| Who Holds the Schools Accountable? |
Who Holds the Schools Accountable?
Perhaps the biggest difference between public and private school is the system of accountability. Children know all about being held accountable. Not long after they leave behind infancy, children learn that virtually everybody is going to hold them accountable for something or another in almost every situation they will be in. And they become little experts at meeting the expectations of adults, even if it's just surface fulfillment of the requirements and not a genuine accountability.
But the truth is that all of us are held accountable to fulfill our responsibilities. Jobs hold employees accountable. In marriage, the husband and wives hold each other accountable to live up to the marriage vows. Even businesses are held accountable by customers. If the business fails to live up to the expectation of the customers, they will go out of business and not make any money any more.
Responsibility and accountability are the core of what makes us tick as people and by extension what makes institutions work the way they are supposed to work to serve the needs of the public. Accountability means that someone somewhere is going to judge you on your performance. If you are performing well, you are rewarded. If you are not performing well, you are punished, corrected or dismissed. It's not a hard system to understand and your children understand it in depth.
In school, children are held accountable every day. Not only do they have to live up to behavior expectations in class, they must participate in lessons, be part of lesson related activities and do homework and take tests and get good grades to be rewarded with a high grade average to take on to the next grade and eventually to college.
But who holds the schools accountable to do the jobs they are required to do? This is the fundamental difference between public and private schools. Private schools are quite simply held accountable by the parents of the children who attend that school. Now in every private school, there is an internal system and structure to execute accountability on a daily basis in the form of the school administration and the principle. But ultimately if the school is not living up to the promises it makes to the parents who pay what are often high fees for that education for their children, those parents can pull their kids out and go elsewhere.
So a private school lives under the laws of the marketplace which keeps other businesses working correctly. They can be fired by parents so it pays for them to listen to parents, to keep parents informed and to make sure that at the end of the semester, the quality of education and the educational experience the kids had was top notch.
Public schools on the other hand are not held accountable by parents. They are held accountable by the government. And as we all know from watching how well our politicians behave, the government is pretty awful at holding anybody accountable for anything. So the public school systems and the schools in your town learn quickly how to "just get by" on satisfying government requirements and those requirements have precious little to do with the educational experience of your child or of your expectations as parents.
Now the public schools will put on a pretty good show that they want the input of parents and that they want to be accountable to parents. That is because you as a parent have two very potent weapons at your disposal that can hurt the school if they don't convince you that they are living up to expectations. You can vote and use politics to make the government live up to its job. Or you can take your child out of the public schools and take them to a school that will be responsive to your needs and expectations.
One system is bureaucratic and based on government oversight which almost never works. The other is based on the laws of the marketplace and driven by satisfying consumer need. That system is the private school system and the consumer is you and your child. And while the private school route is more expensive, by patronizing the system that works and that will be ultimately accountable to you, you are voting that the public system doesn't work so maybe someday the government will fix it. But we aren't holding our breath for that.
PPPPP
Word Count 745
|
A Place for Your Gifted Child When you recognize that your child is gifted in some particular area of talent ...
read more
A Place Where You Cannot Protect Your Child There are a lot of reasons that parents consider pulling their kids ...
read more
Becoming a Snob When you talk to a lot of parents, its amazing how many consider the public school system ...
read more
Big Schools Big Programs Comparing the good things that can be offered between school programs can get difficult. Picking a ...
read more
Changing Schools from Your Child's Perspective There is one thing that is a bit strange about the process we, go ...
read more
God and School It has not always been a problem to have a religious faith and still attend public school. ...
read more
Greatness and Public School Depending on the size of your community the number of kids who might be in public ...
read more
Hype Versus Reality in Private Schools Private schools function from an entirely different economic base than public schools. Because private ...
read more
Interviewing Schools You are an adult. And when adults make big decisions in life, they have good reasons. And deciding ...
read more
Money and Education We like to think of public education of our children as a pure science that is populated ...
read more
On Not Letting School Administrators Push You Around If you have found yourself outraged, frustrated and feeling a little paranoid ...
read more
Protecting Your Child's Love of Learning Sometimes for parents who see their children come home from public school angry and ...
read more
Public School and Society In our social system, we often just take for granted that the way our educational system ...
read more
Reading, Writing and Arithmetic There seem to be a lot of reasons for sending your child to public school depending ...
read more
Special Schools for Special Kids If you are a parent of a special needs child, you know something that the ...
read more
Taking Control of Moral Education People remove their children from public school and move to private schools for a lot ...
read more
Teaching Subjects or Teaching Students Teaching school is as much a calling as it is a job. And in fact ...
read more
The Dilemma of Finding a Good Christian School Christian people often feel a bit isolated in society. And for a ...
read more
The Government Wants Private Schools to go Away When you are trying to make an objective decision about whether to ...
read more
The Legalized Abduction of Children It's almost inconceivable but it happens to every single family in the country every day. ...
read more
The Rights of Parents Sometimes it seems that once you drop your children off at the door of the school ...
read more
They Want to Drug Your Child! Anyone who has an interest in what is going on in the world of ...
read more
When Fear is a Part of Life at School You can probably think back on some of your favorite classes ...
read more
When Schools Turn into Spys What do you pay the school to do for your child? You pay the school ...
read more
Who Holds the Schools Accountable? Perhaps the biggest difference between public and private school is the system of accountability. Children ...
read more
Why Private School for Your Child? There are notable differences in what private schools offer from the public school environment. ...
read more
|
|
|
Disclaimer:
The Publisher has strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in
the creation of this website, notwithstanding the fact that he does not
warrant or represent at any time that the contents within are accurate
due to the rapidly changing nature of the Internet.
This site
is a common sense guide to Who Holds the Schools Accountable?. In practical advice websites,
like anything else in life, there are no guarantees of income made.
Readers are cautioned to reply on their own judgment about their
individual circumstances to act accordingly.
This site
is not intended for use as a source of legal, business, accounting or
financial advice. All readers are advised to seek services of competent
professionals in legal, business, accounting, and finance field.
Any
perceived slights of specific people or organizations are unintentional.
|