Meanwhile, in Houston...
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I have no issue with the state taking over, but the real problem lies not in the funding but the community. Schools cannot effectively set the expectation of achievement if it's not driven by the home.
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I have no issue with the state taking over, but the real problem lies not in the funding but the community. Schools cannot effectively set the expectation of achievement if it's not driven by the home.
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In general. It happened to the district next to us when they would not approve any levy or bond issue for a decade. Eventually they went under state control, you couldn't give away a house in that district and the community eventually realized they were cutting off their nose to spite their face.
I don't know what it's going to take to turn this cultural dislike of educational achievement around. But if the state can improve things, which apparently they have in some cases, more power to them.
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Critics argue that state interventions generally have not led to big improvements.
And that would be my prediction here. Partly for the reasons Mik brings up. At the end of the day, 'good schools' and 'bad schools' are largely (though not entirely) euphemisms for 'collection of (on average) good students' and 'collection of (on average) bad students'.
We start to believe our own euphemisms and put too much of the blame on teachers and administration.
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It's not always money.
My daughter took two F schools in Caldwell Parish to C schools. Now, daughter is a consultant working for a national firm, but the cost to the parish was peanuts when looking at total funding.
A lot of the difference was made by changing some teaching techniques, creating teaching teams, giving master teachers more latitude and leadership roles and a reemphasis on the community in community schools.
