Keep in mind, that Athenian society and its government, that education was reserved only for the citizens of Greece. What often is rarely expressed, is that Athens society was broken down to citizens who had no rights - the slaves to people who were not native born, but considered free men under Greece to have their children educated as the parents sees fit to do so.

The history of education as it has developed in the different regions of the world from ancient times, has always been dictated by the social-income status of the people, and the governing powers. In Wikipedia - “As the customs and knowledge of ancient civilizations became more complex, many skills were passed down from a person skilled at the job - for example in animal husbandry, farming, fishing, food preparation, construction, military skills.
Oral traditions were central in societies without written texts.[4] Literacy in preindustrial societies was associated with civil administration, law, long distance trade or commerce, and religion.[5] A formal schooling in literacy was provided to an elite group either at religious institutions or at the palaces of the rich and powerful.
Providing literacy to most children has been a development of the last 150 or 200 years, or even last 50 years in some Third World countries. Schools for the young have historically been supplemented with advanced training, especially in Europe and China, for priests, bureaucrats and businessmen. For most craftsmen skills were learned during an apprenticeship—as for example most lawyers and physicians before the mid-19th century.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education

Of course education has evolved pass the stages of Athens, the first democracy to emerged where education of their citizens became an integral part of a working democracy to one where all citizens, no matter the political stripe are receiving formal schooling underneath the various models of education systems, and not necessarily a public education model. However, the public education model is the most dominate model across the globe, given that it is the most inclusive model that educates everyone no matter the social-income status of their students.

As it stands now in 2013, the public education model has placed controls on the free market to where parents are not allowed to freely select their children’s education as in Ancient Athens. There has been restrictions placed on parents via through the income status of parents. Very much like ancient Athens, who did not allow their slaves to have an education, underneath their Constitution and governance model. Some historians, would say that the downfall of Greece was in no small part, the Athens citizens who disobeyed the laws and educated the slaves.

Why the restrictions in 2013?  Why indeed can’t the parents shop for education services in the same way as shopping for tutors for their children?  We are no longer living in Ancient Athens, nor the world of the one-room school house and more importantly we are no longer living in a world, where the public education systems provided a well-rounded education that had all the components. Today, in 2013, art and music has been tossed in favour of short little lessons disperse across the core curriculum offerings. Its obvious the public education system of 2013, is not adapting well to the changing demands of students and parents of the 21st century.

How did the rights of parents to educate their children as they see fit, evolved to one that controls and places restrictions upon the parents and students as to what comprises an education in 2013? The devolving rights of parents have hit rock bottom versus the authority of the public education system. Ancient Greece sure does have relevance to present-day Ontario, and for that matter the other provinces across Canada. 

The wealthy have complete freedom to choose the manner of their children’s education, but their schools tend to look similar to our middle class schools - better sports facilities, more exchange visits to France, but otherwise roughly the same. The percentage of reading disabilities seems to be the same, so phonics doesn’t seem to have caught on.  The wealthy are also great consumers of after-school tutoring.

I suspect differences in outcomes can be accounted for by the extra opportunities provided to those children, for example camping in Europe or intern jobs over the summer instead of hanging around the streets.

It is possible that most parents would shop for exactly what they have now.  There might be a difference in the behavior of parents of students with disabilities.

(The percentage of reading disability rises with SES because the wealthy can afford a diagnosis.  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0909(199806)4:2<90::AID-DYS105>3.0.CO;2-3/abstract Does anyone know of a study that unravels this?)

Not that I know Tom. But its very true, as one moves up the income ladder, the parents will provide for their children the things that are not being provided at the local school. In Canada its the same type of data stats. and the stories of Canadian parents are teeming with the same type of education by income.

In one story on the parent blogs, a typical upper class parent is doing the walk of obtaining a tutor for her child, at one of the big tutor chains. To her surprised she sees parents of lower income that she knew could ill afford the tutor payments. The parent discovered that having a tutor for you child, is no longer exclusive for just the ones that have the excess cash. She wonders at the end, how fair it is for all parents, having to go to private tutors because the schools refuses to teach the basics in the 3 Rs,.

The above story is the one that got stuck in my head, because in my little journey, I bumped into a few parents of the upper income range, working in government positions, justifying their actions, that they have the right to send their children to the private tutor, because the public education system cannot provide all the services. The parents who cannot afford to do so, too bad - the parents have to make do with the offerings of the education system.

It gets even more stranger, when parents who either have the bigger pocketbooks or their insurance covers for the psycho-educational assessment, don’t wait for the school to get around to their children, they go straight to the nearest phone, and booked an appointment for the diagnoses. However, that doesn’t mean the parents who get private diagnoses doesn’t have trouble to obtained the education services and accommodations for their children. They have less trouble, and are not ignored as much as the other parents who are stuck with the public education system.

So yes, the percentage of reading disability rises with SES for a number of reasons. In the public education administration, one can’t pissed off the wealthier parents. Some of them are lawyers and might sued, but what is important is the sad fact that most reading, writing and numeracy problems are not flagged in the public education system. The students really do not received any effective remediation, and as Annie Kidder has stated from time to time, its comes down to the parent who pushes for their child. How savvy they are to the ways of the education system.

Sure it is a given, the higher one goes up in income, the communities have that many more services and offerings then the low-income communities or even the rural areas. Meanwhile governments closes down libraries and scratched their heads why the youth is so troubled.

I don’t believed for a second that parents would shop for what they have now. Tons of studies in the U.S. that reflects the opposite. Parents end up shopping for a new school, where there is choice when they are dissatisfied with the local school. Choice has become so popular with parents,lotteries are held, waiting lists, and the parents get themselves educated on the options.

When the only choice is the public education system, the only option for parents is to move. Most people can’t move because the rental/ownership of homes are beyond their means. So they are stuck with the local school. There is no motivation for parents to change when the only option is the local school. Just like the one grocery store town, where most residents tolerate the store, the prices and just make do. Enters the competition, a new grocery chain and watch things change with the grocery stores and the customers who are now making requests on food products and other demands. In the one grocery store, no point in requesting a food item, when the food truck only comes in once a week and the product is not carried by the wholesalers.

Parents like other people are motivated to change when it is in their best interests to change. Choice and selection all helps to motivate the parents, to worked for the best interests of their children, no matter the income level.

There is also quite a few studies on the social aspect of parents. The more income one has, the more able the parent can extracted from the public education system, an education more in keeping to the wishes of the parents. The social status of parents plays a huge part inside the public education system to keep the status-quo and having parents working for the best interests of the education system, that is working against the best interests of their own children.

Nancy: I agree with you point-by-point, but I am not talking about good and bad public schools.  10% of students in Ontario are in PRIVATE schools, where the parents are paying the piper and presumably calling the tune.

Even after paying sky-high tuition at elite private schools, wealthy parents still need to shop for supplementary tutoring after school (in my neighborhood that costs north of $100/hr).  Their kids still develop reading disabilities at similar rates, which we agree is almost always due to educational malpractice.  I’ll bet they aren’t much happier than public school parents.

I don’t have any evidence from Canada, but private schools in the US do NOT deliver better academic outcomes - even though they get to weed out disruptive students and those with learning disabilities.  http://www.cep-dc.org/displayDocument.cfm?DocumentID=121 

If our wishes were ponies, then perhaps every parent would get a $10K voucher for their child and every school would be a publicly-funded (or partially publicly-funded) private school.  But parental expectations, involvement, and SES are still huge discriminants.  I’m just pointing out that ‘shopping’ - moving funds through the parent’s hands is not a recipe for wholesale excellence. 

There are some great opportunities.  For example there are no execrable private schools, nothing remotely like the schools that ring our public housing sites or native reserves.  Those are the ones that private operators could take over and make a huge difference - as KIPP and others charters have demonstrated.  And there are private schools that specialize in students with disabilities and special needs - we need far more of those, perhaps funded through scholarships.   

I’m surprised no one is pointing out the pitfalls of wide-open, Wild West sort of education markets. What about, for example, the danger that of schools, such as Nazi or Moonie or jihadist schools, that will indoctrinate their students with a very narrow point of view? What about the danger that savvy parents, who are primarily well-educated and affluent, will choose the best schools for their children, while less sophisticated parents will not be similarly able to pull strings for their own children? Wouldn’t such a fragmented system undermine the important assimilation of different cultures and religions that occurs in publicly-funded schools? How can one guard against fraudulent fly-by-night operations that siphon off millions of dollars before disappearing? What about families that can’t afford transportation? I’m sure there are many other dangers out there, but I expect these are enough to be going on with…........

Some would say, some public schools are simply indoctrination schools, and as a result undermining the individual rights and freedoms of society.However, what Malkin and Tom has pointed out, the danger lies when like-minded parents and educators gathered together for the purpose of educating children under one roof - the school. So how does a school regardless private or public or a hybrid balanced the individual rights, the collective rights to determined the education of children?

The question posed, has no easy solutions in a democratic society, where constitutional rights and freedoms is the foundation that supports the legs of the democratic tenets. Likewise, the education model and its structure exists to support and strengthened the democratic principles, tenets and more importantly give continuous life to the constitutional rights and freedoms as one generation of students to the next, take their place in society.

Sounds so wonderful eh? The realities are much different, where more often then not, the parents are seen as the weakest link in the lens of the public education model. Unlike the Athenian model, where parents ruled the education part, while the Greek state stayed out of education portion.

In 2013, the Canadian education system is regulated by the elected governments in the formed of controlled processes and protocols that prevents students and parents from inserting their individual rights/freedoms to override the collective rights/authority of the Canadian education system.

Ergo, parents are forced to compromise between what is best for their children’s education and what is best for the overall collective, the education system. Parents have an easier time with private schools, because at any time, they can withdraw if the private school is no longer working for the interests of their children. Unlike the public school down the road, that has processes in place, making it difficult to withdraw. Thus compromise is forced upon the parents/students in a public school setting.

That said, the main narrative thread that runs through Tom’s and Malkin’s posts are about the parents and schools. How indeed to guard against those schools who have their own hidden agendas, and schools who don’t provide the necessary skills and knowledge banks for students?

Could it be in part parental engagement? It certainly shows that in Ancient Athens, parental engagement was key to their prosperous society and economy. What are the keys to parental engagement in 2013 and why are parents seen as they are today?

Two papers of parental involvement, based on a model that moves beyond income and education levels, to one that is most kind to the individual parents as partners and not as deficits.
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/peabody/family-school/papers/childrens_education.pdf

The second paper, is to understand the under-involvement of parents in their children’s education. The focus is on the low-income parents.
http://www3.nd.edu/~ujournal/assets/files/06-07/underinvolvement.pdf

One can see the complexity of what lies underneath the decisions of parents and their children’s education and why the education systems in Canada have followed a pathway where parental input is minimal and education decisions rests mainly with the powers inside the school, to decide what will be or not be in education for students. Parents cannot exercises their rights and freedoms in the same way as the Ancient Athenian parents could.

The third article, is about putting into law, for parents and their children to insert their rights, to governed their children’s education of children with disabilities. There should be a legal framework for all parents that is explicit that motivates parents to looked after their children’s education, as the Athenian parents were motivated. “The strengthened role of the parent is an explicit and key element of the IDEA’s interactive decision-making process, and plays a fundamental role in the law’s stated goal of “improving educational results for children with disabilities” by implementing policies that effect “equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with disabilities.”
http://www.smartkidswithld.org/guide-to-action/your-childs-rights/your-childs-rights-parental-involvement-for-families-of-children-with-ld

Why not put into law, to prevent what Tom and Malkin has expressed, where parents are seen as assets and not as deficits. Where parents are working interactively with the schools and government that keeps in mind at all times, the best interests of the individual students, and their education.

I often wonder why as it stands now, why parents are seen as being suspects to lower education standards. Yet, they are the ones’ keeping the two billlion plus industry of education products and tutoring humming along in profits.

POSTED ON BEHALF OF DOUG LITTLE

From the progressive POV: Reformers are pretty much 100% wrong about all issues of significance.

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/03/instead_of_a_war_on_teachers_how_about_one_on_poverty/singleton/

Doug, the journalist, David Sirota who penned the article you cited, went to a charter school.  He’s just like so many who are against better schooling for the masses (and justifies it with biased reporting); yet when it comes to themselves or their children, they want better.  (Some of are more equal than others?)
I think that people like Sirota make $$ by writing articles that sooth the status quo, since the same strongly suggests that the current power shift away from these state-run monopolies over to parents will soon just wither away because of their staggering failures…
You and your cohorts love fairy tales, eh Doug? 

Having worked with poor middle-school dyslexic students in the Regent Park district in Toronto for the past six months, I can confidently say that it is the TDSB that is ensuring these students will grow up in poverty. 

As far as I can tell, the teachers are excellent.  There is a rotating staff of educational assistants, and lots of computers and other resources.  But TDSB policies systematically prevent these teachers from helping the kids.

It starts with a “wait to fail” policy, a prohibition on phonics interventions, and then a two year wait for an assessment.  By middle-school, these kids are hopelessly behind, frustrated, and usually acting up.

The worst students are herded into a “behavior” class where academic teaching is not even attempted, the better ones get moved into integration classes where they can disrupt everyone else. 

I remember seeing two learning-disabled students in a classroom, with three adults (a teacher and two assistants).  The two kids were disrupting each other, each preventing the other from learning.  But there were rules about pulling them out for one-on-one work, and in any case there were no quiet places in the school for that purpose.

In high school these illiterate and unschooled kids will make the transition from the school system to the care of the justice system.  And the educrats will be blaming ‘poverty’ for another generation.

Want to kick-start the war on poverty?  Hand over those buildings and funding to a charter school.

Great post Tom,Amen!

The different disciplines all get a piece of the public funds allocated to the student.

It`s astounding how much the teacher training institutions forbid phonemic awareness instruction and phonics.
They also don`t believe in Dyslexia.

POSTED ON BEHALF OF DOUG LITTLE

The results of charter schools are more often worse than the local public school. There is no solution
there. No successful countries use the charter/voucher formula. Total nonsense.

Rather odd, because in the Alberta’s charter schools all have waiting lists as long as two to three year. Parents anxiously awaiting for something better than the local public school down the road. I do say, even the LD school funded by public education dollars has a waiting list as well.

I can confirmed as a parent observing in the last 12 years, what tom sees everyday. Some of the very same tactics were attempted on my youngest child, based on some type of social-income measure. I could have sworn it, when my child’s homework came home, with the teacher’s handwriting on it, having trouble with an exclamation point. Only to find out, that my child had a parent that could help their child at home, and therefore was denied the literacy and numeracy remediation in the primary grades. On the other hand, according to the education officials, I was doing untold damage to my child, by tutoring her at home.

To repeat what tom has posted - “In high school these illiterate and unschooled kids will make the transition from the school system to the care of the justice system.  And the educrats will be blaming ‘poverty’ for another generation.

Want to kick-start the war on poverty?  Hand over those buildings and funding to a charter school.”

You see it was that vision of tom’s,  that was dancing in my head when my child was silently screaming for help starting in grade 1. Visions, that most parents wants to avoid at all costs for their children.

For some reason the public education system of 2013, does its best, producing a steady supply of students into the prison system, a host of other high risked activities that are not good for one’s health and welfare, and to passed all the costs to society and the students’ parents. To picked up the tab to repaired the damage and of more importance, to repaired the student’s academic knowledge, that should have been mastered in grade 6, but was never taught.

Anything has got to be better than the local public school, who will find a reason not to educate children to their full potential. Anything, including home tutoring by parents, who apparently are judged by their social-economic status by the public education system that first starts with, the ‘wait to fail’ policies, to handicapped the students and have students and parents point themselves to the path that leads to prison, or an equally worst fate.

I was called foolish by the educrats because I would not quietly accept the fate of my child. Good thing that I was foolish, or otherwise she would not be attending university this fall.

For some reason, the public education system and its stakeholders are refusing the solutions and as the Chem teacher who wrote a reference letter for my 17 year old, she said, who knows - she made be the one who wins a Nobel prize, discovering the next big thing in the field of chemistry.  Its all the lost potential of students, the lost to the economy of Canada when the public education systems and its stakeholders refuses to educate all children academically and to their full potential.

Want to kick start the war on poverty?

Time for devolution of power and authority down towards the parents and local schools. Hand over the education funding to parents.

POSTED ON BEHALF OF DOUG

Increasingly the long hours, low pay and other demands in charter schools will result in more and more unionization.

http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/news/charter-school-teachers-vote-in-union-pocono-record/

Once schools have to be competitive the unions will never have the kind of power they have in a monopoly, because consumers/parents will have autonomy. 
Can you imagine here in Ontario how many parents would pull their kids from our state-run schools if there were an alternative?

Another thought, Doug:  unfortunately, with the glut of unemployed teachers, a free market/voucher system would drive salaries down and increase short hours and days.  That’s how the real world operates—supply and demand.  In other words, when the market is flooded the price goes down.  This is very different from the bubble that state monopolies (at the expense of taxpayers) live in.
 
In the bigger picture, with the left-of-centre governments currently in power in our province, they’re insisting on paying public sector unions close to six figures, despite our huge deficit and debt.  This government will cause another downgrade of the province’s credit rating, because they’re showing their creditors that they’re not serious about addressing the enormous debt/deficit.  In the meantime, private sector employees are taking pay freezes and even cuts, and many have no pensions.  This is what’s going with the tax base (our government’s revenue source).  Do you think that the monopoly bubble of state-run institutions will burst under this kind of pressure?

There is another small problem with unlimited vouchers.  We believe that the marketplace will discipline the poor performers and reward the better ones.  But the “Invisible Hand” depends on participants signalling to each other about the quality of goods (quality, since price is largely hidden by the vouchers), and education may not develop that kind of informed and chatty marketplace.

We see this in private schools - there is no robust version of Consumer’s Reports for private schools, and parents must choose on subjective indicators. Worse, once a child is enrolled in a school, the parent has an incentive to speak well of it - you will never hear a parent say “I was a complete patsy - I sent my child to a terrible school because they had nice brochures and indoor rinks.  Now he can’t read, but he sure loves hockey.”  You never hear a discouraging word unless the headmaster appears in handcuffs on the front page of the Star.

That lack of a marketplace doesn’t matter for inner-city charter schools, because parents aren’t choosing between degrees of happiness.  They are choosing between an education for their children, or the Regent Park/Duke of York where only 32% of grade three kids can read at bare-minimum level 3 or 4 (EQAO 2012).

Tom’s version depends on the school is authorized under the education act to delivered, under the parameters of education opportunities. Equality of opportunities focus, is exactly what Tom has outlined in his last post.

However, in Bev’s posts she is stressing under the free market premise, the outcomes are just as important as the opportunities.

What is desperately lacking as it stands now in the education model, is the lack of equality of outcomes focus, to balanced the equality of education opportunities. After all, its not much use walking into the grocery store, to take advantage of the sales, but has no money to take advantage of the sales. Likewise in a school, there is great difficulty to take advantage of the education opportunities if the students have not mastered the 3 Rs.

Of course there is no robust version of Consumer’s Report for schools, when the education system does not release and make public all the data, and not just the bits and pieces, that allows wide interpretation of the data.

If all the data was made public, parents especially the parents with children designated as SE, would be demanding choice and demanding to fire all the education staff at the school board level.

Some may indeed worried about parents making the wrong decisions, but its a red herring because parents are force to make subjective decisions for their children, because they only have the bits and pieces of data to relied on. Its how the schools get away with not providing early reading remediation who are experiencing mild to moderate reading difficulties.

Over at the P4E, an interesting education reports with interesting data. One can conclude fairly quickly, what the public schools are not doing and that is to raise the achievement levels of all children.

The best thing that parents could do, when enrolling their children, put down no income, for race - Canadian, and for jobs of parents - leave it blank. Just the birth certificate, health insurance card, and the gender. It allows the public schools the ammo, to manipulate the parents and students to received an education according to the needs of the education system staff. Outcomes of students don’t matter, just their SES factors and to be used at some point in the future as the excuses to explained away failure. Parents become handy to bashed based on the social-income scale and in the end its all the fault of the parents regardless of income.

Tom, at best you’re guessing.  May I ask:  have you ever experienced a free market, where you shop for schools the same way that you shop for houses, cars, or for that matter, any big ticket item?  I don’t want to sound like a know-it-all, but as I’m sure you’ve read in other blogs, I’ve had the above experience.  These countries where I lived had had the free market in place for many years, so academically they were all very good.  hmmm.  Do you think it’s because that’s what parents want?  Also, my experience was that the schools that needed students fought fiercely for them while, where enrolment was high, the schools were more laid back.  I heard years later that of course things reversed, so the schools that had experienced high enrolment no longer did, and had to start working harder to attract students.  Of course there were schools that were highly prized and were terrible:  they lived on prestige and family tradition. (Nothing’s perfect.) 
Parents don’t talk, Tom?  Really?  Where did you get that information?  What do you think mothers talk about over lunch? 
What I loved best about the competitive market was how happy the children were.  When they’re challenged academically, they thrive.  Over here, as you’ve pointed out, there are actually classrooms where children aren’t even expected to learn.  As Mr. Khan from the Khan Academy said in a speech:  some students who struggle, once they get through a tough spot become little geniuses.  Why do state-run monopolies give up on kids?  How many engineers, scientists, doctors, etc., have we lost because our current state-run monopoly has no intention of educating the masses? 
I don’t think a voucher system would fail…

POSTED ON BEHALF OF DOUG

The world’s best education systems do not use the charter voucher so called free market privatised model.

They use a model based on public schools, highly unionized.

I don’t think any of South East Asia’s teachers are unionized, but they have so many private schools that it forces the public schools to step up to the plate and deliver a quality education that has high academic standards.  Those kids are lucky!