School Vouchers - Would they work?

Great Debates
61

Do I disgust you, The Ryan?

I gave a simple criteria that would make me come right to the side of vouchers - Tell me how they are supposed to help the public school system. How do vouchers make the schools better. Enlighten me.

Insulting people and whining yourself how we need to look out for the more wealthy people and vouchers are a neato way to do this does not come close to answering my question.

My mind is not made up at all on this. I want what is best for our aschools, and will listen to any reasonable ideas to achieve this.

And I’m still waiting for the reasons vouchers will achieve this. So how about it?

Yer pal,
Satan

*TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Six months, one week, three days, 3 hours, 57 minutes and 58 seconds.
7726 cigarettes not smoked, saving $965.82.
Extra time with Drain Bead: 3 weeks, 5 days, 19 hours, 50 minutes.

I slept with a moderator!*

62

JAG, Mr. Z., i’m always in good company.

[soapbox]

Competition is the most important element of a free market. When we compete, everyone struggles to win. Even the losers are better for the struggle. Muscles in competiton with gravity get stronger and bigger.

I’ve been in favor of vouchers for ten years. Vouchers mean competition for money, which has consistently proven to generate the best product for the best price, across the economic board.

I seriously doubt any “mass exodus” from “public” schools. I’m guessing, initially, 90% of the children won’t even notice. Parents will send their children off to school as normal, same school, same teachers, along with the check on the first day. Big deal.

To add to that, in some areas, there isn’t much in the way of private schools, so for those communities it’s not an issue. Nothing changes.

What will change is that entrepreneurs will start opening private schools, offering better education, better classroom experience, more and diverse classes, better teachers, all for the same money. Just like colleges. *How in the world can that possibly be a bad thing? *

Currently, my children are in FL public schools, where there has been such an influx of kids that the schools have erected on school grounds these portables (flimsy trailor-like classrooms), right here in Lightning Alley, where the storms get pretty fierce. We are forced to purchase tissues, crayons, paint, glue, tape, and a host of other things that schools used to provide for us. Taxes keep going up, but the quality of education keeps going down.

As a consumer, wouldn’t you want to get the most for your dollar? Don’t worry about the kids down the block, worry about your children, worry about their education, and worry about their future. If a better opportunity comes along, you take it. It a school can’t keep up, they will have to shape up.

No more sloppy fiscal budgets. No more over priced union slacker teachers. Your child won’t be faced with problem, disciplinary-challenged kids because they won’t be there (and hopefully neither will the drugs and guns that go with them).

Additionally, an entrepreneur will see the need for the type of school that is tailored to the special needs of “problem” children and open a school for just that purpose (some exist now), hopefully enabling the children to become better people when they mature, rather than leeches and problems to society later on. Currently, public schools cannot offer an effective solution to this problem.

I can’t possibly imagine a voucher system *not[/] working favorably in the interests of the people and the greater good.

[/soapbox]

63

Imagine Chile:

I also believe Venezuela tried vouchers and are now trying to reform the reforms. I’m going to look into this.

64

You cannot possibly be comparing our economic and social situation to that of Chile and Venezuala, can you?

But, in fairness, does anyone know of a country where vouchers were tried and succeeded for the common good?

65

Here in California, as you already know, there is a voucher propostion on the ballot. The proponents of prop 38 are currently running shameful, negative, and in my opinion, dishonest, tv ads. One claim is that 40% of L.A. public school teachers send their kids to *private[i/] schools. I mean, how would they know this? Did they get a list of all teachers, call them on the phone and ask them a)do you have kids, and b) do they go to private schools? I don’t think so.

I oppose vouchers for the following reasons.

  1. Parents of poor kids will still be unable to afford the private schools.
  2. There is no public control of the price of tuitions.
  3. On the off-chance a poor parent is able to scrape up the tuition money, the private school is under no obligation to accept the poor parent’s kid.
  4. Public schools, already under-funded, will become an educational wasteland.

I think we should fix the system, rather than gut it.

66

Given that the major argument for vouchers is that it will help “the really poor,” if vouchers DON’T help them, that would seem to be a strong argument against the idea.

67

Some thoughts on your points:

  1. How do you know that private schools will be unaffordable? Some current schools may be, but new ones will compete for that voucher.
  2. Many people are opposed to the idea of price controls on anything. Free competition in the market sets the price. if 90% of the people have ONLY $x to spend, businesses will compete for that $x.
  3. That would appear true. “Public” schools would still accept them tho.
  4. You have no proof for this statement, only fear. No one wants their school to become a wasteland. IMHO, such an extreme would not happen. Schools (“public” and private) will still be able to function quite well on the dollars per student that they are currently spending if they are fiscally responsible (if they aren’t, they should get out, don’t you think?).
68

since we all pay very high taxes for the public schools (included in our property tax bills) I have often thought that it would be a good thing if our tuitions in private school could be a tax write off. This would then give everyone a chance of affording private school.

Many areas have wonderful schools, but L.A. is not one area that does. When my kids were in private school we found that 2 County Supervisors and 3 Board of Education members had their kids in with mine. That should tell you something about the L.A. County problem. Many kids were the offspring of public school teachers.

If vouchers should be approved, there is no reason for any parent to not question all the private schools to see what their agenda is. No one should find out after the fact that the school of their choice belongs to the “moonies.” Have we become so lazy that we can’t reasearch our life’s choices?

Let’s get a tax break on private tuitition and we would have the money to find just exactly the right school for our kids. If we can’t find a good one, start one!

69

This is funny… kind of…

I have been hoping to actually READ the proposed voucher program instead of speculating as to what it is based on the debates. I went to both http://www.gop.com and http://www.rnc.com… all the links are nonexistant. They shouldn’t have given Gore such a hard time about inventing the internet, I guess he showed them!

70

They are unaffordable now for the poorer parents. Some kids are lucky to wearing shoes. I don’t forsee a new crop of less expensive private schools cropping up. And current private school tuitions will not be going down.

And if a school recieves public money, which voucher money will essentailly be, they should have to accept the public.

71

I’m not entirely sure that increased competition and reliance upon the free market is the universal cure for all that ails us.

I believe competition among health care providers has steadily increaseed over my 15 year working life, and my personal experience has been for premiums to steadily rise in inverse proportion to the quality of service. At the same time, I understand that perhaps the largest social statistic that has not seen improvement during the recent economic boom has been the number of Americans without any health insurance.

I’m not convinced that privatization is always a panacea. I see significant problems directly resulting from the creation of the present day prison industry.

No one has responded to the mention of taxes for police protection. Or how about fire departments? There are some functions that I personally believe are appropriately provided by the state, and which I do not believe are best addressed by free market forces. Certainly feel free to disagree with me.

I’m not certain I want to risk significantly harming our present system (while readily acknowledging it’s shortcomings) and sacrificing the next generation of students on the hope/assumption that a certain number of private schools of a certain quality will “pop up.” Bet some areas might hear more popping than others. I’m not convinced that the current system is beyond repair. And I question whether vouchers would actually improve the present system. I’d rather try to improve what we’ve got, instead of making drastic overhaul and hoping for the better. I must admit, however, that school funding/administration/reform is certainly not something I am expert on.

My limited experience, having done some research in my immediate area, is that the 2 really good non-religious private schools are VERY expensive (more than $8G), and extremely selective in their admissions. As an atheist, I can not send my child to a religious school.

72

And like someone said, just because it’s a private school doesn’t make it better.
I went to CAtholic school. I think I did much better in the public school setting. I have a learning disability. My school’s solution was to send me to a guidance counseler to talk about my “feelings”…oh, and to warn the kids who picked on me that I was “special”. (EXTREMELY pissed about that one).
I remember sitting in the crappy room that was a makeshift nurse’s office (no nurse, just secretaries). On the other side of a divider, a nun was working with a learning disabled child, and insulting her. “Oh you’re so stupid, why can’t you learn like the other kids?” I remember feeling ill and wanting to walk over there and tear that old hag a new one.
Our libraries were full of outdated books. The school was NOT diverse by any means-it was a White Catholic prep school. I remember having to write a Pro-Life essay in 8th grade-it HAD to be pro-life. I didn’t know what my feelings were on that subject. Yes, it’s a religious school, it has the right to do that. But if fucking sucks.

My sister wasn’t learning jackshit in her social studies class because the teacher, a man, was burned out and bitter at not being able to teach at a public school. He took it out on the students. There were hardly any computers, gym was a joke, and no music or art programs.
And tuition was so fucking expensive!

Don’t kid yourselves-private schools aren’t always the answer. Let’s work on trying to BETTER the public schools we have first.

73

Police and Fire departments are necessary elements provided by the state for the protection of the citizens; schools do not fall into this category.

A voucher system is not an overhaul; it’s a change in the way funds are distributed. The basics and basis of the educational system remains the same. What’s more, there are minimal educational requirements for which all private schools must meet, or they will lose their licenses.

Once the vouchers are distributed, and others are allowed to compete for that voucher, we will see more private, non-religious schools enter the market. Not right away, this takes some time; another reason why the voucher system is not a radical overhaul.

Most communities will see no immediate effect, that comes later, and the entire country will keep the educational system in check, by voting with their feet (and vouchers).

74

From Wrath:

We’ve had a number of posters from private schools put their own experiences here, I don’t recall any one of them saying that it was cheap. And again where the money for all these “new” schools going to come from, the vouchers certainly won’t provide it. Third, if you were building a private school, where are you most likely to put it? The inner city, or the burbs? There are way too many mights in this argument.

  1. Many people are opposed to the idea of price controls on anything. Free competition in the market sets the price. if 90% of the people have ONLY $x to spend, businesses will compete for that $x.

Tell that to the residents of San Diego (example I put in pg1 of this discussion). The free market is not the panacea you claim.

  1. That would appear true. “Public” schools would still accept them tho.

The same public schools that money has been siphoned away from?

  1. You have no proof for this statement, only fear. No one wants their school to become a wasteland. IMHO, such an extreme would not happen. Schools (“public” and private) will still be able to function quite well on the dollars per student that they are currently spending if they are fiscally responsible (if they aren’t, they should get out, don’t you think?).

Sure we do, the money for the vouchers comes form the public schools, take money away, what happens? They won’t have the money they’re currently spending if it’s siphoned away to subsidize private enrollment.

75

That’s not true, at least not in my state. The voucher initiative in California specifically exempts private schools from regulation, both in standards and local ordinances, maybe the one for your state is different, and if so i’d like to see a copy of it.

As for your first statement in that post, I believe the basis for public education has been explained ad nauseum.

Again you assume that this will happpen. Yet I haven’t seen a voucher initiative that’s anywhere near cost effective enough to provide the basic infrastructure for these new schools. So, new schools are going to “pop up” to take advantage of money that does not cover it’s costs? That’s not even sound economics.

76

Umm, isn’t the whole reason for this because other efforts have FAILED, miserably?

Also, keep in mind this would allow you to send your child from an F school to a higher rated PUBLIC school. It doesn’t have to be a private school and definately does not have to be a religious school.

77

So we just throw more money into the private schools?

Then, they won’t really be “private” anymore, will they?

78

Of course it is. Like ANY startup company (like an airline like JetBlue) there will be an investment made by one or several people to build a new school and compete for vouchers. Cost recovery will take years, but that’s how it works.

No, no one REALLY knows if this would happen, and if it didn’t, the public school is still there, still providing the (wonderful) education they do now.

And as for the schools that get less money as students leave, the voucher idea is based on the actual cost we currently spend per child for education, so if there were fewer children to teach, the school would not require the same amount of money, thereby forcing them to streamline operations.

79

Wrath, do you really believe that school choice works so simply? Read yesterday’s LA Times.

The voucher plan instituted in New Zealand, terrifyingly similar to Proposition 38, was a complete and total failure which resulted in further polarization of education.

One needs to look no farther than today’s Times for an additional voucher debunk.

And don’t forget the Sensas-Utcha Institute for Holistic Learning!

A great article about this voucher debacle appeared in the Septemper 23rd Milwaukee Journal. I don’t have the link, so I will not quote the article at length. If you would like more information, please email me.

All you need are investors and effiency will logically follow? Baloney.

MR

80

Okay, so, require licensing of teachers and the schools so that they meet minimum requirements (we do that now).

A school voucher would only be payable to a state-licensed school, not a non-existent one.

And yes, it can be that easy.