Private school for Malia and Sasha

What school model do you prefer?
Public schools can work well if students and parents actually commit to make them work. Sending students with poor attitudes and little potential to a good school really doesn't accomplish much, except to spend more money.
I know the PC thing is to say that all students can succeed blah blah blah.
Some other countries, with a more pragmatic understanding of this, don't bother sending kids with poor academic aptitude to schools that require high academic standards. If you are vocational ed kind of person, then that is the kind of school you go to.
I do understand that many schools are, indeed, underfunded and non functional. I can't help but observe that much of the fault must lay on students that are more interested in hooking up, sports and "keepin' it real." As long as academic work is observed with disdain by many people, and especially many minority children, they will continue to fail.

We cannot get rid of public schools by waving our hands and hoping that a million kindly nuns descend from the sky to teach inner city kids Latin for no money. If we really want to get rid of public schools, the government is going to have to write some big checks to make the transition happen.

The Republicans had held the White House and controlled Congress from 2001 to 2006. They did squat to get rid of public schools. That could be because they are secretly in love with the teachers unions. It could also be because there are some big honking logistical and financial obstacles in the way.

I personally don't favor getting rid of the public schools, but not because I think they're so great. I just don't see how it happens.

(The same drama gets played out in Social Security: Damn these liberals! Why can't everyone have a fully-funded retirement account rather than Social Security!)

Can you imagine the absolute headache experienced by the Secret Service in trying to protect their principals at a public school? The disruption in routine would be absolutely insane.

Funny that Amy Carter's sojourn in the DC public schools has never been cited by the USSS as a dark chapter in their history.

Nor for that matter has older POTUS childrens' tenure at large public universities been seen as an insurmountable challenge.

The 'site security' dog won't hunt.

Calvert Homeschooling. One of the best classical educationa you can get. Still about 5-$600 a year.

In other fora, I've occasionally proposed the following solution to DC's many problems:

1) Require that all federal elected officials, as well as the heads of every federal agency headquartered in DC, reside within the boundaries of the District of Columbia for the duration of their respective terms of office. Inter alia, this would imply getting DC drivers' licenses & paying DC taxes.

2) Require that all the aforementioned officials send their kids to DC public schools.

3) Abolish every police force within DC boundaries, except the DC city police.

Then, with its insulation from the Federal City's troubles having been ripped away, watch Congress (*) move posthaste to fix things.

(*) On second thought...maybe this isn't such a good idea. I mean, this is _Congress_ we're talking about here....

"They had not problem protecting Amy Clinton at a D.C. public school in the 1970s."

But I thought that 9-11 changed everything, Steve? This isn't the 70s anymore. We are at "yellow alert" on the Department of Homeland Security watch list. Doesn't that mean anything?

Or is it only relevant when we're talking about a Republican's actions?

Do you really think we'd ever institute a voucher program whereby the common herd could send their children to "posh private schools"?

No I don't think we'll ever institute a voucher program whereby the common herd could send their children to "posh private schools"? I can't see anyone who is in favor of that. But, there are many less expensive private and charters that are excellent. Some, like Downtown College Prep in San Jose are even designed for at-risk populations of students and they have a higher success rates with students who were failing in their previous schools than the publics their students would otherwise attend.

For that matter has Barack Obama has ever attended a public school? Not in high school or college. I don't know about Michelle Obama.

This doing it to protect the public school stuff is just a little too much to take. C'mon, it would have been a class move to send his daughters to a good charter. Not that would have been real community service.

Alas, no class.

That "$25,000" was cooked up by the Cato Institute in a recent Washington Post guest column. They admit that the "on record" cost per pupil in DC is about $8300, but then add in the capital budget and the teacher's retirement fund. Meanwhile, that number seems to have "gone viral" all over the web.

You can't claim that $$ in a pension fund is part of the actual school operating budget. It would be like claiming that a GM car selling for $20K at the dealer "really" costs $40K because of GM's pension obligations.

Smart liberals (and all others) in bad school districts don't send their kids to public schools. I'm glad to hear this news, I would really question Obama's judgement if he sent them to public schools.

http://lhote.blogspot.com The DC Charter schools are, in fact, in great shape, though I doubt anyone around here will want to accept that fact.

Are you talking about all the liberal trolls? It's certainly not conservatives who are reluctant to admit that charter schools can do a decent job.

Typical liberal hypocrisy. They do all they can to prevent poor and middle class people from escaping public schools through vouchers. They cater to one of the most powerful lobbying and special interests in the nation, public school administrators and teacher's unions, because of their massive political contributions and manpower. But when it's time to send their own kids to school, they send them to elite private and religious schools like St. Albans or Sidwell Friends.

"The Obamas, like all parents, seek the best for their children." Yes, but as president Obama swears to seek the best for all children in the US, not just his own. If he had an ounce of honor and integrity he would now recuse himself from any participation in legislation or administration of public schools, but of course that won't happen.

What social climbing phonies the Obama's are. "Change we can believe in?" No, Clintonism II and the same old pandering to powerful special interests with personal hypocrisy to boot. Politicians are simply unable to see what rotten skunks they are, to the core. To hell with them all, but especially to the "social justice" hypocrites.

The projections being made here are awesome to behold, including yours, Rod.

Anyone who cares about their child's education knows the decision of where and how to educate your child is far more complex than the pithy aspersions being cast about here.

Our daughter spent 16 years in private schools, and in every one of those years our taxes supported public schools. Should we be upset that we funded education for kids who weren't ours, or are we hypocrites because we didn't send our daughter to public school?

That's the binary choice, and since y'all are competent judges of people you've never met, I invite you to pass judgement here and now. I'm sure God on his throne will agree with you.

...

This is the second attempt to post this, there was a "submission error" because what I typed was wrong...as always...it's a small change to the website...really...

I just checked: It will cost the Obamas about $57,000 a year to send their two kids to Sidwell.

Just normal, everyday folks. Good thing O doesn't want any 'regular' people to have a shot at a private school. They get to go to public school. When will people have their eyes opened about the rich phonies on the Left when it comes to sending their own kids to school?

Please, if you know what needs to be done, run for your local school board. Talk your friends into running for the board, too, and help them get elected. Make the changes needed. We need you on that board, rather than the people Mark Twain described so many years ago.

Stand up for your fellow citizens, help us all.

ld Susan wrote "The amounts proposed as vouchers are almost never enough to cover private school tuition at competent schools."
they aren't meant to be and not every private school tuition is 5 figures.

"2. There is the well-founded, I think, anxiety that private schools would immediately increase their tuition in the amount of voucher money available, thus nullifying the whole idea,"

Congress and liberals are very much guilty of relying to much on static analysis. In other words say someone proposes a tax increase, static analysis will say that there will be a drop in tax receipts, if a tax increase is proposed they will say that there will be an increase in tax receipts. False they don't take into account human nature. Like any other business private schools have to strike a balance in what the charge. Too low and they are flooded with applications. Too high and they get too few. this anxiety assumes that everyone attending a private school will receive a voucher. false. see my answer below for more

"3. No proponent of vouchers known to me - but I'm ready to learn - has articulated any system which would adequately take care of disabled and retarded youths."

here again static analysis predicts doom, but what is to prevent parents of disabled children from banding together and forming their own schoool? The market place will fill the void if their is a need. Right now there is no incentive to establish such schools since the state is already required to do it.

I would prefer to see a scenario that provides all school age children currently attending a public school with a voucher equivalent to the amount that the school district is spending on each student. In my case the Richmond Va schools spend almost $10K per student. Parents of children currently attending a private school would receive a tax credit equivalent to the voucher amount. All the public schools would be converted to charter schools ie allowed to compete with the private schools. The parents decide where the child goes. The newly chartered public schools would be allowed a 5 year grace period then are cut loose from the school district. The school district quickly becomes nothing more than a pass through agency, collect taxes, issue vouchers.

I suspect you would see new schools sprouting up like mushrooms

Maybe it's the political culture, but this conversation would honestly never happen in Canada, where I attended both private (Christian) and public schools, and found the quality of education in both to be just fine. (Neither was perfect, of course, but nor were they markedly different from one another.) Obviously there are a lot of reasons why certain schools are better than others, but I see no reason why the "failed old public school model" need be failed at all, as long as it's funded and administered properly. You don't hear much talk of the failed old national defence model, after all.

AAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!! I lost half of my comment again!!! The software is EVIL!!! OK, I feel better. Here's the full post.

According to data here, there are about 5.2 million children in private schools nationwide and about 54.3 million in public schools. Assuming that about 22% of minors are below the poverty line, which would be about 12 million out of the public school population, and assuming that all of these families received vouchers, where do the additional 12 million private school slots come from? Magic? No one ever seems to think about this. Yes, to some extent new schools would "spring up", but it wouldn't happen overnight, and any time you have booms of this sort, the quality tends to suffer.

Second, priate schools often admit selectively, and they do not have to follow many of the legal mandates that public schools do. Thus, if the 12 million above-mentioned children did suddenly have vouchers, and even if there were sufficient slots for them, many would not be able to get in, anyway. Many others who did get in would eventually be expelled for academic or behavioral reasons(private schools can and do accomplish this far more easily than public schools, which, pressured by retention statistics and legal mandates, expel students at a much lower rate). This is something else people don't think about.

Having taught in the public schools and being a child of public-school teachers, I would never minimize the problems and dysfunctionality of the public school system; nor do I denigrate private schools (in which I've also taught). The point is that vouchers are not the magic solution they are touted as being, and that many of the problems are societal and thus more complicated than just the matter of where children go to school. It is an open secret taht many on the right dislike public schools intensely for many reasons and would be perfectly happy to see them vanish. Note">http://simianbrain.atlblogs.com/archives/006630.html">Note this anecdote about former Secretary of Education William Bennett:

"At any rate, since Mr. Bennett had been Secretary of Education I [Reed Hundt of Intel] asked him to support the bill in the crucial stage when we needed Republican allies. He told me he would not help, because he did not want public schools to obtain new funding, new capability, new tools for success. He wanted them, he said, to fail so that they could be replaced with vouchers,charter schools, religious schools, and other forms of private education. (emphasis added)" This from the former Secretary of Education!!

Once again, public schools have plenty of problems. The point is that people need to lay their cards on the table, and those who are don't really want to fix the public schools should be honest about it; and we shouldn't expect vouchers to be a magic solution for all our educational problems. Also, I would add that the Obamas' choice for their daughters is really no one else's business. Let him who is without inconsistencies between their values and their actual practice throw the first stone.

To the point of Rod's observation, clearly there's something wrong with either having the ability to make a different choice for your child's education, or in actually making that choice. Some here apparently think it's hypocritical not to make taxpayers foot the bill so that everyone could go to Sidwell Friends, or maybe that private schools shouldn't be allowed to exist.

Or maybe that public schools shouldn't exist, at which point maybe we should repeal child labor laws and really go Crunchy Con!!!

I also posted a full-bodied text and got a submission error message and (again) there was no way to retrieve the post and re-submit. This has happened now three times. Please tell everyone to copy their text before attempting to submit in the new captcha torture-encouraged Guantanamo. Otherwise, it inexplicably goes to note-in-a-bottle/lost-in-space limbo (not unlike those astronaut tools). Sad but true. Or as they said yesterday when I was 'guest teacher' for the day at the Dallas elementary school, "Que Lastima!

What about stopping to consider Malia and Sasha for a second. Does anyone really think they can form and maintain normal peer relationships in a public D.C. school? At least kids in a "posh" private school are used to families with celebrity status.

Private schools and Ronald Wilson Reagan.

TIME Magazine
Monday, Apr. 26, 1982
A Boost for Private Schools

Reagan offers tax credits

Ronald Reagan could not have picked a better audience (4,200 members of the National Catholic Educational Association), or a more fitting date (April 15, the deadline for filing tax returns). His speech was chock-full of applause lines, and he hit nearly every one on cue. "I believe that working Americans are overtaxed and underappreciated." Cheers and applause. "I have come to Chicago to propose another tax bill that will allow them to keep a little more of their own money. I have come to propose a tuition tax credit for parents . . ." At this point, his listeners rose to their feet, roaring their support and drowning out his words. After the clamor died down, Reagan finished his sentence: "This tax credit will be for parents who bear the double burden of public and private school costs."

It was a gratifying reception for a President who has not heard a lot of applause lately. But elsewhere his plan is sure to provoke as many boos as cheers. Republican Bob Packwood of Oregon and Democrat Daniel Moynihan of New York introduced a tuition tax credit bill in the Senate in 1977, and a bitter debate has been raging ever since. Indeed, even as Reagan basked in last week's cheers, opponents of the program were mobilizing.

Under Reagan's proposal, families with adjusted gross annual incomes of $50,000 or less would be allowed to take a tax credit up to $ 100 in 1983 for each child in private elementary or secondary schools, up to $300 in 1984, up to $500 thereafter. Families earning between $50,000 and $75,000 would be eligible for partial credits. Declared Reagan: "We are offering help to the inner-city child who faces a world of drugs and crime, the child with special needs, and to families who still believe the Lord's Prayer will do them less harm in the schoolroom than good."

Opponents claim that credits would violate the constitutional principle of separation of church and state, since 80% of private school students are in parochial schools. They also contend that the legislation would damage the public school system by encouraging parents to put their children in private schools; an estimated 5 million students are enrolled in private schools, compared with 40 million in public schools, and that ratio has remained fairly steady over the past 15 years. Moreover, the tax credits would drain away funds needed to improve public education. Says Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers: "There is no more reason to pay for private education than there is to pay for a private swimming pool for those who do not use public facilities."

Supporters contend that the plan would benefit those who most need help.

According to Gary Jones, a deputy under secretary of the Department of Education, 54% of the families sending children to private schools make less than $25,000 a year. Trying to blunt the church-state issue, Reagan stressed that the tax credits would go not to parochial schools but to the parents themselves. The President also emphasized that no credits would go to families that send their children to racially discriminatory schools. Finally, he argued that strengthening private schools would force public schools to improve their programs.