[lug] BVSD Windows vs Mac craziness

[Timothy Klein]

On 21 Jan 2006, at 11:45 AM, Paul E Condon wrote:

> Understand, I also suspect that primary education in USA is in need of
> reform.  But I wonder if the reform advocates are qualified to do what
> is needed.

Three of the greatest reforms that American education could do:

* Get rid of school boards. They do more harm than good, and tend to  
be populated by non-experts with an axe to grind.

* Eliminate the by-county funding nonsense.  Each state should have a  
pool of education tax dollars, and it should be divided up per  
student, regardless of where they live.  This rich kid/good funding,  
poor kid/bad funding paradigm is absolute nonsense.  (Hell, there is  
not even a compelling reason why taxes for education couldn't be  
collected federally, and doled out by the Fed to every American  
student.  That would eliminate the poor/rich state schism, too, but  
that be an even more radioactive reform [in spite of the fact that  
it'd be one of the very best reforms we could implement]).

* Develop *federal* standards.  Right now, what it means for a kid to  
"succeed" or "fail" or "meet the curriculum" varies wildly from  
county to county, making any meaningful metric of education success  
nearly impossible.

Enact those three changes, along with a desire to actually fund  
American education, and you'd go a long way to reforming the system  
we have.  And you wouldn't even have to get involved in a fight-to- 
the-death with a teachers union.  Of course, Americans tend to think  
about education in a very reactionary way, so all three of these  
reforms are effectively impossible.  Thus, American education will  
continue to be:  good, in rich counties.  Average, in mixed  
counties.  Piss-poor in poor counties.  What it means for a student  
to be educated will continue to mean wildly varying things, depending  
upon which friggin' *county* that student was educated in.  And  
experiments at reform will continue to be experiments completely  
devoid of any control, due to the wildly varying methods and  
curricula from county to county. *sigh*

We won't be significantly fixing the fundamentally confused system we  
have now by putting band-aids on it, as we are constantly doing.  And  
the "go private" mantra will only screw average to poor kids even  
harder.

I knew I should have just ignored this thread...

Tim