Replies to post #66397 on Apple Inc (AAPL)

[sinclap]

In Minnesota, the top private school is Breck.

Tuition is in the $16,000 plus range. If you graduate, you are guaranteed entrance into a Ivy League school.

Students who normally attend such caliber private schools want to learn, have parents who are actively engaged and student mis behaving is not tolerated.

Public Schools are a different matter. Many parents treated as day care, are not actively involved and blame the teachers if their kids act up. Also, have to take in the trouble makers who do not want to learn but want to keep others from learning. Until you start holding parents accountable and kick out the ones who do not want to be there, the teachers always will to be blamed.

[pdq]

WLD- re: teachers

Don't know about the rest of the planet, but the typical private school around here pays its teachers *less* than the typical public school.

Not surprising, and I'm sorry if I gave you the impression I was saying the opposite. I mean, which would you choose, as a new or experienced teacher? Kids whose parents are "invested" in their kids education (sometimes to the tune of $20,000+/yr) or kids whose parents (or parent) may not give a rat's ass? Kids who are well fed, or kids whose only good meal may be the one the school pays for?

Would you choose a classroom packed with 30 or 40 kids in aging facilities that have aging textbooks and aging technology, or small classes with the latest facilities, books and computers?

Would you choose a school that legally cannot turn away kids that may have behavioral or developmental problems or may even have records of juvenile delinquency...or schools that can pick and choose which students to take?

Your pick. Free market.

I know what I'd be tempted to go for, even if they were offering less. In fact, you might have to pay me more...maybe much more...to take the job in the city center school, which is just continually scraping by, on funds that don't even keep up with the general CPI, much less the service- and salary- intensive expenses that schools have to keep up with.

BTW, turns out I had underestimated a bit in my earlier post: the BLS tells me that tuition and fees for private schools (ie their revenue) have actually gone up 55% since 2000...as compared to the ~12.5% increase my state's public schools have gotten over the same time period.

http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/outside.jsp?survey=cu

(in right hand column, scroll down to "Elementary and high school tuition and fees")

[Tex]

OT re teachers' pay

Don't know about the rest of the planet, but the typical private school around here pays its teachers *less* than the typical public school.

Yeah, same here too. The teachers who go for the private school do it, so they say, for a better working environment: students and colleagues actually interested in teaching and learning.

In an environment offering both bad money and bad professional satisfaction, who takes the job? If the job has built-in protection from consequences, eventually it could become a haven for a higher-than-normal percentage of shirkers.

People seek private education despite the money, and offer to work within it despite the money, in order to enjoy non-economic benefits. The non-economic benefits seem to derive in large part from the selectivity of the membership of the student body and the faculty. Inability to boot those who don't fit tends to undermine the desirability of the system ... and maybe what you end up with is bad public schools.

Take care,
--Tex.