.6 Rights to a Bad Education

The next issue I want to talk about is the right to a bad education. That may sound strange, but a lot of communities feel that they have a right to a bad education. We really believe in local control of schools in this country, every community has a right to have its own curriculum, make its own decisions, do its own thing. Does that include the right to a bad education? For example, two communities in the same metropolitan area. One does an excellent job with special education and the other does a miserable job of special education. Special education is costly. You get federal and state subsidies for it, but beyond that, special education is costly. It requires more facilities and more resources. If you are a parent moving into this metropolitan area and you have a special ed. kid, are you going to check out which schools do a good job with special ed.? Of course you are. So which school are you going to pick? You are going to pick the school that is doing a good job. So the reward of the school district that is doing the good job is that they are going to have more kids that are going to cost them more money to educate. What is the reward for the school that is not doing a good job of special ed.? Their special education department is small and doesn't require much money? Bad system isn't it? They are being rewarded, their tax payers have less of a tax burden because their schools are doing a bad job. Or you have a situation like some of the school districts in Arizona, where retirement communities deliberately have bad schools in order that families with kids will not move into that school district. There are some communities in Arizona that have no schools because families know that the schools are bad and they don't want their kids educated there. So in the end, you have a reward for bad education which is absolutely unconscionable. Right now as one of the by-products of local control of schools, the official position is that communities have the right to a bad education. Another problem is no external accountability. Here the problem is that schooling is so complex that it is very hard to pinpoint where problems are. The kindergarten teacher may have done a great job, but by the time you get to the 12th grade, it is hard to see any results. The kindergarten teacher may have done a lousy job and by the time you get to the 12th grade the other teachers may have done enough good things that it's been wiped out. But that is not to say that the effect of the kindergarten teacher isn't substantial, it is just to say that often times other circumstances will negate either the good or the bad. It is very hard to pinpoint any kind of accountability.

	Why would citizens of a community want to have bad schools?	Answer Here
	Mr. & Mrs. Jamison plan to move to a suburban neighborhood in Virginia. The schools in the neighborhood that they are moving to are not funded very well because the community that it is in does not have very many children due to what Dr. Allen calls "DINKs." Should this influence whether or not the Jamisons move to the new neighborhood as planned? How could they still move to the neighborhood and ensure that their children will not have the right to a bad education?	Answer Here