Do you feel that the private system is taking all of the good educators and administrators? America isn't the only country with a private/public school ecosystem, yet other countries are able to maintain quality public schooling while it seems America struggles.
A lot of Western non-US countries honestly don’t have a lot of attractive private sector businesses. Small nations with strong public education are very unique. For example Norway only has 5 million citizens, extremely low immigration, a mono-culture and mono-ethnicity, and earns a huge amount of money from selling fossil fuels which are then funneled to public use. Yet the left in America pretends the Nordic model can apply here.
America is unique. A lot of our public services are quite expensive and quite low quality. Our system is organized around the private sector and the more we embrace the private sector the better things are.
The environment Rebekah describes seems like a modern US tech business. Everyone is expected to be where they're needed, treat each other with respect and focus on their work. Sometimes I wonder why successful businesses can create the environment schools can't and then remind myself that businesses (and private schools) can easily exclude troublemakers, malcontents and people who don't fit in for whatever reason. Also some of the things you mention (e.g. mono-culture) make it easier to create an environment suitable for learning.
It shouldn't be a priori to honor the private sector and shit on the public sector but as long as we do we shouldn't be surprised at the results. Teaching and education simply needs to be valued more than it is. We shouldn't have to beg people to do the job. Instead we should reward and honor the profession so well that we can set high standards for teachers and still have a surplus of applicants.
Perhaps if we compensated teachers more like police or firefighters and required advanced credentials as more successful countries do our schools would be better.
Or perhaps if we had the demographics of Norway our schools would be vastly better in every single category except “diversity”.
Like it or not students are not born genetically equal. Throw in poverty and lack of effective parenting and there’s no hope that endless funding will somehow fix that situation.
I think you would benefit from approaching the situation with a bit more understanding. Also forget Norway, America is a big a diverse country so that is your problem to solve. You are not competing with Norway, you are trying to solve your own problems and failing.
America is big and diverse, but it is not a special snowflake. You are choosing to provide public schooling but failing to do so well. There is a myriad of reasons why and I am sure it is different per location but the fact remains. In your ideal private focused system, are kids not provided a good education when their parent's income can't keep up with the worsening class divide? If so, do you think that will result in a positive situation for America long term?
I do appreciate your perspective by the way, thanks for engaging.
I want to take the same public dollars that are funneled directly the monopolistic, corrupt, badly run system and instead give the money directly to parents to use as a voucher. If they like their current public school, wonderful, they can give them the voucher. If they want to go someplace else, the money is there for them.
