I have no problem with allocating additional resources towards gifted students, but the rest of your point is wrong.
You're misdefining the structure of business. Students are the equivalent of customers. Teachers are the employees, who could be hired or fired under a business model. If you don't satisfy students (or, more realistically, their parents), under a business plan, you would lose them as customers. The business would fail. Urban public schools are more akin to a failing enterprise kept afloat by ever-increasing subsidies to provide services to a diminishing & unsatisfied customer base. (not in every case: we know Demo's school is a bastion of success!)
Your analogy is very flawed. If you view the student as a customer, the school is like a fast food restaurant which doesn't cook the burgers, but instead provides raw ingredients and instructions and tells the customer to prepare the food himself. Some customers will get burned or undercooked or badly seasoned burgers, and they will feel unsatisfied. There is no scenario in which the school can do all the work and provide a satisfactory result without significant effort from the student and his family.
well, demosthenes has shown one reason your analogy fails, but let me offer another.... schools are judged by.... test scores. businesses are judged by... profit. who makes the product that create the test scores? Students. Who makes the product that create the profits? Employees. That's the point I was trying to make. YES, I fully agree, as I stated in my argument that teachers should be fired for incompetence and administration. However, my point in the section you quoted is the reason private schools and SOME charter schools are "succesful" is they are essentially allowed to pick their student body and fill it with highly motivated students and parents. Point being that yes, some teachers suck and a lot of adminstration sucks, but private school "success" is not because of that factor.
I am attempting to be level-headed and thus responding tersely. Since you found my prior response insufficient, your conclusions are wrong and they seem to be driven by a seriously flawed attitude towards children with disabilities that I have trouble addressing either briefly or without flaming.
To say that someones else's response is "wrong" without providing any support is flaming. You have no idea what my attitude is towards children with disabilities. I surmise from your post that in your world "different from you" attitudes must be "wrong", but in the real world differences in opinion are just that. I, for one, would love to hear your opinion and any facts that back your case.
I do have an idea what your "attitude" is towards children with disabilities because you said things like "Penalizing your best and brightest to bring the slowest up to average is no way to distribute scarce resources." You will recall, if you've read this thread, that I described the education of students with disabilities as a civil rights issue. To me, your statement is the moral equivalent of arguing that poor black people are not worth the trouble of educating because it takes scarce resources away from respectable white kids. I'm sure you didn't (and maybe still don't) see it that way. I presume that your assumptions were subconscious rather than intentional. You may view your statement about the "slowest" as just some dumb kids and not think about how awful your statement sounds if you substitute "Joey with Down's syndrome" or "Chris with cerebral palsy" or "Karen born with fetal alcohol syndrom" as somebody who its not worth the effort to bring up to average. Perhaps you never thought of children with disabilities as having equal rights to an appropriate education. Perhaps your view of civil rights is that they are only afforded when it is cheap and easy to do so. I'm certain that if you were asked you'd never say you disliked children with disabilities, and you probably are now rolling your eyes at my political-correctness. I am not trying to call you anything. Nevertheless, it is extremely difficult for me to respond to the hidden assumptions in your statements in any respectful way other than saying "you're wrong." I suggest we agree to leave it at that.
I guess the disagreement comes in the word "appropriate". In my opinion, an appropriate education is defined as challenging each student to the extents of their ability to learn. Having your best and brightest just go through the motions for their last 3 years of high school is just as or even more wasteful as teaching a kid who at best will end up sorting glass at the recycling plant calculus.
filler. EDIT: Perhaps the point that is intended relates to the education of high-achieving and low-achieving students without disabilities. I have no issue with that. I have a huge issue with presuming that students with disabilities shouldn't be allowed to hope for anything more than sorting glass at the recycling plant. Why don't we agree to reframe the issue.
reductio ad segregatum rather than actually contributing anything on the subject. Great start. Next I'm sure you'll be saying how Hitler had the exact same views as me. I'm talking about allocation of resources and arguing that we should spend more resources on top students than the disproportionate amount we now spend on the students with lowest academic achievement. Somehow, to you, that makes me "morally equivalent of" a racist. Your psychobabble notwithstanding you know nothing about me and are not fit to judge a slug race much less other posters on this board. Your response is gutless. You say that you aren't trying to call me anything. I call shenanigans on that. Read your own post. If you are going to call people names and hide your cowardly unwillingness to discuss the subject, then you contribute nothing. Leave the discussion to the large number of posters here that actually are contributing something. I suggest we agree that you are a gutless name-calling jerk and leave it at that.
I found your post morally reprehensible. I still do. I am trying to be reasoned and unemotional about it. Please rethink your post.
I find cowardly posts that do nothing but call names in a discussion forum to be morally reprehensible. What you are doing is the moral equivalent of driving down the street shouting out racial epithets and then complaining because someone throws a rock at your car.
You cast a really wide net when you refer to students with disabilities. It ranges from kids with speech and reading problems up to kids that drool on themselves for a living. For the more extreme group isn't it sometimes just an exercise in futility to continue 13 years of education? Now your other comment states "I have no problem with allocating additional resources towards gifted students". Where is the money coming from unless it is cut from somewhere else? People are already stretched on their property tax bills.
We didn't get here talking about what to do with adults with a disability. We got here talking about what to do with a child with a disability. That includes 1st and 2nd graders, etc. No it is NOT an exercise in futility to continue to educate those children, no matter how "extreme" you think they are. It is a moral imperative and a civil rights issue (not to mention far less expensive to the taxpayer than lifetime institutionalization). As for the "exercise in futility" comment, we're venturing far afield but adults with disabilities deserve real opportunities also. That's a totally different topic. As I mention, if you want to have a discussion about whether to spend more money on enriching high-achievement classrooms instead of spending that money on low-achieving programs, that's fine, have that discussion. Maybe we should spend more time on the physics lab than the wood shop. That's an entirely different issue --both policy wise and in my view moral and civil-rights wise -- from whether or not disabled students are entitled to the same high expectations as non-disabled students. It is not appropriate to take money allocated to educate disabled kids and give that money to high-achieving students. It is morally wrong to do that. (Also illegal, given current law on state and federal funding, but that's a different, less philosophical topic).
What are "special needs" in your opinion? Are you talking about physical disabilities, learning disabilities, kids from dysfunctional homes, illiterate high schoolers, what?
To reiterate for the 4th or 5th time and now to echo upon bigred's comment, all I'm asking is to recognize that there is a world of distinction between "students with low academic achievement" and students with disabilities. The issues are NOT the same -- legally, morally, policy wise, etc. -- and that point was infinitely clear in my first comment to Demosthenes, but some people have lost sight of it. Discuss all you want about low academic achievement, but don't conflate that with special needs students.
He's trying to. You keep dodging it. You keep hiding behind "morality" in order to not discuss this. Whose morality are you talking about? Yours? My morality says you should do the best you can to take care of people, but I'm not going to set myself on fire because you are cold. That's just stupidity hiding behind morality. Morality is not yours to decide for everyone else, so come down off your high horse and join the conversation. Just quit casting everyone else as "immoral" because they don't agree with you.
All of the above. What is "moral" about education is that it is an investment in the future and we should make that investment. Debating about how the resources available for investment should be allocated is not immoral, and I'm tired of being told that I'm morally a racist because I have a difference of opinion.
Rubbish. That's NOT what you have been saying for the last couple of pages. Now you've been called on it and you are trying to weasel your way out. Students of low academic achievement almost always are that way because of some special need. Which ones is it "moral" to help, and for which ones are we "morally" off the hook?
What do you all think of encouraging early graduation for kids that can test out of high school? As of now it is a rarity due to a schools funding structure being pegged to the amount of full time students it enrolls. But this holds back the best and brightest. So here is my idea. After 10th grade, students have the option to test out of high school and are granted, upon passing, automatic enrollment in the local community college for their junior and senior years. And the district foots the bill as they are still on the hook for these kids. The advantage to this is that kids that have little money can work wicked hard and get themselves a free associates degree which would generally lead to scholarships at 4 year universities and only 60 or so credits necessary for a bachelors degree. Brilliant or what?
I like it, except the student should be able to test out earlier than that if they are prepared. I have friends in this area and in NM whose kids (who are still taking some HS classes) are taking math and science classes at the local cc-all of which are transferrable.
Truth hurts. I'm sorry you don't believe in that, but I have no problem with questioning your moral fiber because you don't.
Who is the you you are referring to? I only ask because I don't see anyone here who has advocated eliminating programs for the people that the lawyers down the street have decided that it is moral to help out. If I were to be snarky, I suppose I could point out that this is the same Congress that thinks that taxation without representation is "moral". But I wouldn't do that.
Cool. How old are they? The only reason why I would wait until after 10th grade is because there is more to school than just education. 2 years of socialization at that age are essential to development. But once they become juniors it's a different story, IMO.