Public schools ultimately become a reflection of the community they serve IMO.
If you have a community with stable families, parental involvement, good nutrition at home…you will have a successful public school.
If you have excess poverty, lack of parental involvement, no consistent nutrition at home…the school is doomed.
I don’t think this bill is going to solve any of those issues. It will provide am escape hatch to a small percentage of kids in poverty stricken communities in Iowa, and that’s good for them for sure, but a vast majority of this money will be spent lowering educational costs for families who were already affording private education for their kids, all while costing the whole state an additional $345M a year.
There might be better, cheaper ways to improve education in Iowa.
This is true. It’s why I don’t feel compelled to send my kids to private school. I live in a high income area. The public school has iPads, chromebooks, robotics lab, nice gym, fully rubberized track, turf football field. Huge PTA participation and fund. Etc
Literally 10 miles away is a low income neighborhood. It’s where I coach and provide cyber lessons to high school kids.
They have literally none of that. PTA is basically non existent because it requires time that low income parents don’t have if they work weird hours or far away.
It some counties, that is true. In others, it is far from true.
Let’s look at Iowa:
These ratings are pretty crude, based on standardized test scores, but it gives us a national baseline.
Here are the ratings:
Among Iowa’s 1,282 schools, there are:
19 exceptional schools, compared to 25 the year before.
171 high-performing schools, compared to 194.
475 commendable schools, compared to 432.
394 acceptable schools, compared to 439.
156 needs improvement schools, compared to 146.
67 priority schools, compared to 44.
So, some good, some bad.
I don’t think our public school systems are the best in the world, not by a long shot.
The biggest reasons for school failure are poverty, parental involvement and nutrition, IMO.
Education is a state level issue. Dems don’t run every state.
Sometimes money can help, but it needs to be used correctly.
Our literacy rates are dropping because the wealth gap is increasing.
Education doesn’t happen all that much in the school. Without a stable home, it’s really, really hard for kids to get a good education anywhere.
That might well be true, but if it can’t fully fund a private education, it’s not going to provide an opportunity for poor families to send their kid to a private school. All it does is lower the educational costs for families already affording private educations.
Looks like the lowest is 10K, the highest is 52K for public school per student for 2020.
The average private school tuition is $4,839 for elementary schools and $9,208 for high schools.
So private school is less expensive than public school. With a voucher of $7,598.00 per year going into the parent’s pocket rather than the public school’s pocket this makes financial sense for at least for elementary school.
Private schools, to keep the student teacher ratio low will have to raise their prices if there is a large influx of new students.
I have no issue with standards being met for acceptance to private schools. Both scholastic/aptitude as well as past behavioral examination and exclusion if necessary.
The law will phase in over three years and eventually allow all Iowa families to use up to $7,598 a year in an “education savings account” for private school tuition.
If any money is left over after tuition and fees, families can use the funds for specific educational expenses, including textbooks, tutoring, standardized testing fees, online education programs and vocational and life skills training.
For the first year of the program, the 2023-24 school year, the funds will be available to all incoming kindergarten students and all public school students. It will also be offered to current private school families who make at or below 300% of the federal poverty level.
Our public school is kind of crazy. Not all the toys you list, but we are an affluent university town with high achieving, wealthy families, so we have dozens of AP courses, high achieving clubs and activities, great teachers - teachers like to teach where the kids learn easily - and overall a more academically rigorous education than the surrounding private schools.
Yes, true, elementary schools, it could make sense - I think more about high school just because in our area there are tons of private high schools, and very few private grade schools. And in our area, those are all just as expensive as high school, but our area is kind of ■■■■■■ up when it comes to private schools. We have some of the most expensive in the entire country. Because of that, my perspective on this topic is often skewed, which I do try to keep in check.
Do schools not offer breakfast and lunch? Since when does poverty make someone too dumb to learn?
But, you did hit the nail on the head with the lack of parental involvement. If you had that from the beginning as well as discipline and consequences at home, the public schools wouldn’t be the mess they are today in some of the poorer districts.
Now bring into the public schools all of the non-English speaking immigrants and you have a slowing down of the whole process.
Where can parents go to get a decent education for their child? This is a step in the right direction.
Parental involvement is linked to poverty. If you agree that parental involvement is an issue in successful school districts, then you agree poverty is part of the problem as well.
With the shift in funds to the parents to make a choice, I would surmise there will be new private schools for elementary students.
This is the best area to get started in as these are the most important formative years.
I hope this works and I think it will.
I don’t mind paying property taxes for education as long as the students are being educated and not indoctrinated. These children are our future and they should be invested in, but invested in so there is a high rate of return for that investment.
Not necessarily. There are grants and merit to help afford private school. If a poor kid does well on scores and has no discipline issues then they should be a priority over a rich kid who’s dumb as a rock and makes no efforts.
There are plenty of people in poverty that take education seriously. What you may be alluding to is the culture of some in poverty that think education is for losers.
I’ll bet there are. We’ve seen that no amount of money pumped into the public school system cures a desire not to learn.
There are always going to be poor folks. They are offered the same education in public schools as the middle class and the wealthy.
Odd how many who are poor get an education and work their way out of poverty. Ben Carson is a great example of that. A single mother that worked all of the time but instilled the right values in her children.
