Scott, thanks for your thought provoking blog entries. My first question for you would be does this apply to suburban schools or just schools in poverty stricken regions? If it does apply to suburban schools what are your ideas about adapting it to our needs?

I very much like the idea of trying to privitize public schools - I think charter schools can be very valuable as long as there is transparancy in the operations. Right now we have a couple of charter schools in Ventura County with at least one of them being a very poor performer - Vista Real. Interestingly enough Vista Real doesn't have much transparancy either.

I also like the idea of school vouchers and am sick the way they keep getting shot down by special interest groups.

Katie, would that special interest group be teachers?

Teachers Unions

The kind lady realizes that charter schools are government schools and therefore are not privatizing. You give away your agenda when you mention charters and vouchers together.

Maybe more people would trust your party if your party did something to stop the people who abuse charters for profit. But instead they seem to get promoted. I am sticking with the governor on this one. Let's work on our schools.

Brian

I believe Mayor Bloomberg's poverty program where the government induces certain behavior through payments is means-tested, meaning only people that were classified as some % near the poverty line could apply.

In terms of Gingrich's proposal that pays students to take science and math classes, he seems to believe this could be done by local non-profits or ed foundations. I don't believe Gingrich thinks that this could just apply to to certain poverty groups, but to everyone.

Gingrich seems to accept the premise of the non-profit revolution. Instead of growing the size of government, he prefers the heavy lifting to be done by local non-profits. In this case the government grants funding to non-profits to perform certain functions.

Brian,

Do you think paying citizens in poverty to meet certain positive behaviors will work?

Do you think paying students to take more difficult math and science classes would improve on the current shortage we have of qualified math and science scholars?

Where is this money to come from? I hate the idea that schools and worthy programs should be supported by nonprofits. If your idea is so great why should a few of us pay a " do gooder" tax? Shouldn't everyone pay? If Newt's ideas would really change things up let's do it!

If the government gives a grant to a nonprofit guess what? That nonprofit is now a government program.

We should try this at Apollo in Simi Valley. Scott you should talk to the education foundation about it. Glen Becerra is a leader in it and he could really help you.

Maybe we should also do this to start Arabic programs in more colleges of high schools. It is silly we teach French and not Arabic locally.

Check out the jobs STARTING at $150,000 a year with plenty of chances for travel.

http://ventura.craigslist.org/gov/313176545.html

That could be a great job. But only if you are willing to move to Iraq.

We already pay people to do well in school. We lower their car insurance and give away a massive amount of financial help for college. Going to college increases a workers income over their lifetime drastically.

Basically, what the liberal feel good Scott Bloughs want is to speed up the process for the instant gratification crowd. Maybe we can make it even faster and teachers can hand out fives for doing your homework and tens for passing a test.

Where is this money all going to come from?

The Test program in New York City for poverty is being supported privately at this time. They've raised 140 million privately of 150 they need in New York a lot of which is coming from Mayor Bloomberg's own pocket for the test program.

This is a little different from other leaders who have designed a program and forced everyone else to pay for it.

I agree that it is oriented around an instant gratification model, but one study around instant gratification to think about is a an experiment I read about but can't cite for you right now.

It took two sets of bowlers. The first group were allowed to bowl, but there was a big sheet in front of the pins so they couldn't see the outcome.

The second group were allowed to bowl and see the pins they were knocking over.

Which ones do you think did better? Seems kind of obvious, but the ones who saw the pins knock over did better and were instantly gratified with their efforts while the ones whole bowled and didn't see anything for their efforts tended to not do as well.

What we are talking about is developing outcome-based programs. If it works in the test case, I'm for it. If it tends to fail, I think we need to go back to the drawing board.

Oh, and I agree that college education is probably the most important factor in improving standards of living. It is not instant as you have to work for it and be a "starving student". I agree, maybe there need to be more inducements.

In Japan school only costs $6,000 dollars total. I believe the reason is by the time they reach college age they already learned the things American students pay $50,000 for.
They don't learn faster because their teacher gives them jelly beans. Which now I look back was ridiculuos. Everytime I started to get on a roll the teacher would give me something that made me hyperactive and caused me to end up in the principals office.

We can't have a decent educational system. If we did how could we bribe the Nations' children into dying for us. They wouldn't need money for college.