It is time to NATIONALIZE the schools!

[Snake Alchemist]

I am so tired of having the excellent school in the rich neigborhood and the awful school right next door on the wrong side of the tracks. Using property taxes to fund schools is ridiculous. Schools need to be run at the national level and funded identically. You have X amount of students then you get X amount of funding, PERIOD. Of course there would have to be additional funding for special needs kids, but that is an easy enough matter. Also, the highest paid teachers need to be in the schools where the area has the lowest median income. If your median income is 75K then your teachers are paid X, if it's 65K then they are paid X+Y and so on.

[DrDan]

1. confused by your teacher-salary suggestions

Teacher's salaries are basically determined by level of education and credited experience. Why would you suggest placing highest paid teachers in lowest income areas? What would one have to do with the other?

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. It would be interesting in a Federal system how seniority and retirement would work

Those are negoiatied on a district basis.

As for teacher assignments:
School performance often follows area income levels. There is a clear pattern of more senior (and therefore notionally better) teachers migrating away from troubled schools to those that are doing better in higher income areas.

[DrDan]

7. exactly - like punishing a teacher for pursuing a further degree

Rather than using salary to determine where a teacher would be assigned, how about paying a premium for teachers volunteering to teach in lower-income areas?

[Snake Alchemist]

8. Bingo. nt

[Snake Alchemist]

4. You could factor in education and experience, but you have to incentivize people to work

in lower income areas. I thought a bump in salary would do so.

[DrDan]

9. ok - so a voluntary assignment in a lower-income area would provide extra pay

agree with that

[The Genealogist]

31. It sounds similar to me to what happened in the univ. housing office I worked at

When I was in college, I worked in the housing dept. They had grad assistants acting as hall directors. The more seniority and pay the hall directors had, the more difficult building they were assigned to as director. The newer, posher dorms tended to have less behavioral problems to deal with, as well as less problems with the physical buildings themselves. They were easier to run. One needed less experience to run one of those. The older, crummier dorms tended to be rowdier and to have more problems with the physical buildings themselves. They needed someone who was more experienced, tougher, to run such buildings. Thus, the more experienced (and better paid) directors went there. Sounds similar to what the OP is saying, to me. Poorer districts often have older buildings and more challenges from the students. They are not necessarily more rowdy, as with the dorms I mentioned, but there are more and unique challenges for the poorer districts that will be better handled by more experienced teachers. Those teachers SHOULD get better pay, as they are more experienced and face a tougher job.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. I think you are a little behind the times.

It is already being done at the state level in multiple states. The results have been mixed at best.

Education is clearly not a Federal issue under the current laws and precedent.

Not saying some changes would not be a very good thing, but there is no stomach for anything like this from the current administration. After they are reelected, that could change, but I would not expect anything.

[Snake Alchemist]

5. Maybe not, but it eventually has to happen.

You just can't have the wide differences in funding we see now.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

12. In California, there are not major disparities since the state is the primary funding source

Court invention forced it. The results still vary widely

[Snake Alchemist]

14. So there is no diffence in funding per county/school district?

Is teacher pay higher in low income areas?

[alc]

6. it's not just the $

My city schools spend more $/student than suburbs and it doesn't help and they both spend more than many of the private schools. I have friends who who teach in the many different school districts and they ALL hate the requirements that come with federal funds. The federal requirements treat all schools the same, but they are not the same. There are different issues. What looks like success in one is not the same as another and the federal requirements don't consider nearly enough of the differences. The long term goal should be to change things so that they all succeed equally, but I don't see a way for that to happen through nationalizing the schools.

I think the best way is to give school districts more independence. They need support too ($ and other). And there should be oversight. But even if the feds disagree with their plan they should not automatically lose funding. We have a couple of school boards who should probably be in jail, but most of them understand their community and schools much better than the feds and are making progress by finding ways around federal requirements rather than following them.

[Snake Alchemist]

10. I guarantee that if you equalized the money that you would have the 1% fighting for better

schools nationally since that would be the only option. They wouldn't just be able to get special perks for their school districts.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

15. Not seeing that in California

[Snake Alchemist]

17. May be too small a pool. I think nationally would be more effective.

Do you have any links on what they have attempted in CA? I'd like to read up on it.

[exboyfil]

18. Do you really think that the 1% are sending their kids to public schools?

AGI of Top 1% is $343K

I grant you the top 5% are probably utilizing public schools ($154K)

If we equalized the spending then the rural school districts would be the ones to benefit not the large urban school districts. Take a look at this link to get an idea of the funding spread in Illinois (one of the best examples of irregular spending).

http://schools.chicagotribune.com/district/city-of-chicago-sd-299#elementary-schools

Statewide in Illinois they spend $11.5K/yr while in Chicago it is $13K/yr. Notice that Chicago is on the downside of the tail at the high end. If you take all the funds expended above Chicago and equalized spending, you would probably not move the average for Chicago much. There is just not that many students on the tail ahead of Chicago.

When you look at funding sources you will find those high spending school districts get over 94% of their funding from local taxes versus Chicago at 49%. Niles is a classic example. They are effectively a private school already, and I am sure the residents will elect to go all the way if spending is normalized.

The interesting ones are school districts like Grant which spends $11K/student and gets an average ACT score of 20.7. Compare to Chicago High Schools which spend $2K/yr more.

Next question would be the spending for the different schools in Chicago. If Northside College Prep gets more money than Robeson High School for example.

[Snake Alchemist]

26. You are right. Probably more like the 5% or 10%.

Let those schools go private then and spread the funding saved. I think nationalizing would definitely help rural schools.

[Snake Alchemist]

13. I don't see what the problem is.

If your county or district has a lower median income than your teachers get a bump in their salaries to incentivize them to stay there. If politicians want to bring down the schools, let them try to bring ALL of them down. Then you'd see some real political backlash.

[Snake Alchemist]

25. The problem is that is seems like rural schools are worse than their urban counterparts.

I am also not so sure that schools in different parts of the city are funded the same.

[Snake Alchemist]

28. I think nationalization would also help even out the curriculum

It's amazing the difference in curricula from school to school and the wide knowledge gaps in some of them.

[HereSince1628]

29. That's one of the things I think that the feds would likely botch,

Having a national curriculum would not be good IMHO. The US is very large as nations go, we have geographic differences in resources that impact on what citizens in different regions "need to know."

That isn't to say that read'n writ'n and 'rithematic aren't the same everywhere. But educating kids to have the foundations required to be good citizens in their communities requires understanding issues in a way that has relevance to place. And places and issues in the US are geographically different with respect to population structure, climate, resources, industry, laws, etc.

[Snake Alchemist]

30. Yeah, those Okies and Jayhawks don't need no kemstry learnin. nt

[brooklynite]

19. How does nationalization achieve this?

Think about any big-City School system. Each school is funded equally, but I guarantee you'll find poor-performing schools in poor neighborhoods, and good schools in wealthy neighborhoods. How if the Federal Government going to do a better job?

[exboyfil]

20. Do we know for a fact that all funding is equal in these schools

That would be a good piece of investigative journalism to analyze the differences between Northside Prep and Robeson in Chicago for example. Take a look at the facilities, the teachers, etc. Spend time in the classrooms. See what is really going on in these schools. You could even recruit student journalists to do some of the investigation for this story. I for one would like to see a piece like this. The outcomes of these two schools could not be any different.

[kickysnana]

21. Yeah, lets reinvent the wheel. Problem with schools is the right wing attacks since the late 1970's.

[liskddksil]

22. I would normally agree, but not with Arne and his crop of ed-deformers running the show.

At least the few sane districts left in this country can still have some autonomy to actually teach instead of drill for meaningless tests.

[former9thward]

24. Exactly the problem and will always be the problem.

Administrations change, always have and always will. If schools were nationalized they couldn't be unnationalized when lousy people are in charge.