School Vouchers?

[jayjay]

@ITR_champion

I personally do not understand why anyone would want to deny poor, mainly racial minority students the same advantages that we currently give to wealthier, mainly white students.

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.

[ShibbOleth]

For those who support school vouchers:

Would you support school vouchers if the parents want to send their child to a Madrasah? Please give your reasoning either way.

[gonzomax]

The vouchers will not be large enough to pay for a high grade school. They will help defray the costs for people who already send their kids to private schools. But they will not open them up to the undesirables. It will not allow the children of the poor to get a leg up. They still will not be able to afford good schools.

[gonzomax]

I wonder how many schools will just jack up tuition the amount of the voucher and just grab our tax money? That keep the riff raff out and enriches the private schools.

[shiftless]

Why should this one area of government spending allow taxpayers to redirect their money? I’m fine with public schools but I’d like the goverment to redirect some money from bombing Iraq to repairing the roads in my area. Can I get a voucher for that? I’m not so keen on goverment bailouts for failing banks. Can I get a voucher for that money to go toward a bank that is actually responsible?

I understand the reasoning that people have to send their kids to school and they don’t want them in crappy public schools. Sorry. I have to pay all kinds of taxes to support programs I hate too. It makes no sense to create a new kind of welfare just for private schools.

[septimus]

@ITR_champion

The average cost per student in a public school is near $10,000 nationwide, … If we took that $10,000 and offered it as a voucher, poor parents would have access to a variety of private schools even if they couldn’t afford to chip in a penny of their own money… So with a well-planned voucher program, the poor could, in fact, afford to send their kids to private schools.

As others point out, public school costs are high in part due to mandates (e.g. for students with special needs) that do not apply to private schools. You’re now asking public schools to finance such special needs with less money.

Thus I’m afraid that your “well-planned” voucher program is one planned to divert money from taxpayers and students with special needs to a new and untested private-school industry.

[magellan01]

Here’s how I see things. The system we have now is not inherently flawed. It served us well form many, many decades. But it is failing us now. Particularly those students living in poorer communities. It used to be that a poor kids raised in tenement building in Harlem could expect to get an education that would allow him to escape the ghetto. There are millions of examples of this in New York alone. The Italians and Jews who found themselves born into poverty in the first half of the 1900s didn’t stay there. They became, managers and foremen, doctors, and lawyers. But for a myriad of reasons, this same system is failing us now. So, let’s look for a new one.

Here’s what I think would make sense. Every family gets a voucher. All schools must accept vouchers. So the public school that is down the street is still an option. So is the private school across town. Schools can set admissions for these students however they’d like. One school can attempt to attract the best academic students, another the best artsy types, another those who prefer to work with their hands, etc. Now let’s say that a kid wants to be a doctor or lawyer, he will, naturally apply to the best academics-geared school that is convenient for him. If he doesn’t get in, he looks to the next one, etc. Just like kids look at colleges now. The artsy kids and the more mechanically inclined do the same things with the schools that appeal to them.

So that takes care of the students that are motivated and have an idea of their futures, what of the others? There would still be “general” schools. And within any geographic area there will be more than one that parents can choose to send their kids to. Unlike now. If that school is good, then we’ve lost nothing. If it’s not, some enterprising person will open a competing school dow the street. Just like what happens with restaurants. Schools will be competing for students. Again, unlike now.

Let’s simplify this. Let’s say we have the exact system we have now, with one change. Every school district has to have two high schools, not just one. No vouchers, just the usual "you live here, your kid goes to the school in your district. But now you have a choice between A & B. Instead of one school housing 1,000 kids, we have two schools each housing 500 kids. Can anyone really argue that both School A and School B wouldn’t be better because they have to compete for the same dollars attached to each student?

Lete’s look at the less fortunate end of the spectrum. We have a stereotypically poor kid in a bad neighborhood with a bad school. Suddenly, there are options for him. Let’s say he’s not academically inclined, now he his schools that may men more to him because their focusing on something he likes, art, working on cars, etc. That kid’s life just changed. Instead of being in a school that is trying to get everyone they can into college and he is viewed—and views himself—as a failure, a kid on the fringe, he suddenly can go to a school that caters to him. Huge difference.

Also think of his stereotypical single mom. Currently, school is not an area she feels she has an expertise in, and she play no role in it. One reason she is not active is that she views herself as having no power. Enter the voucher. She receives one in the mail and suddenly has something worth $10,000 in her hands. And for the first time she has to decide on how to spend that $10,000. I think this act alone will be a game changer for many. They can choose to show their displeasure with on school by sending their kid to another one the next year. Suddenly, this person is much more involved in her child’s education than she ever was.

And the end, that is the key: parental involvement. We can throw all sorts of money at the problem (as we have been doing) and not change squat. I urge all those interested to read Abigail Thernstrom’s “No Excuses”. She doesn’t argue for vouchers for all, but she does identify those things that lead kids and schools to be successful.

[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.

[Kearsen]

@Der_Trihs

No, it would just result in a lot of government money getting sucked up by scam artists creating useless “instant schools” to suck up the voucher money, a lot of money going to schools that amount to Christan indoctrination centers, and existing private schools to raise their fees by the amount of the voucher. It’s just another right wing scheme to destroy the Evil Public Schools, divert government money to the corrupt, and swell their ranks by forcing students into religious & political indoctrination centers.

Is everyone stupid in your eyes ? I see an awful lot of “but i know better than you do” coming from you and people like gonzomax.

The bottom line is this: You don’t matter in how I raise my child, If I want to use my school voucher money to send him to some christian/political school.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

First, ITR, I’m very skeptical of a link to edchoice that provides a meta-analysis of studies of vouchers. They’re an interested party. What are those studies of vouchers: were they conducted by disinterested parties? How were they structured? How large were the voucher programs–were they large enough to have an impact? (I can’t answer them myself, because your link appears to be broken when I click on it).

Second, it makes no sense. A school has fixed costs (mowing the yard, heating the building, cafeteria workers, etc.) and per-student costs (pencils, copy paper, textbooks, etc.). Teachers, the biggest cost, are in-between. If you remove that $10,000 for a student, you’re partly removing the per-student cost, but you’re also removing the fixed costs. The money that remains will need to stretch further to cover the fixed costs. I can model that for you if you need me to, but I think it’s pretty self-explanatory.

Third, the clients for schools are, in order:
-Society, who pays the check.
-Children, who get the learning.
-Parents, who get their kid educated.

Our current system puts the decisionmaking in the hands it belongs in: those of the primary client, society. Society determines what gets taught, when, and how. That’s how it should be. Parents are a tertiary client, in this social endeavor, and shouldn’t really have the power of decisionmaking. (Note that I’m talking about deciding how to use public funds: if they’re using their own money, it’s a different transaction).

Fourth, vouchers benefit kids based on parental involvement. The kids who I see who struggle the most are those whose parents struggle the most: struggle with addiction, with poverty, with violence. Those are the kids whose parents won’t apply for vouchers (we have to get the social worker to visit their houses to get them to apply for free lunch, ferchrissakes). They’re the ones who will be left behind in the schools with ever-dwindling resources; and the gap between the poor and those filthy capitalist pigdog rich* will grow ever greater.

• fanservice for OMG

[Fear_Itself]

@Kearsen

The bottom line is this: You don’t matter in how I raise my child, If I want to use my school voucher money to send him to some christian/political school.

It’s not your money. If you take it, there are going to be strings. No one is forcing you to take it.

[ITR_champion]

@gonzomax

The vouchers will not be large enough to pay for a high grade school. They will help defray the costs for people who already send their kids to private schools. But they will not open them up to the undesirables. It will not allow the children of the poor to get a leg up. They still will not be able to afford good schools.

Did you read post #36? If so, why are you simply ignoring what we’ve already established as a fact, namely that voucher programs are available to the poor only?

@ShibbOleth

For those who support school vouchers:

Would you support school vouchers if the parents want to send their child to a Madrasah? Please give your reasoning either way.

Contrary to what some people seem to think, private schools do not exist in a regulatory vacuum. For example, the school that I teach at passes accreditation procedures from the Virginia Association of Independent Schools every five years. As far as I am concerned, the regulatory bodies already in place are sufficient to the task of determining which private schools are worthy of funding, and would do the job as consistently for a Madrasah as for any other school.

[ITR_champion]

@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?

I really see nothing of the kind. As I said in this post in a previous thread:

“They examined achievement test data and concluded that students in Catholic schools learn more than students in public schools. Moreover, Coleman rejected the claim that Catholic school students perform better on achievement tests simply because they are more talented or come from better families. He argued that the achievement differences between public and Catholic school students are, in significant measure, attributable to the different schools they attend.”

“Taken as a whole, Coleman’s work, and subsequent research by other scholars, indicates that, on average, Catholic high-school students learn more than public-school students of similar backgrounds and ability levels. It was also found that Catholic schooling lowers high-school dropout rates.”

Later in the article they also discuss research that specifically looked at minority students in inner-city areas, and showed that Catholic schools outperform public schools in those areas as well.

All of this was from a research report commissioned by the Department of Education, so it can hardly be said to be biased against public schools. The data show that the same group of children, educated in a private school, see better results than in a public school. See also this report, looking at the results after Florida introduced statewide vouchers in 1998. Student performance soared upwards in numerous categories, with the biggest gains being among the poor, blacks, and Hispanics. I don’t see how anyone can look at those results and see them as a bad thing.

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?

We already have a society that does that for millions of children both disabled and not. I want to get as many children as possible out of those schools and into places where they can learn.

And that’s not even going into the issues of separation of church and state

I fail to see how there can be any issue of separation of church and state here. Government money goes to religious colleges and universities all the time, so why not elementary and high schools?

[gonzomax]

@ITR_champion

Did you read post #36? If so, why are you simply ignoring what we’ve already established as a fact, namely that voucher programs are available to the poor only?
Contrary to what some people seem to think, private schools do not exist in a regulatory vacuum. For example, the school that I teach at passes accreditation procedures from the Virginia Association of Independent Schools every five years. As far as I am concerned, the regulatory bodies already in place are sufficient to the task of determining which private schools are worthy of funding, and would do the job as consistently for a Madrasah as for any other school.

Because that is not where they intend to go. The idea is vouchers for all. Are you suggesting that because in your school district, vouchers are only for poor kids, there fore that is true across the nation and for the future as far as you can see.
The intention is vouchers for all.
Private schools don’t have to serve the masses. they can select their students.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

I’d be interested in seeing a proposal for ideal vouchers. I’m not comfortable arguing against vouchers across the board, because there could be proposals I’d be fine with. But the ones I’ve seen have elements I find troubling, as I stated above.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@ITR_champion

This claim that vouchers somehow hurt public schools by drawing away money comes up many times in every discussion, yet it’s flatly untrue. The actual empirical evidence shows that when a voucher program is implemented in a particular area, it leads to improved public schooling in that area. The competition keeps 'em honest. From this report, page 4:

Okay, tracking down this cite and following the evidence, turns out they’re citing another study put forth by their own institute. A review of their study concludes:

Aud’s analysis does confirm an obvious point: if state and local governments subsidize vouchers at a lower rate than public schooling, then, all other things being equal, state and local expenditures will decrease.

So this is important: it only helps local schools if the vouchers are less than the per-pupil cost at public schools. If, as ITR proposes, you take the entire cost out of the public school and put it into a voucher, his cite is totally off-point.

Furthermore:

This review concludes that Aud’s assumption of increased per-pupil spending by school districts might be true, but the assumption of decreased total budget likely is not. Further, even if state and local governments were, in fact, able to reduce instructional expenses by $444 million over 15 years, this was merely a drop in the bucket – she describes a savings of less than 1/100th of one percent of annual public school spending, or about 60 cents per child per year.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@brickbacon

Why do you think schools are bad? More importantly, why do you think someone would open a school in a terrible area given all the uncertainties and problems inherent to doing so? The free market doesn’t typically bring good supermarkets or good doctors to poor areas, so what makes you think the schools will come just because there is a profit motive?

There is something called the automobile and there is something called the bus.

@Kobal2

Then maybe, I don’t know, address that problem instead of in effect trying to make it worse by reducing their funding some more ?

@LouisB

Improve the school system; shut down substandard schools and fire substandard teachers. Bus the displaced children to good schools if necessary but don’t spend money intended for public education on private schools. That’s it in a nut shell: Don’t spend money intended for public education on private schools.

Great but that’ll require curbing the power of the teacher’s unions.

@Lynn_Bodoni

This. The thing about public schools is that they MUST accept just about all students. Even the ones who are disruptive, or who have very expensive requirements. Private schools, on the other hand, can and do expel students who cause any problems. And if Johnny or Suzie need an aide to sign for them because they have hearing difficulties, for instance, the public school system has to pay for that aide.

Erhm…all the public schools do have policies of expulsion.

@MrDibble

No, the government should not provide money for kids to go to private schools.

Because there should not *be *any private schools, or home schooling.

I find this amusing coming from a Tolstoian anarchist.

[Dangerosa]

@Lobohan

Then the first thing you should do is take its funding and give it to nearby private religious schools.

No, wait, that’s actually the last thing you should do.

Vouchers are an attempt to destroy schools. The only way I’d support them is if:
[ol]
[li]The money can’t go to religious schools.[/li][li]Schools that accept the money can’t turn away students.[/li][li]Schools must allow students to go for just the price of the voucher.[/li][li]Schools must obey all normal standards for sciences.[/li][li]Free abortion on demand for all students.[/li][li]That last one was just to check if you were reading.[/li][/ol]

That (minus the last two bullets) would be my requirements as well. As well as “schools must meet the same test standards as public schools,” “school fixed cost funding cannot be decremented due to fewer students” (you still need to heat the buildings).

And no vouchers for homeschooling. Those services are already provided through public schools and if you offer vouchers, vouchers.

[Kobal2]

@Qin Shi Huangdi

There is something called the automobile and there is something called the bus.

And there’s something called “being dirt fucking poor”. Don’t you grasp that concept ?

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

Erhm…all the public schools do have policies of expulsion.

You should watch The Wire in order to get a glimpse at why they’re never used, barring someone shooting up the school or something. Statistics and politics are a hell of a thing.

Then again, if public schools could and did expulse more students, that would be shitty too, since for most poor people, it’s public school or no school at all - and you don’t become a rotten kid who throws books through windows for no reason.

@Qin Shi Huangdi

Great but that’ll require curbing the power of the teacher’s unions.

Why ? Your solution is to pay teachers even *less *? Great way to attract talent, that.

Let me tell you a little story of my high school.
I had a physics teacher in what I think would be freshman year for y’all. Coincidentally, this was also the year I decided, for fun, to keep a record of all the stupid or blatantly wrong things teachers said in class in my schedule book. Since we’re all human and all make mistakes or have slips of the tongue, most teachers had a few by the end of the year.
That teacher ? She had 12 whole pages, front and back. She was a horrible, horrible teacher who barely understood what she taught, and woe be upon he who tried and asked a question or went outside the boundaries of what she’d prepared for the day. As the rumour went, she “passed” her teaching exam with 4 out of 20 points, which in the American system would be a D- I guess. Now, I have no way to know if this is true really, as there were all sorts of stories that went around about her in the school, both in the classrooms and in the teachers’ lounge.
But she still had a job. Know why ?

Because it was her, or nothing. The school’s head honcho had no choice but to keep her on staff, at least until someone better came along. For all I know, she’s still teaching there.
Nobody wants to be a teacher at the best of times, but when you combine that with constant griping that teachers are all lazy prima donas (hey, they’re always on holidays, har dee har !), and salary woes, well, you get shit teachers because the people who would be good teachers do something else, anything. Or if they have some kind of mission about teaching, they get jobs in, yes, private schools. Who often pay better than Union rates, BTW - they’re not stupid.
This was in France of course, which just goes to show people are the same cunts all around - we have the exact same problems and the exact same blowhards griping it’s all the teachers’ fault. Same reason our classrooms now have around 40 students each on average, which is hellacious.

You want a school system that works, you have to pay for it. No free lunches in this world.

[UltraVires]

Anti-Voucher Politician: But taking money away from these failing inner city school will hurt them!

Me: Good. They are creating a generation of kids that can’t read, write, speak, or spell, encourage gang activity and criminal enterprise. They shouldn’t be given 1 cent more of taxpayer money. They should be bulldozed and monuments erected on the site dedicated to the principle that we will never make the same mistake and disadvantage children in that way ever again.