And if you REALLY want to open up a virulent and vicious debate, get into the issue of whether schools should have to pay extraordinarily high amounts to educate students with a limited ability to learn and to pay back society with a return on their education, and not have enough money to provide advanced classes for their excellent students. That's one area where the private schools have all the benefit; they don't have to accept special needs students, so can avoid all the cost of providing special facilies, extra staff, and extra services, while the public schools are required to accept those students and educate them, however much extra it costs.
That issue is really only starting to emerge as the costs are really getting better known, and educational standards decline, causing a search for scapegoats. It's easy for a school to say "this student costs us $23,000 a year, which is why we can't afford an advanced placement calculus class."
CAVEAT: I am raising an issue, not taking a position. I look at it from many perspectives, including that of a board member of an organization which provides services to the disabled, and the husband of a teacher who has to try to mainstream highly disruptive and very time consuming special needs students in her elementary classroom while still being expected to give a good education to the 25 other students. I am very conflicted about this myself and really don't know what the right answer is (a rare admission for me to have to make). But I recognize it as in increasingly divisive issue. |
