Manhattan
were independent of New York City even /with/ all the disproportionate
number of poor people it has to support.

The situation is completely cynical. The red states -- the ones that
are always complaining about how libruls are stealing their money --
take $2000 more per capita from the Feds than the blue states. In New
York City, each student gets thousands of dollars less from the state
than the kids in the upstate suburbs. And so forth.

One of the most sickening examples of the way things work: the Bush
Administration's recent decision to strip New York and Washington of
terrorism funds and give them to politically useful rural areas that
don't face a significant terrorist threat and had already been
receiving a disproportionate share of anti-terrorism funds.

I just read the other day about another plot directed at New York,
this one to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel. Those are /my/ friends the
Administration is putting at risk for tawdry political advantage.
Sorry for getting angry, but from my perspective, the members of this
obscenely corrupt Republican Administration should be taken out and
shot. What kind of bottom feeder would do such a thing?

>On that same subject, the was the interesting case of the Irvine Unified 
>School District.  Seems that, in the depths of time when such things 
>were initially set up, Irvine was classified as rural.  After all, 50 
>years ago it was mainly orange groves and cattle. (It wasn't call the 
>Irvine Ranch for nothing!)  Now, of course, it is a major city of almost 
>200K and a technology hub.  But, the state still funds it as though it 
>was rural.  Since rural districts get less per student than urban 
>districts, the state doesn't want to change.  They don't want to cough 
>up the money.
>
>> I'm always amused by the way middle class posters, generally white
>> suburbanites, defend the fact that poor schools get less than middle
>> class ones. Funny, isn't it, how those brave crusaders for fiscal
>> restraint will tell you that class size and teacher salaries don't
>> matter because the poor kids are the problem, but don't save
>> themselves some money by increasing the class sizes and reducing
>> teacher salaries in their own schools.
>> 
>
>Or, why should we increase our class sizes and reduce teacher salaries 
>just because some urban district 50 miles away can't (or more usually, 
>won't) fund reduced class sizes, new buildings, additional teachers, 
>etc.  Those districts get more per student than we do!

Ditto. If you pay x dollars for teacher salaries, the cities should be
able to pay the same. And if those cities can afford it, well, they're
unusual. Because the cities I've lived in have all been straightened.
Like the little city I live in now. We get the poor, we have to police
the crack dealers. The suburbs get the taxes and none of the problems.
So our property taxes are much higher than the taxes in the suburbs
and our schools and services are worse.
 
>>>Josh, government is best local.  Yes, there will be abuses, but they 
>>>will be a lot smaller and localized than the abuses you get when you 
>>>consolidate it in state and federal hands.
>> 
>> 
>> I think you've taken an argument about money and turned it into an
>> argument about control. And while they aren't entirely separate,
>> neither are they as tightly linked as you suggest. Certainly I don't
>> think that starving inner-city schools of funds is the answer.
>> 
>> But, since you saw fit to change the topic, I'll note that, when other
>> factors such as populace and the availability of funds are accounted
>> for, the best public schools have been and are the ones in the most
>> populous cities and states.
>> 
>Oh?  Would you consider Whitehave a populous city?  (now know as South 
>Memphis, since it was annexed in my youth.  Known more for the one house 
>in it, where some R&R singer used to live.)  When I grew up there, it 
>had TWO public schools with national rankings, at least until they 
>decided to bus half the local students somewhere else, and bused in a 
>bunch of students who didn't care.  Note I said didn't care.  Not of a 
>different race, not of a different socio-economic background, they just 
>didn't care.  They were being treated as pawns in some big shots power 
>game, and they knew it.  Some wanted to take advantage of going to the 
>better school.  Most just tore it up...
>
>I graduated a year early to get out before the worst of it hit. 
>Interesting to see a nationally ranked school go to nothing in just one 
>year...

Which is why I said when "other factors such as populace" are factored
in. It's no secret that if you fill a school with students from
comfortable backgrounds, the school will do well. The real question
here is whether the schools are doing as well as they can with the
students they have. I humbly submit that a school that has to teach
classes in janitorial closets and can't afford art classes or science
teachers or physical education classes isn't doing the best it can.

>> And that I've seen decentralization do great /harm/ to schools, as
>> when New York City districts were given independence from the
>> notoriously bureaucratic Board of Education in the 60's, a move which
>> proved utterly disastrous (the local board proved incompetent and
>> corrupt) and had to be reversed. 
>> 
>> It's nice to play Jeffersonian republican citizen-farmer (Don't Tread
>> On Me!), but truth be told most of us buy our food at the A&P.
>> 
>
>So, ALL the districts were incompentent and corrupt?  Or just one or 
>two.  And, how much help did they get to become that way from all the 
>former bureaucrats who now found fresh, naive meat to feast upon...
>
>Ubetcha I'm cynical!

I don't know the percentages, but I think it's fair to say that, on
average, the poorer the district the more corrupt it was. And it had
little to do with the BOE bureaucrats: rather, it was the districts'
separation from the BOE that led to the corruption.

-- 
Josh

"I love it when I'm around the country club, and I hear people talking about
the debilitating
effects of a welfare society. At the same time, they leave their kids a
lifetime and beyond
of food stamps. Instead of having a welfare officer, they have a trust officer.
And instead
of food stamps, they have stocks and bonds."

- Warren Buffett
                                              
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