Public schools, private schools, vouchers....

The BBQ Pit
21

It’s a huge change, and I don’t think anyone could confidently predict just how it would alter the education landscape. However, my guess is that a comprehensive voucher system would effectively mean privatizing education, albeit with massive government subsidies and presumably some functions still being performed by the states directly. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

Like almost everyone else, I’d be perfectly satisfied with fixing public schools rather than switching to voucherized private schools. The problem is that it seems as if public schools are ill-equipped to address their deficiencies in a timely and efficient manner, largely for reasons that would be much less of a factor in the free market: little incentive to innovate and improve, no effective mechanism for change, and the hindrance of static rules handed down from centralized bureaucracies.

I don’t see it as “passing the buck” to the free market. We compose the free market every bit as much as we compose the government, therefore public education is just as much a passing of the buck to the government as private education is the opposite. Either way, it’s a question of deciding on the proper venue for education, not of abrogating our responsibilities.

That’s definitely a problem, but the severity of that problem is up for debate. IMO, it would be unwise to sacrifice generations superior schooling because of an aversion to a few years of increased confusion and uncertainty. Besides, if the change to a voucher system were incremental (as it would pretty much have to be) the panic should be kept to a (relative) minimum.

22

I wasn’t aware of this at all. Since I was already a high school senior when the first voucher program was mooted here (FL), I didn’t pay that much attention.

I’d always assumed the voucher covered the entire cost of tuition.

There’s a lot of falling-sky stuff here, and not that much of reality. Of course kids today have nicer stuff than kids 30 years ago- society as a whole has more disposable income than it did 30 years ago.

As I’ve noted before, the teen pregnancy rate has dropped quite steadily since 1950 (although this is partly due to a decrease in teenage marriages). There was, however, a significant increase between 1986 and 1990 - which suggests that the last four years’ worth of high school students have been disproportionately likely to come from broken homes, etc.

23

The overwhelming majority are not-for-profit, especially below the university level.

For every student who couldn’t afford the extra? I’m not sure that would work. A large part of the virtue of private schools is their ability to choose which students to educate. When they reached the point at which such scholarships became a losing proposition, they would just find a pretense to reject students who would need financial aid. You could try to implement regulations forbidding such practices, but even if successful you will have largely defeated the purpose of switching to a privatized system. I think.

If, OTOH, you’re referring to a more modest scholarship problem, that’s a different story. Most private schools offer some scholarships of their own accord, both need-based and merit-based.

24

You don’t need any more supervision of private schools than you need supervision of private businesses. If they provide a good product at a good price, they will thrive. If they offer a poor product at a poor price, they will go out of business.

For one, I hope to God that money is taken away from public schools. They churn out kids year after year who can’t read, and parents who have smart kids but no money have to choice but to send their kids to these prisons er schools.

I am enrolling my daughter in kindgergarten next fall and I need to bring two utility bills to prove that I live in the district. The problem, the secretary told me, is that this school is much better than the surrounding ones, and many parents use a friend’s address to allow their kids to be able to attend this school instead of their “assigned” school.

Am I the only one who sees what an absolute crime this is? If those other schools are so bad, then why do we continue to spend money on them? If people are going so far as to commit fraud against the school board to get their kids into better schools, why are we forcing them to go to substandard schools?

And to the poster upthread who bitches about HIS tax money paying for teaching creationism and so forth, well guess what, I pay taxes too, and we all have different beliefs.

If you want to send your kids to an athiest school, and my neighbor wants to send his kids to a Muslim school, and the other neighbor wants his kids in a Wiccan school, and my kids go to a Christian school, then what is the problem? Everyone is getting what he wants.

I think that the teaching of creationism in school is pretty much silly, but if I had that choice but a quality education otherwise, I would take it in a heartbeat. That’s better than the inner city Jr. High near me with a chain link fence around the whole place with black composite covering it to keep the drug dealers out.

I walked to the office and couldn’t even count the number of times I heard the kids calling each other “nigger” and “motherfucker”. On a three minute walk. Now, if I can hear it, then surely the teachers and administrators hear it as well. Why don’t they do something about it? Why do kids who want to learn have to go into an environment like that?

25

No - where to draw the line would require much argument. But the kernal would be that a charity must do charitable work, and if you’re accepting the government’s dollar and wanting more money and not making it available to at least some of those who can’t pay, then you’re a business not a charity.

26

When was the last time you saw a Muslim school in Delray Beach?

27

I don’t understand the nature of your objection.

28

I’d like to point out that we’re not talking about a trivial amount of money, at least not around here (Baltimore). We spend $13K/year per student in the Baltimore city school system, and what we get is violence like in the linked OP and a graduation rate that’s worse than any city except Detroit. The local Catholic school for grades K-8 costs $6K/year and students come out educated. There is an Episcopal high school right up the street that has a tuition of $12K/year, and it’s graduates 90% of it’s students (or better) to top level colleges across the country. No, you can’t save everyone and vouchers are not a magic wand to solve all of society’s ills, but for $13K/student I am absolutely confident that schools would emerge to compete for that money, to the benefit of most students.

29

I haven’t really been looking, and I don’t know of any.

But I’m sure that with a full school choice program, there would be enough Muslim parents in south Palm Beach county that there would be a market demand for one.

30

The Baltimore Public School System has to take every single kid who is under 16. Everyone. Of course they’re going to have a lower graduation rate than a school that can pick and choose among its applicants. Also, the school that you mentioned that charges $13,000 is automatically going to get students whose parents have a higher SES than the kid who goes to the public school. Even with a voucher that covers half the tuition, the kid with the parents who live on transfer payments will not be able to attend. Thus, it becomes a way of segregating poor students from wealthier students. The poor kids will be stuck in underfunded schools, forced to take idiotic state exams, with less than state of the art facilities, and overworked and frustrated teachers and administrators. Their poorer success rate is guaranteed, and this becomes a circular argument about public school failure.

I’m not sure how people think that taking money AWAY from public schools is the answer. If you really want public schools to improve, you want smaller class sizes (even the “problem children” find greater success in a smaller class setting, so we need more teachers), better educated and trained teachers (pay better and be more selective in hiring, and fund quality mandatory continuing ed for already established teachers), better equipment (computers that work, recent books, supplies for kids who can’t afford to buy them).

Listen to people (including me, I won’t lie) piss and moan about the taxes they pay to fund their schools, and you’ll see why things don’t get better. Our district is pretty good. I can’t complain about the quality of our texts or our computers. It would be nice if the roof didn’t leak and if the walls weren’t made of cinder blocks (not kidding), but overall, it’s pretty good. In places where the tax base is poorer, things are much, much worse, yet their funding is threatened. No one wants to pay for things to improve-- all this NCLB stuff is an unfunded mandate. Vouchers are just another way to avoid addressing the real problems and offering real, FUNDED solutions.

ETA: Kids who can’t read need intensive programs to catch them up to grade level when they are young enough for it to matter. This requires hiring specialists to take them out of the regular school day and teach them decoding and comprehension skills for at least half the day. We’ve tried this a little bit, informally on our team and it had good results. But it’s UNFUNDED, and not a program that is endorsed on a large scale. If people want real change, different approaches have to be used, but no one wants to make the bold move and pay for it.

31

Hardly a big deal?

To a kid it is a huge deal to switch schools. They lose all their friends and, schools do not all teach at the same pace. They may be ahead in some places and behind in others.

32

Yes, it’s hardly a big deal.

33

Ruby,

So the solution is just more money, huh? Just give public schools more money, and everything will be fine? :rolleyes:

34

It’s neither better nor worse than isolating the priveleged few from the inner-city kids, as an expanded voucher system would do.

35

There’s a large part of me that says, “So fucking what?”

I have a Hell of a lot of hostility towards public schools because I was in an abusive one. Not a poor school district, just one where the teachers encouraged and enabled abuse by the students towards “lucky” children each year.

And between the administration, the teacher’s union, and the people who fell for the “won’t someone think of the children” when an attempt was made to organize a change in the school board, based on retiring the worst offending teachers, I see no justification for the idea that public schools shouldn’t be punished for such idiocy. My parents ended up with the choice watching me be ground into a feral beast, or putting me into a private school. But the public schools never gave a shit, since it didn’t cost them a goddamned thing.

If the public schools are abusive, protecting asshole teachers, or pedophile teachers, why the fuck shouldn’t they be punished? Taking away a voucher amount will hurt the school less than a successful lawsuit, but is something that can be done in a timely manner, with a minimum of hassle for the parents and students involved. But it remains a cost to the school district.

I don’t think that it is necessarily an argument against vouchers to say that they’ll take the money from the public schools. IMNSHO that’s part of the purpose of vouchers.
ETA: I’m not arguing in favor of vouchers, per se. There are some excellent arguments against them, in this thread. Just expressing my frustration with the argument that Jayn_Newell put forth.

36

Bet you’d get a lot more tail these days if you stuck with the feral beast thing.

37

You didn’t really think this through, did you, though a previous poster had stated the problem with this approach. A poor school will churn out poor students, offering little to no benefit above and beyond a public education. Plus, we can’t rely on an educated consumer. If we could, there would be no spam. Lastly, private business is regularly supervised. There are minimum wage laws, workman’s compensation laws, safety regulations (workplace and product), etc. I can’t go out tomorrow and start building cars and airplanes for public sale without complying with all hosts of regulations, and Big Brother does supervise to ensure those regulations are met.

38

I don’t think so. Considering that by age 11, I was having fantasies about bringing a gun to school and shooting the worst offenders, teacher and student, I’d guess that at least six of us would have died before 1986 if I hadn’t gotten out of that school district by 1980.

39

First of all, a full voucher system would benefit everyone, not just “a privileged few”. Second, making up numbers here, let’s suppose that 10% of the kids in the system are “bad” (you call them “inner city kids”, lobotomyboy63 calls them “gangbangers”, whatever term you want to use). Right now, these kids are ruining the schools for everyone. If vouchers could move 80 % of the other students (or 70% or 50% or 20%, whatever percentage it winds up being) from their sphere of influence into an environment where they can get a descent education, then that’s an improvement over the current system. I fail to see why you would oppose that.

40

Did you read my post? I actually have very specific ideas of where that money would go and why it would help if it went there. It’s not just throwing gobs of cash at the wall and seeing what sticks. Your idea seems to be “Just take money away from the public schools, then everything will be fine.” The problem is, as Jesus said, the poor will always be with us. If you want to help the people in the bottom SES group, and the kids whose parents aren’t very invested in their kids’ educations, you have to give a shit about public schools, because their kids will always be stuck there. Maybe you don’t care about poor kids, but I do. I care about why kids drop out and what the consequences are for our society. I don’t just want to bitch about them later, because they’re on the dole, pregnant in their teens, or in jail. Complaining is easy. Changing things is hard, costs money, and forces you to see the people in need as human beings.

If you’re complaining about kids who can’t read, guess what? Those kids are always going to be in public schools. I have actually worked with middle school kids who can’t read at grade level, and I have a good idea of what can help them get caught up, so they won’t feel like they should drop out in high school. And anything worth doing costs money. You need to hire specialists, you need to have smaller classes, you need new materials… unfortunately, the schools cannot get those things without money.

You think you’ll wave your magic voucher wand and the kids with real issues, the disadvantaged kids, will go away? I don’t see how, and I don’t see you address them in your plan. I’ve addressed them in mine.

ETA: OtakuLoki, I know you had a bad experience in public school. I wish you could see past it, that all schools are not that way, and public schools in general do not deserve a cut in funding because of your personal issues.