California state is cutting down

NEW -> Contingent Buyer Assistance Program
Misrepresent a typo, that's the best you've got?

Oh wait, like NPR this morning, are you going to imply I'm racist if I dont' think Obama will be a good president?
 
A typo is generally a misspelled word. No problem with spelling, but I question those who don't know the difference between through and throw. Anyway, sorry if I'm being picky, but I believe you are being overly simplistic about some serious problems in education.
 
I honestly don't believe that more money to the school district will ever solve the problem of poverty and parental lack of education. We are talking about systemic problems which are not problems generally solved by school districts (although they deal with them daily). We have major immigration issues and crime issues that feed the problems of the schools. If a school district could actually mandate parent education and involvement, we may be able to do something with more money. But as it stands, economic issues also preclude requiring parents to attend any type of parent education programs. Of course there are numerous possible solutions, some of which have had varying degrees of success, they do all cost money. But the bottom line is parental involvement and support, if you don't have that, you have nothing.
 
It depends on the school. Parent education only works if parents show up. You need qualified instructors, a forum to hold them, childcare if necessary, custodial services and a limited number of refreshments. Of course, these things do cost money. Parents of low income and poorly educated children need education themselves, it truly does start at home. I am not saying that the solution is more money but teachers cannot do everything, especially when the messages at home are the opposite of what we are trying to teach. One of the biggest problems we have in education is all of the "strings attached" money we get. More often than not, money can only be spent on "things" and not the people that make those "things" work.
 
I honestly have no idea how much this would cost, it truly depends on how you set it up. The problem with parent education too often is that the parents who show up are the ones who need the education the least. But stop for a minute and imagine that every parent in districts like LA and Santa Ana cared as much about their child's education as the parents in Irvine. What would be solved? How about parents who make sure their children attend school daily, come prepared, do their homework adequately, eat well, get a good night's sleep, respect their teachers and school rules and understand the connection between hard work and future success? These types of programs would fit much better as a county service and not a school district service, as they should start from birth. I know we all hate to hear about the need to spend more money, but possibly we wouldn't need to spend the money on the other end, namely in the prisons.
 
So how much should we transfer from the schools to county services?

If the extra money isn't going to do any good in the schools without the county services and the county services will make it more like the communities in the districts that are succeeding, how much of the excess money the failing districts are spending compared to schools like Irvine, HB or Palo Verdes USD do we transfer?

Is any bureaucrat accountable for the performance of the troubled school districts? When was the last time one of them was terminated?
 
No_Such_Reality said:
So how much should we transfer from the schools to county services?

If the extra money isn't going to do any good in the schools without the county services and the county services will make it more like the communities in the districts that are succeeding, how much of the excess money the failing districts are spending compared to schools like Irvine, HB or Palo Verdes USD do we transfer?

Is any bureaucrat accountable for the performance of the troubled school districts? When was the last time one of them was terminated?
Click to expand...

I'm not quite sure I follow the logic here. You want to take money away from struggling districts to pay for services for families that other districts like Irvine do not need? So now Irvine gets more than the districts with the neediest kids? Maybe you aren't aware that many of the wealthier districts are receiving lots of extra funds to keep programs from foundations run by wealthy parents. I don't blame them for doing that, they just want the best for their kids, but these aren't the types of things that low income districts can resort to.
 
You said that money wouldn't fix the school, that the problem was the nature of the community.

Since money won't fix school outside of fixing the community, why should we send more money to LAUSD than we do to IUSD? Why not improve the community and fund the schools the same?

Why not use that extra money that LAUSD gets above successful schools and give it to the social programs for use to improve that community?

As for 'wealthy' parents programs, show us the school district accounting for those funds. In other words, prove that they (Irvine, Palo Verdes, etc.) are spending more.
 
I do agree that something must be done about the "nature of the community" as you call it. I do not agree that districts like LAUSD receive more funding. The funding is essentially the same although possibly coming from different sources based on Prop 13 laws and the property taxes assessed by each city. So I don't think that "taking away" will enable districts to have equal funding. I do think that community leaders and politicians in low income cities need to take a more proactive stance towards helping those they serve rather than leaving it all to the school district. Of course, as you know, what happens in a city isn't just isolated to that city, so this is also a county, state and country issue. At this point, we have opened a can of worms involving the consequences of poverty. We might as well ask, how do we solve the problem of poverty? I don't think we're going to solve that one on this forum. I just want people to be aware that the problems facing our schools DO NOT have any easy answers and all of the finger pointing we do is very counterproductive. I know that you could switch the teachers in Irvine with those working in the inner city of LA and they wouldn't have any more success than the teachers who are there now. Just ask those teachers and they will confirm this.
 
LAUSD is spending more than Irvine per student. That link was provided way earlier in this thread, yet you cling to saying they don't have more money and provide no documented proof that Irvine is spending more.

Chino SD apparently spends 15% less per student. Imagine what they could do with an extra $1000/student. Chino spends 2/3rss of what LAUSD spends/student.

But okay, we can't solve that.

Who will be accountable for the spending and results?
 
Please explain to me what the definition of "results" is. Is it a test score? Is it admission into college? Is it a successful career? A happy life? We have so many ridiculous standards that we keep pushing on these kids, a one size fits all approach that gives us quick and cheap ways to label kids. There are other models used in other countries that could possibly work here, but our legislators continue to push a college bound requirement onto all students and use those standards to measure the success of schools. We could probably agree that the whole system needs to be blown up and let's start from scratch with real solutions that address the needs of society and the needs of children.

As far as funding goes, it has become such a maze, with the twenty pound Ed Code, that anyone could argue that one school is getting more funding than others. These funding formulas do not account for all of the extra money received from numerous sources. Can someone explain why the school I teach at has one computer for every 17 students, when other schools have one computer per two students? Or try this one: hurry up and spend a bunch of money on new "stuff" while we cut all of the positions that support the students. New computers and no one to maintain them. How about new ELMO's for the classrooms but no equipment or people to properly set them up? More crap we don't need and no one to help kids. All of this comes from a bureaucratic maze that becomes more complicated everyday. It is such a mess. I'm sure we could agree on that.
 
That's exactly the point. The bureaucracy is wasting money.

They can stop wasting or at least reduce the waste before we give more.

And maybe, they should start with a real accounting for where money comes from and goes.

As for success or failure, well, maybe less than a ~25% dropout rate would be good.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dropout17-2008jul17,0,1269326.story

Even that is questionable as politicians don't agree and neither do watch dog groups.

Not having the school system trying to hide it would be better. And frankly, not having to beat them to care enough to track it would be better still.
 
No_Such_Reality said:
That's exactly the point. The bureaucracy is wasting money.

They can stop wasting or at least reduce the waste before we give more.

And maybe, they should start with a real accounting for where money comes from and goes.

As for success or failure, well, maybe less than a ~25% dropout rate would be good.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dropout17-2008jul17,0,1269326.story

Even that is questionable as politicians don't agree and neither do watch dog groups.

Not having the school system trying to hide it would be better. And frankly, not having to beat them to care enough to track it would be better still.
Click to expand...

Finally we agree!
 
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