# School Vouchers? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 31, 2011, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702 "2011-08-31T00:40:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2011, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/81 "2011-09-02T04:53:56Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > What ?! NO ! Didn’t I make that part clear ? Socialization is a horrible, horrible thing. Socialization sucks hairy donkey balls. But it is necessary, so, y’know, whatever, deal with it, son 😃 > > As for your actual point, I agree - it’s not ideal. I myself went to a somewhat privileged school (my parents actually pulled some shady tricks to go around districting rules, including making me enlist for god damned Latin… ) and there were very few “coloured” children among us. Maybe a couple per classroom, tops - I reckon the school board tried to spread 'em around, which is at the same time a good and a bad thing. > > Still, the odds of meeting the Other are markedly better in a school (be it public or private) than they are in one’s living room, wouldn’t you agree ? I donno. I think it depends where you live. My son goes to a Jewish day school and I guess there are ‘white’ folks there, but I live in Denver and he thinks you can be a Mexican if you don’t wear sunscreen in the summertime. His favorite restaurant is a Moroccan one and his best friend is Chicano and his step-grandmother is Chinese. He definitely interacts with more “Others” than I did at that age. I think it’s because of our lifestyle and the city we live in. BUT I’ve also seen brand new teachers say, “I’ve never seen this many Mexicans in a room before…” when talking about their new classrooms…nevermind that Denver is like half Latino. I also feel like parents who homeschool _may_ be more inclined to have ethno-centric lifestyles anyway, either by choice or geography. Not sure. ---
**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2011, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/82 "2011-09-02T07:02:38Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > **Schools seem to become increasingly child factory farms. I think that is hurting us as children grow up to think of themselves with much decreased self worth, just another cog in the wheel, another expense for the system, and another brick in the wall. That mentality persists into adulthood for many IMHO.** > > The former system, usually called the single room school house, started building child self worth as soon as they are able to help younger children and slowly increases self worth of helping out others, all under the teachers supervision, and thus decreasing the teacher’s workload as well, so the student learns to help those less advanced (younger children) and more advanced (teachers) then themselves. This encourages being productive and valued members of society. > > This is sadly absent in the current system and only really still exists in some collective home schooling situation. > > The value to the children to learn that they are important members of society and to learn not to be a drain but a contributing member is worth offering vouchers, possibly greater then their tax burden to encourage it. I’m unclear how what I bolded is a _bad_ thing. We are educating our children to be 9-5 M-F working members of society, that means they have, you know, create something of value. Many, if not most, will avoid the literal assembly line jobs, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be in a workplace with alot of people with similiar job titles and duties, and we must prepare them for this reality. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2011, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/83 "2011-09-02T11:53:16Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > You can’t imagine anything worse than that? Not an entire underclass of completely uneducated, poor young men, in the prime of their strength, with no jobs and no prospects? And worst thing you can think of is wasting your taxes? Do you mean something different than the entire underclass of poor, young men with no jobs and no prospects that we currently have now? At a minimum, the public schools have failed them. At worse, they have encouraged it. Why not give the kids that want to learn a chance to learn? Even if we protect the sanctity of public funding in education, why not at least let them choose a different school in the district? ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2011, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/84 "2011-09-02T12:42:43Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > Do you mean something different than the entire underclass of poor, young men with no jobs and no prospects that we currently have now? Yes, I do. If you just slam the doors on all inner city schools, what we have now will seem like a church ice cream social. If you think it can’t get any worse, you are well and truly uninformed. ---
**Author:** ![Gedd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gedd/32/4938_2.png) [@Gedd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gedd)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2011, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/85 "2011-09-02T14:17:42Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > The teachers and administrators have proven that they can’t even control the students at the school. That isn’t a problem of funding. (I agree; it’s mostly a problem of the parents). I’m willing to bet the three major reasons students using vouchers do better are: 1. Private schools pick their students 2. Private schools have a better teacher to student ratio 3. Parents with vouchers are involved in their kid’s education (The big one). [According to the National Education Association](http://www.nea.org/tools/17360.htm), parental involvement "raises students’ grades and test scores, promotes better attendance, increases social skills and promotes better behavior.” If you have a school with low test scores and let the parents who are concerned about that put their kids in a different school two things will happen. First, the school will get less funding since it has fewer students. Second, the scores will just go lower because a good chunk of the kids that left were in the top half of the student body. Repeat next year when the school ratings come out and parents with kids in that school are offered vouchers. In these cases vouchers aren’t a solution; you’re just putting more water in the bucket instead of fixing the hole. ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2011, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/86 "2011-09-02T16:33:50Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Of course it is, and I have no problem with homeschoolers. And if they’re doing a worse job of it than a public schoolteacher, they’re absolute morons. > > Give me a situation where: > -I have very little paperwork > -I have a tiny class size > -I control curriculum and pedagogical methods > -I’m not limited to specific hours of the day > -I have absolute disciplinary authority > -I control my students’ schedule 24 hours a day > -I control my students’ diet > -I control what my students experience emotionally at home > > and I will blow you away with my results. My students will be much closer in academic levels than those in a public school classroom, so there’s not as much differentiation necessary; I can differentiate for individuals much more effectively; I can teach wherever is most appropriate; I can leave students alone for a few minutes while I go to the bathroom; I won’t have emotionally or physically abused kids coming into my room; I won’t have malnourished kids coming into my room; and on and on and on. > > If you can afford to homeschool your own kids, by all means do so. I salute you sincerely. Public schools are available because not everyone can afford to do so (or is willing or able to do so for other reasons), and we as a society don’t want those kids cleaning chimneys. They’re a service to society at large first, to the kids second, and only to the parents third. I’d like to supply a point for each of your bullets but suffice it to say, schools used to have all of those things with exception to only 2. Everything else points to a failing ideology of the government (over the course of decades) ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2011, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/87 "2011-09-02T16:41:48Z")
Too late for edit: Look I like vouchers, they would be a good solution for me but my kids are currently in a great public school. If they were not I’d want them to be in some private school (at least partially funded) by school vouchers. But it is all going to depend on the kid. I agree that parents need to be more active in the day to day life of their kids but guess what? Some parent’s don’t, and no matter what you offer them or do for them ever will, give 2 shits about little Johnny. What we as a society needs to realize is that we can’t save everyone from themselves. If proposing solutions that will better a good portion of ‘those left behind’ is wrong then consider me the devil. Some kids or going to be janitors (the probability is high that their parent’s didn’t take a very active role in their schooling) Continued government intrusion to ‘make things better’, in respect to schools at least, has made significant negative impact in how to go about helping everyone. Currently the trend is to hurt those in the upper category cause “hey, they will make it alright anyway” I am open for more ideas that are better suited to encompass **more** children, I don’t think anyone believes that people are out to get kids. I will be proven wrong on this point I’m sure in a few posts ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2011, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/88 "2011-09-02T17:15:19Z")
> [@Kearsen](#): > > Some kids or going to be janitors (the probability is high that their parent’s didn’t take a very active role in their schooling) No shame in being a janitor; frankly, the kids that are going to be janitors aren’t the ones that worry me nearly as much as the ones who are going to get pregnant at fourteen or the ones who don’t think school matters because they plan to sell guns, just like their daddy (who doesn’t exactly run a hunting supplies store). The question isn’t whether we save people from themselves: again, that mistakenly treats the parent like the client. The secondary client is the child, and there the question is whether we save children from their parents. But the primary client is society, and there the question is whether we save society from future adults who are in worse shape than they otherwise could be. There are certainly things we can do to make public schools better. But if it’s public funds, the reforms we should do should be decided by the public, not by individual parents. ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2011, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/89 "2011-09-02T17:20:29Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > No shame in being a janitor; frankly, the kids that are going to be janitors aren’t the ones that worry me nearly as much as the ones who are going to get pregnant at fourteen or the ones who don’t think school matters because they plan to sell guns, just like their daddy (who doesn’t exactly run a hunting supplies store). The question isn’t whether we save people from themselves: again, that mistakenly treats the parent like the client. The secondary client is the child, and there the question is whether we save children from their parents. But the primary client is society, and there the question is whether we save society from future adults who are in worse shape than they otherwise could be. > > There are certainly things we can do to make public schools better. But if it’s public funds, the reforms we should do should be decided by the public, not by individual parents. I agree with most of that. What happens if society decides to release vouchers? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2011, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/90 "2011-09-02T17:30:38Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Imagine little Billy who is bright and intellectually curious. In a public school, he’ll sit in the back of the classroom being ignored while the teacher deals with the head cases and the criminals. But if we gave Billy’s parents a voucher, they could send him to a private school where the head cases and the criminals aren’t allowed. Then it would be possible for the teacher to actually focus on him, challenge his intellect, and help him learn. This. I was little Billy growing up. It is not bragging to state that I was significantly smarter than the mouthbreathing retards that I went to public school with in grades 2-6 (I skipped 1). What did I learn? 1. I was going to be bored out of my ass when I went to school. I would have to listen to the teacher explain things 3, 4, 5, 10 times to the mouthbreathers. Sheesh. 2. I was going to get my ass kicked by the mouthbreathers because I knew the answer when called on and therefore made them look stupid. And they sure as hell didn’t want to hear me point out that they made themselves look stupid. When my parents sent me to a private school, it was great in terms of the academics. However, by that time, I had learned lousy study skills. In addition, I didn’t fit in with the other kids’ cliques, so I was the outsider. Different set of issues. However, when I finally graduated from high school, I pretty much skated the first year of college on advanced placement credits. If I had stayed in public school, I doubt I would have even been accepted to a college. I am not a fan of government education. If it were up to me, I’d start again from scratch and boil it down to small home-school groups, where a couple of families get together and pool resources to teach their kids. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2011, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/91 "2011-09-02T18:59:50Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > 1. I was going to be bored out of my ass when I went to school. I would have to listen to the teacher explain things 3, 4, 5, 10 times to the mouthbreathers. Sheesh. Definitely this is a problem; I agree. There’s a place for heterogeneous grouping, but I think the pendulum has swung too far in that direction. Kids who will get things the first time need the opportunity not to have to hear them the tenth time. It drives me crazy watching the quicker kids get bored as I patiently explain yet again how to use the tens place in addition. > [@](#): > > 1. I was going to get my ass kicked by the mouthbreathers because I knew the answer when called on and therefore made them look stupid. And they sure as hell didn’t want to hear me point out that they made themselves look stupid. The school should have stopped the violence, sure–but perhaps a different kid would have learned how to be smart tactfully and without insulting other people. > [@](#): > > When my parents sent me to a private school, it was great in terms of the academics. However, by that time, I had learned lousy study skills. Again, this is a school’s failure. I have more than once reduced a smart kid to tears because I expect them to work in my class. They may not skate by on brains alone: I make them set challenges for themselves. It’s very common for smart kids to say, “Well, I can do 95% of the work effortlessly, and 95% is good enough for the grade, so the 5% that’s hard for me I can safely ignore.” I insist that the 5% that’s hard is exactly the 5% that’s most important for them to work on: why work on stuff that’s easy for you already? In theory they accept that message, but in practice it can be very difficult for the smart kids to do. In any case, while it’s nice to imagine how great parents would be if schooling were turned into co-ops, what outcome would you predict for a kid whose mom is addicted to meth and whose dad is in and out of prison? Are you okay with that kid being totally screwed by his parents’ choices, or do you have some other thoughts about how it would work? ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2011, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/92 "2011-09-02T20:49:53Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > … And if you’re very, very lucky, you might get to sniff a pair of panties or two along the way. > > I’d like to see a Mommy homeschooling little Timmy on all this… I’m pretty sure there are websites where you can. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2011, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/93 "2011-09-02T22:48:10Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Don’t forget one essential point of schooling (public or private): socialization. In school you’ll meet people richer than you, or poorer than you. In school you’ll meet black kids, white kids, yellow kids, brown kids. Girls and boys. Smart guys and dumbasses. In school you’ll have to do lots of administrative crap that you’ll have to do all over again because form 22A.B got lost by the admin staff. You’ll learn that the admin room is only open from 14:00 to 15:30, because fuck you that’s why. You’ll learn that there are bullies out there and no, nobody but you gives a crap about them. You’ll learn that there are suck-ups and that yes, more often than not they do get favoured, despicable as they are. You’ll learn that people are mean, dirty, violent selfish jerks - but that some of them are a’ight. > You’ll also pick up lots of great musical tips, lots of bad fashion ones, and probably learn how to break copyright so hard it’ll run to its mommy crying. And if you’re very, very lucky, you might get to sniff a pair of panties or two along the way. > > I’d like to see a Mommy homeschooling little Timmy on all this. > In my (admittedly limited) experience, little homeschooled Timmy comes into the adult world thinking he’s a very special snowflake and with exactly zero experience on how to deal with other people. More often than not, that makes him a total douche, but by then of course it’s too late for him to learn all of this. This is a bit of a highjack, I know: It all depends. My niece was homeschooled, and she turned out fine. She socializes easily and has plenty of friends. At 17 she’s just started taking classes in college (math and history, so far) and is doing very well. She’s also started a business on the side. The thing is, she was homeschooled, but not isolated. All her life she was socializing with tons of people from the surrounding community, which is very diverse. And not in the least bit religious, by the way. I do want to point out one thing that really bugs me: It isn’t necessary to teach kids that there are bullies out there. I was bullied when I was in school and I do not consider it as having had any value whatsoever. In my adult life there has never been a single occasion in which I have been bullied, certainly not in the same way I was as a child. I could have lived without that experience as a child. ---
**Author:** ![AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2011, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/94 "2011-09-03T07:32:01Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > What about the disabled? What about those with learning disabilities? What about kids who CAN be good students but whose parents don’t care enough to bother with the program? You CAN see that the excellent results that private schools get, in general, are mostly because they don’t have to accept all comers, right? You CAN see that giving the money that public schools need to right now to even do the lousy job you say they’re doing to private schools is going to gut the public schools, right? Are you prepared to live in a society that warehouses disabled minors in schools that are possibly a step above Bedlam? Because that’s what’s going to happen if vouchers ever became a nationwide program. > > And that’s not even going into the issues of separation of church and state or the multitude of scam schools that will spring up to reap the windfall. jayjay, there are Schools for the Deaf and Blind, for sensory disabled kids you know. It’s just that they’re not used a lot b/c mainstream school districts use deaf adn hard of hearing, and blind/low vision kids as cash cows. They can LEGALLY give kids a minimal accomodnations education, (ie fifteen minutes of Braille/ASL) and still be said to be legally within the law of giving kids a free and appropreate education. On the other hand, most sped kids are LD kids (and a lot of THOSE kids are kids who are only in sped b/c someone thought it would be a brilliant idea to put them there) Sigh…sped is so screwed up. ---
**Author:** ![Ca3799](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9f8e36/32.png) [@Ca3799](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ca3799)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2011, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/95 "2011-09-03T15:11:47Z")
I’m not impressed with what I often see regarding vouchers. Too often, I am reading stories about how the administrators are using the money to shop at Victoria’s Secret or whatever. In my state the big supporters of voucher systems seem to also be heavily involved in “culture war”, religious-right issues which makes me think they are more interested in ideology than education. We have a pretty big public school system in place already. If some of the schools are not doing a good job, it’s seems to be a better plan to improve them, not fracture them into smaller, more educationally diverse pieces. ---
**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2011, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/96 "2011-09-03T15:38:44Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by Qin Shi **Handgie:** > Great but that’ll require curbing the power of the teacher’s unions. So, if it requires re-negotiating union contracts to include some clause to dump sub-standard teachers, do it. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2011, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/97 "2011-09-03T21:04:22Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Yes, I do. If you just slam the doors on all inner city schools, what we have now will seem like a church ice cream social. If you think it can’t get any worse, you are well and truly uninformed. How would it be worse? Let the kids who want to learn transfer to other schools in the district. I would pay my hard-earned tax money for that. Then, the inner city school teachers and administrators can continue to allow their facility to be drug distribution centers and pretend that they are trying to do something productive. But, in fairness, since they will have less students, they will get less taxpayer money to facilitate the distribution of drugs in the inner cities. I know that you see this as a negative, but with the deficit and everything, perhaps pretend schools where kids are pretend educated are in line for cuts. But still, liberals will still have their masturbatory fantasy that something good could possibly happen in run down, shithole, decrepit inner-city slum schools with graffiti on them and razor wire around them. Win-win? ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2011, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702/98 "2011-09-03T22:16:31Z")
I wish the schools problems were simple to evaluate. I went to Detroit public schools long ago. We had slow, average and fast student classes. You were evaluated and put into a fast program if you qualified. We had French. Spanish, Russian and Latin available. There were music classes and shop classes. All sports were available. If a student had no interest in pursuing college ,there was Wilbur Wright which offered shop and technical training for those who were after machinist or manufacturing jobs and apprenticeships. Our schools competed evenly with the best private schools and were ahead of the Catholic schools then. Something has gone wrong, but blaming the teachers is weak. There is a hell of a lot more wrong than that. I suppose drugs and decaying neighborhoods are huge factors. But we can not fix the neighborhoods or make drugs go away. We are unable to make schools safe anymore let alone a comfortable place to learn. There were union teachers doing their jobs back then , just like now. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-vouchers/594702.md?page=4)