The Boston School Committee will vote this week on a plan to overhaul its broken system for assigning students to schools, a complicated lottery-based maze that for years has been a source of frustration, waste, and despair.
Only a masochist could love the existing arrangement, whose Kafkaesque dysfunction was dissected in a Globe series in 2011. The scale of that dysfunction could be inferred from its effect on a single city block.
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People like Jacoby are already free to send their children to whichever private school they wish. But I don't want ONE DIME of my hard earned tax dollars going to support that.
Investing in public schools is investing in everyone's future, because a well-trained workforce increases tax revenue and reduces crime in the decades to come.
I agree completely. Public education funded by all taxpayers is the portal to economic opportunity and social equality and an absolute obligation. Even those with no stake or faith in our children's future have to concede that education is less expensive than incarceration.
A point I made at all parent seminars was - if you bought a dozen eggs at the grocery store and came home to find four of them cracked, you'd return to that same store and expect satisfaction. Your child's education is so more important. Demand the best of your public school for a dozen years . Hang in there and get your money's worth for your tax dollar. Only fourteen percent of most citizens have a child in school but they all are paying for your child's education - insist on the best . My thirty five years as a public school teacher taught me much.
"A well trained work force". hmmmm, seems someone has not been paying attention to the quality of our public education system of late.
We are WAY behind other nations in this, so do not start touting how great MASSACHUSETTS is, compared to other states. MA is still WAY behind other countries.
I wanted to let you know about a petition at" We the People", the site at which people can petition the Obama administration. This petition says we should abolish the Educatrion Department.
1. Education is not a designated Federal function.
2. The Democrats used the spurious Commerce Clause argument to pass the bill and create the department.
3. The department has produced nothing but 'standards', statistics, and lawsuits.
4. As the standards were produced a few years ago, all that's left are the lawsuits and statistics.
5. This department that produces very little of substance, employs over 5,000 bureaucrats and lawyers.
6. The department has a budget of over $68B.
7. Money and Pell grants could still be distributed by other organizations.
8. The politicians are using sequestration to scare us. They are saying they'll have to ground bombers, end training missions, and cut airport security, and more painful things. Yet sequestration will save at most $44B. Cutting this department could save upwards of $68B and show that it is possible to reduce the size of government.
If you agree with the above points, feel free to forward the URL to the petition.
Yes I realize I made a couple of typos. I admit I am a poor typist. :-)
"I admit I am a poor typist." ...uh, there my be other shortcomings.
Just curious Mr. Jacoby. Do you feel the federal government should have any role in our lives or in society. I mean technically we could leave everything up to the states or even individuals?
Jeff did not mention this, but my understanding is that this system came about because Judge Arthur Garrity ordered that the schools be racially integrated, back in the early 1970s. In the days prior to this schools were segregated, because blacks and whites voluntarily lived in their own neighborhoods. So the genesis of the problem, government intervention by a judge. This drove many white families to move out of the city or to enroll their kids in private schools. Neighborhood schools were clearly better, even if they did not provide the "diversity" that is now considered as important as food and water. Government folly on steroids.
"because blacks and whites voluntarily lived in their own neighborhoods"
Actually, only partially true. A small amount of reading on your part would disabuse you of this idea.
Your "understanding" is deeply flawed. Judge Garrity's order wasn't about promoting "diversity". His order was meant to address the systematic racism that pervaded the Boston School Department at the time. It was argued and proven before the Federal court that schools in the minority neighborhoods of Boston were under-funded and neglected. The school assignment system that was developed to comply with his order was perhaps an imperfect measure, but it guaranteed that public schools in Boston had balanced racial representation.
"Why haven’t we figured out by now that separation of school and state should be too?" An absurd polemical stance. The foundation of freedom is an educated populace, and only education ensures the state's survival. While the assignment 'algorithm' is maddeningly complicated, it is only that way because truly 'public' education must balance a vast number of social, legal, political, emotional and physical realities, including the sad reality that, like everywhere else in life, when dealing with a limited resource, you can't always get your first choice. Unless we wish to return to the Balkanized Boston of the 1950's and 60's, (JJ would love it I suspect) a cumbersome process is inevitable.
Geo writes:
"The foundation of freedom is an educated populace, and only education ensures the state's survival"
I am curious as to the meaning behind that? I am old enough to recognize that as the way communists talked. "The state's survival" Hmmm, that sentence could easily have been written as:
"The foundation of freedom is an educated populace, and only education ensures their survival".
Looks to me like one of our socialists made a bit of a slip up here.
"Looks to me like one of our socialists made a bit of a slip up here." Just your mis-informed speculation, and completely incorrect. BTW - the cold war was over about 25 years ago, you can relax a little.
I don't understand what's being proposed here. There's a lot of hyperbole (the farm system of the USSR!!!) and platitudes about parents (Yeah!) and government (No!). How does Jacoby envision a public school system be run, exactly, if not by the big bad government?
Jacoby offers no real solution, just a criticism, with a magical 'solution' that, while it may be ideologically pure, is meaningless here in the real world. A libertarian educational utopia is very easy to desire, but it is, in reality, impossible to implement.
I am old enough to remember when schools were NOT run by "big bad government". They were run by local school boards, not the Feds.
It seems the complaint was that local schools in poorer areas were not getting as much funding as schools in wealthier areas. Oh, the "unfairness" of it all!
I went to school in a four room repurposed army training classroom. It was all the small rural town I lived in could afford. The big city kids had these huge buildings. Everyone was white in our town. So I guess we were being discriminated against by the folks in those cities, even though we were white?
Funny thing, I have kept tabs over the years with quite a few of those kids. We all seem to be doing really well.
Folks, it is not the building, it is not the desks, etc. It is the attitude of the parents, teachers and students that make a school successful.
I went to H.S. in a building that was built in 1911. It is still known as the best acedemic high school in that state, and sure enough, they are still teaching classes in that 1911 building. Go figure.
When people get tired of the Federal gov wasting their money on BS schemes that don't work, maybe education will actually improve?
Oh Boy, Jeff outdid even himself with this one! This definitely has to be on a top ten list somewhere. How nuts can he get??
Obviously not nuttier than you, since you did not bother to state why he is nuts. You just blasted away, shooting with blanks.
Sometimes nuts is just nuts..Obvious to anyone with an ounce of sense..
Liberate the Boston Globe From Jeff Jacoby.
Liberate the Opinion section from Factchex's non comments!
As opposed to yours?
Is there any hard and fast evidence that the musings of Jeff Jacoby are in line with any human progress in this country? The answer is no. The rest of the developed world understands the value of an educated population, publically funded. Crafting of that education is debated but instituted where successful with uniform resources. Mr. Jacoby without much rationale but full of wayward ideology seeks the opposite. Knowledge and experience are cornerstones of human survival and should be available to everyone regardless of social status not because it's a good idea, but our very worth as a nation depends on it. If someone can afford a private school, more power to them, but as a citizen of this country there is a social contract to assure we have informed residents.
Great point. The high-performing schools in Finland, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Massachusetts are all government-run.
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Because public education may be failing in some of the cities doesn't mean it's failing everywhere. Many of Boston's suburbs offer excellent public education, at a cost per student that is much less than equal private schools. The parents in many suburbs love and support their schools. Are their issues? Yes. The school unions are a big issue, and we may need legislative changes to reign in their salaries and benefits, and to insure proper evaluations. In the end, however, the people OWN the schools, and most people want to keep them, not outsource them to private bidders. Can you imagine what would happen if we do do as you suggest. Inferior and unaccredited for profit private schools would pop up everywhere, and the cost would greater than the current cost.....look at what they charge...average of $20K to $30K a year, while the public school average is $13K.
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"However, Mr Jacoby's column is about the dysfunctional and appalling BOSTON CITY PUBLIC schools. He is not talking about Weston and Brookline publis schools and suchlike."
He's not actually that specific when he gets into the "government bad" routine. He holds up Boston as an example of what happens when the government run schools. Soviet farm system and all... LOL.
well reasoned. ZLets make kids travel absurd distances for mediocre - at best - education. What do you think of the new Core Curriculum method? From what I have read it appears to be another example of the left dumbing down education.
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sort of like government run healthcare
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This is perhaps the most ignorant thing I have ever read in the Globe.
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Could the Globe get more moderate conseratives than this guy? It's so obvoius where he's going to stand on just about any issue, once you've read a few of his columns. His ideological refexiveness does little to add to the debate. He should go back to the tabloid-esque Boston Herald, where he'd once again be much more in his natural element.
"...obvious..."
Consistent with the views of a guy who opposes recycling and disbelieves global warming. Why doesn't the Globe get a thoughtful conservative columnist who could actually challenge liberal readers, rather than a cartoonish conservative caricature. That would be an act of courage. He is way to the right of most Republicans--and that is saying a whole lot. Amazing that a Noam Chomsky or Diane Ravitch gets no space on the Globe's pinched op ed page but Jacoby and the Pioneer Institute get free reign. I guess because there's no taking them seriously.
"Kafkaesque dysfunction"? Really Jeff, you get paid for this crap? What a joke. This phrase pretty much sums up your career. Sophomoric ideas riddled by meaningless cliches. I give you a c+ for at least hitting the word count requirement.
Should Mr. Jacoby trouble himself to read the Massachusetts Constitution, he would find that it spells out the duty of the state to support a system of public education, and it explicitly denies the use of public monies to support religious institutions. So much for "conservative strict constructionists".
You may be on to something Jeff. Before Deval Patrick or any governor, mayor or schoolboard asks for yet more money they need to answer for the money they're already wasting and the lack of improvement from all the money and staffing they've already been granted.
I found the graph in this story appalling: http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/03/chart-of-the-day-public-schools-bloated-with-bureaucracy/
Just to say it one more time. Americans educate a vast, diverse population speaking a myriad of languages, having many different cultural and economic experiences and do it very well. Your examples of FInland, Singapore, Korea are the exact opposite of the U.S. Some schools in challenging environments may not be great, but the job they do is amazing. And they keep working at it every day. Drop your cliches and get some real experience. Stop using the schools to advance your political agenda. Politicians out of public schools!
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Can someone just fire this guy and put him out of his misery please? What a waste of time and space.
Privatize the schools like you privatized the military? Remember Blackwater??? Examine your own greed and stop chasing public money. How did privatizing public water work in Peru, when citizens were fined for collecting rainwater?
Very funny, but hardly informative. You seem to make a career out of wisecracks.
Across the top of the Boston Public Library is graven in stone the following: "THE COMMONWEALTH REQUIRES THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE AS THE SAFEGUARD OF ORDER AND LIBERTY" Jeff, do you know what that means? The fundamental purpose of public education is not only to produce good test-takers, plug-in cogs for the wheels of business, or workers that can compete with China. Or adults who know and believe only what their parents told them. It is to create a citizenry equipped, intellectually and morally, to operate a democratic society. That's the public stake in education. The question underlying Boston's crazy assignment process is not why the government should be runnng our educational system, but why we, as a society, are not making equally excellent schools in every neighborhood.