>> "His parents pulled him out of public school after his behavior deteriorated dramatically and he made what they said was almost no academic progress. They placed him in private school, where he made rapid progress, and they sought reimbursement for tuition. They are entitled to that reimbursement if they can prove that the public school failed to provide a free appropriate public education under federal law."
Seems like if this is the case for children with special education needs it should apply to all children given how poor the "free" educational system is in many areas in the US.
You've just waded into the voucher debate, congratulations.
The argument against this is that if you reimburse private school tuition, you divert money from public schools, thus exacerbating the problem. You also divert money from public schools for no guarantee of better results. This kid did better, but would another? And once you divert public money to private schools, are they obligated to meet the same academic standards?
On the other hand, the public schools are bad in places, and it's hard to argue that kids should be the ones in the middle, getting worse results while we sort out the schools.
The advantage with vouchers is that there is a direct incentive, the parent's desire to see their children succeed, driving the allocation of resources. By comparison, public schools have much weaker incentives. Public school administrators generally only need do enough to avoid being ousted from their appointment or election, while private schools live and die by their enrollment.
The incentive isn't just weaker, it's arguably diametrically against the interests of the children. A teacher's union would lobby for the interests of its members and that would include things like higher teachers' salaries (i.e. less money for the rest of the budget, transportation, activites) and shorter working hours (i.e. shorter school days).
Nah vouchers will just raise tuition and give more money to private schools. Private school costs 5k say and you get a 5k voucher. Demand increases and they raise tuition to 10k. Voucher is still 5k.
Diving a bit deeper, there's a fundamental debate about whether private schools taking vouchers will perform better than public schools. The essential argument in favor is based around the idea that with a free market and healthy competition we get a better education for less with lots of room to adapt to changing needs.
Those who reject vouchers argue that education is not and cannot be a free market in the usual sense. An important property of a free market is the ability for companies to fail: indeed, the majority of startups and small businesses fail. And while it's acceptable for restaurants a grocery stores to come and go, a private school going under has serious consequences. Unless the school goes under in the middle of summer break, all the students will be out of an education for a time. Even if neighboring schools are able to immediately take in all the displaced students, the disruption costs students weeks of productive learning. Also, competition requires people to have different options when choosing a school, but there's no guarantee schools will crop up appropriately, especially if poorer school districts will come with smaller vouchers. Finally, relating back to the article, if the private schools have any choice in which students they take, they will be incentivized to avoid taking students with disabilities, which generally are more costly to educate.
The proponent's response to all of this is that these problems can be alleviated with proper regulations, and then we leave the realm of ideology and it becomes a negotiation. Personally, I'm skeptical that a voucher system could be implemented well enough to improve education, though it could come out cheaper, but I don't think it's worth the risk. I'm open to the idea, though, or at least talking about it.
A voucher would divert money from a public school, but it would also divert a student. If it costs $5,000/year to educate a student at a public school, grant a $3,000 voucher, and the public school would come out ahead since they have $2,000 dollars without a student.
That's assuming they keep that $2000. I haven't seen any proposal where that would be the case. More likely is a voucher for $3000 and the $2000 is redirected elsewhere.
> if you reimburse private school tuition, you divert money from public schools, thus exacerbating the problem
The total amount of funding for schools hasn't changed. One could inversely argue public-school funding is bad because it reduces money for private schools. Both arguments are tautological. They first assume their system is better, say the other competes for their money, and thusly conclude that funding for their better system should be preserved. (This is not an argument for or against charter schools. I'm just saying the "depletion" argument is silly.)
> You also divert money from public schools for no guarantee of better results
When properly done, charter schools can outperform public schools [1]. Otherwise, the evidence is mixed. I'd thus argue defaulting to the status quo. Teachers argue the status quo is state education while conservatives argue it's parent choice.
To add to your points, a very important consideration is that charter schools can game the metrics by forcing out students who aren't performing well, while public schools can't turn anyone away. This may be why they seem to improve test scores without making any actual difference [1].
Public schools can use charters to game metrics themselves too [2].
I don't think the argument is tautological because right now, the public controls the cost of education and how that cost is allocated by our votes for taxes and bonding and by elections of local school boards. If we opt to increase or decrease that funding, it is based on the assumption that the funding will provide a certain level of education and that we can also elect people that oversee that education. Once you bring private schools into the mix, questions about cost become much more complicated. Can a private school charge tuition beyond the voucher amount? If not, what the point of it being private, isn't it just a public school in everything but public oversight? Right now, if I reject or approve a bonding referendum or vote for a school board member, I am offering my opinion on how a school system is run because my vote has a direct effect on how much money goes to the schools and who oversees that money. But if it goes to vouchers, do I lose that control?
So no, I don't think the depletion argument is tautological because we do not have citizen control over how a private school is run, by definition. If they opt to charge more for tuition that the voucher covers, the depletion argument is very real, because people with more money can provide a better education with public subsidies. Even if they cannot do that, we still do not have oversight of those funds.
So, the wealthy get vouchers, as they can afford the lawyers and phycologists required to have a child declared disabled and in need of special accommodation?
My favorite response to the voucher debate is that most politicians who are against vouchers... send their children to private schools! (In D.C. at least, where public schools perform very poorly.)
Would the elite private schools that they send their kids to be affordable with only the voucher and no extra money? Doubtful.
The main point of the debate is not whether some private schools are able to educate better than public schools. It is whether subsidizing private schools will raise the overall quality of education.
No, not even close. Tuition at Sidwell Friends is approaching $40k/year [1]. The Lab School (specializes in learning disabled students) is over $40k/year [2].
DC spent about $20k/year per student in 2014. That's among the highest spending level in the nation [3]. I believe that figure is closer to $25k/year in 2016. About a third of the states spend less than half per student than DC [4].
The public schools in the parts of DC, Virginia, and Maryland where these politicians live are some of the best in the country. They don't send their kids to Sidwell Friends because Woodrow Wilson is mediocre, they send their kids there because it provides networking with other affluent and influential families and because it provides a certain amount of isolation from the proles.
Perfect, judgment-free description of an emotionally charged debate. I cant tell what side you're in, which is the exact right thing for this particular post.
> The argument against this is that if you reimburse private school tuition, you divert money from public schools, thus exacerbating the problem.
Well, if I do poorly at my job, I won't get paid either. Why does a school system get protection that the people paying for it do not? The status quo continues to hurt children.
> And once you divert public money to private schools, are they obligated to meet the same academic standards?
Well, yes, they should be held to the same standards as our public schools. Heck, if they take tax payer money they should have the same standard of what can be added as extra fees (no BS taking the money and demanding additional tuition).
It bugs me that when private social programs are brought in to deal with the worst-of-the-worst[1] and get results that we don't allow our children the same outlet education-wise.
1) I remember the lecture by one group out of Chicago in the 90's (cannot remember the name but they had some good data collection that I took hints from). They had a client burn down their HQ. They still continued even with that individual.
> Well, if I do poorly at my job, I won't get paid either.
The problem here is always measurement. How do you measure education success? Tests? If we have too many tests, people complain that their kids get too much testing. Grades? That leads to inflation. And so on. I don't think most people will disagree with the need for measurement and performance expectations, it's the details that are the sticking point.
> Well, yes, they should be held to the same standards as our public schools. Heck, if they take tax payer money they should have the same standard of what can be added as extra fees (no BS taking the money and demanding additional tuition).
But what's the point of the school being private then? They become public school that we don't have elected oversight of.
>FYI: North Dakota has a variation of open enrollment for public schools
I actually live in North Dakota and know a few families who utilize open enrollment. I have my issues with it because the district foots the costs for transportation, but the key difference is that it is between public schools, not between private and public.
The measurement is always going to be a problem, but we already measure public schools with tests. It really isn't the main issue as parents will pick the schools and they by and large know if their children are being educated.
> But what's the point of the school being private then? They become public school that we don't have elected oversight of.
I'm a bit confused. Just because I think that the tuition needs to be the same for everyone as a parent protection mechanism doesn't mean their won't be a difference.
> I have my issues with it because the district foots the costs for transportation, but the key difference is that it is between public schools, not between private and public.
One step towards allowing parents to vote on if the school is doing a good job. I do wish they would transfer the tuition to private schools also. If a district accepts the students then transportation is an issue which the state could separate out in a budget. Sadly, ND is going to have some problems this year because of an unexpected expense.
> I'm a bit confused. Just because I think that the tuition needs to be the same for everyone as a parent protection mechanism doesn't mean their won't be a difference.
What would be the meaningful differences? We are saying, "here's a fixed amount you can spend, you can't charge more and here are the standards you have to meet. Oh, and you can't go out of business, since that would be disruptive to the child's education." It really seems like we've removed most of the advantages of a private school, but can't elect their oversight like we can with a public school. I see absolutely no benefit to having a bunch of disparate schools that have identical budgets and standards. We could do that with magnet schools.
EDIT: I should also add, that I think people overestimate how much vouchers can do to solve the problem, which is largely socioeconomic. Rich people would still live close to the best schools and even if poor people could send their kids there, they still deal with so many disadvantages. If all the best schools are an hour bus ride away, that's unfair to people who don't live in that neighborhood. If I still cannot afford extra curriculars or class trips, then I still cannot give my kids the same education. There's so many other things that figure into the education formula that are not just the school you attend or the teacher that teaches you. I think the best option is to increase people's engagement in their school systems (via school board elections, lobbying, PTA and so on) and get incentives to improve public schools.
That isn't what I'm saying at all. I'm saying the tuition paid by the state needs to cover the tuition if you accept the money as a school. I am pretty sure that removes none of the advantages since many private schools in ND and elsewhere have lower current tuition than the public school receives, and last time I looked the private schools were doing the same testing. STEM teachers might actually get salaries that would attract them to a school.
The oversight is the parents saying I want my kid to go somewhere else. Individual decisions of the parents is quite a bit more valuable to me then the elected folks taking donations from the various teacher's unions.
I updated my post to add a few things and reword a phrase that was kind of rude and patronizing.
I guess I'd like to hear specifically what a private school that is using fixed tuition dollars could do differently. How could they pay teachers that much more? If parents take their kids out and the school goes out of business, how does that improve the outcomes for the kids who didn't leave the school who's education has been disrupted?
EDIT: I should note that here in Fargo, no private school is paying teachers near what they are public schools. I went to look for assessment reports in the school district profiles, but the private school system is not listed.
I tried to ignore your tone, and it is really hard to hold a conversation if you go back and change your post after someone already comments on it.
> Rich people would still live close to the best schools and even if poor people could send their kids there, they still deal with so many disadvantages. If all the best schools are an hour bus ride away, that's unfair to people who don't live in that neighborhood.
That is a result of schools being funded by property taxes and levies. Our current system allows this to happen and switching to a system where the school is paid per student reduces the problem.
> I guess I'd like to hear specifically what a private school that is using fixed tuition dollars could do differently. How could they pay teachers that much more?
Most private schools have less funding than public schools so it would actually increase their budget. Public schools spend a lot of money outside the classroom on admin which most private schools don't find necessary.
> I tried to ignore your tone, and it is really hard to hold a conversation if you go back and change your post after someone already comments on it.
When I started editing my post you hadn't yet replied. So I'll just have to be sorry and leave it at that.
> That is a result of schools being funded by property taxes and levies. Our current system allows this to happen and switching to a system where the school is paid per student reduces the problem.
Not exclusively. People want to live close to good schools so people who can afford to live close to one do. Performance is related very closely to the socioeconomics of the area. In Chicago and New York, schools in poor neighborhoods under perform, despite receiving the same funding. Anecdotally I see the same here. Of course, this is the argument for vouchers; get kids out of schools that under perform, but the cost of doing so can be onerous, not just in money, but in time. Getting a kid from a poor neighborhood to a better school is costly and difficult. I actually think open enrollment is a better answer for this, because the public can pick up the transportation costs (as much as the current implementation of that chagrins me). And of course you have the problem of admission and extra programs that are funded by backers, not the public, which could complicate the process a great deal. (for the record, taking sports out of schools is something I support regardless).
> Public schools spend a lot of money outside the classroom on admin which most private schools don't find necessary.
I don't know that there's much more than anecdotal evidence for this. In my experience (which I fully knowledge is anecdotal) most administrative expenses in the public sector surround the need to be accountable to the public. This creates cumbersome red tape like complicated purchasing policies, regulation, auditors and so on. My observations of the school system here leads to much the same conclusion. Part of the admin overhead is their requirement to meet certain standards and provide certain required services. If private schools were to start taking public money, I believe administrative overhead would follow closely.
The thing is, I'm not categorically opposed to vouchers. I think that there is a place for parents to argue that their kids are not being served by the public school system. But I cannot see how a blanket voucher program can avoid the same pitfalls public schools currently have. As someone said upthread, a critical part of the free market is the ability to fail, and the last thing we can have happen to a school is to have it fail. To avoid that we would regulate private schools to the point they are a public utility, technically private, but really indistinguishable from what we once had.
In ND the private schools are cheaper tuition than what the state is paying per student. I would imagine that you can find quite a few prep schools that are more $, but those aren't private schools that normal people send their kids to.
Fairfax County, VA. It's one of the wealthiest counties in the US, so there's plenty of discretionary income for private school. But, I wouldn't have guessed other areas had tuition less than average spending per pupil at the local public schools.
Lot of church schools since a lot of the target market isn't rich.
I suppose there is always going to be a 'elite minimum' so that the precious child won't have to deal with the riff-raff. Very much like unpaid internships often become.
Yes. The amount of time & money spent on special education programs is _incredible_. Private schools just don't tailor to this student population, and that's a _huge_ reason why private schools, on paper, look better.
My wife is an SLP (i.e. "speech teacher", but more recently in management) and has dealt with several cases where very well-off families keep their children in public school so the state picks up the cost of special programs, even for simple stuff like articulation. In some states/counties, some students are entitled to government-funded therapy even if the kid goes to private school during the day!
Given everything we know about how _little_ teaching methodology matters to overall, aggregate outcomes--that what matters most, by far, are the home environment and the peer environment--I don't even see the debate about vouchers as remotely legitimate. From a 10,000 foot view, public education has the maximal benefit with minimal _actual_ burdens on other students. Rich kids will tend to go to rich public schools, and that's all that really matters. Poor kids will go to poor schools because poor parents rarely care, nor have the time or wherewithal to care, about those issues. But at least public schools will meet a baseline. Those parents that do care usually are able to make busing arrangements. Basically, all the corner cases can be adequately handled with smaller programs. There's no need to upset the existing structure of public school education.
Only bad things can happen. The history of education is littered with foolish ideas. The only obvious good idea was to institute public education in the first place. Beyond that, there are no easy solutions to improving educational outcomes. It's largely a cultural issue, and you can't legislate culture, nor can you throw money at it.
Well, you [i]can[i] throw money at it. It won't fix anything, but that won't stop politicians from wasting money on whatever asinine idea betters their re-election odds.
The ADA is a law that was passed during the first Bush administration, not a "product" of Obama's DOJ other than the expectation that the DOJ enforce the laws of the United States.
Do you remember the HN story about the DoJ letter to UCB? Did you read the letter? There is significant leeway in which cases the DoJ pursues, and in how the DoJ pursues and investigates cases. In no way was the DoJ's finding (i.e. threat of legal action, fines, etc.) a given. It also seems obvious that UCB could have claimed that to address the complaint would have been cost-prohibitive (which the DoJ letter listed as a possible defense), yet they didn't attempt to do so.
Also, this action was only pursued after two professors at a university for the deaf filed an official complaint with the DoJ. Isn't it bizarre that two professors at an institute of higher-learning filed a complaint to have educational resources, which were freely available to the entire world, deleted?
> not a "product" of Obama's DOJ other than the expectation that the DOJ enforce the laws of the United States.
A bizarre statement, considering how the Obama administration and DoJ simply declined to enforce laws they didn't like.
> Also, this action was only pursued after two professors at a university for the deaf filed an official complaint with the DoJ. Isn't it bizarre that two professors at an institute of higher-learning filed a complaint to have educational resources, which were freely available to the entire world, deleted?
No, it is not bizarre that lawyers at a university for the deaf, precisely the population that one expects to notice this infraction and to also have the monetary resources to file a complaint, were the ones who filed a complaint. That's often how lawsuits come about.
Yes, the DoJ is all about priorities. Obama's administration put more resources into its civil rights division compared to the Bush (GWB) era, which looked more into voter fraud among other issues. That other administrations may have let the law go unenforced does not mean that the law should or can be ignored when litigants pursue a complaint.
And yes, I have read the other HN threads on this and have occasionally chimed in the discussion [0]. The issue is a lot more nuanced than "THANKS OBAMA SJWs". But it's a path that the United States as a whole decided to walk down in 1990, in bipartisan fashion, when it passed the sweeping American Disabilities Act. The ADA has had massive costs for businesses and organizations in the past decades: http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/ada/ch2.htm
> No, it is not bizarre that lawyers at a university for the deaf, precisely the population that one expects to notice this infraction and to also have the monetary resources to file a complaint, were the ones who filed a complaint. That's often how lawsuits come about.
Sorry if I was unclear. I meant how ironic it is for people who have devoted their lives to educating others to file a complaint causing freely available educational resources to be destroyed.
That's one irony to note. Another irony worth noting is that a premier publicly-funded university, in the U.S. state that is among the most proactive in enforcing ADA regulations, expended taxpayer-funded resources to produce educational videos that did not meet ADA regulations.
Those educational resources may have been "freely available" because they were posted on YouTube, but the folks who did the work of curating, editing, and producing those resources for YouTube are paid with public funds, and are thus obligated to follow the rules of ADA. If "well at least it's better than nothing" is the excuse for deprioritizing access to these resources, then the ADA's ability to protect the disenfranchised becomes effectively meaningless.
Note that the ADA was passed in 1990, so it had been in place for 17 years before Berkeley started putting video online.
And, for the years between 2007 and 2015 Berkeley staff had lied by saying that they were aware of Berkeley policies to make stuff accessible, and that the material was accessible.
This is new grounds for the ADA. Previous guidance has almost always been about having your site's core functionality accessible. So if you're TurboTax, a blind person should be able to submit their taxes.
The idea that in 2007 anyone thought that all the videos your school would post online would have to be accessible to hearing-impaired users is simply inaccurate.
2007 is a lot different than 2017 when it comes to online video consumption. For starters, a greater number of people, including the disabled, are consuming online video. This is not entirely different from brick and mortar facilities being hit with lawsuits for not having required wheelchair accessible facilities. Those lawsuits weren't based on new laws, but on the discovery of the inadequate facilities.
I think it is entirely different. Physical accessibility is virtually a one-time cost: install the rails, ramps, etc, and you're done. But meeting these standards [1] is surely cost-prohibitive, especially when the only person doing it is an already overburdened professor who's merely uploading videos of his lectures, slides, etc. It would increase the preparation time of every lecture, document, etc. by several times over.
For a small business, a $10,000 lawsuit + construction fees is not a trivial cost, and may be cost-prohibitive enough to force the business to close shop. But "something is better than nothing " is not justification alone for not meeting ADA regulations.
I don't think anyone believes that meeting ADA regulations is cheap; the fact that Berkeley (and Harvard and MIT [0]) are in this predicament shows that the cost of producing accessible video is non-trivial. But it's the law, and advocacy groups would argue that the burden shouldn't be on the individual professor, but on the institution, or rather, the federal agencies to provide adequate funding to meet the burden imposed by law.
If institutions aren't forced to realize the costs, then they aren't incentivized to pressure government budget/policymakers to make ADA funding a priority, which neuters the protections that ADA was created for in the first place.
Again, it's costly, but that's the monetary price our civic society pays when it decides to extend protections to those who are disabled. Presumably, the ADA was passed because legislators and constituents thought that the price was worth it.
> especially when the only person doing it is an already overburdened professor
That over burdened professor was offered help, and s/he had to sign a declaration to say s/he was aware of the help provided by Berkeley, and that the content was accessible.
> UC Berkeley’s faculty creates and publishes courses for the public on UC BerkeleyX. Faculty developing UC BerkeleyX courses can, but are not required to, develop courses in collaboration with the Berkeley Resource Center for Online Education (BRCOE). BRCOE follows best practices in design for accessibility and also has a quality assurance process that includes deploying various accessibility evaluators; remediating layout, page structure, downloadable or styling accessibility barriers; and obtaining transcripts of all audio and video files associated with a course.
> Prior to July 1, 2015, UC Berkeley also allowed faculty and instructors to design, develop and publish courses through a self-service model, which did not include support from BRCOE. Beginning July 1, 2015, UC Berkeley advised the Department that all faculty using the selfservice model will be asked to sign off on a list of accessibility resource reviews prior to publishing the course. The sign-off statements include:
The age of the law, and of the building, and of the content, makes this example a bit different.
i) I build a building and then someone passes a law and I have to modify my building to make it accessible.
ii) A law is passed. A decade later I build a building, and I see the law and think it's a good thing and tell my architects and builders to make sure they comply with the law and I offer them support to understand the law, and they sign a document to say "Yep, we complied with that law", and it turns out that they lied and my new building is not compliant with the law and I have to add a ramp anyway.
It was worse than that. The court's decision acknowledged that most of the videos did have subtitles, but found that the subtitles were not 100% accurate, there was a small number of errors, plus they did not provide subtitles and a description perfectly describing graphical content of the videos such as charts. Some videos also didn't have captions at all but merely having captions wasn't the issue.
Among the problems that go beyond simple captioning of voice:
"many videos did not provide an alternative way to access images or visual information (e.g., graphs, charts, animations, or urls on slides)"
"videos containing text sometimes had poor color contrast"
"information was sometimes conveyed using color alone"
"some documents were not formatted properly for use with screen readers"
"page structural elements were not always defined"
"some tables did not have row and column headers defined"
"math equations were not always defined in a comprehendible way" (Not sure if any math classes, texts, articles, etc at all pass are capable of passing this new court defined test for everyone.)
"Many PDFs either did not have a tag structure defined or the tag structure was incorrect."
"Some links were not keyboard accessible and did not indicate whether they were expandable or collapsible"
So the court set a very high bar schools and perhaps others must pass in order to be legally allowed to post content on line. Content must not be merely accessible but must be what the government now calls "entirely accessible". By this decision this can be seen to cover a comprehensive set of ideals that go far beyond voice transcriptions, and which by the standards of the court seem to be required to be implemented perfectly without any errors or omissions to pass the standard required by their reading of the ADA.
It's true that the DoJ (and DoEd) have paid attention to these problems relatively recently (less than 10 years). I don't agree that perfection is required or that a bar has been set that must be met in some approved way prior to posting content. It's not like every university with publicly available videos has to caption them now "or else," but they should heed the lessons learned from the outcomes of legal cases like this.
I disagree. First, guidance tends to be updated in response to litigation outcomes as often as in response to executive fiat, arguably more.
Second, why do you deny that anyone had thought of deaf accessibility when the videos were first uploaded? Subtitling and sign language accommodation are not new things, it was entirely foreseeable that there would be both demand for such accommodations and that standards for adding caption data to online video would emerge.
There may not have been litigation or guidance on ADA implementation in place at that time, but you shouldn't need a rule to be in place before you spend money on doing the right thing when the spirit of the law (maximizing accessibility) is clear and the demand and technical requirements of the task are obvious.
It should have been on UCB's to-do list from the day after the videos were uploaded in the first place. To have it otherwise is to say that deaf people don't matter.
Berkeley themselves thought all the content was accessible. They provided support to content creators to make it accessible, and they required content creators to sign declarations to say that the content was accessible and that they were aware of the support that Berkeley provided.
Why did Berkeley require those declarations to be signed if they didn't care about accessibility?
I can't speak specifically to ADA, but I know federally funded programs were required to meet 508 standards as of 2003, which included captions or transcripts for videos.
So expecting such affordances for ADA purposes in 2007 seems reasonable.
Does such a high bar also have to be present for those students whom are at the top of their grade in a given subject?
I have often wondered how different my life would be if public school were more like college. A set of known curriculum which might be consumed in any order in which dependencies were fulfilled.
Yet further, the arbitrary length of a semester should be removed. It should be entirely work unit based.
My high school was a lot like this, especially closer to the end. You were often required to take certain subjects, but among those subjects, there was a fairly wide array of choices (calculus or advanced geometry, American Lit or British Lit, and so on).
It's slow, but high schools are generally moving to this model. The school I teach at does this. You are required to have a certain number of and type of credits but you have freedom in how you do this. For example, you are required to take biology, but your other science credits could be forensics, anatomy and physiology, and astronomy. In the past everyone would have to take biology, chemistry, and physics with no options until their senior year.
I've taught in several high schools and they all had this in some fashion. There are some core credits you must take, but then the majority can be selected from a variety of offerings at the school. Expanding these offerings was one of the explicit goals of public schooling in the post-war period (though it has lost priority to accountability since the 1980s).
Can someone please explain the relationship between the linked article and the headline. How has the supreme court set the educational bar higher for students with disabilities and how will this impact public education? Will there be immediate effects?
Federal law requires that a public school provide a free and appropriate education for students with disabilities. If the school does not, then the parents of the student can place their child into a private school and the public school is required to reimburse the parents for failing to meet their legal obligations.
There was a lawsuit over this concerning what level of education the public school must provide in order to meet their legal obligation.
The appeals court set the bar really low. It seems the student basically just had to be passed from grade level to grade level if I am understanding the situation correctly.
The Supreme Court said, no the public school actually has to set appropriate challenges and goals for the disabled student and try to meet those goals. The school has to do this even if the disabled student cannot be placed in the mainstream education classes.
Right, isn't the term "reasonable accommodations" from ADA language?
I'm still at a bit of a loss as to the functional impact. I understand the monetary argument in the first paragraph, there are similar laws pertaining to educational material funding and accessibility such as CA EDU 60119[1] which requires access to all students all primary education materials BOTH at home and in the classroom.
But I'm still struggling to understand how this will functionally change anything? I guess I'm wondering if there is a measurable mandate for anything other than what could hypothetically be "superficial change" to accommodate the language of the supreme court.
I'm only a casual observer of the court, so corrections here are very welcome. As I've seen, many rulings tend to cluster around the end of the session (June). Decisions from this term can be published at any point between now and then.
I suppose withholding an obviously short and easy 8-0 decision until after the hearings would be just as political. But to announce the ruling now, during the last day of the committee confirmation hearing, seems extremely political and like an indictment against Gorsuch.
I'm not a casual observer.
You are simply wrong :)
THe reason rulings cluster around end of session is because those are the hard cases, which actually require persuading various judges chambers, writing opinions at least 5 will sign onto, etc.
Unanimous rulings like this one, they are just about always released the second they are done.
I've seen some misunderstandings in this thread. This ruling doesn't create a voucher system. The Supreme Court's ruling sets the bar that a public school has to met in the education of a special education student. If the school does not meet this bar, the guardians of the student can seek reimbursement of private school tuition.
My parents pulled me out of public school and sent me to a private school that could teach me given my special needs. Best decision for everyone, sucks though that they had to pay my tuition in addition to all the taxes.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 160 ms ] threadSeems like if this is the case for children with special education needs it should apply to all children given how poor the "free" educational system is in many areas in the US.
The argument against this is that if you reimburse private school tuition, you divert money from public schools, thus exacerbating the problem. You also divert money from public schools for no guarantee of better results. This kid did better, but would another? And once you divert public money to private schools, are they obligated to meet the same academic standards?
On the other hand, the public schools are bad in places, and it's hard to argue that kids should be the ones in the middle, getting worse results while we sort out the schools.
Those who reject vouchers argue that education is not and cannot be a free market in the usual sense. An important property of a free market is the ability for companies to fail: indeed, the majority of startups and small businesses fail. And while it's acceptable for restaurants a grocery stores to come and go, a private school going under has serious consequences. Unless the school goes under in the middle of summer break, all the students will be out of an education for a time. Even if neighboring schools are able to immediately take in all the displaced students, the disruption costs students weeks of productive learning. Also, competition requires people to have different options when choosing a school, but there's no guarantee schools will crop up appropriately, especially if poorer school districts will come with smaller vouchers. Finally, relating back to the article, if the private schools have any choice in which students they take, they will be incentivized to avoid taking students with disabilities, which generally are more costly to educate.
The proponent's response to all of this is that these problems can be alleviated with proper regulations, and then we leave the realm of ideology and it becomes a negotiation. Personally, I'm skeptical that a voucher system could be implemented well enough to improve education, though it could come out cheaper, but I don't think it's worth the risk. I'm open to the idea, though, or at least talking about it.
The total amount of funding for schools hasn't changed. One could inversely argue public-school funding is bad because it reduces money for private schools. Both arguments are tautological. They first assume their system is better, say the other competes for their money, and thusly conclude that funding for their better system should be preserved. (This is not an argument for or against charter schools. I'm just saying the "depletion" argument is silly.)
> You also divert money from public schools for no guarantee of better results
When properly done, charter schools can outperform public schools [1]. Otherwise, the evidence is mixed. I'd thus argue defaulting to the status quo. Teachers argue the status quo is state education while conservatives argue it's parent choice.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/charter-school-perf...
Public schools can use charters to game metrics themselves too [2].
[1] http://www.nber.org/papers/w22502
[2] https://www.propublica.org/article/alternative-education-usi...
So no, I don't think the depletion argument is tautological because we do not have citizen control over how a private school is run, by definition. If they opt to charge more for tuition that the voucher covers, the depletion argument is very real, because people with more money can provide a better education with public subsidies. Even if they cannot do that, we still do not have oversight of those funds.
The main point of the debate is not whether some private schools are able to educate better than public schools. It is whether subsidizing private schools will raise the overall quality of education.
DC spent about $20k/year per student in 2014. That's among the highest spending level in the nation [3]. I believe that figure is closer to $25k/year in 2016. About a third of the states spend less than half per student than DC [4].
[1] http://www.sidwell.edu/admissions/tuition-and-fees/index.asp... [2] https://www.labschool.org/page/admissions/tuition-and-fees [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/06/02/the-... [4]http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-educa...
Well, if I do poorly at my job, I won't get paid either. Why does a school system get protection that the people paying for it do not? The status quo continues to hurt children.
> And once you divert public money to private schools, are they obligated to meet the same academic standards?
Well, yes, they should be held to the same standards as our public schools. Heck, if they take tax payer money they should have the same standard of what can be added as extra fees (no BS taking the money and demanding additional tuition).
It bugs me that when private social programs are brought in to deal with the worst-of-the-worst[1] and get results that we don't allow our children the same outlet education-wise.
FYI: North Dakota has a variation of open enrollment for public schools https://www.nd.gov/dpi/SchoolStaff/SchoolFinance/OpenEnrollm...
1) I remember the lecture by one group out of Chicago in the 90's (cannot remember the name but they had some good data collection that I took hints from). They had a client burn down their HQ. They still continued even with that individual.
The problem here is always measurement. How do you measure education success? Tests? If we have too many tests, people complain that their kids get too much testing. Grades? That leads to inflation. And so on. I don't think most people will disagree with the need for measurement and performance expectations, it's the details that are the sticking point.
> Well, yes, they should be held to the same standards as our public schools. Heck, if they take tax payer money they should have the same standard of what can be added as extra fees (no BS taking the money and demanding additional tuition).
But what's the point of the school being private then? They become public school that we don't have elected oversight of.
>FYI: North Dakota has a variation of open enrollment for public schools
I actually live in North Dakota and know a few families who utilize open enrollment. I have my issues with it because the district foots the costs for transportation, but the key difference is that it is between public schools, not between private and public.
The measurement is always going to be a problem, but we already measure public schools with tests. It really isn't the main issue as parents will pick the schools and they by and large know if their children are being educated.
> But what's the point of the school being private then? They become public school that we don't have elected oversight of.
I'm a bit confused. Just because I think that the tuition needs to be the same for everyone as a parent protection mechanism doesn't mean their won't be a difference.
> I have my issues with it because the district foots the costs for transportation, but the key difference is that it is between public schools, not between private and public.
One step towards allowing parents to vote on if the school is doing a good job. I do wish they would transfer the tuition to private schools also. If a district accepts the students then transportation is an issue which the state could separate out in a budget. Sadly, ND is going to have some problems this year because of an unexpected expense.
What would be the meaningful differences? We are saying, "here's a fixed amount you can spend, you can't charge more and here are the standards you have to meet. Oh, and you can't go out of business, since that would be disruptive to the child's education." It really seems like we've removed most of the advantages of a private school, but can't elect their oversight like we can with a public school. I see absolutely no benefit to having a bunch of disparate schools that have identical budgets and standards. We could do that with magnet schools.
EDIT: I should also add, that I think people overestimate how much vouchers can do to solve the problem, which is largely socioeconomic. Rich people would still live close to the best schools and even if poor people could send their kids there, they still deal with so many disadvantages. If all the best schools are an hour bus ride away, that's unfair to people who don't live in that neighborhood. If I still cannot afford extra curriculars or class trips, then I still cannot give my kids the same education. There's so many other things that figure into the education formula that are not just the school you attend or the teacher that teaches you. I think the best option is to increase people's engagement in their school systems (via school board elections, lobbying, PTA and so on) and get incentives to improve public schools.
The oversight is the parents saying I want my kid to go somewhere else. Individual decisions of the parents is quite a bit more valuable to me then the elected folks taking donations from the various teacher's unions.
I guess I'd like to hear specifically what a private school that is using fixed tuition dollars could do differently. How could they pay teachers that much more? If parents take their kids out and the school goes out of business, how does that improve the outcomes for the kids who didn't leave the school who's education has been disrupted?
EDIT: I should note that here in Fargo, no private school is paying teachers near what they are public schools. I went to look for assessment reports in the school district profiles, but the private school system is not listed.
> Rich people would still live close to the best schools and even if poor people could send their kids there, they still deal with so many disadvantages. If all the best schools are an hour bus ride away, that's unfair to people who don't live in that neighborhood.
That is a result of schools being funded by property taxes and levies. Our current system allows this to happen and switching to a system where the school is paid per student reduces the problem.
> I guess I'd like to hear specifically what a private school that is using fixed tuition dollars could do differently. How could they pay teachers that much more?
Most private schools have less funding than public schools so it would actually increase their budget. Public schools spend a lot of money outside the classroom on admin which most private schools don't find necessary.
When I started editing my post you hadn't yet replied. So I'll just have to be sorry and leave it at that.
> That is a result of schools being funded by property taxes and levies. Our current system allows this to happen and switching to a system where the school is paid per student reduces the problem.
Not exclusively. People want to live close to good schools so people who can afford to live close to one do. Performance is related very closely to the socioeconomics of the area. In Chicago and New York, schools in poor neighborhoods under perform, despite receiving the same funding. Anecdotally I see the same here. Of course, this is the argument for vouchers; get kids out of schools that under perform, but the cost of doing so can be onerous, not just in money, but in time. Getting a kid from a poor neighborhood to a better school is costly and difficult. I actually think open enrollment is a better answer for this, because the public can pick up the transportation costs (as much as the current implementation of that chagrins me). And of course you have the problem of admission and extra programs that are funded by backers, not the public, which could complicate the process a great deal. (for the record, taking sports out of schools is something I support regardless).
> Public schools spend a lot of money outside the classroom on admin which most private schools don't find necessary.
I don't know that there's much more than anecdotal evidence for this. In my experience (which I fully knowledge is anecdotal) most administrative expenses in the public sector surround the need to be accountable to the public. This creates cumbersome red tape like complicated purchasing policies, regulation, auditors and so on. My observations of the school system here leads to much the same conclusion. Part of the admin overhead is their requirement to meet certain standards and provide certain required services. If private schools were to start taking public money, I believe administrative overhead would follow closely.
The thing is, I'm not categorically opposed to vouchers. I think that there is a place for parents to argue that their kids are not being served by the public school system. But I cannot see how a blanket voucher program can avoid the same pitfalls public schools currently have. As someone said upthread, a critical part of the free market is the ability to fail, and the last thing we can have happen to a school is to have it fail. To avoid that we would regulate private schools to the point they are a public utility, technically private, but really indistinguishable from what we once had.
Citation? The private schools in my area charge tuition well in excess of the county/city expenditure per student.
[Fairfax County Public Schools, $16,000/pupil/year: http://www.insidenova.com/news/education/fairfax/fcps-per-st...
Madeira School (girls prep school), $45,000/pupil/year: http://www.madeira.org/admission/tuition-financial-aid/cost-...
Nysmith Academy (elemetary school), $30,000+: http://www.nysmith.com/tuition-fees/
St. Stephen's & St. Agnes (parochial), $30,000+: https://www.sssas.org/page/admission/tuition-and-financial-a...
Paul VI (parochial), $18,000: https://www.paulvi.net/page.aspx?pid=257
Also of note - PVI charges more for special ed students.
Fairfax County, VA. It's one of the wealthiest counties in the US, so there's plenty of discretionary income for private school. But, I wouldn't have guessed other areas had tuition less than average spending per pupil at the local public schools.
I suppose there is always going to be a 'elite minimum' so that the precious child won't have to deal with the riff-raff. Very much like unpaid internships often become.
My wife is an SLP (i.e. "speech teacher", but more recently in management) and has dealt with several cases where very well-off families keep their children in public school so the state picks up the cost of special programs, even for simple stuff like articulation. In some states/counties, some students are entitled to government-funded therapy even if the kid goes to private school during the day!
Given everything we know about how _little_ teaching methodology matters to overall, aggregate outcomes--that what matters most, by far, are the home environment and the peer environment--I don't even see the debate about vouchers as remotely legitimate. From a 10,000 foot view, public education has the maximal benefit with minimal _actual_ burdens on other students. Rich kids will tend to go to rich public schools, and that's all that really matters. Poor kids will go to poor schools because poor parents rarely care, nor have the time or wherewithal to care, about those issues. But at least public schools will meet a baseline. Those parents that do care usually are able to make busing arrangements. Basically, all the corner cases can be adequately handled with smaller programs. There's no need to upset the existing structure of public school education.
Only bad things can happen. The history of education is littered with foolish ideas. The only obvious good idea was to institute public education in the first place. Beyond that, there are no easy solutions to improving educational outcomes. It's largely a cultural issue, and you can't legislate culture, nor can you throw money at it.
I'm confused...
2007: https://www.cnet.com/news/uc-berkeley-first-to-post-full-lec...
2017: http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/266033/obama-civil-rights-...
Also, this action was only pursued after two professors at a university for the deaf filed an official complaint with the DoJ. Isn't it bizarre that two professors at an institute of higher-learning filed a complaint to have educational resources, which were freely available to the entire world, deleted?
> not a "product" of Obama's DOJ other than the expectation that the DOJ enforce the laws of the United States.
A bizarre statement, considering how the Obama administration and DoJ simply declined to enforce laws they didn't like.
No, it is not bizarre that lawyers at a university for the deaf, precisely the population that one expects to notice this infraction and to also have the monetary resources to file a complaint, were the ones who filed a complaint. That's often how lawsuits come about.
Yes, the DoJ is all about priorities. Obama's administration put more resources into its civil rights division compared to the Bush (GWB) era, which looked more into voter fraud among other issues. That other administrations may have let the law go unenforced does not mean that the law should or can be ignored when litigants pursue a complaint.
And yes, I have read the other HN threads on this and have occasionally chimed in the discussion [0]. The issue is a lot more nuanced than "THANKS OBAMA SJWs". But it's a path that the United States as a whole decided to walk down in 1990, in bipartisan fashion, when it passed the sweeping American Disabilities Act. The ADA has had massive costs for businesses and organizations in the past decades: http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/ada/ch2.htm
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768856
Sorry if I was unclear. I meant how ironic it is for people who have devoted their lives to educating others to file a complaint causing freely available educational resources to be destroyed.
Those educational resources may have been "freely available" because they were posted on YouTube, but the folks who did the work of curating, editing, and producing those resources for YouTube are paid with public funds, and are thus obligated to follow the rules of ADA. If "well at least it's better than nothing" is the excuse for deprioritizing access to these resources, then the ADA's ability to protect the disenfranchised becomes effectively meaningless.
And, for the years between 2007 and 2015 Berkeley staff had lied by saying that they were aware of Berkeley policies to make stuff accessible, and that the material was accessible.
The idea that in 2007 anyone thought that all the videos your school would post online would have to be accessible to hearing-impaired users is simply inaccurate.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13933826
I don't think anyone believes that meeting ADA regulations is cheap; the fact that Berkeley (and Harvard and MIT [0]) are in this predicament shows that the cost of producing accessible video is non-trivial. But it's the law, and advocacy groups would argue that the burden shouldn't be on the individual professor, but on the institution, or rather, the federal agencies to provide adequate funding to meet the burden imposed by law.
If institutions aren't forced to realize the costs, then they aren't incentivized to pressure government budget/policymakers to make ADA funding a priority, which neuters the protections that ADA was created for in the first place.
Again, it's costly, but that's the monetary price our civic society pays when it decides to extend protections to those who are disabled. Presumably, the ADA was passed because legislators and constituents thought that the price was worth it.
[0] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/2/25/harvard-lawsuit-...
That over burdened professor was offered help, and s/he had to sign a declaration to say s/he was aware of the help provided by Berkeley, and that the content was accessible.
https://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016-08...
Pages 3 and 4:
> UC Berkeley’s faculty creates and publishes courses for the public on UC BerkeleyX. Faculty developing UC BerkeleyX courses can, but are not required to, develop courses in collaboration with the Berkeley Resource Center for Online Education (BRCOE). BRCOE follows best practices in design for accessibility and also has a quality assurance process that includes deploying various accessibility evaluators; remediating layout, page structure, downloadable or styling accessibility barriers; and obtaining transcripts of all audio and video files associated with a course.
> Prior to July 1, 2015, UC Berkeley also allowed faculty and instructors to design, develop and publish courses through a self-service model, which did not include support from BRCOE. Beginning July 1, 2015, UC Berkeley advised the Department that all faculty using the selfservice model will be asked to sign off on a list of accessibility resource reviews prior to publishing the course. The sign-off statements include:
i) I build a building and then someone passes a law and I have to modify my building to make it accessible.
ii) A law is passed. A decade later I build a building, and I see the law and think it's a good thing and tell my architects and builders to make sure they comply with the law and I offer them support to understand the law, and they sign a document to say "Yep, we complied with that law", and it turns out that they lied and my new building is not compliant with the law and I have to add a ramp anyway.
The Berkeley situation is more like ii than i.
Among the problems that go beyond simple captioning of voice:
"many videos did not provide an alternative way to access images or visual information (e.g., graphs, charts, animations, or urls on slides)"
"videos containing text sometimes had poor color contrast"
"information was sometimes conveyed using color alone"
"some documents were not formatted properly for use with screen readers"
"page structural elements were not always defined"
"some tables did not have row and column headers defined"
"math equations were not always defined in a comprehendible way" (Not sure if any math classes, texts, articles, etc at all pass are capable of passing this new court defined test for everyone.)
"Many PDFs either did not have a tag structure defined or the tag structure was incorrect."
"Some links were not keyboard accessible and did not indicate whether they were expandable or collapsible"
So the court set a very high bar schools and perhaps others must pass in order to be legally allowed to post content on line. Content must not be merely accessible but must be what the government now calls "entirely accessible". By this decision this can be seen to cover a comprehensive set of ideals that go far beyond voice transcriptions, and which by the standards of the court seem to be required to be implemented perfectly without any errors or omissions to pass the standard required by their reading of the ADA.
Second, why do you deny that anyone had thought of deaf accessibility when the videos were first uploaded? Subtitling and sign language accommodation are not new things, it was entirely foreseeable that there would be both demand for such accommodations and that standards for adding caption data to online video would emerge.
There may not have been litigation or guidance on ADA implementation in place at that time, but you shouldn't need a rule to be in place before you spend money on doing the right thing when the spirit of the law (maximizing accessibility) is clear and the demand and technical requirements of the task are obvious.
It should have been on UCB's to-do list from the day after the videos were uploaded in the first place. To have it otherwise is to say that deaf people don't matter.
Why did Berkeley require those declarations to be signed if they didn't care about accessibility?
looks around who said that they didn't?
So expecting such affordances for ADA purposes in 2007 seems reasonable.
I have often wondered how different my life would be if public school were more like college. A set of known curriculum which might be consumed in any order in which dependencies were fulfilled.
Yet further, the arbitrary length of a semester should be removed. It should be entirely work unit based.
Contact your state legislature.
There was a lawsuit over this concerning what level of education the public school must provide in order to meet their legal obligation.
The appeals court set the bar really low. It seems the student basically just had to be passed from grade level to grade level if I am understanding the situation correctly.
The Supreme Court said, no the public school actually has to set appropriate challenges and goals for the disabled student and try to meet those goals. The school has to do this even if the disabled student cannot be placed in the mainstream education classes.
I'm still at a bit of a loss as to the functional impact. I understand the monetary argument in the first paragraph, there are similar laws pertaining to educational material funding and accessibility such as CA EDU 60119[1] which requires access to all students all primary education materials BOTH at home and in the classroom.
But I'm still struggling to understand how this will functionally change anything? I guess I'm wondering if there is a measurable mandate for anything other than what could hypothetically be "superficial change" to accommodate the language of the supreme court.
[]1http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/textedcod60119.asp
I suppose withholding an obviously short and easy 8-0 decision until after the hearings would be just as political. But to announce the ruling now, during the last day of the committee confirmation hearing, seems extremely political and like an indictment against Gorsuch.
Unanimous rulings like this one, they are just about always released the second they are done.
Couldn't anyone getting an inadequate public education sue under this?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Appropriate_Public_Educ...
The reason this doesn't apply to all students is because it's specifically about federal legislation that deals with disabled students, IDEA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individuals_with_Disabilitie...
Edit:See also, FAPE: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Appropriate_Public_Educ...
Edit: Here is the decision: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-827_0pm1.pdf