Scholarships and voucher programs are two ways that underprivileged children can attend private schools.
Vouchers *with* scholarships, yes?
littlek - in florida we have both
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McGentrix
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Wed 22 Aug, 2007 04:53 pm
littlek wrote:
onyxelle wrote:
McGentrix wrote:
dagmaraka wrote:
McG, are you saying that ALL poor parents, those that cannot afford private schools by any stretch of imagination, do not care about their children's education and do not get involved in it? Because that's what I'm hearing from you.
Then you are deaf perhaps?
Having just come into this conversation, I don't think McG is saying ALLL publich school parents aren't involved in their children's education. That would be an ugly generality. What i am reading is that because PS students come from everywhere and have every sort of parent, there are MANY STUDENTS WITH UNINVOLVED PARENTS.
I happen to be an involved parent, but there are many children in both my daughters' classes as well as the students in my Husband's class who's parents are so uninvolved, they don't see the teacher except when they're forced to or their child won't get their quarterly report cards. Hang around for parent/teacher conferences if you ever have children, and you'll see this to be so.
I've even heard a mother tell my husband she couldn't 'be coming all out to the school because shes' trying to open a restaurant and that is her FIRST PRIORITY right now'. This is indicative of MANY PARENTS in public schools. Not all, not most even, but a great many of them.
Dasha and I both read into McG's post, validly or invalidly, that he was implying poorer students those doing poorly in school 'probably have' uninvolved parents. In the richish burbs I teach in, I see parents at all economic levels uninvolved in their students' education. AND I see students who do well with involved parents doing poorly and the opposite.
Thing is, I NEVER mentioned anything about wealth. To tell you the truth, it never even entered my thinking as we have no "rich" private schools here. That was your guys first conclusion and just shows that you believe private schools to be elitist. Because you think that way, you were offended by my post.
I taught middle and high school for five years and I have seen first hand the level of parental involvement so don't think for a minute I don't know what I am talking about here. It is the reason I left.
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engineer
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Wed 22 Aug, 2007 05:12 pm
Quote:
I was referring to the term "better". "In private schools where teachers tend to get a better group of students". That's a judgment on the students, their abilities, etc. I don't believe the students anywhere are "better" or "worse".
I am sure that there are parents in private schools (far less, certainly - let's just say 'some') in private schools that are also uninvolved.
"Better" in this case refers to a wide variety of factors. Money is one of them. Even here where the majority of private schools are small, parent run entities or church based, the families of the students must make signficant sacrifices to send their students to these schools, sacrifices that other students might not be able to make. But better also refers to parental involvement, behaviour issues, overall family education, etc. ON AVERAGE, these important factors in education outcomes are better in private schools. This tends to be a more desirable student body for teachers making the spots more competitive and driving down salaries.
I have three students in the public education system here and a fourth will start in a couple of years. I will put them up against anyone from a private school, but that doesn't mean I can't recognize the disparity in the average backgrounds between students in public and private schools. Do you disagree with the basic premise or is it the word "better" that touches a sore spot?
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dagmaraka
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Wed 22 Aug, 2007 05:20 pm
no, i agree with what you spell out above. it is the word 'better' that rubs me the wrong way. clearly, private shools are selective and tend to have smaller student bodies. it's like a college track in public high school, let's say, thus i don't think the comparison (better and worse) is quite fair. "better" has a highly judgmental charge that is being attached to the students, while the factors that you describe(money, parents, whathaveyou) have little to do with the particular students' abilities, if you know what i mean. but i know you didn't mean it in a judgmental way.
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Joe Nation
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Wed 22 Aug, 2007 05:57 pm
I would like to know what the 37 languages being taught at that high school are.
Scholarships and voucher programs are two ways that underprivileged children can attend private schools.
Vouchers *with* scholarships, yes?
littlek - in florida we have both
At the same time? I mean, if you get a voucher to a private school, does the town/city/state pay the tuition?
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Joe Nation
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Wed 22 Aug, 2007 06:00 pm
The one in Fishin's home town (which I thought was Boston).
Joe(I think I forgot Portuguese)Nation
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littlek
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Wed 22 Aug, 2007 06:01 pm
Fishin lives in a medium-distant burb (or maybe it's rural...?) outside of Boston.
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dagmaraka
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Wed 22 Aug, 2007 06:04 pm
...which is why they have cambodian and vietnamese, i presume. but who are they teaching arabic and farsi, and croatian and what is Slav? I doubt there are enough kids to have a class for some of those languages on any given year. maybe pooled classes from more schools? interesting.
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Joe Nation
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Wed 22 Aug, 2007 06:10 pm
I was just having fun trying to come up with a list of 37, I think I got to twenty-five, twenty-six with the addition of PoRt. Maybe Fishin can give us a link.
How about Dutch? And Catalan? Anyway, just curious.
English
French
German
Russian
Polish
Spanish
Italian
Latin
Portuguese
Chinese:
- Cantonese Yuè
- Gàn
- Jìn
- Huáinán
- Kèjiā
- Mandarin
- Min (South)
- Pínghuà
- Tuhuà (Xianghua)
- Wú
- Xiāng
Korean
Japanese
Vietnamese
Swahili
Setswana
Xitsonga
Akoose
Shuwa
Ejagham
Egyptian Arabic
Levantine Arabic
Mesopotamian Arabic
Hindi
Kashmiri
Gujarati
Malayalam
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dagmaraka
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Wed 22 Aug, 2007 06:26 pm
are all of those actually being taught or are they just 'available'?
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fishin
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Wed 22 Aug, 2007 06:31 pm
dagmaraka wrote:
...which is why they have cambodian and vietnamese, i presume. but who are they teaching arabic and farsi, and croatian and what is Slav? I doubt there are enough kids to have a class for some of those languages on any given year. maybe pooled classes from more schools? interesting.
It is weird because we don't have a huge immigrant population right here in town. We do have some from Lebanon, India, and all over China. There is a small group from Cammeroon (sp?) too. But the neighboring towns do have larger populations of Asian and Middle-Eastern immigrants.
The English, French, Spanish, German, Latin and Russian languages are offered at levels "I", "II", III", "IV" and "AP". The rest appear to be offered "as requested" for a semester at a time.
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Joe Nation
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Wed 22 Aug, 2007 06:32 pm
No Gaelic.
Joe(my mother would be mad about that for days.)Nation
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Joe Nation
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Thu 23 Aug, 2007 03:11 am
I didn't mean to hyjack this thread because I think it's an important topic of the day.
Here's what I think are some sub-questions:
Should the teachers at the high school Fishin gave as an example be paid the same as the ones in the twenty-seven schools in New York City listed as "Persistently Dangerous"? NYC Schools
Can we afford as a nation to have any such schools?
Joe(Should math teachers have more body guards than say art teachers?)Nation
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candidone1
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Thu 23 Aug, 2007 08:09 pm
I'd be interested to hear what the population of fishin's language school is, what other courses are offered there, and if these languages are in fact offered as an in class experience or as correspondence/online learning.
I find it hard to believe there is any school that can offer, and justify offering, 37 different languages.
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dagmaraka
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Thu 23 Aug, 2007 08:41 pm
Joe Nation wrote:
I didn't mean to hyjack this thread because I think it's an important topic of the day.
Here's what I think are some sub-questions:
Should the teachers at the high school Fishin gave as an example be paid the same as the ones in the twenty-seven schools in New York City listed as "Persistently Dangerous"? NYC Schools
Can we afford as a nation to have any such schools?
Joe(Should math teachers have more body guards than say art teachers?)Nation
my lay, gut instinct would be that such schools could use more money than regular schools to deal with criminality, to develop alternative programs to get kids more engaged, etc.... but this doesn't seem likely if the money comes from the property taxes....
Are there exceptions? Do some schools get extra money from the state?
