Mike Angwin wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:
RJ>While I have no argument with this per se,  how do you deal with the fa
RJ>that it's hard to judge the "product" of an institution of that sort,  
RJ>educational institution,  until some years after a number of groups hav
RJ>passed through their whole process...?
 MA>        By letting each parent judge the results, relative to 
 MA> thier own children, on an ongoing basis.  I have no need of 
 MA> state tests to tell me how my child is progressing.  I know my 
 MA> own child better than any state or national administrator could 
 MA> ever hope to.  I know very quickly when my child is having a 
 MA> problem in a subject, can tell when they are picking up a great 
 MA> deal in a course and when a specific course is basically a 
 MA> waste of thime for them.  I can even tell when a teacher is 
 MA> doign a good job with my children or when they have the 
 MA> misfortune to be assigned to an incompetent civil servant 
 MA> disquised as a teacher.
This is not a bad thing,  not at all.  The problem I see with it is that a 
lot of parents don't see themselves as having that responsibility,  they look 
at things as this being the responsibility of those who are doing the 
educating.  And _those_ folks encourage it,  of course,  as it increases 
their power in the situation.  I've even encountered some who were blatantly 
elitist in their attitude toward some parents,  arrogantly so,  and using 
administrative aspects of the situation to literally penalize parents who 
tried to exert their own influence in the situation.
Literally!
I remember well a situation going back a number of years where a family was 
having a lot of personal problems (job,  divorce, etc.) and this one kid was 
absent a lot more than he should have been.  The mother got called into 
school and lectured,  and when she tried to deal with the *ASSHOLE* on the 
other side of the desk he got all snippy and pointed to his bit of wallpaper, 
 asking her where hers was.  The upshot of it was that he ended up declaring 
those absences to be "unexcused",  with a fine being the result.  She ended 
up trying to go to the school board,  which didn't want to deal with the 
situation at all,  and then before a local district justice where costs and 
such were added to the "fine".
Grr.
 MA>        In a free market educational system parents, confronted 
 MA> with poor schools, poor teachers, and ineffective institutions,
 MA> could simply chage to a more productive enviroment...at will.  
 MA> No tests would be needed and the viability of any institution 
 MA> would be measured by it's customer base.  You wanna see how 
 MA> well a school is doing, get a copy of it's P&L, it's performace 
 MA> will be carried out to two decimal places. 
RJ>That strikes me as being the first objection that anybody's likely to r
RJ>in response to this.
 MA>        And it will be a major objection.  Basically we will be 
 MA> divided into two camps.  One will argue that a free market is 
 MA> the most effective and most efficient means of performing any 
 MA> task, while the other will argue that government is.  Such, I'm 
 MA> afraid, is the task we have before us.
Yep,  that sure seems to sum things up...
email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com 
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