Del Bobcat, maybe Philly and some other places where they don't have the resources and limited space, but they do in many other locations. They absolutely do in much of Ohio and the West Coast.

And the choice kids in your county is going to get? More for profit on-line schools that are exempt from state standards.

The pick of DeVos is a horrible pick on many levels, not the least of which is the fact that in the last election cycle she and her family donated over $40K to Rob Portman. The issue many has is not that choice should not be an option, but its what the choice looks like, and the choice she has promoted is profiteering and failure.

No, they actually do not! Students are turned away everyday from the parochial schools in Ohio for a variety of reasons.

Check out Florida, 86% of charter schools do not serve kids with severe disabilities. Check out Michigan what has happened with kids with disabilities in Detroit under her watch.

https://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2011/12/21/can-charte... /

Interesting allusion to a quote from the majority opinion in Brown V. Board of Education back in the most recent Civil Rights Era; however, I think it is misdirected. Why do black parents in the inner city overwhelmingly approve vouchers in virtually every survey that has been done of that cohort? It seems to me that they are saying they want to be able to send their children to a better school, rather than the one in their neighborhood. It's almost like volunteer rather than forced busing.

Duh!!! The issue is why their schools have been degraded to the point people want out. Just look at your own backyard and you will see one of the greatest haves v. have not's situations in education in OHIO. If there was race involved it would be a sure fire loser in federal court.

I once sat an listened to a complete train wreck of a story about a new teacher's experience in an inner-city Chicago school. She lasted one year and I can't recall if she gave up on teaching or not. But, I just could not believe what I was hearing. So there are completely dysfunctional schools. From leadership to facilities to teachers to students and their families.

But, this isn't normal competition. Vouchers and charter schools dilute funding. Conservatives need to "man up" and help fix these schools instead of running away from issues with vouchers and choice. The wimps! ;)

I got a buddy who works at GE. If his plant starts failing, he doesn't open a new one across the street and build stuff at both. He works on fixing the current plant.

This a true but little know fact to those who came to OU for 4 years, graduated and left. One of our local elementary schools passed zero of the 12 performance objectives this past year while another school in the district passed 10 of 12. The former has a 78% free and reduced lunch population, the latter is at 18%. 117 students who live in the attendance area for school A exercised an intra-district option to go to another school while only four transferred in. See a problem? Unfortunately they are generally poorer rural white kids with no one to advocate for their education well-being.

To our friends on the left, honestly from a political point of view, keep doing what you are doing. You have no idea how this is all going to blow back on you in Nov 2018. I don't know how other conservatives voted but in the GOP primary but I didn't vote for Trump, but did vote for him the general election. I have to think Trump strategists believe they couldn't have scripted this any better.

The hysterics on the Left are as bewildering as they are amusing. I can't tell you how many women I know who didn't for Trump were appalled by the language of some of the speaker sat the Women's March. Then we had the anarchists in Berkeley, and daily drama coming from the liberal powers that be. Just looked at my in box, I received a couple of replies from parents in the city that I know who send their children to Catholic and charter schools. I sent them a link to this thread. I was slightly admonished by one person for even trying to reason with a "bunch of crazy people who don't live in the neighborhoods we do." They told me to save my breath.

Don't take my word for it. Rahm Emmanuel, who is hardly a conservative told his fellow liberals they are making a big mistake with all these hysteric. Below is a link from a New York Daily columnist, again hardly a conservative paper. The author says the Left is getting played by Trump and it will turn out badly for them. Check it out and remember it in Nov 2018.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/democrats-played-artic...

C-bus, this discussion about education does not have to be about liberal vs. conservative. It seems as though that is your first approach with any debate, while providing little to the topic at hand.

Not allowing students of disabilities into a charter/private school should not be a right/left issue, it should be something that a school that prides itself on the education of Christ to be ashamed of. Does this happen? Your damn right it does, and I know this first hand. At my (public) school, we service a number of students who had to leave private schools to get the speech/OT/PT/special education services that they need. And you know what? We do it while still maintaining far higher scores than any private school in the area.

I have not seen anything about the Women's March in this entire thread until your last response. I don't know what that has to do with Betsy DeVos's confirmation, which is now official. Instead of now trying to defeat her nomination, I hope to be able to educate her now on the great things that are being done in education and hope that she will finally start to learn about the department she is running rather than vilify it.

I think you would do well to make this an inclusive discussion rather than looking to attack people for their beliefs.

Alan, as you know, I live in Akron. I feel for your district, but if Athens has this trouble is there any hope for Akron. Couple of questions - What would you and Billy recommend to fix the problem? Have the better teachers transferred to the better school? My limited knowledge here is that the better schools like the Firestone area tend to have the better teachers. You can't blame them in high school here where they can get assaulted at school.

I do charity work for the Society of St. Vincent dePaul and each week I visit homes in the inner city. It is hard to see how some of these kids have any chance of surviving. Almost always one parent homes with mothers who started having kids at 16. The breakdown of the family is in my opinion the number one cause of many issues. If the children had two working parents they would at least have a chance. Until we get everyone to work and take responsibility, I don't think there is enough money in the world to fix these problems. As you can tell I am rather conservative, but I do this charity work to help the kids. That is the only chance some of these households have for the future. We pay some bills, bring food and books for the kids since many house have none. We can argue liberal and conservative back and forth, but until individuals start taking responsibility, get an education and work for a living, I feel sorry for my children having to deal with this issue because this issue will still be here when I am long gone.

And therein lies the rub. You just dismissed the conservative point of view. How can we find common ground with that kind of dismissal? Are you suggesting that I and others like me are not aware of local school boards, how they function, and how they are elected into office? How can a "check and balance" dictated by the federal government effectively apply to all local school districts?

Herewith a collection of thoughts and memories about quality of education.

My grade 1-8 teachers were Franciscan nuns. Three or four struck me as exceptional. The others mediocre. One - my 8th grade teacher - was unprepared to teach/handle 14-year-old boys beginning to feel their oats and engage in a measure of rebellion.

At a public high school, several teachers - Latin, algebra, geometry, Spanish, history - were exceptional. Several were mediocre and one was dreadful.

Decades pass and my kids attended a high school - Charles Brush in Lyndhurst - which at that time was highly regarded. Its administration boasted about how well students did on standardized tests, the percentage that went to college, number who were awarded scholarships, etc. Yet, as my kids went thru Brush, they complained about certain teachers. I queried them:
Q. Are those teachers men or women?
A. Always men.
Q. About how old are they?
A. About your age, Dad.

Their answers reminded me of some Ohio men friends who majored in education not because they wanted to teach but because they regarded teaching as a means to deferments from military service. It was, then, easy to imagine them as 40ish and just marking time in classrooms until they could retire. I couldn't help wondering how many such men from colleges across the country were populating 1-12 classrooms.

More recently I read a lengthy story - Newsweek or TIME, as I recall - that reported on findings of a study on teacher quality conducted by McKinsey & Co.
The numbers I am about to cite may be off somewhat but they are in the statistical ballpark. The study on public school teachers found that only one-third had finished in the top one-half of their graduating classes. An even smaller percentage finished near the top of their classes. Again, I couldn't help wondering about the caliber of teachers in our nation's classrooms.

As I think many BAers know, other studies show a sizable percentage of teachers leaving the ranks of education after a few years. How many of those early departures are the most able teachers?