Posted on 12/11/2008 10:13:57 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Nothing dramatizes the two-tier public-education system quite like the announcement by the First Couple that their daughters, 10 and 7, will attend Sidwell Friends, perhaps the elitist of the elite private schools in Washington, tuition $30,000 a year.
"Sidwell," the parents joke, "is where Episcopalians teach Jews how to be Quakers." The Obamas called Sidwell, as the locals refer to it, the "best fit" of security and comfort for their children. No doubt. Few begrudge the Parents in Chief seeking the best education money can buy. It's easier than choosing a puppy.
Unfortunately, most Americans don't have that kind of opportunity or that kind of money, particularly in Washington, where the public schools are, to put it kindly, lousy. These schools are distinguished for the lowest performance rates of any school district in the nation despite spending $13,000 per pupil, third highest in the country.
No congressman sends his children to public schools in the nation's capital. More than a quarter of the teachers in the public schools send their children to private school. The Obamas noted that their friends, many of whom will become colleagues on the White House staff, send their daughters to private schools. Joe Biden's grandchildren will go to school with the Obama girls. Chelsea Clinton went to Sidwell and then on to Stanford and Oxford. President Carter sent his daughter Amy to a public school for a while, but soon reconsidered and sent her to Sidwell and then to Brown. Private-school education doesn't determine acceptance to an elite college, but it makes it easier.
Though Washington has several good charter schools, which are funded with public money and run independently of the public-school bureaucracy, their capacity is limited. (The Obama girls would likely have made the cut.) My grandsons attend one, and there's a long waiting list. Charters are not burdened with platinum-plated union contracts and "teacher tenure" designed to protect the incompetents.
Reforms are vehemently opposed by the American Federation of Teachers, the big umbrella union with lots of clout. Beholden as he is to the unions, the president-elect is not likely to offend them. He has emphatically opposed vouchers because they "might benefit some kids at the top; what you're going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom." Unlike his own kids, who have already fled.
Few parents (and grandparents) I've talked to envy the Obamas for their presidential privileges -- the servants and limousines and the big Boeing 747 -- but they truly envy their ability to educate their children in a good school. Michelle Obama insists that her daughters will make their own beds and won't rely on the servants, and good for her. But neither will they get a glimpse of how most of the children in Washington, the majority of whom are black, suffer from an inferior education. That's a vividly drawn line dividing childhood friendships.
The public schools were segregated by race when I grew up in Washington. They're segregated just as rigidly today by economic class, as schools are in many cities, and the result is all but the same -- public schools for blacks, private schools for whites. I once took my son out of a public school because his American history teacher was absent more days than she was on the job; in one conversation, she couldn't identify the fourth president of the United States without consulting her lesson plan, and was not embarrassed for it. She was protected, as incompetent teachers are protected today, by union-backed tenure.
Michelle Rhee, the tough new chancellor of the Washington schools who gets more grief than thanks for trying to do something about the quality of education, offered teachers who agree to give up tenure considerably higher pay. Most declined. They know what we know -- that few could pass merit muster.
In the bad old days, Southerners often said they would be happy to send their children to school with the likes of the children of Ralph Bunche, the secretary-general of the United Nations and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, but not with the children the elite private schools wouldn't take. Such thinking was, of course, racist. Nobody would say such a thing today. But many poor black (and white) children get a public school education in the ghettos that wouldn't prepare them for Sidwell Friends even if their parents could afford it.
Administrative and economic racism, which President Bush called "the bigotry of low expectations," dooms these children, and perpetuates prejudice, as well. Racism, like that rose by any other name, still smells -- but it's not sweet.
I never attended the very worst of the worst public schools, but it still was a bad experience. They’re long, long beyond reforming. People just need to stop using them.
That is the most telling line of the whole piece. My kids go to a Catholic school that's spends considerably less than $13,000 per pupil. And, it is a world class education.
Things will never change as long as the teacher's unions have as much clout as they do today (and will enjoy much more in the coming administration). It is criminal.
I think Jesse Jackson, Sr. got it right with this fellow. He ain’t one of them inside.
They aren't good enough. Consider parochial schools for your kids.
Call them what Neal Boortz' calls them. Government schools. That's what they are.
it's purely a demographic issue
I'd not heard that before, that the Carters pulled Amy out of public and sent her to Sidwell. I guess sending her to public school was just for show.
Meanwhile, the Bush twins both graduated from public schools in Texas.
Careful - I mentioned that once and got ragged on because President Bush was ONLY Governor at that time. Although while President, at least one of the girls (Barbara?) went to something like the University of Texas (in Austin I think). Probably a great school, but not in the “elite” set of institutions typically thought of.
Just quibbling - I have no doubt Washington DC test scores are horrible, but...
I don’t think Washington DC has the lowest performance rates of any district in the country. This is not an easy comparison to make in the first place, as there is very little in the way of national test-score data that permits district-to-district comparisons between states. Washington scores are usually compared to state scores, that include suburban and rural districts that tend to perform much better.
There are probably many big-city and inner-suburb districts that are at least as bad as Washington, and I have no doubt that many are actually worse.
NO school choice for YOU!
You need to view Animal Farm. THAT is what the LEFT is all about. Some animals “are more equal than others”.
“$13,000 per pupil, third highest in the country.
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The true cost is actually nearly **twice** that! It is $24,600!!!
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/04/07/the-real-cost-of-public-schools/
Any time any state publishes how much it costs to educate a child in one of its government indoctrination camps **double** that amount. In my state for instance, no school building bonds are included, and no retired teacher expenses either. Retired teachers are considered retired state workers and are NOT included in the budget. Also, the schools in my state get many county services for free that a private school would need to pay for. For instance, lawn care, police patrolling the halls, and police to direct traffic at sporting events.
By the way, my county is building a $50 MILLIION dollar high school. No, that $50 million is not considered a school expense.
There are schools so bad in this nation that it would be better for the child to receive NO education whatsoever than to step foot in them.
I seriously mean it.
Things will never change as long as the teacher’s unions have as much clout as they do today (and will enjoy much more in the coming administration).
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The very concept of tuition free government schooling is flawed. These schools must be eliminated completely.
They aren’t good enough for us. We’re in our 14th year of homeschooling, with at least another 18 to go.
Ah, her last line expains it all. It’s racism.
I’d be seriously interested in hearing an argument from a union supporter, of any sector,
how the existance of unions helps the consumer.
Not sure what you mean by "no" education. But I'll say that any formal education would be inferior to THIS kind of education:
Deuteronomy 6:6-9 (New King James Version)
6 “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
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