education

[serjykalstryke]

so, firstly, i reject the conservative idea that schooling should be privatized, but i also reject the liberal view that our broken system is fine, i say we get schools even more local, and get the federal government out of it, the no child left behind act has left us all behind, and the kids are paying the price. any thoughts?

[Rob Withers]

Do you reject school vouchers? What do you see as the problem with them if you do?

[serjykalstryke]

I'm open to the idea, I'll admit that I am not well versed enough in them to have an intellagent discussion about it though.

[Matthew Tabler]

I concur with school governance being more localized. What's good for California schools isn't necessarily good for schools in Maine. We need to give the power to regulate schools back to the people that send their kids there.

[Rob Withers]

I am in favor of national testing, but I don't think we should attach funding to it. We need a way to compare the performance of schools and kids across the nation.

[serjykalstryke]

i'm also in favor with national testing, and i'm also in favor of a national bare minimum for what is acceptable from students, and if the kids aren't performing up to par then i believe there should be a law that the state governments have to divert some type of help to the school. but beyond that schooling and funding should be localized

[Will_MacKay]

Serjykalstryke, one of your previous posts indicated you were a senior in high school recently. As a recent student, you have insight to the schooling system in Virginia. Do you currently have any input to your school system ability to deliver education to the students of your area?

I think school systems all too often fail to follow up with their “customers”. It seems that once a person graduates, the school system never asks “How well do you feel we prepared you to face (college or workforce)?” There could be other questions asked to determine needs of improvement for the local school system.

School systems should ask these questions after the first full year out of high school and fifth year out. The last battery of questions could ask if the individual if they view their education from the local school system was successful, if they graduated college, have they made career advancements in their current job because of the education you received, and so forth.

I think the Modern Whig Party of Virginia could use this idea, with serious fleshing out of course, as a means to show we are serious about improving education in Virginia. This idea would put the focus on the appropriate level of government (local school board) rather the State Board of Education. It makes the local school board responsible for the results of their directives and policies. The results of these studies could be required to be presented to the local population as a part of the annual report and required to be sent to the state board of education for their review.

[Arane]

There was one idea thrown out by one of my teachers when I was in college - make schools more like colleges.

The idea behind this was that the government would set a base line of standards (basic reading, writing, math, and science) which the schools must meet. Beyond that, let the free market reign. Right now, many public schools have rather wasteful spending and many have a low level of even meeting the basics. Instead of just providing free for all, the government provides vouchers for schools based on the calculated cost of running the school, and anything above and beyond is between the company (i.e. - the school) and the consumers (the kids and parents). If parents want their kids to go to the school they view as being better, they'll choose that school over the lesser ones. This would cause the schools to then start competing with eachother. The low-end schools still provide the basics of what kids need, while the high-end schools provide that extra for people who want to pay for it. Every school is given a budget, decided locally, based on what their expenses should be in terms of cost-analysist to meet the standards, and anything above and beyond that is paid by the institution itself (and whatever is required of the consumers).

Looking at schools today, there is already a degree of this going on. However, it is costing the federal government more than it should as the schools do not seem to even be bothering with trying to streamline their budget. The lower-end schools still get the students within their borders whose parents don't want to pay the extra to send them to a private school or into a school not in their zone.