Private Education and Voucher Programs

[Stravo]

I found out last night that my daughter was struck by a bully in school who in the same incident gave a friend of hers a bloody nose. The kid was given detention. My daughter tells me that this kid gets detention nearly daily and he's the class bully. The police were called to her school on Monday because a student struck a teacher.

Now this is a private school. I pay $350 a month for her to attend this school. I am pissed that this is happening because the primary reason I pay for the school is not for her to be educated in the Catholic tradition but to be safe from the rotten violence plagued public schools.

My daughter and her grandmother have told me that a new batch of kids from all grade levels came in this year and the school is a lot more violent and the teachers can barely control the kids. There are groups of parents meeting to discuss going to the principal and demand some action on this issue and while I'm hardly activist like in my nature I'm going to start participating because this has the potential to become really dangerous.

Now I find out that this new influx of kids are coming from Public schools who are paying the private school through some sort of voucher program to have their kids transferred. The private school does it for the money and increase enrollment and the public schools get some pressure taken off their over crowded state.

I don't care.

I pay for my child to not have to experience public school environment with violence and class disruptions. If a parent can't pay for their child to go to a private school then that's a shame but don't start importing the problem that we paid to have our kids safe from. My boss' wife is a private school teacher and she complained to me that these vouchers are usually an excuse for some public schools to get rid of their problem kids.

Has anyone else experienced a similar system in their school district or had experiences with a similar voucher system? It seems to me like its a system that is ripe for abuse like shipping off problem kids en mass and letting the private schools deal with them.

It seems that you can't escape the corrosion of the public school system wherever you go.

[Academia Nut]

Well, admittedly, I'm from Canada, where our schools are no where nearly as fucked up, but being a Google scholar (heh) I do believe that this is an aspect of No Child Left Behind. Basically, from what I undersand because theoretically no one wants their kids to go to a crappy school, if a school fails the various standarized tests then the government is required to offer the parents of the children enrolled some sort of 'out', obviously by these vouchers, to move on to a 'better' school. Of course, the money to pay for this is taken from the troubled school.

So basically, it looks like the American government has set up a system whereby they will steadily destroy their current batch of public schools and turn the lower end private schools into the new public ones. It seems as if it were intentionally set up to make sure that the poor have no possibility of ever getting a quality education and possibly bettering themselves because all of the problems are just being hoisted off on someone else.

I'm sure the American teachers on here will correct me on important points, though I think I got the gist of it.

[Knife]

I pay for my child to not have to experience public school environment with violence and class disruptions. If a parent can't pay for their child to go to a private school then that's a shame but don't start importing the problem that we paid to have our kids safe from. My boss' wife is a private school teacher and she complained to me that these vouchers are usually an excuse for some public schools to get rid of their problem kids.

Has anyone else experienced a similar system in their school district or had experiences with a similar voucher system? It seems to me like its a system that is ripe for abuse like shipping off problem kids en mass and letting the private schools deal with them.

It seems that you can't escape the corrosion of the public school system wherever you go.

I don't see how the vouchers themselves are the problem, rather the private school's ability to either modify the new students behavior and/or remove them from the school. If indeed the school is doing the voucher deal for the money, it may be difficult for the management to get rid of the troubled kids. However, that's the private school again and not the voucher system.

[Darth Wong]

I don't know why you would expect a Catholic school to demonstrate superior conduct. Here in Ontario we still have a separate Catholic school board: a legacy of our past. And contrary to some Catholics' opinions to the contrary, it is not characterized by superior student conduct. They don't have any magic elixir to make shitty students into good ones.

If you want to put your daughter in a good private school, find a small one where they have a personalized approach and where you feel comfortable with their style after talking to teachers and administrators about your daughter's requirements.

[Stravo]

I don't know why you would expect a Catholic school to demonstrate superior conduct. Here in Ontario we still have a separate Catholic school board: a legacy of our past. And contrary to some Catholics' opinions to the contrary, it is not characterized by superior student conduct. They don't have any magic elixir to make shitty students into good ones.

If you want to put your daughter in a good private school, find a small one where they have a personalized approach and where you feel comfortable with their style after talking to teachers and administrators about your daughter's requirements.

In terms of expectations for a Catholic school my own experiences in Catholic school were quite wonderful. I didn't deal with any of the shit my friends in Public School dealt with. I remember them telling me stories about gangs roving the school or waiting outside for the wayward student who pissed them off. Theft, graffiti, etc. That was all alien to us.

The only violence I remember was when we got in a new student in 6th grade who was a giant kid from a nearby Public School, scared the hell out of everyone else and he decided to make his name with me since I was the biggest kid in class (now second biggest since he came on) so he started shit with me and I whipped his ass. End of story, no other violence in 8 years of primary and 4 years of secondary Catholic education.

The quality of education was superior as well as far as I was concerned. In comparison to what my public school friends were displaying in terms of what they knew we were much better off in that regard. But that's all based on my personal experience in a rinky dink Private school in the heart of Washington Heights/Harlem over 20 years ago. Things could have changed.

We're currently looking for a small school for her and we may have found one so that looks like our answer.

[Honorable Mention]

Don't these schools typically have an entrance exam one would have to pass beforehand? I went to Catholic schools my whole life and we tested in. I realize this doesn't fully answer the question because folks who test in can be just as disruptive, but personal experience shows that the more disruptive kids barely made it in to begin with *shrug*

The bigger issue appears to be the lack of balls to just kick the kid out for repeated bad behavior rather than the fact that he's there in the first place. Private schools are under no obligation to continue with problem kids.

[Hawkwings]

Isn't a main point of private schools the fact that teachers can and do punish disruptive kids?

[Tsyroc]

Isn't a main point of private schools the fact that teachers can and do punish disruptive kids?

Heck, they could do that at the public schools I went to.

One year I went to a grade school where the principal was still allowed to paddle students. I only know of two students getting paddled while I was there but it obviously wasn't a hollow threat.

My later public school experiences had detention, suspension and expulsion as punishments. I guess those worked better because of where I lived because they were serious about the expulsion if you were bad enough and often enough. It was TFS if the family had to pay to send their kid to a private school or transport them to a different public school.

[Adrian Laguna]

They don't have any magic elixir to make shitty students into good ones

No, but you can get higher concentrations of good students if you employ class based segregation. Kids from affluent families have a tendency to have an overblown sense of entitlement, but they are generally not given to violence, and are also better students than kids from poorer families. Stravo likes the Catholic School not because it's Catholic, but because it costs money, thus only kids who meet a certain minimum in socio-economic status can attend. The voucher system upends this, which causes problems unless the public schools give vouchers only to good students.

[Guardsman Bass]

That may in fact be part of the problem: the vouchers as is are generally only given to students who have problems with the public education system. You guys are getting the bad kids even by public school standards in your area.

I'm not sure what you could do, other than demand that your school do a much more thorough job vetting kids who try to enter for problems in their educational backgrounds. It sounds like your school is basically turning a blind eye towards the problem in exchange for more cash - are they strapped or something like that? Maybe your group could threaten to do a mass pullout of your children unless the above requirement is instituted, or unless the real "problem kids" are expelled/put in order.

Or, of course, pull your daughter out and send her to a different school, as you seemed to have implied.

[InnocentBystander]

It seems that you can't escape the corrosion of the public school system wherever you go.

Not all public schools are bad, there are some great public schools in affulent suburbs. Of course the high property taxes make these schools at least as expensive as private schools.

[LapsedPacifist]

What does the school have to say for itself? Have you talked to the headmaster/dean/principal to get the official line yet?

LP