http://isteve.blogspot.com/2009/06/benjamin-schwarzs-laments-end-of.html

And here’s how this fits into the thread above. Teacher and Parent appeals for more funding for CA public schools is not going to be successful. The feelings are we are spending far too much for public schools already.

When the public school giants like OUSD and LAUSD produce products that the taxpayers cannot identify with much less hire or work alongside – people will want to cut off funding to these bad schools (when something is dead you need to bury it). We were once willing to increase funding to the schools because those public schools were once identified with CA society and prosperity. Not any more. Maybe the problem is that we gave so much to the schools that waste became the order of the day.

Any kind of fund raising – or tax increase campaigning – must be preceded with a propaganda campaign to convince the voters that the public schools are good value for the money.

Good luck with that.

If the Educrats are serious about getting things back to the past popularity they need to start running the schools the way they used to. Tracking, separate campuses by puberty, no further attempts to make one size fit all, and serious and severe discipline.

My bet is that it is not going to happen. The budget cuts will continue. The alternative schools, the Charters, Internet Schools, etc, will supplant the doomed urban school districts.

Brave New World.