The US currently ranks in the middle-to-bottom half of developed countries when it comes to secondary education (i.e. high school). One of the most glaring problems is that public schools have absolutely no incentive to teach kids well since the government protects their revenue flow. This is why privatizing the school system through charter schools may not be such a bad thing. Before I go any further, let me be clear that this does not mean that we should not regulate how schools behavior in terms of LGBTQ discrimination and other issues. Basically, there needs to be legislation ensuring that no essential civil rights and liberties are violated in schools regardless of privatization. However, now that schools are no longer protected from failing, they will be forced to up their game and put up good results (examples include high test scores and graduation rates) in order to attract students and hence obtain funding. Charter schools will also make it easier to fire teachers who are negligent in class (it is currently very difficult to do this due to legal and union issues involved with public schools- see video for further clarity). Once teachers have something to gain from good teaching and much to loose from bad teaching, I believe that the kids in schools all over the country will benefit.
Khushboo Shah
Jul 21, 2018
Discussion
Greetings, fellow Ambassadors, As we know, the July 2018 topic for the Roundtable Discussion is Education Funding. I recently came across this extremely informative resource about education funding. The resource explores how funding has changed over time, and provides statistical data in understanding the changes made over the local, state, and federal level in the USA. Article: http://apps.urban.org/features/education-funding-trends/ As mentioned on their website, the data they they collected "measured the progressivity of school funding as the ratio of two weighted averages of each district’s per-student revenue: (1) weights are the number of poor students; and (2) weights are the number of nonpoor students. For example, an estimate of 1.1 would imply that, on average, poor students attend districts that receive 10 percent more in per-student funding than the districts nonpoor students attend. " (source: http://apps.urban.org/features/education-funding-trends/) What do you all feel about this article and the information put forward by them? Ambassadors belonging to other nationalities, how does education funding work in your country? Could you please share your insights, or any other resources or articles you find valuable? Thank you so much for all your inputs!
I definitely agree that the American education system is flawed, and privatization does have certain benefits. Would you recommend privatizing all schools across America or simply expanding our existing private school system?