[quote=AN][quote=bearishgurl]AN, if you don’t mind my asking, aren’t you raising your kid(s) in the exact same (or adjacent) neighborhood as the one you grew up in (so your family can have extended family nearby)?
If so, what exactly is your beef about the public schools there? Are any of YOUR old teachers still there to teach your kid(s)? Don’t the schools in your attendance area have pretty high API scores?
I mean, YOU turned out okay and made it into a UC and graduated, right??[/quote]I turned out fine. But it’s not about me. I’m talking about public schools in general. I’m not saying all public school teachers are bad. Actually, most of the ones I had were good or great. So, it’s not about me specifically or where I live. But as a taxpayer and a parent, I want to get more for our tax $. I view that class size is hugely important. With this said, as I stated, for similar $/student, private school teacher to student ratio is a lot smaller. So, that’s where my beef is, class size. I want to see 10-1 for pre-K and K, I want to see 12-1 for 1-3rd grade, I want to see 24-1 for 3-12 grades.
My send beef is choice. I want more choice for ALL PARENTS, not just those who could afford it. I want parents to have options to private schools, charter schools, regular public schools (any public school), etc. I want to put the power in the parents hands in term of choice. They know their children best and they know how they want to raise their kids. I feel that the more we encourage involvement from parents, the better the results will be. I feel that there’s no 1 teaching method that works for all students. Some work well in a montessori environment, while others need more structure like a regular public/private school, while other thrives in a home school environment, while other needs even more structure, like a boarding school type of environment. As long as we set a fixed $ amount we, as a society, want to spend per student, I want to have the $ follow the student. My beef w/ public teachers and the teachers’ union is they’re gungho against this idea.[/quote]
Parents DO have all of these options now, and most of them are funded publicly (including homeschooling, if one chooses to go that way). Teachers and their unions are not opposed to choice. They are opposed to having public money going toward private enterprises that are often not held to the same standards as public schools. Again, the right to a public education means that students have a right to an education at a public institution; it does NOT mean being able to use public money for whatever you want to do with it.
