Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Devos Confirmation

A liberal sending their child to private school? Oh, I'm one of them (parochial school, in our case). I do my best for my child in the system as I find it. Considering that all our children on this board are extreme outliers by definition and uniquely vulnerable, I'm not sure personal anecdote counts for anthing, but I will say that it is absolutely NOT up to individual children or families to improve a system, a school or even a classroom. (I think the Obama daughters probably were as vulnerable as it gets), Teach every child at their level, using appropriate grouping, as is always being promised? And serious, functional anti bullying measures? Public school, here I come. Just find an appropriate group for my kid, just another two or so in his grade/age with a similar cognitive profile would suffice. Considering this is a fairly large metropolitan area, they might even have found them. Excuse me while I don't wait.
Does that make me a hypocrite? Possibly. All I can say is that my criteria were met in a public gifted program for middle school and DS10 is back in the public system, and I prefer it that way,
I like to think that I do walk the walk.

It isn't clear to me how saying, "We need to have a strong public education system" is inconsistent with sending a child to a private school.

The inconsistencies in the following, however, are very clear: "We need charters to replace failing public schools, like the ones in Detroit!" when the charters in Detroit are effectively as bad as the public schools.

But alternative facts are what count when you're playing this game, and so Barack H. Obummer's kids went to private school, which makes him a hypocrite. Right. Whereas Betsy DeVos, who pushes charters in Detroit, is NOT a hypocrite because...personal choice, that's why.

Tigerle, I think you make the choice that you as a parent are believes is right for your child. I think the article was making the point on hypocrisy in denying funding to a choice program for poorer families who might want to send their children to a different school. Just like all of us those parents should be allowed that choice.

Val, we can argue how good or bad the charters in Detroit are with respect to the public schools. But that is not the point. The point is the parents should get to make that choice.

I haven't seen a voucher program that would actually pay for tuition at a top tier private school. In the Seattle area tuition at the really good private schools (on par with Sidwell) is around $30,000 a year.

The whole thing seems like a pitch to get the government to pay bible school tuition.

Well, I am with Richard Kahlenberg and other educators who have found, in the trenches, that schools need to have a critical mass of high and middle SES children to work - and that you mustn't tell a middle class parent faced with a majority low SES school to send their child to that school to "lift it up", because "middle class kids have the right to go to a middle class school as well" as I believe he put it.
I believe that if you tell can tell parents convincingly that middle class children (or middle and high SES children, it's just a shorthand) WILL be in the majority and their needs WILL be met, parents WILL choose that nicely free public school almost all of the time, and that happens to help the low SES children who go to that school, too, most of all, because the quality of what happens in that schools classrooms will be so much higher. That is what magnet programs, gifted programs etc do and it works for many places. It takes a lot of effort, of course. Vouchers as a nice subsidy for people who are thinking of opting out anyway are a wonderful solution that works for people who actually have access to meaningful choice, means there is F all to do for people who should actually work on improving the public system. All it ends up doing is funneling money into the private sector.
If that is your ideology that is fine (General you, not anyone on this board). But be honest about it, it does squat for public schools, squat for poor people. There's evidence.

Sorry. I think i have now gone way off topic as far as gifted ed is concerned. These ideas really have no bearing on gifted ed at all, because statistically a gifted kid will be always in the minority, usually as a minority of one, and our HG+ children may be a minority of one in the whole school. So the answer to the trope of putting gifted children in the regular classrooms in order to lift standards and improve the experience for all is that if you want children to do heavy lifting, put them in the majority LOL.
Similarly, if you remove the statistical 0.5 gifted children from the regular classrooms, it doesn't change composition in any meaningful way.
I imagine that for someone like Devos, the need for public gifted ed does not compute at all. If you're so smart, why don't you just go to private school?!?

Well said, VR00. Parental choice.

I value parental empowerment.

Yet I see a potential downside, as schools accepting government money may become subject to governmental interventions which may substantially change features of the school to no longer resemble that which the parents chose. In this way, accepting government money may be a Trojan Horse and take down high-performing schools. However at this point it is pure conjecture.

The current educational system whose end-goal is equal outcomes was created under previous administration. Time will reveal how much DeVos may influence the US Department of Education, and how much the US Department of Education may influence DeVos.

Why must it be top-tier, or nothing?

As far as the amount of a voucher, there may be different means of calculating this. I'm familiar with voucher programs tending to allocate the amount of tax money which a public school district lists as its "expenditure per student", although this may be divided into fixed costs or sunk costs (such as buildings) and variable costs (such as teacher salaries), with only the variable costs "following the student" as a voucher payment to the new school.

Parental choice.

The current educational system including existing school choice was created under previous administration. Time will reveal how much DeVos may influence the US Department of Education, and how much the US Department of Education may influence DeVos.

Voucher Discussion Crucial, Richard D. Kahlenberg, January 2017, The Atlantic
Most of the article is anecdotal. Here is one of the few refernces to research:
The article mentioned the failure of over $7Billion of educational programs under Obama and Duncan. When schools of higher SES were mentioned, underlying behavioral factors were cited, such as academically engaged students, and involved parents.

Tigerle, are you able to point us to the evidence which you allude to?

I mentioned a research study in this post upthread... which found the preponderance of evidence to be supportive of school choice.

The current US public education system was developed under prior administration. The impact of DeVos on the US Department of Education, and the influence of the US Department of Education on DeVos remain to be seen.

As I've said before on this thread, those asking for evidence ignore what's put in front of them and segue to another topic. This is what argument from ideology does.

There is no amount of evidence that will convince people whose agenda isn't what they claim it to be. It's the whole point of their position. They present fake facts from biased sources and tell you, "See!?"

When that point gets brought up, the response is to find a new segue or a way to attack.

The best approach, I think, on a forum like this one, is not to engage them.