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Incredibly low-priced private schools

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Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#31

Post by DrSprout »

grellas wrote: post #20
mml wrote: post #3

I've lamented the fact that we are such small thinkers today. Our neighborhood public school is among the worst in the state. Local private schools cost about 1500/mo for gradeschool. I was looked at as a wild man for suggesting we should start our own school. 20 kids' worth of parents can afford to employ a teacher at a very attractive rate for both parties I suspect.

Local caring and local responsibility are key to any system of quality education. The public schools I grew up with in the American midwest (all lower middle class) were uniformly good but this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources (e.g., property taxes from the community), did not have to account to the distant bureaucracies or have to focus on prepping kids to meet minimum proficien…

>this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources

This is really the only significant part of the equation. The system is basically designed to fail. You pass a tax levy for X mills, which brings in X amount of money for the school system, and never a dollar more. Property values go up, but property taxes do not. The budget therefore shrinks every year due to inflation, and every 10-15 years the situation gets so dire that the district has to put a ballot issue up for a tax "increase" to get funding back up to the levels of 10-15 years ago.

In most areas of the Midwest, this poor voter understanding of how schools are funded has resulted in a steady decline in school expenditures, even as actual costs of education have outpaced inflation.

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#32

Post by hga »

sethg wrote: post #21

If this were an article about poor people in India hiring their own militia because they couldn’t get adequate protection from the local government-sponsored police force, would anyone be considering this a model for the US to emulate?

No, because in the US the people are the militia, and outside of a few states and D.C. are allowed to provide their own protection.

And of course in those nasty state the powerful hire their own militia (private security) anyway.

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#33

Post by crystalis »

patio11 wrote: post #25
sethg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call bullshit. I send my son to a private religious school ( http://www.jcdsboston.org/ ) which is not sponsored by any synagogue of millionaires. The Supreme Court declared in 1925 (Pierce v. Society of Sisters) that parents have the right to send their children to a private or religious school, and upheld in 1972 (Wisconsin v. Yoder) that parents could even get religious exemptions to state compulsory-attendance…

Your school's annual operating budget is $4.5 million dollars. (Of which ~$1.2 million is subsidized by your synagogue and other fundraising.) That lets them afford a staff to do things like, e.g., keep immunization records and shuffle them around when students transfer. If they didn't, they would be shut down. One issue down, seventy two to go. I am not seeing how this makes my contentions false.

It took you less than ten minutes to notice the reply and debunk its false claims. Don't you wish people would bother to see if they were, you know, right, before they tried to call you out on something?

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#34

Post by sethg »

patio11 wrote: post #25
sethg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call bullshit. I send my son to a private religious school ( http://www.jcdsboston.org/ ) which is not sponsored by any synagogue of millionaires. The Supreme Court declared in 1925 (Pierce v. Society of Sisters) that parents have the right to send their children to a private or religious school, and upheld in 1972 (Wisconsin v. Yoder) that parents could even get religious exemptions to state compulsory-attendance…

Your school's annual operating budget is $4.5 million dollars. (Of which ~$1.2 million is subsidized by your synagogue and other fundraising.) That lets them afford a staff to do things like, e.g., keep immunization records and shuffle them around when students transfer. If they didn't, they would be shut down. One issue down, seventy two to go. I am not seeing how this makes my contentions false.

We are not sponsored by any synagogue. (Trust me, the synagogues compete with the Jewish schools for donations.) “Other fundraising” is our fundraising.

I don’t have a breakdown of my particular school’s budget, but a sample budget for a Jewish day school (http://www.peje.org/docs/samplebudget.pdf) estimates that about two-thirds of a school’s expenditures are going to be for personnel, and about a third of the personnel expenditures are going to be for administrative staff. I really don’t think my school spends $500K a year paying someone to shuffle immunization records around.

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#35

Post by patio11 »

sethg wrote: post #19
arch_hunter wrote: post #2

Even most private schools in America charge less per pupil than the government pays to educate a student in a public school. Governments are rarely efficient because they do not have to be.

The public schools are obliged to take just about every kid who shows up, including children with severe emotional, cognitive, or physical disabilities. In the US, they are also obliged to provide disabled children with education “in the least restrictive environment”, meaning that if a disabled child can be educated with special accommodations alongside non-disabled kids, that’s what the school has to provide, even…

Private schools, by contrast, have no obligation to accommodate disabled students

That depends on your jurisdiction. For example, you've indicated you live in Massachusetts. Two minutes of Googling found that 151C (e) makes it unlawful for private schools to refuse admission to the blind, deaf, and students requiring use of dog guides. That is one law. I would not wager it is the extent of regulations on the matter.

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#36

Post by yummyfajitas »

Avshalom wrote: post #24
ovi256 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Governments are rarely efficient because they do not have to be. I'm starting to develop a theory that governments are efficient, even very much so, except to another metric. The US Gov's Education Department metric seems to be "pleasing the teacher's unions", not financial efficiency. And at that, they are very good.

Because No Child Left Behind is just every teacher's favorite legislature, and nothing makes teachers happier than 50 hour work weeks for low wages. The two biggest problems any teacher I know can find with the current public school system are: 1. Over reliance on standardized test as the only metric of education. Making it difficult to teach kids engaging material in various subjects (Nope, can't cover history's 10…

Teachers do not work 50 hour weeks. On average, teachers work 38 hour weeks. That's 24 minutes less per weekday and 42 minutes less per saturday than the average professional. They do this 9-10 months/year, the other 2-3 months a year they work dramatically less.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf

Additionally, while their wages are low, their fringe benefits are excellent. They often get defined benefit pensions, earlier retirement than other professionals, tenure and 2-3 months vacation.

http://web.missouri.edu/~podgurskym/articles/files/fringe_be...

Incidentally, while it may be the case that private schools don't educate everyone, so what? If they can educate students in category X better than public schools, but schools can educate category Y better than private, isn't it best for everyone if private schools take the X students and public takes the Y students?

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#37

Post by sethg »

patio11 wrote: post #35
sethg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public schools are obliged to take just about every kid who shows up, including children with severe emotional, cognitive, or physical disabilities. In the US, they are also obliged to provide disabled children with education “in the least restrictive environment”, meaning that if a disabled child can be educated with special accommodations alongside non-disabled kids, that’s what the school has to provide, even…

Private schools, by contrast, have no obligation to accommodate disabled students That depends on your jurisdiction. For example, you've indicated you live in Massachusetts. Two minutes of Googling found that 151C (e) makes it unlawful for private schools to refuse admission to the blind, deaf, and students requiring use of dog guides. That is one law. I would not wager it is the extent of regulations on the matter.

A private school can’t refuse admission to a deaf student, but if (for example) the student requires a sign-language interpreter to participate in class, the private school is under no obligation to pay for one. A public school in a similar situation would have to hire an interpreter.

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#38

Post by patio11 »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #36
Avshalom wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because No Child Left Behind is just every teacher's favorite legislature, and nothing makes teachers happier than 50 hour work weeks for low wages. The two biggest problems any teacher I know can find with the current public school system are: 1. Over reliance on standardized test as the only metric of education. Making it difficult to teach kids engaging material in various subjects (Nope, can't cover history's 10…

Teachers do not work 50 hour weeks. On average, teachers work 38 hour weeks. That's 24 minutes less per weekday and 42 minutes less per saturday than the average professional. They do this 9-10 months/year, the other 2-3 months a year they work dramatically less. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf Additionally, while their wages are low, their fringe benefits are excellent. They often get defined benefi…

I agree with everything in the above post except the one unevidenced claim: that teachers' wages are low. Teachers' wages are not low in the United States on average.

Quoth the BLS:

Median annual wages of kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers ranged from $47,100 to $51,180 in May 2008; the lowest 10 percent earned $30,970 to $34,280; the top 10 percent earned $75,190 to $80,970.

You can scroll down the list of occupations and see some folks who get paid less than teachers. It is an eye-opener in some cases (firefighters make less than middle school teachers? Really? Whoa.)

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#39

Post by llimllib »

mml wrote: post #3

I've lamented the fact that we are such small thinkers today. Our neighborhood public school is among the worst in the state. Local private schools cost about 1500/mo for gradeschool. I was looked at as a wild man for suggesting we should start our own school. 20 kids' worth of parents can afford to employ a teacher at a very attractive rate for both parties I suspect.

> Once upon a time there were four smart women named Louise Sivy, Helen Braun, Ethel Rew, and Patricia Troy who saw a need for an independent early childhood and elementary program offering small classes and a challenging multi-faceted curriculum. They had been colleagues at Wroxeter-on-the-Severn School and opened Chesapeake Academy in 1980, with just 36 students. They held classes at a space previously occupied, believe it or not, by a beauty parlor. The next year classes were held in a local church before moving to our present location in Arnold, MD just a few miles from Annapolis.

> The four smart women were resourceful. Moving from the beautiful castle-like school building at Wroxeter they found they were in need of basic furniture for classrooms and bartered for desks and chairs with local schools. They were conscious of fiscal needs and worked with generous families to administer the school’s financial resources.

> They wrote curriculum, taught classes and worked with their faculty to lay the groundwork for the individualized curriculum and the active learning philosophy Chesapeake Academy champions today. The four smart women were visionary. They embraced technology as an educational resource, while Apple® computer company was just finding its' way into the school marketplace.

http://www.chesapeakeacademy.com/podium/default.aspx?t=10367...

Patricia Troy is the mother of Dave Troy, a local entrepreneur, and she did exactly what you're proposing.

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#40

Post by llimllib »

crystalis wrote: post #33
patio11 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your school's annual operating budget is $4.5 million dollars. (Of which ~$1.2 million is subsidized by your synagogue and other fundraising.) That lets them afford a staff to do things like, e.g., keep immunization records and shuffle them around when students transfer. If they didn't, they would be shut down. One issue down, seventy two to go. I am not seeing how this makes my contentions false.

It took you less than ten minutes to notice the reply and debunk its false claims. Don't you wish people would bother to see if they were, you know, right, before they tried to call you out on something?

and ten minutes after you posted this the guy posted a defense that at the very least passes the sniff test. You think maybe you should let an argument happen before you, you know, make snarky comments?
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