I just posted that for people raising a “separation of church and state” argument.
I love the idea of vouchers and would like to see them more widespread. I also think that there should be some means testing so that people who can afford to send their child or children to a private school without government assistance shouldn’t get such assistance.
Vouchers are not sufficient to pay for private schools. They just help out those who are sending their kids any way. To change things vouchers would have to cover the cost of better schools. There is no effort to do that. So schools will get even more separated. The schools of the poor will become less attractive and less competitive. The separation of the rich and poor will be complete.
A 4, 000 dollar voucher will not pay 20,000 dollars of tuition. It will just help those at the edge. It will give a few more bucks to the rich who will send their kids to good ,expensive schools anyway.
Segregation here in the United States has taken at least two major forms over the years, neither of which are countenanceable, defensible, or excusable. However, in order to understand how and why things became so explosive when policies such as various mandatory school busing edicts were applied to the North in the same fashion as they were applied in the South, it’s important to be aware of the differences between the two forms of segregation and how and why they came about. Both of the above-mentioned terms are self-explanatory, but here goes:
Segregation de Jure, or Jim Crow, as it came to be called, was officially implemented in the South as a means of limiting contact between the races, despite the fact that in many, if not most Southern districts, whites and blacks had lived side by side since antebellum (pre-Civil War) days. Inotherwards, schools, libraries, movie theatres, swimming pools, etc., were segregated by law.
Segregation de Facto, the Northern form of segregation, on the other hand, although not official, was much more pernicious. *Segregation de Facto *meant that things were/are still segregated for a fact; Inotherwords, since neighborhoods were/are segregated, so were/are the schools. This type of segregation, although it wasn’t legal, has proved to be far more deep-seated and therefore much more difficult to root out and get rid of than the Segregation de Jure which existed in the South for the longest time, and helps explain why many of the Northern metropolises, including and particularly Boston, experienced much racial turmoil and upheaval which rivaled that of many of the Southern areas when large-scale mandatory school busing edicts were applied to many, if not Northern metropolises. Hostile school committee and/or City Council membors in many Northern cities, including and especially Boston, made already-bad situations far worse by riding on the coattails of white working-class frustrations along the lines of race and socioeconomic class and effectively coached much of the white working class in many of the Northern metropolises into belligerence and resistance.
I believe that the way in which to really root out and get rid of de facto segregation is to work with the variouis institutions (i. e. the banks and real estate agents, etc. ) that made this especially pernicious form of segregation possible.
would it be ok to use vouchers for madrassas?
Parochial schools are allowed to receive government money and participate in government programs as long as the money they receive does not advance the school’s religious mission. (See Everson v. Board of Education for more information.) For example, participation in energy-efficiency and free-lunch programs has nothing at all to do with religion, so the government allows that. On the other hand, government money cannot be used to provide religious instruction. For example, a Catholic school can accept government money to teach science or math classes because those classes are secular, but it cannot use that money to pay the teacher who teaches Catholic doctrine. In fact, one of my classmates currently teaches at a Catholic high school. She said that the religion teachers are paid from a separate account in order to keep the monies separate for accounting purposes.
That being said, parochial schools are not always better than secular schools. There are many that don’t teach higher-level thinking skills; they teach rote memorization from workbooks such that “progress” is measured by how fast a student completes each set of workbooks. There are also those that teach everything from the perspective of the religion that sponsors it; science, for example, is taught from the creationist perspective and the only literature that is taught is the Bible. That’s not education, that’s indoctrination. The University of California at Berkeley and US District Judge James Otero agree with me.
Interestingly, I think you’ll find that the highest number of people in college (as a comparison with the general population) is Jews. Jews are also generally more influential (i.e. possessing of money) than any other group.
Should I take this as proof that Judaism and Jewish schools are the best answer for everyone, or should I interpret it as meaning that having money is a large factor?
As it stands, this is just an appeal to authority. Where are the numbers that lead Coleman to this conclusion? And how significant is this measure, relative to the effect from the parents? Is there any control for the nonlinearity of the effect, that is to say, the possibility that a school is better for any given student due to the collective involvement of the entire parent body?
This phenomenon can be explained with three uncontroversial facts.
Given point 1, assortative mating means that smart people are increasingly marrying smart people, and are earning more. Point 2 implies that they are going to have smarter kids.
Taken together, these facts imply that with time, the genetically smart will become rich, and the genetically stupid will become poor. This can explain a lot of the variance in who goes to costly public schools versus private ones. Although this sorting is not a perfect system - connections, loopholes, and underhanded deals aren’t going away anytime soon - two generations seem to have been sufficient for this sorting process to produce statistically significant results.
Now, to make a testable prediction: if my hypothesis is correct, the class difference in achievement-test scores will widen with time, providing that the tests are not “corrected” to cover such discrepancies. And ironically, in an intelligence-based meritocracy - what many classical liberals would consider an ideal state - it is an inevitable outcome. It is not necessarily a pleasant one - it may mean, for example, a permanent underclass that can’t succeed despite any outside efforts. But just because it may make us squeamish doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Well, I’ve heard several stories that Jews were sent to Catholic schools.
But really that would still simply be saying that affluent schools are better than poor schools. That’s not really an impressive bit of knowledge, nor does it really help poor kids in any way.
One of the biggest problems (if not the biggest) facing parochial schools nowdays is the clerical shortage. The reason why parochial schools were the most affordable private schools (& could offer education to the working classes) was because they had access to Sisters and Brothers who, having taken vows of poverty, tought children essentialy for free because that was their vocation. Nowdays parochial schools have to rely on the laity to provide teachers & administrators and pay them accordingly. Laypeople cost alot more money, especially when they marry and have children.
And while parochial schools can be much more accommodating to secular or non-Catholic students they still require deference to the schools religious ethos. Many parochial schools will require teachers (& administrators) to be Roman Catholics. Even the ones employ non-Catholics expect them to adhere to certain values. Ie no unmarried couples cohabitating, no divorcees, no homosexuals, etc. Why should I be OK with my tax dollars going to an institution that refuses to emply me because I’m gay (& not celibate & closeted). It’s bad enough that the military does. Even if students aren’t forced to pray (or take RE) they still face restictions that don’t fly in public schools. How many parochial schools can really claims they don’t discriminate against gay & lesbian students? Sure they’ll enroll Johnny, tone down the anti-gay stuff to the level of “sex is only approriate between a man and a woman joined in wedlock”, but what happens when Johnny shows up a school dance with Kevin?
This is more correct. the fact is, America’s rich have een segregation themselves from the poor, ever since time began. This extends to education. the solution? Force rich suburbes to accept students from poor city neighborhoods.
that will be about as successful as busing to achive a “racial balance”.:eek:
But they are not succeeding as a general proposition in those places. Again, I am intimately aware of the situation that exists in many DC schools (both charter, public, and private). The problems in DC are far broader than just that. You are also not accounting for the fact that Charter schools generally admit only those motivated enough to apply.
But you discount the fact that if charter schools are performing the same overall, that means that several schools will be closed. Failure and experimentation are fine when we are talking about yogurt or tennis shoes, it’s more problematic when it involves kids’ lives. Particularly when the opening of future charter schools can potentially gut an existing public school.
I would argue that we have not actually tried to fix public schools in big cities. We have thrown money at the problem, and made vague gestures about reform, but we haven’t really fixed the underlying problems. We’ve let drugs and crime destroy cities, allowed jobs to leave in droves, and ignored the deleterious and caustic cultural shifts that have resulted in decaying cities.
But public school salaries are too low in many cases.
But large efficient private business models are a usually rigid, top-down structures. Do you think Walmart gives their clerks or greeters any substantive input in how things are run?
So what. Why do you think a Walmart-type entity would not be able to become accredited? Again, I’m sure their schools would be better than many that exist now, but it would be a bad public policy decision to allow them to run things. But, you didn’t answer my question. Would it be good if Walmart ran all the schools in, say Washington DC? What do you think would happen to unions, teacher salaries, etc.?
What do you think makes Charter schools and vouchers better in the first place? What can they do that public schools are unable to do, and are those good things?
I do not understand why vouchers are hailed as this wonderful pancea.
Why not have government controled schools…but offer a variety of teaching and learning approaches? THAT would boost acheivement levels HUGELY! The problem right now is that we have too much of a " one size fits all" mentality when it comes to what will work regarding teaching methodologies. Maybe too what would help more is making sure that kids with disabilites aren’t kneejerk mainstreamed. Mainstreaming would still be an option yes…but it wouldn’t be automatic.
That in turn would have test scores rise b/c nondisabled kids would be taught by teachers who KNOW how to teach disabled kids…that in turn would cut down disruptions by disabled kids a lot (and a lot of special needs kids act out b/c they’re so frustrated abt not being able to access the curriculum or not being able to be a part of a community)
I can get behind this, but I don’t think it goes far enough. Charter schools which accept vouchers must accept vouchers as the whole payment. And charter schools which accept vouchers must offer the same services for special needs kids as public schools do. This means special ed for the dyslexics, signers for the deaf kids, teaching English to kids who speak another language at home, attempting to educate the mentally challenged to the extent of their abilities, etc.
When charter schools do a better job than public schools, I think it’s mostly due to the fact that they can cherry pick their students. I’m 52, and I can clearly remember many kids from the elementary, middle, and high schools who were extremely disruptive, had no intention of learning, and dragged down the class average. Had the schools I attended been able to kick these kids out, then of course the schools could have shown a better success rate. But public schooling is PUBLIC, and must accept just about every kid.
I like the idea of school vouchers, but when I do the math on the back of an envelope, it seems a voucher system takes money out of education.
Now, the rich guy pays a school tax and he pays for his kid’s fancy private school. We are screwing the rich guy who gets nothing for his tax dollar. Under a voucher program, the poor person and the rich person both get vouchers, so the system is helping the rich guy with school costs. Income from taxes remain the same, but expenses increase.
Am I wrong on this?
Additionally, a lot of middle class whites in the District move to the suburbs when they have kids, or when their kids are school age. Just as an anecdote, I’ve seen a few neighbors move to Montgomery County either when their kids turn three or when they decide to have them. I’ve also seen quite a few middle class blacks move to the suburbs when their kids hit a certain age as well.
We’ve had this debate before and in the end everybody with a brain ended up agreeing with me.
Public schools generally work well in most suburban and rural areas but encounter problems in urban areas. There are all sorts of ideas about what causes this problem. Some people blame race, others blame racism, some blame poverty, other blame lazy parents. Whatever the case may be, there is a significant percentage of urban students who are failing in public school because of a few bad apples consuming all the schools resources but these same urban students would flourish if they were in better learning environments.
Charter schools as they are commonly understood are schools that are funded the same way as public schools, they are not allowed to ask for more money from the student or give “rebates” to the student. Charter schools at least provide an opportunity for students to exercise a little self selection and get out of popisonous learning environments. Every liberal poster seemed to think this was OK as long as the charter school could not cherrypick, most conservative posters seemed OK with this as well (most people seemed to be OK with the idea of magnet schools and GT programs within the public school system).
In the end, liberals were more concerned with a level playing field and distribution of educational opportunity regardless of ability to pay than they are with the specific mechanics of how that level playing field is reached.
Where the kumbaya consensus broke down was on vouchers. Liberals were initially adamantly opposed to the idea because vouchers are commonly portrayed as stealing from public schools so that someone can have their tuition to Exeter subsidized by the public school system (and indeed this is the formulation that most supporters of a voucher system envision). When it was presented as a need based scholarship program, liberals started coming around (with a healthy dose of skepticism but ultimately if it was really just a need based scholarship then they had not real objections).
But the Conservatives didn’t want to limit vouchers to those who were in need, that would just make it another government welfare program. The voucher system as commonly envisioned by conservatives is to give every child a voucher and let them spend it anywhere they want. If they want to spend it on their local public school (that way the public school would have to compete for every student just like a private school), then fine, if they want to bundle the voucher with $20,000 from their parents to go to Sidwell Friends then that is fine too.
Our president supports charter schools and objects to a voucher system.
It sounds like to me, we need to all send our kids to Catholic School.
Remember when conservatives used to talk about how Affirmative Action was wrong, because it was based on race, not “opportunity?” As in, there are some white folks who are at a far greater disadvantage for social mobility than some minorities?
Well, thank you, ITR champion, for turning that argument back on its head.
Let’s look at a few more underperforming school districts: Alexandria County, VA (59% white), Glynn County, GA (71% white), and Ulster County, New York (88% white).
Crappy schools are not crappy because lots of poor black people go there, which is essentially what the OP stated, in a rather bald attempt to cast implicit racist aspersions on people who do not support vouchers.
In the end, I think Bear Nenno was exactly right when he said that the main problem in thinking that vouchers are a panacea to failing public schools is that where there is poverty, there is a larger population of shitty parents who just don’t care what the hell their kids do. Heck, the sooner the kids drop out of school and get their McJob/dealing drugs/running a meth lab/whatever, the sooner they start bringing money into the broken, messed-up family.
These are not the kind of people who care enough to take free money to send their kids to public schools. These are the die-hard underclass of people, who, regardless of race, are going to leave their kids right where they are and not care about them very much. How do vouchers help these folks?
And the study about the Catholic schools that is summarized, but not cited, seems to say that factors like family income don’t relate well to student performance. I can see that, but the OP seems to be asserting that how screwed up a family is (e.g., dad was never in the kid’s lives, mom’s an alcoholic, family lives in crime-ridden neighborhood, etc) doesn’t relate to academic performance. That beggars belief.
But just to sum up, I object to the poisoning of the well with making this subject about race. Lousy schools are found in predominantly white and predominantly minority areas. The question of how to best fix schools is a question that isn’t an issue of race.