Of course, this isn’t just a matter of religious institutions providing a secular service. Catholic schools routinely require one theology class a semester, and I can certainly imagine church-affiliated schools that require more. Under the standards cckerberos quoted, there’s not even a requirement that the majority of the program be secular, just that there be some secular purpose served. If I’m understanding that correctly, a school could have one hour a week of some secular subject, and all the rest of the time devoted to religious education, and still be eligible for vouchers.
I addressed two of the three questions posed in the OP regarding Romney’s proposal. I didn’t realize the Post Police were going to make me address them all within a certain time frame. I was directly making known my opinion on Romney’s proposal. No handwaving there, chief.
The article is vague but it doesn’t look like Mitt is breaking any new ground. So really it’s just a question of how you feel about vouchers to begin with. For myself I think enabling students to move between public schools is different than vouchers for private schools which removes funding from the public school system. Overall the way to improve American education is to move away from the agrarian past and send our kids to school during the summer. Also focusing on learning instead of test taking would help. Also the realization that the main problem dragging down our test scores is not the education system itself but rather that far too many kids get stuck in awful family situations and are condemned to poor performance before they ever reach kindergarten.
Imagine a rural area where the parents of 190 out of the 200 kids opted for a religious school; the public school would consolidate with another school 50 miles away. Now consider the choice facing the parents of the remaining 10 kids.
Alternatively, maybe it’s not religion, but just a local private school that just sucks. Plenty of publics suck, but when they do, in theory, a district/county/state that can intervene. When the local school is a private (run by the mayor’s wife, say), that’s less likely. Eventually, the market mechanism will work, but in the meantime a lot of kids are screwed.
Finally, imagine that 40 of 200 parents start a Baptist school, 40 start a Catholic school, 20 opt for an online charter, another 20 opt for the long commute or a boarding school or some other option, and 80 stay in that public school. Those 80 kids are going to lose a lot by having their school shrink by over half; some programs are no longer affordable (e.g. they can’t afford a music and and art teacher, and must choose or combine)
You’re correct. I was just explaining the basic concept of vouchers.
Yes, Romney’s plan would only affect a sliver of education spending in the US.
So basically the ones that don’t switch end up sticking with a smaller, under-funded school compared to before?
Not underfunded; they’d still have at least the same amount of per-pupil funding, and almost certainly more. What they’d lose out on is the things you get with scale (e.g. a school with 200 kids will have a lot more extracurricular choices than a school with 100). So it’s a possible problem in some rural areas. Of course, it’s a bit of a moot point, as nearly all people in rural areas are happy with their public schools. I’m just pointing out that it is a theoretical problem.
At present, nearly all voucher and charter systems are in dense urban areas, where people are unhappy with public schools, and where consolidation and/or cooperation are much easier.
If you ask me, trapping poor children in failing public schools looks like a way to keep the poor poor. Giving those poor children the chance to attend successful private schools would give them a much better shot at a good education, and thus at rising out of poverty. The ACLU and other groups that fight against school vouchers are the ones who obviously want the poor to remain poor.
That said, I doubt that Mr. Etch-a Sketch’s vague plan would ever amount to much.
As I posted above, his proposed $500 per student is not much of a “voucher”.
That’s the rub, will this voucher actually allow a poor student to go to a successful private school? Or, will it simply allow not-quite poor students to go, or simply give a rebate to wealthier students who are already going the private school route?
Similar to his “fire my insurer” comment, folks without means don’t always have the option to vote with their feet, they’re captive consumers, and free market solutions don’t work when you have a customer set that is stuck with one provider.
Well, Denver has Open Enrollment. You can enroll your kid in any school in the district if there is space.
The parents who can afford to transport their kids and maybe pay for after care will do this. The ones who can’t, won’t. And let’s face it: some of them just don’t care.
It creates more white flight in an already pretty segregated area. Personally, when I look at schools, the first thing I want to see is 1) Class size 2) test scores. I’m currently considering putting my son in a charter (yeah, I know, me) because I really do care about his education and I can’t pay $14,000 a year in tuition for him at a private school. I can handle his 2nd grade year okay, but probably not the 3rd grade.
So I have to pay $800 to get him tested to see if he qualifies for a magnet school. One of the top five in the state. Charters are by lotto, of course. Most parents apply to all area charters and hope they get into one. I mean, if you can’t afford to pay $300,000 for a tiny condo in a good neighborhood, you have to scramble.
I used to think that charters and vouchers were eeeebil and to a degree, they are, but what’s a parent supposed to do?
The main problem with vouchers is that it’s not a real solution so it just distracts from discussions of ideas that really could make a difference. Another major innovation that occurs to me would be funding statewide instead of locally so that you don’t have the huge disparity between one school district and the next. But really, the main problem is not the schools but the tragic lack of support a lot of kids receive before they ever get that far.
To me, the biggest problem is that teachers are drawn from the bottom ranks of students entering college. With many outstanding exceptions, teachers are pretty dumb. Until we value education enough that we pay teachers a salary that will draw smart people we are fucked. And of course no one is going to be willing to raise teachers’ salaries until they stop acting less like Teamsters and more like the ABA and AMA.
That is all on top of the fact that the school year and day are too short, the pedagogy is based on fads rather than science, and that too many families just don’t give a rip.
Oh, yeah, here we go again. Teachers sure are dum dums!
:rolleyes:
Maybe they cut the art teacher’s hours back so she only comes in two days a week. She only had 40% of the students she used to, so each one gets just as much of her attention as before. And she can work one day a week at the Baptist, Catholic, and boarding schools.
And the art teacher says, “Screw this-I need a full time job with benefits. B’bye.”
That’s certainly a possibility. Backers of voucher programs say that competition will improve schools, but this sort of case seems like it would drive some people out of the teaching profession, leading to a smaller pool of candidates for the schools to hire from.
I can tell you what is absolutely not going to happen: The different school systems coordinating their schedules so that our hypothetical art teacher gets 40 or so hours a week.
It does seem unlikely, but I don’t see any reason why it’s impossible. And the teacher could do the coordinating for them. “You’ve got 20 students and want an art teacher one day a week. I’m the only person for 50 miles with any experience teaching art. I’m available on Fridays, take it or leave it.”
It won’t be that simple, of course, but people are very adaptable and can usually manage to work something out among themselves. But if the net effect of this is to turn one full-time job into two part-time ones (repeated thousands of times across the country) then lots of people are going to get screwed. It is a sad fact of life that there are people who look for ways to perform just that sort of screwing.