Correct me, if I’m wrong (if I am, there’s probably no debate here), but I believe that school vouchers allow parents to send their children to whichever school they want, even if they want to send their kids to a private school.
Am I right so far?
What’s wrong with this? It seems that the liberal ones in these forums are against the idea. Why?
Please, finals are almost here and I’m still not ready to stop being educated.
Well, first of all, you want your children to go to a GOOD school, right? Say, Groton, or Harvard Prep, or whatever?
Simply because someone has offered you vouchers does not mean your children will be accepted there.
So… what other schools are there? Doesn’t matter. Private schools may pick and choose who they will and won’t accept, and there’s no guarantee that ANY of them will take your kids.
So… what’s the alternative? Public school, of course. Unfortunately, the funding for those vouchers came directly out of public school funding. Opponents of vouchers (including nearly the entire educational infrastructure of the country) seem to think that taking money away from the public schools is a bad thing.
The way it stands now, rich people in Anytown pay school taxes, whether their children go to Anytown Elementary or not. This basically means society picks up the tab for a free education. Conservatives want to alter this – to anything ranging from “educational choice” to “totally privatized education, cut off from the government altogether.”
Trouble is, privatized education on any kind of large scale has so far failed to turn a profit. At least, as long as certain regulations are in place (like “not allowing large corporations to plaster the buildings with advertising,” and suchlike. Smaller schools, which charge whatever they like, can and do operate within a budget… but the idea of shattering the entire educational system of the nation into a constellation of little private schools scares some folks.
In at least one experiment of this nature, in San Antonio, Texas, some people literally began opening charter schools in their garages, in order to get hold of that voucher money. These “schools” were legal, within the existing framework at the time, but I can’t say I would have wanted MY kids depending on them for a future. Meanwhile, one of the city’s poorer school districts took a beating budgetwise, and nearly everyone suffered. Conservative proponents of school vouchers, however, claimed the whole thing as a success!
The bottom line here seems to be that until a system of regulation is set up… a system that would protect standards, nationwide, for all children in all private schools… a system that would be durn near as exhaustive and bureaucratic as the public school system itself… the voucher system will simply hurt the public school system, and will be dicey for anyone who isn’t able to get their kids into Groton or whatever…
Among the various arguments against school vouchers, one the loudest is the fear that public schools will lose money and get worse as parents will send their students elsewhere, particularly to private schools.
Also, if someone could select which public school to enroll in, how do the good public schools schools select which students to take? (Note, I think most proposed voucher systems would not include a choice of public schools, only the option to take public money to a priavte school.)
Most proposed programs will not give an allowance to cover most private school tuitions, but rather act as a fixed ceiling to make private schools more affordable if the entire cost is not covered.
Many “liberals” just don’t like the idea of any public money going to anything religious.
What happens is that parents use the vouchers to send their children to better schools, not necessarily the best schools. But so what? The schools the voucher children attend are better in the parents’ eyes than the public schools, so why worry if a poor kid in D.C. can’t get into Sidwell Friends (an exclusive private school Chelsea Clinton got into)? If that kid gets into a private Catholic school, it’s still better than the public school the kid was in.
Of course the money comes from the public school, because the public school is not doing a good job educating the student (if the school was, there would be no reason to leave). And of course the public education establishment doesnt like this, because it takes money away from them. No one likes to receive less funding. Of course, if they are doing a poor job, they deserve to lose their funding.
Perhaps some conservatives and libertarians do support totally privatizing education, but so what? You can’t judge a program based on the motives of those who are offering it. You judge a program based on what it will do. And vouchers offer poor children an escape from wretched public schools. I don’t think that most of the inner-city parents here in D.C. who support vouchers care one bit about whether or not some unnamed conservative wants to privatize education. They simply want their kids to get a better education than the D.C. schools offer.
The simple answer is that if you don’t want your kids to go there, then don’t send them there. If these shady schools were indeed opened, so what? How does that harm you? It sounds like you would be smart enough to avoid sending your kids there, and I’d bet that most parents would be that smart, too. That’s the beauty of private and charter schools. If they are shady, they shut down. However, if public schools are shady, they stay in business because there is no way to escape them.
If the school district was doing a poor job educating students, then it deserved to take a beating. You shouldn’t fund failure.
The only way vouchers will hurt public schools is if public schools are doing a bad job. And if they are doing a bad job, they deserve to be hurt. Vouchers help parents who want to get their kids into a better school. I fail to see what’s objectionable about that.
If bad schools lose students and funding due to vouchers, I say thats a good thing. Just like an unefficient corporation having to lay off employees or even go out of business, there is an overall benefit of this.
The entire educational system is against this for the same reasons they are against stardardized testing. They don’t want any accountablility or any change in the status quo.
No, not quite right there.
There is no guarantee that the voucher money parents will receive will be enough to expand private school facilities. In this case, the parents who already have their kids in private school would receive a nice chunk of change while all the other kids would be stuck in a public school which now has even less money than before.
I don’t have any figues on this, but I would wager this is a very real possibility in many districts. For these places, the voucher plan would help only the parents of those few who are fortuate enough to already be in private school. The plan would hurt everybody else. In a district where the public schools are doing alright, the voucher “cure” would actually cause the problems.
Bingo.
Vouchers have always seemed to me to be a “stealth” way to fund parochial schools with public money. And I’m damned if I want my taxes paying for religious instruction at the expense of basic education.
It would be amusing to see how pro-voucher folks would feel about Satanist or Wiccan (or Wahabi, more to the point) schools being funded with public monies.
If vouchers were used to fund only secular schools, then IMHO this wouldn’t be a problem. But by framing the issues as “school choice”, this seems to be an obvious and transparent attack on SOCAS.
Well, I’m an athiest and I still think vouchers are a great idea. It’s not just a stealth way of paying for religious schools.
Take the religion out of it for a second: If religous schools were not included, would you then agree that competition between public schools for students and funding would be a good idea?
Religion for some is fact for others. Do you think creationists like funding darwinist schools?
And who says religions replaces general education. I once taught as a general studies teacher at a religious private school. Those students have basic requirements. They just have to be have a much longer school day to cover secular AND religious topics. But the State does have requirements…
Didn’t I just say that in my post?
It depends on the state. Where I live, there’s no requirement for parochial schools to live up to the same standards as public schools. Establishing education standards for voucher funded schools would seem to be a huge issue that should also be included in any sort of voucher funding legislation.
You did say that, squeegee. I wasn’t asking you specifically. I more meant all those who are against school choice. Should have been clearer. My bad.
You’re mangling the definition of “fact” there. :rolleyes:
I too, shudder at the idea of the church teaching generations of our youth thier ideology passed off as ‘fact’. However, I could accept it if the kids were actually learning how to read and write in inner city schools.
The whole religion issue should not be central to the debate here. Current proposals regarding vouchers are for lower-income people in places that have incredibly bad public schools. 13 of D.C.'s 19 high schools have 90% of their students who read at or below the “Basic” level. That’s outrageous. The parents who want to use vouchers here want to get them into a school that will actually teach their children; I don’t think religion is their primary motivating factor.
Here is the problem- there are no controls on private schools, esp faith based schools. They are free to teach their students that god created the earth in 7 days, “darwinism” is a falsehood, and that negroes are by the Word of God inferiour to white people. Ok, well, that’s their faith- but I don’t want MY tax dollars supporting this garbage. Maybe they can read- but if they are brainwashed into this BS- what good will it do them?
Now, at a public school level- I have input. I can vote to the School Board, the Superintendant, or hell- even run for school board myself. I have some measure of control as to how MY tax dollars are spent.
Sure, SOME private schools give a better education than public schools- but vouchers are not limited to those schools. In some areas with vouchers, the KKK could open up a school to teach hate- and so could extremeist muslim groups. Nor are all private schools even teaching kids to read better.
If you want your kids to get a better public education- get involved. Vote out the current school board, put in a “3R’s board”, or whatever. YOU as the voter have ultimate control over how YOUR kids are educated. You don’t need vouchers, you need to vote.
DrDeth, you make a good point, to a certain extent. Sure, private schools could open which do these things, but there is no history of this ever happening in any of the voucher programs around the nation. And it is true that some Christian schools likely teach Creationism. Well, whether you want to accept it or not, many people believe Creationism is true science, and if they want their kids taught that, those of us who do not believe in Creationism have no right to stand in their way. Some public schools teach quite a few screwy things, and many parents object to the subjects being taught there. At least under a voucher system, parents who want their kids to be taught Creationism could just send their kids to a private school instead of trying to take over the school board and force Creationism on the public schools, as they have tried to do in a few areas.
The fact is, if a parent thinks his or her child would receive a better education at a private school, then that parent should be able to send the kid there. That’s all that really matters to me. I don’t know the child better than the parent does, and I’m certainly not a better authority on that child than the parent.
Could you please elaborate on these ‘screwy’ things being taught in public schools? I may have had some bad teachers growing up, but I don’t know that the actual content of the classes would classify as ‘screwy.’
As for your first point…well, I am pro-spiritualism, but when we get into the realm of falsifiable facts and non-facts, then I’m not sure that parents have a right to force their kids into thinking that Creationism is ‘true science.’ That pretty well kills any further scientific study, to my mind. And that’s certainly not what I want for my tax dollar.
As for whay I am against vouchers:
Hey, I’m not against private schools. I’m not even against private religious schools.
What I AM against is the idea that we can fund these schools with private money… while NOT HOLDING THEM to the same standards and requirements as we do the PUBLIC schools.
Education has, in recent years, become a wonderful scapegoat for politicians in need of an issue to flog. Can’t cure unemployment? Can’t balance the budget? Screwing the poor left and right? Don’t worry, folks, because I will FIX THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM!
…even if it weren’t broke to begin with.
A quote from above:
Ah. Nice to know we can boil a complicated problem down into a couple of simple sentences. Oh, wait, no we can’t.
This would seem to indicate that public education does not work. Anywhere. At all. Pardon me if I disagree. There are thousands of public schools that are doing just fine, thank you… but they would still suffer if voucher systems were put into play on any kind of widespread level.
This would also seem to indicate that if a school district is having trouble educating its students, that the obvious answer is to cripple it further, rather than investigating the reasons and, like, actually doing something about them. Pardon me if I disagree.
I’m not so worried about the inner city schools as I am the rural school districts. Quite often, these districts suffer because they’re way the hell and gone out in the middle of nowhere, and the best teachers may not want to LIVE way the hell and gone out in the middle of nowhere… hence, we either pay big bonus bucks, to lure them out there… or we do with substandard education. Hell, this is a SIMPLE problem! This problem CAN BE FIXED SIMPLY BY THROWING MONEY AT IT!
…but instead, we will issue vouchers, and cripple this distant, rural school. Perhaps other schools will open to compete with it, thus distributing the funding over several schools, none of which is as well funded as the original…
…or perhaps NO schools will open, leaving the local folks with the exact same problem they had before.
This is a solution? And this is just ONE of the issues lurking in wait in the Great Voucher Debate.
Poor school districts are another fun topic. These districts can’t afford the best teachers, much less buildings, equipment, books, and so on. Once again, this problem could be solved by throwing money at it… and this is exactly what DID happen, via the “Robin Hood Law,” which lifted extra budget money from the state ed budget and allocated it to poorer districts.
Admittedly, the higher income folks and hardcore conservatives did NOT like this idea, which smacked of socialism, and argued, “Why should MY tax dollars be taken out of MY district, to pay for educating the little (insert plural racial epithet of choice here) in some POOR district?”
…and lo and behold, we began hearing about the voucher system. A system which, in every field test so far, has yet to work for educators and their students… although the politicians seem to have made plenty hay out of it.
If some part of the system, in some given location, is broken, fine. Fix it. But crippling the entire system and handing it over to private hands, while regulating those private hands LESS than we did the public ones?
You know, the S&L crisis taught us an important lesson about deregulation. Why are we so damn anxious to do the same thing all over again… with the education of our children?