

Chicago’s schools

Zero sum games

A politically embarrassing strike

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Readers' comments


form follows function

It's a lie that the teachers' union is against merit pay. You just don't understand what constitutes merit in the teachers' union. Here's how it works: The school district pays for teachers to get advanced teaching degrees, typically from a second or third tier school aka degree mill, and then the teacher gets an automatic raise. The best part is this works more than once, so you find quite a few teachers with two or even more advanced education degrees! It's clear that these highly educated professionals are exactly what our schools need more of. Maybe with four, five or six taxpayer funded PhD's they will eventually succeed at teaching kids to read and do math at grade level.


There is no 7% raise. The 7% is not salary. Currently, at the technical college I teach for, there have been two IT positions open for nearly a half year and have been posted three times. So, spare us the government workers are paid too much speeches while CEOs lie about their credentials and get paid no matter how incompetent.

No CEOs work for firms that are subsidized by taxpayers who collude to sell us "shit" in their own words while socializing the services they use and we have little choice because they all use the same contracts, which is collusion. Sorry, but private schools that are non-profits often take poor children who take responsibility for their learning like my older brother and don't blame the government like most right wing losers.

Private schools that accept poor children choose to do this. Those children are the lucky few. The majority of poor children remain stuck, without choice, in a government sanctioned monopoly pegging their futures to lotteries with odds stacked decidedly against them.


7% yearly raise? if only those of us in the private sector could secure such cozy raises. we've been lucky to get 1% or 2% for the past several years.
remind me why I didnt get a comfy government job?

Medicine4theDead in reply to Fio9

Do you have a source for your 7%? No, and neither does the Economist. Here is a quote from a school board member: "Chicago offered teachers raises of 3 percent this year and another 2 percent annually for the following three years, amounting to an average raise of 16 percent over the duration of the proposed contract, School Board President David Vitale said."

Sadly, 3+2+2+2 = 9 and not 16, but apparently the news idiots can't do their maths and have to socialize their stupidity onto teachers.

Quoting learningengineer's quote from a school board member: "... amounting to an average raise of 16 percent ... "

Average being the operative word.

Which was elaborated upon in the following quote from the Associated Press: "When the two sides met at the bargaining table, money was only part of the problem. With an average salary of $76,000, Chicago teachers are among the highest-paid in the nation. After weeks of talks, the district proposed a 16 percent raise over four years, including bumps for experience and education — and far beyond what most American employers have offered in the aftermath of the Great Recession."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/chicago-teachers-union-decides-...

Yes, a school board member and not from the union. Sorry, but your source is dubious at best. Do you have a link to actual contract language? No, I didn't think so. Must be nice wanting high standards for others, but very low standards for yourself.

Wallace, don't bother giving facts to learningengineer. He will first try to discredit you by asking for facts. When you then respond with them, he will discredit them. Every news source stating said facts is anti-union, and clearly fascist, right-wing, or "right-wing communist" (learningengineer's own words).

Move along, nothing to see here.

Wallace didn't bother with facts because he conveniently selected the sixteen percent and ignored the fact that their is no reference for it so it isn't a fact yet. If you are too lazy to perform basic research, you should ask your mommy and daddy to help after they change your diapers.

Paul Marks

When will it be worthwhile to try work with the Chicago government school teachers?

When they stop following the people they were taught about in their "teacher training" - Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers ("Social Justice Education") and the rest. And start to follow the ideas of people like John Adams instead.

However, the socialist (and COMMUNAL "anarchist") types they were taught about are never "dogma" as far as the teacher "activists" are concerned - on the contrary the Red Flag and Black Flag types are (to them) objective truth.

Whereas the Founding Fathers of the United States? Oh they are just spreaders of "capitalist ideology" for the "ruling class".

After all "Critical Theory" (and other outgrowths of the Frankfurt School) say so - so it must be true.

Why does not Barack Obama go and talk to the leading Red activists in Chicago? After all he worked with them for DECADES.

Barack was quick enough to get involved in the dispute in Wisconsin - so why not express his opinions about the Chicago dispute?

Medicine4theDead in reply to Paul Marks

Wow, your ignorant bigotry is rather profound. Maybe you could blame alien invaders too? Do you have any actual facts or do you prefer to lie about people you don't know like the ignorant bigot you are. And pointing out that when it comes to backing teachers Obama is a spineless twit with no science to back his or Arne Doughnut's ideas, doesn't prove anything.

Paul Marks in reply to Medicine4theDead

I love you to my sweetheart.

Have no fear you will see Saul Alinksy again.

And you will get to meet your other heros - Mao, Pol Pot and the rest also.

Do not bother taking an overcoat - it is rather warm where you will be meeting them.

Paul Marks in reply to Medicine4theDead

Still I do note your contempt for Comrade Barack.

His lack of "spine" anoying you and the other Comrades ah?

Been President for almost four years - and tens of millions of "reactionaries" still alive.

How frustrating for you.

Perhaps Comrade Barack has BETRAYED you.

Perhaps the banks have BOUGHT him?

See the book "Bought and Paid For".

If you have so much more "spine" than Comrade Barack then you (and the other "true" Comrades) should take action against the "traitor".

Not AFRAID are you?

Paul Marks in reply to Medicine4theDead

"Stalin" and Mao were guilty of many things - supporting collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, muderering tens of millions of human beings......

But neither person was "stupid" or "incompetent" - stupid and incopetent people do not go from nowhere and take power of hundreds of millions of human beings and hold on to that power for decades.

On the contrary both "Uncle Joe" and Comrade Mao were cunning - incredibly cunning.

Neither you or me is anywhere close to these monsters in terms of intelligence.

There is a broader point here....

Collectivism does not fail because the "wrong people" are in charge - on the contrary the Fascist Mussolini was a well read intellectual (not the clown of World War II propaganda) who knew many languages and had been active in Marxist intellectual circles his whole life. "Stalin" was a man of great practical intelligence (both in relation to people and to machines), Mao was classical scholar of the first rank (and a poet in his own right). And so on.

Collectivism does not work - because the basic PRINCIPLE is wrong, not because "stupid" or "incompetent" people are in charge.

Paul Marks

Chicago has the highest pay for teachers and the shortest workday of any city in the United States - a clear victory for the alliance of socialists (Reg Flag people) and "syndicalists" (Black Flag people) who control the Chicago Teachers Union.

Of course only 15% of the children in the care of the government schools can read to a acceptable standard - but neither the socialists (the Red Flag people) or their allies the syndicalists (and other Black Flag "libertarian" left types) care about that.

One can tell this because whenever reform is suggested (such as vouchers or even ultra moderate stuff like merit pay) the union thugs (and their friends) just dismiss it as "dogma". The bottom line is simple - they just do not care about the children. They care only about their own producer interest (like the good little socialists and syndicalists they are).

And their own children?

Oh well that is where the collectivist principles of the socialists (and the so called "libertarian" left - the syndicalists and other Blag Flag types) break down. As a lot of them send their own children to private schools.

Medicine4theDead in reply to Paul Marks

Wow, your comments are profoundly bigoted and stupid. You have no facts or evidence so you have to resort to brainless accusations. Apparently, you are unaware that our revolution was a war against the monopoly of the East India Company - a corporation representing capitalism. Stop socializing your stupidity onto the rest of us.

Paul Marks in reply to Medicine4theDead

Nice twist there my dear.

In reality the Revolution was against taxation by London - and it was organised by a group of conservative landowners (you know the sort of people you would send to a Death Camp - as you would anyone, no matter how poor, who tried to help them).

As for the East India Company I totally oppose its government granted monopoly (as much as I oppose the Federal Reserve system).

However, it was also being taxed into the ground - again by London.

How poltical factions (including people inside the East India Company itself - with their wild military schemes) systematcally ripped off the shareholders of the East India Company is one of the more interesting stories of the late 18th century. Edmund Burke (the same man who spoke in favour of the American cause) wrote and spoke extensively on the matter.

By the way if "capitalism" means anything - it means free trade and opposition to government granted monopolies (mercantalism).

See Ludwig Von Mises on this point.

But then we both know that the "Revolutions" you really love do not actually include that of 1776 - you are more of an October (old style) 1917 Russian Revolution and 1949 China Revolution fan.

Are you not?

Paul Marks in reply to Medicine4theDead

That Comrade Barack had betrayed the cause by being "spineless" was your clear implication my dear.

I can only assume that you are too AFRAID to take action to punish Comrade Barack's "betrayal" (for that is your implication).

As for the "job" of a Comrade (Barack, yourself, or any other).

It is, as you know, made up of two parts.

Firstly you must exterminate the tens or hundreds of millions of "reactionaries" around the world (as Mr and Mrs Ayers and Jeff Jones used to talk about in their Weathermen days).

Killing has never proved difficult for collectivists (of either the Red Flag or the Black Flag types).

However, I repeat - as you already know.....

Exterminating huge numbers of human beings is only half of your job - there is also the other half.

The other half of the job of the Comrades is to build the wonderful new society - the incredible place that justifies all the naughty things (such as killing tens of millions of human beings) needed to create it.

The trouble is that the second part of your "job" is TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

The wonderful new society you wish to replace "capitalism" with CAN NOT be created.

So all your actions (and those of your Comrades around the world over the last century and more) are, in the end, totally pointless.

Paul Marks in reply to Medicine4theDead

Alas my parents are long dead.

As for "birther" - now you are being naughty, I am not Hillary Clinton (it was her people who first used that story politically).

Although actually it started as a publishing blurb scam - as you know. Try to sell more books(and earn more money for Barack) by pretending he was born in Kenya.


The standard for proving the effectiveness of a treatment, such as, vouchers, charter schools or merit pay is the randomized double-blind study. Do one and stop wasting everyone's time with your dogma. The data from the research that has been done, has shown that none of these treatments are the miracle their proponents claim them to be.


The intractable problem with two of the biggest industries in the world, education and healthcare is that to experiment you have to almost by definition do it on live subjects, either students or patients.

This in my opinion lends itself to insularity and extreme conservatism. A wasted year of schooling in a child's formative years cannot be got back, neither can a dead patient. It also means that the producers, specifically state funded producers have no incentive to try anything different. The voucher debate, which this thread appears to have morphed into rather than a discussion of Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago public school system is an attempt to put the onus of the risk of poor education with the consumer of that education or at least their parents. The teachers unions represent their members that is their right of course. What I do not believe is their right is to determine how all taxpayers' funding of school age education should be directed. It should, in my opinion be by the people who consume it. The children and their parents.

Medicine4theDead in reply to Hitchslap

What are you talking about? People can learn at any stage of life unless they believe they can't. You are aware that people continue to add new neurons in their brains well into adulthood? The problem is that you don't retain them unless you actually spend the time to learn something, not be taught something. This is the problem. You entire premise is based on the false assumption that people make rational decisions with their money. If that were true, there wouldn't be gambling. So, please stop wasting our time.

Hitchslap in reply to Medicine4theDead

I would assume that people who pay for private education when there is a taxpayer funded alternative are making a rational decision with their money.

People who gamble are sometime addicted that's true. But like all non essential activities people derive some form of pleasure from them. Why to do people reread books, visit the same restaurants, holiday in the same places? I just want to give people the choice to make their own mistakes you appear not to want to give the poor that choice.

Medicine4theDead in reply to Hitchslap

Sorry, but you are not allowed to spend my tax dollars on your unproven whims. Should we allow hospital patients to select faith healing because it is what they want as a choice? Teachers aren't whores unless you didn't notice.

Hitchslap in reply to Medicine4theDead

The vouchers could only be redeemed against a registered educational institution. It would be up to the state regulator I assume to ensure that they are a bona fide school.

As far as what teachers are. I haven't referred to to them at all but they do sell their labour do they not?

Medicine4theDead in reply to Hitchslap

You seem to be contradicting yourself. The state is bad at running schools, but good at regulating them? In New Orleans some charter schools were teaching Creationism. Sorry, but you still haven't proven that vouchers will lead to better outcomes with our tax dollars.

Hitchslap in reply to Medicine4theDead

Not once have I said that the state is bad at running schools only that there are bad state schools which may happen to be the only choice of the children of poor and low income families. Vouchers would give those children the opportunity to attend another school which has better outcomes for its students. That school may well be a state school.

I never said that a state was good at regulating schools just that that would at a minimum be able to ensure that it actually was a school not some fraudulent outfit.

The best arbiter of a school's quality are it's outcomes. Dropout rate, literacy, numeracy. The kind of things that matter when you're looking for a job.


What the article doesn't say is that a recent poll by the right-leaning "We Ask America" found that 66 percent of parents approved of the strike. Just 31 percent disapproved.

It may be that the poll is dubious - "We Ask America" has been criticised in the past for its methodology. But Reuters has quoted the poll in its article entitled, "Agreement near in Chicago teachers strike, no school Friday [Sep 13 2012]"

The article also does not say that the union is opposed by wealthy groups backed by major financiers, hedge funds and philanthropists dedicated to "reform" of the US education system ie closing public schools and opening charter schools which, despite the hype, perform no better overall than public schools.

The OECD has found a strong correlation between disadvantage and poor education outcomes. Rather than concentrating on alleviating disadvantage, politicians blame teachers for failing to raise test marks.



http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf (major research re charter schools)


In its typical right wing narrative, the Economist avoids facts and evidence, so they can vilify unions and teachers. How many grown adults does an editor or manager manage at the Economist? Now contrast that with how many children and their parents a teacher must manage all while being derided by a rag that supposedly represents the triumph of reality over ideology. How much does a private school cost? That is how much a good education costs? It is called the market.

The going rate for a private school education does not reflect what the "true" market value of education is, for a variety of reasons. The most obvious being SES self-selection. After a moment's reflection on that I'm sure some others will come to you.

Kroneborge in reply to Medicine4theDead

You seem to be fairly uniformed about it.

I'm a member of the board of directors of a charter school, and I see every day how we educate kids for a fraction of what public schools get, and we get higher scores too.

Then again, we don't spend 40%+ on admin.

Kroneborge in reply to Medicine4theDead

You are confusing biology and business. There's no placebo in business, either something works or it doesn't. Our kids + our budget = proof.

And of course it's not just us, there are private and charter schools across the country that do the same. All while millions of kids still rot in failing public schools.

Medicine4theDead in reply to Kroneborge

Wow, you are hilarious. You have no facts or evidence just a deluded equation born from your imagination that justifies you being a self-righteous bigot. Nice job.

Kids don't rot in failing public schools, they rot in homes with parents like you.

Medicine4theDead in reply to Kroneborge

Wrong again. You are bigoted because you have a deluded belief system based on no facts and no evidence much like a Birther. Being self-righteous doesn't make you right, it makes you something else. The school is responsible for a child dropping out but not the parent? Nice going comrade, you have socialized being a parent onto the government or corporation.


Vouchers. If only. Don't allow the poor and low paid to exercise the educational choices for their children that only the rich currently enjoy. That would never do!

Won't anyone please think of the unions?

How those who are entrusted with their education claim to have children's interest at heart and do it with straight face never ceases to amaze me.

billatcrea in reply to Hitchslap

Vouchers. The simple no-effort solution. If only they would be large enough to allow the children of the poor to go to the schools of the rich and if only those schools would accept them by the thousands.

Indeed, unions, by definition, ‘negotiate’ by means of extortion because they threaten to disrupt legitimate businesses unless their demands are met. In this case, however, the teachers' bargaining threat is to disrupt the lives of the children that they have pledged to advance. Such strikes are therefore a despicable, self-serving tactic undertaken by people without even a basic understanding of ethics. These guys have no business being teachers at all.

Medicine4theDead in reply to Hitchslap

I find it hilariously when the same people who complain about socialism and the nanny state then complain about the underpaid people who raise and educate the children of parents too ignorant and lazy and cheap to do the job themselves.

Hitchslap in reply to Medicine4theDead

I'd like to think that any advocate of school vouchers are advocates of the freedom of choice. The teachers' union oppose the exercising of that choice.

To claim that low income (indeed any)parents that would exercise that choice are lazy or cheap is, at best misguided.

Hitchslap in reply to Michael Simpson

I guess that's the point of the school voucher debate. Sadly not even on the agenda in the UK. The teacher's union appears to want to prevent the experiment. The people that by definition must care about children's education the most are the parents. Why not let them decide how and where they are educated.

Michael Simpson in reply to Hitchslap

Heap loads of money has been pumped into the London school system in the last 10 years. The result? Parents can now rely upon London as now one of the best performing educational districts in the world. The debate begins and ends there.

"too ignorant and lazy and cheap to do the job themselves."

Yes, and everyone who complains about a mechanic should build and repair his own car. And everyone with a structural problem in his house should quit griping and build his own home by hand. Huh?

Point being, it would an extraordinarily inefficient for them to do so and would be a disastrous blow to our economy's productivity. You make it sound like people are getting education for their kids for free--they aren't. Forced contributions in the form of taxes pay for every dime of those schools and their operations. If I was forced to pay money into something that I saw as functioning poorly, then I think I would be perfectly right to complain about the transaction.

Perhaps you should consider factors such as these before lobbing around labels like "ignorant" and "lazy."

In the town where I grew up, public school teachers are paid much more handsomely than the private school teachers. Money spent per pupil is greatest at the poorest schools due to state subsidies of poorer districts. The most money is spent in the places with the poorest outcomes, and increases in subsidies have done nothing to change this.

That's my anecdote. I don't mean it to completely refute your point, only to illustrate how facile it is to offer one example then announce it as where the "debate begins and ends."

Medicine4theDead in reply to Hitchslap

People already have choices especially since schools are run by elected officials, which anyone can take part in. That is probably too much work for someone like you. Much easier, I suppose, to turn education into any other consumer product like a hamburger and ignore the effort of everyone but the teacher. You can already send you children to private school if you work hard and make enough money. If vouchers for schools are good, why not police vouchers, or fire vouchers or prison vouchers or military vouchers? Because your ideology is about vilifying people and unions and not really solving problems.

That is hilarious coming from a someone in a profession that is basically a guild system protected by the courts. Why should someone have to pass the bar to practice law? I have beaten two professional lawyers in court, which only goes to show it means little. Try not being a total hypocrite.

Your town, which you didn't name so I'm going to go out on a whim here and assume its not New York, LA, Paris or indeed Chicago, is probably not the best way of refuting a point that relates to London, a global city with 8 million people - the biggest in Western Europe - and all the antecedent problems this brings.
The point really is that London's education system was in a torrid state less than 15 years ago. It has been utterly transformed by investment, and not just on teacher's pay, but facilities and the numerous other factors that improve student wellbeing and attainment. Vouchers divert attention from this kind of focus. There is nothing in them other than squeezing out the tax money that goes into improving the education system. Parental choice is one thing, but the parameters of the choice above seems to me to betragically unambitious and self-serving. Bad school or, with a voucher and a couple of grand extra a year, good school? Fine. But how about, for a few extra dollars a year, good school, good school, good school or good school? If London can achieve it, so can everywhere else.

Hitchslap in reply to Medicine4theDead

Military vouchers? An interesting proposition to be sure. I suppose they might also be called mercenaries. I would say that you are correct in assuming that elected office is too much work for someone like me as I am not an elected official nor have I attempted to be one, although I have volunteered on the campaigns of others. This is all however, beside the point.
I have chosen a profession and industry in which to build my business and spend the resulting income on the output produced by others be it law, healthcare or civic government. If I'm sufficiently dissatisfied with the status quo then yes, I may well give up what I do to attempt to become a politician.
I absolutely am advocating the turning of education into a consumer product. If it is not a consumer product then what is it? The reason that in Africa often vaccines are sold to the people who need it for pennies rather than for free is because if they have paid for it they will value it more than if it is given away.
The same arguably goes for many taxpayer funded services, education, healthcare, social services.
The argument for vouchers is that the poor can take that money and spend it at any school of their choosing that will accept them. The kicker is that the value of the voucher is less than the value of the funding that the local school that would have received had a local child attended. The idea being that the local school is incentivised to raise its game and the other schools likewise. The taxpayer will either get more bang for their buck or save a few.
The other more compelling reason for me anyway is choice. The poor and low waged do not have much of this. School vouchers give bright kids and kids that might be swayed by a bad crowd the opportunity to be in an environment that gets the best out of them. That is something that only the rich enjoy. Whether by paying of r private education or my moving to an area where the public (state) schools are better and the house prices reflect that. Either way it's selection by money. The children of the poor don't get that option, they take what they're given. That, in my opinion is a disgraceful state of affairs.

Hitchslap in reply to Medicine4theDead

To be fair I said "if" the system has failed and I was paraphrasing another contributor. For what it's worth I believe the "system" in the UK at least has absolutely failed many of the children it is entrusted to educate.

The most egregious of this was the wholesale abolition of the Grammar school system which was the one , best chance of a poor but bright kid getting a first class education. The people who advocated it abolition were I'm sure well meaning but the result has meant those poor bright kids now go to substandard secondary schools that produce the same number of top university students as the remaining grammar schools which are less than 10% of all state schools.

I wouldn't call this evidence but since you asked.


Medicine4theDead in reply to Hitchslap

Sadly, for you your assertions are without any facts or evidence to back them up. Do you have anything that proves any of your assertions?

Learning is a consumer product? Again, there isn't any scientific evidence to support this. We don't blame doctors when obese patients die of a heart attack. We don't blame lawyers for the criminal behavior of the clients they defend. Yet, ignorants like you seem to think it acceptable to blame teachers for the behavior of students who are not theirs and excuse the parents who are. Talk about creating a nanny state comrade.

Hitchslap in reply to Medicine4theDead

If I have blamed teachers for the declining educational standards of many state schools then I apologise. However, I'm pretty sure the only assertion I made was that the teacher's unions oppose the widespread adoption of school vouchers. The only assertion that I have repeated is the that the right to choose the manner of their children's education should not be a preserve of the rich. I want choice for the rich and poor alike, vouchers could give them that. If they choose not to exercise that choice for whatever reason that would be their right too.

Yes, education is product, learning is an output. Healthcare is a product, a healthy body is the output.

Medicine4theDead in reply to Hitchslap

Just so you know, unions are non-profit membership corporations that are run by the voting process, thus when you blame a teacher's union you are blaming teachers. This is why we have people like you who confuse learning with a service or product. It is neither for both parties have to be involved in the learning process to be effective. What kind of citizenry do you think you are going to end up with if they can simply shop around for the school that requires the least amount of effort on the part of the parent and student?

Personally, I find vouchers to be the modern day equivalent to snake oil. There isn't any proof that the voucher does anything except create a placebo effect. I would support vouchers if teachers could start their own private practices individually like doctors and lawyers can.

If you want school choice like the rich, study hard, save your money and become rich. By the way, I lived in a rich district and most parents sent their children to the excellent public school.

Medicine4theDead in reply to Hitchslap

You keep making these assertions about failure, yet you have failed to prove your assertion time and again.

From your citation;
At independent schools, which are mainly selective, pupils passed 47.8 per cent of exams at A - against 41.3 per cent five years ago.

Notice, the word "selective". So, that school controls the inputs, yet only does ten percentage points better than comprehensive schools.

Hitchslap in reply to Medicine4theDead

Your last point illustrates the point that I am repeatedly making. The rich have a choice they chose to send their children to a local school in your former neighbourhood because it met their needs. The poor if they also had the good fortune to live in that neighbourhood propbably also sent their children there.

The UK is indeed giving teachers (or anyone else) the opportunity to set up their own schools. They are called free schools.


Teachers (and anyone else) can of course set up their own private practices. They are called private (independent) schools. There are lots of them, the world over, all shapes and sizes offering all different disciplines and emphases.

As far as creating a market in education I would humbly submit that it requires more effort and thus parental engagement to shop around for a better school than accept the local option.

I will repeat that I am accusing the teachers unions of opposing the introduction or expansion of the usage of school vouchers. If this is incorrect then I apologise.

Medicine4theDead in reply to Hitchslap

Here is the problem. People with little or no expertise think they are experts. You are proposing that vouchers are a good "treatment" to use on children in their cognitive development. I am merely asking that you use the same standards as is required for all "treatments" to prove the effectiveness of your treatment: a randomized double-blind study. Yet, to this date, known have been done. Instead, we are subjected to dogmatic ideologues who have predetermined that unions are bad and vouchers are good because they said so. Go sell your snake oil somewhere else.

Hitchslap in reply to Medicine4theDead

Hi Learningengineer,
I was advocating the the grammar school system against the comprehensive school system, both parts of the state education system in the UK, not private schools.
The numbers from that article were:
Grammar pupils passed 37.1 per cent of A-levels at grade A
comprehensive results moved up from 15.2 per cent to 18.9 per cent.
Not overwhelmingly better than comprehensive schools but at double the top grades I'd say Grammar schools make a pretty good case.
That's why house prices in the catchment area around Grammar Schools and top performing comprehensives are so much higher. Thus pricing lower income families out of the area.

Hitchslap in reply to Medicine4theDead

I'm not claiming to be an expert. I would just like all parents to have as much choice as possible how and where to educate their children in the form of vouchers. The teacher's union oppose this. If I am wrong then I apologise.
Vouchers are not a treatment they are a facilitator, a means of access to a wider pool of choice of education. Money and health insurance are the facilitators of healthcare.
Education is the treatment and like healthcare there is good and bad.

Medicine4theDead in reply to Hitchslap

No, hospitals cannot just treat patients anyway they want. Treatments have been pre-approved by the FDA through clinical trials and facilitators are required to use what is the best or most effective treatment. Charter schools in New Orleans were found to have been teaching creationism. Again, you have no facts or evidence. Maybe you should spend more time researching and less time preaching.

Hitchslap in reply to Medicine4theDead

Well not being from the US and an atheist I guess you have me at a disadvantage. I assume that all schools in the US like in the UK are subject to some form of inspection regime. I further assume that they can be shut down if they break whatever rules they are operating under.

Would I be wrong in thinking that those charter schools in New Orleans are not the only schools that have taught creationism? Maybe some normal unionised state schools have also been found to be doing the same thing?

When I referred to good and bad healthcare I was speaking generally not specifically about the US. However even in the US I'm sure that some hospitals like in the UK have better patient out comes than others. Unsurprisingly, when given the choice, patients tend to favour those hospitals.

Medicine4theDead in reply to Hitchslap

Here is what is interesting. In the US, the Mayoclinic has excellent outcomes with low costs. How is this? Doctors are salaried and allowed to actually treat patients like patients and to solve their health care problems and not treated like a hamburger. The UKs health care problem is that you have turned humans into objects instead of people. In other words, you can't treat people like mindless durable goods unless you want mindless durable goods.

Hitchslap in reply to Medicine4theDead

Once again you appear to be conflating two concepts a market for a product and the facilitator to access that market. I used healthcare as an example of where superior outcomes for a given condition, say cervical cancer will vary from hospital to hospital and state to state even when controlling for other variables. It would be human nature and is borne out in reality that potential patients given the opportunity will seek and the superior performing hospitals. To return to the point of vouchers, they facilitate the seeking out of superior performing schools.

Medicine4theDead in reply to Hitchslap

Again, that is pure speculation and a false analogy. It is not the school that is superior in its performance, it is the student. You have things backwards. The cervical cancer patient can't operate on themselves, but students can learn and study. So, again, you have no facts or evidence, so you have to resort to a false comparison between two dissimilar things.

ZwexwMsHib in reply to Hitchslap

As a 73 yr old retired engineer, living and working for half my working life in the UK and the rest of my working life in the US, I cannot agree more with you about the demise/destruction of the Grammar School. It served me well. My family would, I believe, be considered middling poor (our income was provided by my Dad working the graveyard shift maintaining and repairing double decker buses for London Transport) We were fortunate that we had what I now know to be an excellent primary school less than 500 yards from our home, so that's where my brother and I were sent. This enabled each of us to take, and pass , "the scholarship" AKA "11+", which enabled each of us to go to a Grammar School. At about 12 yrs old I really didn't understand what it was all about, other than I had done something right 'cos my Dad bought me a new bicycle!.....so that I could get to my Grammar School, which was about 5 miles away.
But I look back today and marvel, and am grateful for the education I received over the next few years. We learned some Maths, we learned some Physics, some Biology, but we were also exposed to History, geography, English Lit.. much of which went a bit over my head at the time.....but much of which I was able to refer back to in ensuing decades, during which I have been able to support my family well, largely based on th educational foundation I received at a British Grammar School.

An unexpected suffix: I have an American stepdaughter who is a High School teacher here in Massachusetts. She has a young son, already started in school. She is now saying, knowing and seeing first hand what goes on here, that she wants her child to be educated "In England"......so however grim things are in UK education, there appear to be worse places.........

Hitchslap in reply to ZwexwMsHib

If you get a chance have a look at this Youtube video it illustrates perfectly how some in the teaching profession or involved in the education sector are so blinded by dogma that they refuse to see the evidence that is staring them in the face.

I've been involved as you might have seen in a long running debate with what I assume is a college lecturer. I support the right for parents to choose (as much as possible) the method and mode of their child's education irrespective of their financial circumstances. I believe that school vouchers are the best option currently available. Sadly the teaching unions are vehemently opposed to the expansion of such an initiative. At least in the US it exists, in the UK I see discussion of them being 10 years away at least.

"unions are non-profit membership corporations that are run by the voting process..."

....non-profit membership corporations that forcibly take money from their members and give it to politicians that are agreeable to unions. What kind of citizenry are we if we put up with "democracy" such as this?

After reading about thirty of your responses today, learningengineer - in which nearly half of them you personally insult someone or use derogatory terms, including "snake oil/snake oil peddler as one of your favorites - this rational person has come to the conclusion that it is close-minded, limited intelligence brains such as yours that are the sand in the gears. You demand proof from everyone that doesn't agree with you, and when provided, you discredit it. People like you are the reason why poor parents cannot choose where to sent their children. People like you are the reason terrible teachers still exist in the classroom. People like you are the reason why religions go to war, why nations invade other nations, why genocide happens, why people are still taught that dinosaurs were around 6000 years ago. People like you, learningengineer, are the reason for half the problems in the world. Everyone else is wrong, you are right, data be damned. Ignorance at its finest.

No, not everyone else is wrong. And I never said anyone else was wrong. Just that they have no facts or evidence to support their accusations against unions and teachers. Your statements illustrate your profound ignorance of reality. First, unions get paid for the services they provide as was determined by a federal judge. No one is forced to pay for the political issues unions deal with. Secondly, you haven't provided a single piece of date or fact as of yet to support your assertions, which makes you a fraud. You then accuse me or people like me of all the ills of the world without any evidence again. You are clearly too lazy to do the real work necessary to prove you are correct in the first place.

Hitchslap in reply to Medicine4theDead

I was referring to outcomes in the aggregate not individual. How else would the parent of a child who has yet to attend a school assess it's quality without such data?
Back to the point of vouchers, is once they have the information those parents pay for the entry to the superior performing school with them. I assume that if you have no entrance requirements at your college the only barrier to entry is money, either fees or funding from the state? That is an option that you sadly would appear to prefer denying to the children of the poor and low waged.


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