Well let me further my butthurt by dispelling a few more common misconceptions in public education. It does not cost LESS than private education. I'm not sure where someone got the figures for their cost per pupil but it's not ALWAYS less than the average public school. It's around $12,000 per student – while private education most often runs from 5000 – 14000, but I’ve seen as high as 25000 per student. Someone earlier posted the average as 8500 – and I would agree with that as that seems to be the median. I'm speaking to Kansas only - and it will vary by state.
Also - there are MANY different types of private schools. To generalize them all by saying they all have the same curriculum of public schools shows you don't know what the hell you're talking about. There are private schools that have no curriculum - it's completely open learning and the teacher is only there as a guide in a students exploration. There are private schools that build their entire curriculum around religion. There are private schools that follow the same core standards – but they don’t teach to standardized tests and the teachers have freedom to teach how they want in their class.
I’ll re-emphasize my point. There are FANTASTIC teachers in the public school system. My wife, Mother & Sister inlaw are, or at one point were, in the public school system and I would consider them each fantastic teachers. But they are not able to teach to their best ability because they’re FORCED to teach TO standardized test. Standardized test are only necessary because tax payers are demanding to see results. So we’ve created this pointless metric to track how well kids are learning so some politician can tout his education platform and justify his/her state taxes. This is the very reason I feel VERY STRONGLY that the government should stay the eff out of private education. Even vouchers are a horrible idea. Because it won’t be long before tax payers demand to see results in the private sector – when really it shouldn’t be any of their damned business. You want to fix public education. Stop mandating standardized test and allow teachers to teach lessons like Stellarcat was mentioning. If kids learned with a hands on approach and weren’t stuck with memorization and repetition methods, there would be no drop off during summer break and it would take a lifetime to forget those lessons – not 3 months.
