The Myth Behind Public School Failure

[unhappycamper]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/22-0



n the rush to privatize the country’s schools, corporations and politicians have decimated school budgets, replaced teaching with standardized testing, and placed the blame on teachers and students.

The Myth Behind Public School Failure
by Dean Paton
Published on Saturday, February 22, 2014 by YES! Magazine

Until about 1980, America’s public schoolteachers were iconic everyday heroes painted with a kind of Norman Rockwell patina—generally respected because they helped most kids learn to read, write and successfully join society. Such teachers made possible at least the idea of a vibrant democracy.

Since then, what a turnaround: We’re now told, relentlessly, that bad-apple schoolteachers have wrecked K-12 education; that their unions keep legions of incompetent educators in classrooms; that part of the solution is more private charter schools; and that teachers as well as entire schools lack accountability, which can best be remedied by more and more standardized “bubble” tests.

What led to such an ignoble fall for teachers and schools? Did public education really become so irreversibly terrible in three decades? Is there so little that’s redeemable in today’s schoolhouses?

The beginning of “reform”

To truly understand how we came to believe our educational system is broken, we need a history lesson. Rewind to 1980—when Milton Friedman, the high priest of laissez-faire economics, partnered with PBS to produce a ten-part television series called Free to Choose. He devoted one episode to the idea of school vouchers, a plan to allow families what amounted to publicly funded scholarships so their children could leave the public schools and attend private ones.

[Squinch]

1. They had to do this as the first step in the profitization of America's schools.

[ladjf]

2. The right wingers have succeeding in almost totally wiping out the public school

system in America and have replace it only with profit driven farcical private schools.

[yeoman6987]

3. I went to Catholic School

I graduated from high school in 1987. I went to Catholic School the entire time from Kindergarden through 12th grade. Until private schools can do a better job in Science, we need public schools. I am for public schools because they really are great at teaching Sciences and even Math better than the private schools which we needed for our future. English, on the other hand, is probably taught better in private schools. Public Schools could always find out ways to improve in that area and then they will be perfect.

[unhappycamper]

4. I also went to Catholic schools from the 3rd to the 12th grades.

Besides getting a damn good education, there's one person I remember thru nine years: My homeroom teacher Sister Mary Sturgis. 5'0", 100 lbs with her habit soaking wet, with a ruler in her hand. She sacred the crap out of me, along with most everyone else.

But I did get a damn good education.

[MyOwnPeace]

5. "But I did get a damn good education."

except for spelling............

"She sacred the crap out of me"

[unhappycamper]

6. Freudian slip?

[jeffrey_pdx]

7. I also went to Catholic schools.

What I found was not much room for advancement. When my parents swtched me to public schools going ahead of your class was much easier. There were simply more students.