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U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said the federal bill would siphon resources away from public education. He questioned the quality of teachers in private schools and the kind of curriculum offered there. Durbin also criticized homeschooling and suggested that many parents who homeschool their children might not really be educating them.
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
Everybody needs a side hustle these days, and mine is Ukraine, where I am now.
Summary and audio linked here.
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Audio and summary
I can’t wait for this ass to retire. I have some hope we can get someone in his spot that has his head on straight
Durbin is like the old Chatty Cathy doll. Pull the ring on the back of his neck, and a mechanical voice recites Democrat talking points.
“U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said the federal bill would siphon resources away from public education.” Durbin has been bought and paid for by the unions. Check test scores between students at Chicago Public Schools and those run by the Catholic Church. There is no comparison in the results. The students in these parochial schools are way ahead of their public school counterparts and at a fraction of the cost.
I’m fascinated by your statement about checking and comparing the test scores of the public vs private schools in the same area in an apples to apples comparison. I haven’t seen that data. Can you provide it please?
44 years in office and not a peep, now that he is leaving he proposes “School Choice” what a ass.
The headline states that he opposes the legislation.
Questioning the quality of teachers in private schools? Illinois can’t get rid of this guy soon enough. He certainly did not do any research about proficiency in public vs private. Good riddance!
Let’s see how many people Durbin offended in his little speech. Parents who homeschool their children, children who are homeschooled, teachers, administrators, donors and supporters of non-public schools, and me. And we all vote.
I’m guessing you and all those other people that vote are in the minority. That’s why we have Durbin in the first place. It’s not like he has somehow changed his position and yet he was reelected every time.
One final corrupt statement to take care of your union donors, eh DICK. I am offended that this do nothing politician feels some how knowledgeable regarding the actual quality of teachers in private schools. He believes his impression is enough to direct Billions of dollars toward a failed public school system. The experience I have seen and experienced throughout my life has been, that children attending private schools are better students and (with only a very few exceptions) are far ahead of all public schools academically. To have this marionette quote the party narrative, with no research or input from… Read more »
You don’t even have to look that close, you can see the puppet strings from the NEA and AFT being pulled on this cretin.
Dick protests too much. He graduated from a Roman Catholic high school in East St. Louis before attending Georgetown University. He, even more than most of his benighted subjects, knows the value of school choice.
The Democratic candidates who said that they are running for his spot are worse than him. All are far left people who could care less about IL US citizen taxpayers. They only care about special interest groups.
Agree, 100%. Anyone eager to see Durbin out of office doesn’t understand what will replace him.
Dirtbag Durbin, just like Pritzker, has to ignore facts and reality to promote his warped view of taxpayer funded education. The man is sick and an absolute disgrace.
Dick. Look in the mirror and repeat Nobody Cares What You Think.
Around the time Daley took control of the schools a study was done of a Catholic grammar school in Little Village and the CPS grammar school a frw blocks away. Both serving the same community. The study found the Catholic school educating 4 students for the same dollars CPS was educating 1, with the Catholic school producing a much higher, as in night and day difference, graduation rate from grammar school, high school and college. The gap was attributed to parents taking an active interest in their kids education and having tuition dollar skin in the game. Not all families… Read more »
How would giving people money or paying for their private education foster parents with “skin in the game”? Comparing these two schools is pointless as the selection criteria for the private schools ensure that kids that need additional resources are kept out of the private schools. You are comparing apples and oranges and trying to draw a conclusion that is impossible with the data set provided.
The private vs public part of that was tuition paying parents. The “selection” process at the Catholic grammar school was ability to pay some or all of the tuition, it was by application, not by academic screening or entrance exam. The comparison is valid, neither school had academic barriers to admission. The Invest In Kids program gave tuition assistance and helped kids avoid failing local public schools.
So the private school accepted children with learning disabilities or special needs? Did they accept children that didn’t speak English? Blind? Deaf? Autistic? Intellectually disabled? That would be extremely rare. If these schools did accept ALL, did they provide services for these high needs students or did they offer nothing which ensure these students wouldn’t enroll? Would love to read that study. With past studies, when selection bias and other variables are accounted for, public schools perform the same or slightly better than private schools. These studies control for parent education, race, family income, high needs students, etc… The data… Read more »
First of all, you should know as well as anyone with public school experience that special ed dollars are a black hole and a huge drain on a a district’s budget, especially for the students who are severely disabled and require private facilities. So even the public school districts are not equipped to handle the most in need of services students, even with all their tax payer dollars, and have to place them in private facilites.
Let’s do a study that compares public vs private in the same geographic areas. There’s your control and variable bias accounted for.
I doubt the Catholic school in that example had special ed resources. And I was not making a blanket statement that private schools are generally better. The example was pointing out efficiency of use of dollars. CPS in comparison to most private schools has almost unlimited to access to funds. It too often makes inefficient use of resources and instead demands more dollars rather than rationalizing resources, which is how you wind up with high schools with space for 750 but only 30 enrolled and more faculty and admin than students. But you know this already. If small private schools… Read more »
“The example was pointing out efficiency of use of dollars.” It’s hard to tell how inefficient they are without fully understanding their needs compared to a private school. You admit that the Catholic schools in your example probably didn’t provide resources for high needs students. Don’t you think this is part of high costs of CPS compared to a private school? A student with severe autism (non-verbal, 1:1 aid) can cost more than 80K to provide an education. Students with MS can be just as high. Those that don’t speak English, around 30% of CPS students, can add 5k per… Read more »
You are not wrong and yes my example though real world is a bit apples to oranges yet it effectively illustrates how a mindset of almost unlimited access to funds vs limited access to funds enables indisciplined spending on the one hand and forces discipline on the other. For the sake of discussion, let’s say the 4:1 ration adjusted for special ed is really 1.5 or 2:1. Why would that be? Furthermore, in what world does it makes sense to have so many facilities at such low enrollment staffed by so many admin and faculty because some formula says that… Read more »
“Catholic schools also consistently outperform public schools. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows Catholic schools leading across nearly every category. The Manhattan Institute reports that if Catholic schools were a state, they’d be the highest-performing in the country. U.S. Department of Education data confirms that Black, Latino, and low-income students in Catholic schools outperform their peers in both traditional and public charter schools.”
Again, apples and oranges. If you don’t remove the selection bias and account for demographics, you can’t compare. When those things are accounted for, public schools are equal or better.
Are you saying that public and private schools perform about equally for students that don’t have special needs? Or that they both have poor performance for students with special needs?
These were nationally published studies so it’s not ME saying it. In those studies, when they controlled for student background characteristics, race, parental income, parental education, etc, public school performance was equal or better (math outcomes) than private schools. So a black kid in a public school with college educated parents that make 100k per year performs at the same level or better as a white kid with the same background in private schools. A white kid with a non college educated single mom making 25k per year and on government assistance performs equal or better in public schools compared… Read more »
Absolutely!
This should read as follows:
“So a black kid in a public school with college educated parents that make 100k per year performs at the same level or better as a black kid with the same background in private schools.”
My apologies for any confusion.
Thanks for clarifying. It seems that ideas such as encouraging millions of immigrants from 3rd world countries to come to the US have consequences. As does the idea that bad behavior should be ascribed to trauma and not disciplined. Or that every child should be mainstreamed into general education, regardless of limitations in learning ability. Or that children should be automatically passed through each grade, whether or not they can read. I wonder who promoted these ideas as compassionate and enlightened? The teachers who struggle every day with the consequences should have a strong word with those who promoted such… Read more »
I agree with all of your points but not who you blame. Teachers don’t set this policy but rather state rules or the school system itself decides those issues. It’s like blaming cops for all the crime when it’s state and city policies that are the root cause.
I understand teachers don’t make the rules. But they (through their unions) have placed themselves firmly in favor of every one of these policies.
Researchers have cleverly inverted cause and effect. They take the obvious consequence of chaos and learning failure in schools- more future low SES households. They announce that through careful analytics they have discovered the problem with public schools. Too many low SES students.
“I understand teachers don’t make the rules. But they (through their unions) have placed themselves firmly in favor of every one of these policies.” That’s simply not true. Teachers nor their unions have advocated for immigration policy. I have yet to see teachers or their unions advocating for all students to be passed along even if they aren’t meeting standards. These are administration decisions and that falls on the school board. The teachers union merely advocates for the resources for their student population. That means they will take a more nuanced approach to these topics rather than take a hardline… Read more »
Did the police support no cash bail? The Safe-T Act? Defund the police?
if police had supported policies clearly detrimental to public safety, I would agree with you. But they did not.
Teachers, meanwhile, are on the front lines defending the immigrants they bemoan as causing their problems in doing the job in the classroom.
Teachers are the frontline demanding resources for immigrants. Why? Because they are dealing with children and they are doing their best to help. That doesn’t mean they caused the illegal immigrant influx. Nowhere has the CTU taken a position of open borders. Your point is taken though. You and others don’t like teachers because they take a political position that more closely aligns with democrats. That just shows it’s not about outcomes, salary or pensions but because you want to punish the “enemy”. I don’t want illegal immigrants in this country either. The best thing Trump has done is shutting… Read more »
It’s hard to argue that teacher unions haven’t taken stances on these very policies, and that they only advocate for their students, when both Becky Pringle and Randi Weingarten have been on the DNC for years.
It’s not about hating the “enemy”. If schools were achieving the mission of educating children and doing it in a fiscally sound manner, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. We probably wouldn’t even know who teachers supported politically. But public schools are not succeeding, and educator support for bad ideas is at least part of the reason schools are failing.
You are right, it is apples and oranges but not the way you purport.You trying to compare all public education with all private is a false equivalency on two fronts. The first being that when you compare the apples to apples, regular ed to regular ed, private is better. The second, not all public special ed is performed in the public school buildings. The most severe are placed in facilites…private facilites. Even with all its faults, no institution has done more with less than the Catholic school system. Just curious, do you have any experience with a private school or… Read more »
I’m talking about comparing like characteristics not special ed. When you factor for race, parental education and parental income the studies don’t work out the way you claim.
Yes private schools get by with less because they don’t need to serve high needs students. That’s why I brought that up in the first place not to compare outcomes of special ed.
While I don’t doubt that you’re right, I’d really like to see the test scores. North Clay Schools vs Full Armor Academy, Danville schools vs Schlarman, St. Bede vs LP or Hall, Kankakee vs Bishop McNamara, St. Thomas More vs Urbana, Champaign, and Uni High. Please, let’s see the actual test scores! Wirepoints I think this is where you help us out!!
Hey, down vote person, why not explain yourself? Otherwise, why bother clicking the thumbs down?
You do understand that comments are held while voting takes place instantly? Why do some of you worry so much about downvotes? As I noted from my comment, your conclusion proves nothing so I don’t see why you would expect accolades.
I don’t worry about down votes. I am curious about the rationale behind the vote.
You may need to be patient considering the comments are held.
Interesting to know about this study. Have you a citation?
No, it was told to me by an educator directly involved in the study.
Durbin is not running for reelection, yet he is still on the anti school choice bandwagon. Criticizing private school faculties and education as well as home schooling, while testing results show those students with significantly higher test scores than public school students. He no longer has to adhere to the progressive school and should be more statesmanlike.
Durbin has positively lost his mind.
Nah, he just needs to serve his donor masters with these statements.