Can political opponents have a civilized conversation about education?

[Contrarian]

I just finished reading an article in The Washington Post which is rare in this U.S. divided climate.

--> There are professionals in every organisation which always look for ideas to conversate with "the other side", instead of pointing the finger. 

The Question that they asked is: Can political opponents have a civilized conversation about education?

---

by Jay Matthews

Rage over education issues fills campaign speeches, op-ed pages and cable news shows, but are these outbursts making schools and teachers better?

I have been looking for reasoned arguments between people on opposing sides that illuminate the best and most politically possible improvements we can make in teaching and learning.

Not having found any so far, I tried creating my own. I contacted former Indiana Republican congressman Luke Messer, a partner in the law firm Bose McKinney & Evans. He is president of a nonprofit organization called Invest in Education, which lobbies for more school choice.

I asked him if he would like to have an email discussion about how to make schools better. We are similar in some ways but at different places in the school debate. He is unfriendly to teacher unions. With the exception of some of their political ads, I am for them since I remember what they did for my mom, a lifelong substitute teacher.

Messer and I both like public charter schools, but I regularly note that only 1 in 4 of them have better achievement rates than regular public schools. Messer promotes government grants to parents, often called vouchers, to pay for private schooling, while I think that reform won’t get us far. We agreed to hash out these issues and see where that took us.

Here is what we know. Despite the push by school-choice advocates to get more kids into charter and private schools, more than 80 percent of American children remain in regular public schools. Some of the school boards that run them are under fire, but surveys show parents are mostly happy with what their children are learning there.

That being the case, I asked Messer what he thinks of my view that raucous complaints by parents at school board meetings don’t do much good. Mothers and fathers have the right to speak out, but they have busy lives and usually lack the time to get involved enough to make a difference.

Messer said his group is not focused on fighting teachers unions or electing politicians of any particular party. “Our goal is to expand school choice, all forms of school choice, to give families maximum freedom to choose the best educational environment for their own child,” he said.

“Private choice enrollment — vouchers, tax credits, ESAs [education saving accounts] — have soared in the last decade,” he said. “In 2012-2013, there were about 246,000 kids in private school-choice programs. Today there are about 700,000. Thirty-one states plus D.C. now have some type of private school-choice support. Charter enrollment has grown by around 1 million kids over the last decade. Home schooling has also skyrocketed since the start of the pandemic.”

He did not mention the fight over how or whether to teach issues of gender and race in schools. His organization does not get into that. I think that part of the education debate comes from political campaigns trying to make voters angry. It does nothing to improve reading, writing, math and other important classroom activities.

Messer said expanding charters and private school-choice programs even more “would facilitate the systemic change in K-12 education that many of us have been fighting for.”

That takes our discussion to the heart of the matter. He argues that a key to improving learning would be passage of the Education Choice for Children Act (ECCA), which would create federal tax credit scholarship for kids who want to move to private schools in all 50 states.

I say it would take more than that to put significantly more children in classes where teachers are motivated to challenge students with deeper lessons and give them the individual attention they need. I think one reason the number of kids attending charters has grown more than the number using private school vouchers is that existing private schools have limited space for new applicants.

Messer responded that there is plenty of room for more private school students with vouchers. “There are tens of thousands of empty and available Catholic school seats in New York City and Philadelphia alone,” he said. He estimated at least a million private school places are available across the country.

The failure of teachers unions to stem rising enrollment in charters shows they are good at making Democratic Party campaign platforms more hostile to those kind of schools but don’t discourage parents who want to make a change.

The most successful charter networks, such as KIPP, IDEA and Uncommon, have not only pleased parents but have had a marked influence on regular public schools. In the past two decades, those charters’ opening of college-level high school courses such as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate to low-income children has helped inspire a growth in participation in AP, IB and Cambridge courses in regular neighborhood schools. Only 1 percent of high schools had at least half of their 11th- and 12th-graders in those courses in 1998. By 2019 that number had risen to 12 percent.

Also, the anti-charter rhetoric of teachers unions appears to have had no effect on ambitious principals and teachers in regular schools who are making classes more challenging.

Messer and I agree on that. He told me education reform “has occurred in red and blue communities with teachers of both parties.” Energetic principals and teachers may vote differently from each other on Election Day, but they share a willingness “to challenge the status quo, fight for kids and stand up to the teachers union establishment opposing reform,” he said.

Messer makes an excellent point about the popularity of at least the concept of school choice. “Eighty percent of African American and Latinos" support choice, he said. Even higher percentages of independents and Republicans support school choice programs.”

I think there is also an unrecognized form of increased school choice that may be the most important reason for rising average achievement in American schools over the past several decades. Parents are on average more affluent now than they were a half-century ago. That means they have more money to move to neighborhoods where the schools seem better to them.

Messer and I agree it is important to support parents who want better schools. Bigger incomes help. So do more good charters and more good private schools with space for kids with tuition vouchers.

But we both know that improving the schools takes more than just new federal laws. At the end of our discussion, Messer said, “Admittedly, none of this is a silver bullet. Nobody has found the magic formula to triple student achievement.”

“What makes most schools, charter or not, successful are great leaders who hire great teachers,” he said. “Partisan politics plays almost no role.” I could not have said that better myself.

Our schools were making progress before the pandemic. We have to count on the educators who made that happen to keep going as American schooling gets back into shape. A reasonable discussion of what reforms might help is what we need, not angry buzzwords.

Edited January 29 by Contrarian

[Michael Hardner]

I was expecting a discussion on disunity, but instead got a discussion on American education reform but way of dismantling public schools and disunifying people even more.

They can do whatever they want, but they're really doing everything possible to split into two countries.

[Nationalist]

So if I read this correctly, Messer is promoting private schooling and parental choice. That sounds reasonable. 

I also see the WAPO person tried immediately to drag the conversation to CRT, which Messer refused to engage in.

School choice is a good option in America...IMO.

[Rebound]

If you are poor and you want to go to a private school, a tax credit won’t help you one bit.  The proposal here is to take more money from public schools and give it to religious organizations. It gives benefit to the wealthy at cost to the poor. 

Edited January 29 by Rebound

[Michael Hardner]

Rebound, you have a point.  It seems that the narrative is about choice and quality but what the proponents ask for is defunding.

[reason10]

10 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

I was expecting a discussion on disunity, but instead got a discussion on American education reform but way of dismantling public schools and disunifying people even more.

They can do whatever they want, but they're really doing everything possible to split into two countries.

Politicians who pontificate about education from Washington are the biggest LIARS and HYPOCRITES in the world. Several reasons for that:

1. Yeah, Obama had a lot to say about public schools while his kid was safely tucked in Sidwell Friends PRIVATE SCHOOL.

2. The Beltway provides SEVEN PERCENT of all education funding. And most of the useless mandates (those moe ronic items that require mandatory meetings and have two counties ringing my phone off the hook for sub services) come from the Beltway. They succeed in taking the teacher from the classroom.

3. Most of the money that supports public education is raised at the COUNTY level. Most of the control of the public schools is at the county level. In the two Florida counties I'm privileged to sub, each school is almost a separate country the way they do things. Principals have the final say.

4. Judging by the quality of the elected officials of each state, I'd have to say that New York And California schools are pretty much socially promoting EVERYONE without bothering to check if anybody learned anything. Gary Newsome is the most incompetent governor in the history of the WORLD and people with less than a single digit IQ elected him.

[Rebound]

1 hour ago, reason10 said:

Politicians who pontificate about education from Washington are the biggest LIARS and HYPOCRITES in the world. Several reasons for that:

1. Yeah, Obama had a lot to say about public schools while his kid was safely tucked in Sidwell Friends PRIVATE SCHOOL.

2. The Beltway provides SEVEN PERCENT of all education funding. And most of the useless mandates (those moe ronic items that require mandatory meetings and have two counties ringing my phone off the hook for sub services) come from the Beltway. They succeed in taking the teacher from the classroom.

3. Most of the money that supports public education is raised at the COUNTY level. Most of the control of the public schools is at the county level. In the two Florida counties I'm privileged to sub, each school is almost a separate country the way they do things. Principals have the final say.

4. Judging by the quality of the elected officials of each state, I'd have to say that New York And California schools are pretty much socially promoting EVERYONE without bothering to check if anybody learned anything. Gary Newsome is the most incompetent governor in the history of the WORLD and people with less than a single digit IQ elected him.

None of that has anything to do with @Contrarian’s post. 

Edited January 30 by Rebound

[reason10]

12 hours ago, Rebound said:

None of that has anything to do with @Contrarian’s post. 

Yes it does. Politicians running for NATIONAL office are a JOKE when it comes to education. That was the point I attempted to make. Of course, a few EDUCATED posters here got it.

You must have dropped out of a Blue state school.

Edited January 30 by reason10

[reason10]

14 hours ago, Rebound said:

If you are poor and you want to go to a private school, a tax credit won’t help you one bit.  The proposal here is to take more money from public schools and give it to religious organizations. It gives benefit to the wealthy at cost to the poor. 

(Not that I'm suggesting private schools as an instant cure to bad blue state schools) How does allegedly "taking money from public schools and giving it to private schools" benefit the wealthy, if the idea is to allow a poor child the opportunity to leave an inferior public school and attend a private school? Certainly rich parents like the Obamas do not need money taken away from public schools to fund the Sidwell Friends School. Or are you suggesting THOSE wealthy benefited at cost to the poor? (Certainly, the FATHER in that Klan benefited the wealthy and CREATED a lot of poor.)

Secondly, are you assuming that ALL private schools are automatically "religious organizations?"  Show me the Southern Baptist private school chain. Show me the Jewish private schools. Hell, show me the NATION OF ISLAM private school chain, (of course that means no female students, since Islam prohibits that.) Are you suggesting there are ZERO private schools that are not affiliated with a religion?

I suggest that people from BOTH sides of the aisle grow a brain on this subject. As I have attempted to educate the BOZOS here, MOST OF THE FUNDING FOR PRIVATE SCHOOLS IS RAISED AT THE COUNTY LEVEL, not the city, NOT the state, and NOT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.  (Yes, some money comes from those entities, but a school couldn't run for half a day on the money from them.)

How is money taken from public schools? Are you attempting to say that some religious denomination has a meeting in a county and demands fund taken from ALL the public schools to finance the construction of a brand new private school? Show us some links.

[reason10]

15 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

Rebound, you have a point.  It seems that the narrative is about choice and quality but what the proponents ask for is defunding.

How do you defund at the national level, when the DOE's entire contribution to education is 7 percent of all education funding? The state funding level is only a little higher.

MOST of the funding occurs at the COUNTY level. How does defunding at the COUNTY level work? Do you have any links where a school district in some county pulls operating and construction capital from public schools in order to build and run a private school?

Personally, I say that is impossible because at the county level, education is competing with fire, police, parks and other services. And at the county level, the money comes from property taxes. If you wonder why public schools look like bombed out broken down shells in inner cities, just look at the value of the broken down houses in those same inner cities. It's no accident. And in counties with homes running a half a million and up, you'll see brand new, ultra modern schools.

Frankly, it's a bad idea to just assume a private school is an automatic fix for what's wrong with bad schools. Private schools are able to pick and choose their clientele, so their numbers will always be stellar.

If you want to know what TEACHERS think about all this schitt (and I listen to real teachers in the teachers' lounge during lunch EVERY time I work a sub shift) they blame the negligent parents, for sending little brats to school with ZERO impulse control. I stopped subbing at one inner city school because there were some kids with anger issues who are on a path to committing major mayhem in a classroom and frankly I don't want to be on the property when that happens.

[reason10]

On 1/29/2023 at 7:50 AM, Nationalist said:

So if I read this correctly, Messer is promoting private schooling and parental choice. That sounds reasonable. 

I also see the WAPO person tried immediately to drag the conversation to CRT, which Messer refused to engage in.

School choice is a good option in America...IMO.

I know I'm going to sound like the proverbial turd in the punch bowl, but school choice not only will NOT make things any better, it ignores the problem.

Some schools (not all) are failing because of negligent PARENTS. Talk to ANY teacher and you'll get the same observation. I've seen it. I've watched parents get their little monsters designated ESE to make the little brats less accountable for their actions. (ONE high school kid actually punched a COP on campus. He was arrested. His mother bailed him out. The next day the principal wanted to suspend this little thug. His mother threatened legal action against the school board because the kid was designated ESE. Stuff like that happens all the time.)

PARENTS are the ones who fail to socialize their offspring and unleash little monsters who disrupt class every day.

PARENTS are the ones who spend $300 on trendy NIKES for their kids but somehow forget to buy them school supplies. (I've seen MANY a kid wearing shoes that cost more than my entire outfit that day, coming up to me to borrow a pencil)

PARENTS are the ones who do not make their children study, do homework. PARENTS actually threaten litigation if a kid brings home a D on a test.

Do I sound like a whiny teacher with these details? I've been subbing at three different Florida counties since 1999. I've listened to HUNDREDS of teachers.

Want to fix education? Forget the politics. Forget the fancy "school choice" options. (Negligent parents don't give a rat's ass about "choice." They just want their larva OUT of the house for the day.)

Talk to a teacher.

[Contrarian]

@reason10 at his most reasonable point.  Will answer shortly to your ranting, but is good to notice the improvement in language. Florida closes the bars early on Sunday probably. 

Edited January 30 by Contrarian

[reason10]

Just now, Contrarian said:

@reason10 at his most reasonable point.  Will answer shortly to your ranting, but is good to notice the improvement in language. Florida closes the bars on Sunday probably. 

Since your brain is so closed that ANY items I bring up are automatically "ranting" I don't expect an intelligent discussion about this from you.

Unless there is an actual school teacher on this thread, I'm probably the ONLY education expert you have. The BS about "school choice" is a red herring. It does not address the real problem. I've worked the system for 24 years.

Florida does not close alcohol establishments on Sunday. And I'm pretty sure your meth dealer also doesn't cease cooking on Sundays so you're able to post while fcked up as well.

(Maybe you should keep this about the subject and leave out the childish insults. You're no match for someone with an education.)

[Contrarian]

3 minutes ago, reason10 said:

Since your brain is so closed that ANY items I bring up are automatically "ranting" I don't expect an intelligent discussion about this from you.

Unless there is an actual school teacher on this thread, I'm probably the ONLY education expert you have. The BS about "school choice" is a red herring. It does not address the real problem. I've worked the system for 24 years.

Florida does not close alcohol establishments on Sunday. And I'm pretty sure your meth dealer also doesn't cease cooking on Sundays so you're able to post while fcked up as well.

(Maybe you should keep this about the subject and leave out the childish insults. You're no match for someone with an education.)

Let's skip over the insults. 

I want you for 10 seconds to step out from your Florida bubble and answer a simple question:

Where, and what area can the left and the right in America meet on the education topic? 

Edited January 30 by Contrarian

[Michael Hardner]

7 minutes ago, Contrarian said:

Let's skip over the insults. 

I want you for 10 seconds to step out from your Florida bubble and answer a simple question:

Where, and what area can the left and the right in America meet on the education topic? 

You are at a crossroads here.  If, as I expect, the answer is "nowhere" then you have an example of a zealot.  On a political discussion board, talking to a zealots has less utility than:

- Talking to a pigeon in the park
- Talking to a mannequin in a departments store
- Praying
- Talking to onesself, which is what you are doing

You are, like the monkeys at the beginning of 2001:A Space Odyssey, about to discover the great black monolith that is the IGNORE list...

[Contrarian]

11 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

You are at a crossroads here.  If, as I expect, the answer is "nowhere" then you have an example of a zealot.  On a political discussion board, talking to a zealots has less utility than:

- Talking to a pigeon in the park
- Talking to a mannequin in a departments store
- Praying
- Talking to onesself, which is what you are doing

You are, like the monkeys at the beginning of 2001:A Space Odyssey, about to discover the great black monolith that is the IGNORE list...

I disagree, the way we are taught to lower our standard for certain groups in society, we can lower our standards for right wing fanatics that are lost in the bubble. 

It only takes 1 simple message and it can change someone's view. The way you showed patience to that fanatic believer, @West, you probably passed more knowledge to him/her than his/her fanatics ever did from the populist side. 

So really, is the correct choice to ignore? 

Edited January 30 by Contrarian

[Michael Hardner]

9 minutes ago, Contrarian said:

1. I disagree, the way we are taught to lower our standard for certain groups in society, we can lower our standards for right wing fanatics that are lost in the bubble. 

2.  The way you showed patience to that fanatic believer, @West, you probably passed more knowledge to him/her than his/her fanatics ever did from the populist side. 

3. So really, is the correct choice to ignore? 

1. If you have time to try to teach a gorilla to type, have at it.  Don't expect Shakespeare unless you have a lot of time.
2. But none of these people have any time for me.  Only the populists who are centrists at heart, but swayed by the paranoid messages in the mainstream, see any value in me.  The thing you are missing is that they don't TRUST.  The whole society is built on us trusting people we don't know and hard left and right paranoids have zero time for it.
3. I read almost every post you write because it's a good use of my time.  You seem to have a lot more time than me.

[reason10]

On 1/29/2023 at 7:43 AM, Michael Hardner said:

I was expecting a discussion on disunity, but instead got a discussion on American education reform but way of dismantling public schools and disunifying people even more.

They can do whatever they want, but they're really doing everything possible to split into two countries.

Don't hold your breath on public schools being "dismantled."

Around 1998 Jeb Bush because the FIRST Republican governor of Florida in a long time. (A long line of Democrat governors managed to sink Florida's public schools to around #48 in the country). I remember his education reform, (which had EVERYONE howling in anger.) It was named the "A+ Plan."

For the first time in history, the actual schools would be held accountable. They would be evaluated and graded. (The evaluations consisted of the kids taking the FCAT tests, which tracked if they were learning anything at all. Teachers HATED this and a lot of parents thought this placed too much stress on their kids. My youngest daughter took the test and said it was the easiest test of all time.)

If a school falls BELOW a certain level, it is put on a timetable. Three years of failing and the state would do one of several things: Replace the principal (if that is the problem); send more money to the school (if that is the problem); allow the kids the choice of either magnet schools or charter schools; and IN THE EVENT OF THE INNER CITY SCHOOLS ONLY, allow the kids to attend a private school. (This assumes the private school would accept a failing kid, would agree to the compensation the state was offering, etc)

As you probably have surmised, the private school angle of the law was attacked in court. Even though it was designated for the poorest students in the state, the opponents kept calling it PRIVATE SCHOOLS FOR THE RICH.

Some of the reforms worked because the teachers responded to the pressure and worked hard. Florida's public K-12 schools are close to the highest in the country.

Thing is, the idea of choice of a private school is a cruel joke. If a kid is an imbecile, lazy in class, undisciplined, a private school is not going to be able to wave a magic wand and turn that kid into a valedictorian. And suggesting "school choice" does nothing but let negligent parents off the hook.

Oh, by the way, the "charter schools" is also misleading. Charter schools are usually connected with the regular county public schools. I've subbed for several, so they are on the roster.

(I did sub for a private charter school in Orlando, for a couple of days and barely got out with my life. Mostly gangs there. And the owner of that school was arrested for attempting to defraud the public school transportation system.)

School choice is NOT a magic bullet. It does not address the problem. But it certainly looks good on a politician who wants to use education to cover up his/her other failings.

[dialamah]

9 minutes ago, Contrarian said:

I disagree, the way we are taught to lower our standard for certain groups in society, we can lower our standards for right wing fanatics that are lost in the bubble. 

It only takes 1 simple message and it can change someone's view. The way you showed patience to that fanatic believer, @West, you probably passed more knowledge to him/her than his/her fanatics ever did from the populist side. 

So really, is the right choice to ignore? 

I think the right choice is to ignore, at least for me.  Despite my desire to be more patient, as @Michael Hardnerso often demonstrates, I'm guilty of falling to a lower level than I like for myself.  

In any case, I know from personal experience that one has to come to the realization themselves that their beliefs are extreme; no amount of outside information will persuade them.

[Contrarian]

6 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

1. If you have time to try to teach a gorilla to type, have at it.  Don't expect Shakespeare unless you have a lot of time.
2. But none of these people have any time for me.  Only the populists who are centrists at heart, but swayed by the paranoid messages in the mainstream, see any value in me.  The thing you are missing is that they don't TRUST.  The whole society is built on us trusting people we don't know and hard left and right paranoids have zero time for it.
3. I read almost every post you write because it's a good use of my time.  You seem to have a lot more time than me.

1. Yes, I have no problem teaching, a left behind @taxme how to share a link. If he contacts me, no names needs to be shared, I will help him how to attach to his garbage, a link. 

2. Of course they do not, this is how the anger built up on the other side, because of you and people like @Moonbox, "They don't have time for me". 

3. I do have time, I can look at a 3D sketch and already in 3-5 seconds know already what is wrong with it. The curse of someone getting a gift. What do you do with your gift? Ignore People? 

Edited January 30 by Contrarian

[reason10]

24 minutes ago, Contrarian said:

Let's skip over the insults. 

I want you for 10 seconds to step out from your Florida bubble and answer a simple question:

Where, and what area can the left and the right in America meet on the education topic? 

Not going to happen, regardless of what your blue state inferior education bubble may be feeding you.

If you are STILL trying to find "left" and "right" when discussing education, you have NO idea what you're talking about. The LAST thing that should be infused into education is politics.

Extremist Democrats are demanding segregated dorms for blacks, zero failing grades, and CRT forced on kindergarteners (along with Black Queer Studies.) Extremist Republicans are demanding that funds be taken from public schools to pay for a kid attending a private school, as if that was a magic wave of the wand. Both sides ignore the problem. NEITHER side wants to talk to actual TEACHERS about the problem.

If you're serious about fixing education, ask my why school choice is a cruel joke.

[reason10]

5 minutes ago, dialamah said:

I think the right choice is to ignore, at least for me.  Despite my desire to be more patient, as @Michael Hardnerso often demonstrates, I'm guilty of falling to a lower level than I like for myself.  

In any case, I know from personal experience that one has to come to the realization themselves that their beliefs are extreme; no amount of outside information will persuade them.

Everyone here is an extremist. There are NO moderates at a political message board.  That defies reality on a grand scale.

A moderate, non extremists would NEVER spend any time in a place like this.

[Nationalist]

45 minutes ago, Contrarian said:

Let's skip over the insults. 

I want you for 10 seconds to step out from your Florida bubble and answer a simple question:

Where, and what area can the left and the right in America meet on the education topic? 

Hey...if you really want a civil discussion...best not to start with backhanded crap like...

Quote

Florida closes the bars early on Sunday probably. 

 

[Michael Hardner]

49 minutes ago, dialamah said:

; no amount of outside information will persuade them.

I invite you to chat with me then..

[Michael Hardner]

48 minutes ago, Contrarian said:

 What do you do with your gift? Ignore People? 

Well, I don't waste it...