I consider it to be the money of the student, and the student can decide where and how to spend it (as long as it is for their education). That is how those grants work - the student gets the cash and gives it to the educational system of their choice.
Again - this has been going on for a very long time, and our Republic seems to be doing quite well. I say we take this wonderful experiment in government support of citizen’s educational needs and push it down to the rest of the schools. It has worked well for university and college, we should do it for all levels.
No - there might be parents who can afford half of the cost of the private school, and the voucher lets them attend now. It does not need to be an all or nothing equation.
Yes it does. If parents can not afford even half the cost of private school you are taking their tax money away to subsidize those who can. Does that sound fair to you? What if the government wanted to subsidize half the cost of $14.00 per pound filet mignon? If you can afford the $7.00, you’re golden, but if you can barely afford $1.99 a pound for hot dogs why should you subsidize the other guys?
B-fuckin’-S
I’ve worked in the same district (LAUSD) at three different schools: one upper-middle class, one middle class, and one inner city. Each school gets money from the state based on ADA (average daily attendence). A student sitting in their seat is worth just as much at a top school as at the worst school in the ghetto. You are right in that some states (like Washington) have tax-levys for schools, but those are a local issue, not statewide. The inner city schools get an ASSLOAD more money from the Feds (under Title I), the State, and the County than the upper echelon schools in order to improve low scores. One problem is that the inner city schools have to pay for:
Paint to cover up tagging
Extra-security because of the gang problems
Extra PSA counselors to deal with truancy
etc.
but even so, the school get HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS more than other schools in the district.
And here is the part of educational opportunity that I think a lot of voucherites miss - two families that live next door to each other go to the same school despite the family income. So for you to tell my neighbor making $30,000 that they can have a voucher and me making $35,000 to go to hell, the STATE is telling me that my kid deserves a fucked-up education while the neighbor kid deserves a better educational opportunity. Where else is MY kid going to go other than the neighborhood school? I actually support vouchers, but I am for a all-or-none approach. If school X is underperforming, then every student at that school should be eligible for a voucher and not selected students.
My problem with the “all-or-none” approach is that I can see it being a boon for gentrifiers. You move into a depressed neighborhood to take advantage of the cheap housing, close proximity to work, and urban cache. And guess what? Fill out an application and your little Johnny and Suzy can go to private school all expense-paid! Doesn’t matter that when you lived in the suburbs, you could somehow afford tuition costs all on your own. You’re entitled!
And because they were already attending private school, you don’t have to worry about entrance exams and interviews. The only downside is that the school is thirty miles away. But don’t worry. We’re going to buy Johnny a used Volvo station wagon for his sixteenth birthday. It’s great to be middle-class!
Meanwhile, the poor family to step in line next for a voucher is put on a waiting list. Why? Because the city’s budget can only accomodate fifty voucher issuances a year. And we yuppies, with our city hall contacts and patience for red tape, snatched them all up.
I think the idea of vouchers only sounds good in theory.
I am constantly struck by how few rights that teachers have-they can only send the unruly students to the principle’s office only so often. Any attempt at instilling any sense or morality in the classroom is immediately attacked by the ACLU. If you are a teacher and you are physically assaulted, good luck in getting any compensation. Face it, where there is no discipline, there is chaos-and spending more money won’t make any difference.
I see the DC schools situation as the product of years of politicization of education; and allowing politicians to control school boards is a disaster.But hey, let’s just invent more and more asessment tests, and make sure that the schools get more and more m oney-that oughta fix the problem!
You know what the secret to good schools is? A majority of parents who care enough about their children’s education to participate in the life of the school, as room mothers, as tutors, as mentors, by making sure their own children are doing homework, acting properly in class, and learning something.
Unfortunately, not vouchers, nor money, nor relaxing restrictions on teacher action against students who refuse to learn can make up for parents who care. Vouchers will only make the problem even worse, as parents who give a damn about their kids’ education abandon the public schools. You think the schools are hellholes now? Wait until vouchers become common.
No - their tax money would then stay at the public school that they attend, so it would STILL benefit them. Voucher systems say “The state is going to allocate $10k for your kid, you can have that money go to the public school or you can use it to defray the cost of a private school - your choice.”
In many places, the voucher is for LESS than the average per pupil spent by the state. In DC, the money does not even come from the school budget - it comes from a special allocation from Congress.
You wound me, sir. Grievously so. As a member of my local school board, I find your reasoning specious and asinine. Quite to the contrary, my fellow board members and I (only four of the seven have children in school) care immeasurably about education. And we also have to craft and follow five year plans and the like in order to best be stewards of the money allotted to our school district.
In fact, I would say that it’s primarily voucher fans who don’t give a shit about education. Their focus seems to be on ways to take moneys allotted to public schools and give them away to private (usually religious, but not always) schools.
And I’ll go one further and say that I will solidly support vouchers as soon as private schools are required to take every single student that is presented. The professionally truant, special education students, the kids who just don’t give a flying fuck about learning, &c. Unless and until that happens, vouchers are unfair. And if it’s all the same to you, I won’t be holding my breath waiting for Zeke’s School of Prophecy and Snake Handling to accept any of those students. Nor for that matter do I anticipate seeing secular private schools queuing up anytime soon, since accepting everyone would send their scores (a huge selling point, hereabouts) right into the crapper. And if private schools don’t wish to take anyone who shows up, then they’re shit outta luck when it comes to taxpayer dollars.
Perhaps you mean, “And if private schools don’t wish to take anyone who shows up, then they should be shit outta luck when it comes to taxpayer dollars.”
Because of course they’re not, now. The programs exist. They’ve passed constitutional muster.
I disagree. Voucher fans see the current public schools with entrenched union based teachers playing pass-the-trash, no discipline, and fad based curriculum as a poor use of taxpayer dollars when it comes to their own kids. They want to take a portion (if not all - but a portion would be a good start) of the dollars spent on their child and take that some money to a private school that is not hobbled by the public sector.
But how about if Charter schools are activated first? Charters are issued in the absolute worst circumstances. Theoretically, if you could take 5,000 kids in a city’s worst public schools and move them all into Charter schools, and then institute a broader voucher system, that would largely alleviate the problem you identify. And we should keep in mind that Charter or Voucher Schools needn’t be a perfect solution where every kid gets a perfect education. The metric should whether or not they offer a marked improvement over the current system. And whether they give a good proportion of kids stuck in a cycle of poor education and poverty an escape hatch.
Which is one reason why, as someone who doesn’t have children but will be dealing with these kids, I don’t support them. If a kid has active and involved parents, the kid will probably be ok (as far as I’m concerned) with or without vouchers. If a kid does not have active, involved parents, she’s going to be a lot better off if some of the other kids in her classroom do have active and involved parents than if none of her classmates’ parents give a rat’s ass.
I read the op/ed piece in the OP - it is silent and has absolutely no statistics about the kids who are not using the vouchers because their parents do not care. If you have a different article that tells me what happens to them, it would be nice to read that. (And if you check your cite closely, all it says about the kids with the involved parents is that there’s no statistically significant differences in performance and used some fuzzy non-statistics to tell us about the parents’ feelings. Even as an opinion page, it was a bit light on factual content.)
An underlying reason competition is such a good thing is that the customers for a good or service are the best judges of what they want. By voting with their dollars they reward the businesses that do the best job of supplying their needs and wants, and force suppliers that don’t to either change or fail. Public education is different in that the ones making the decision – the parents - are not really the customers we should be trying to please. Nor should we be trying to please the students. As I see it, the purpose of public education is to strengthen the nation by providing a more productive and wiser populace. This leads to a better economy, less crime, and better voters. While some of us would choose schools on the basis of these goals, that isn’t necessarily what many, perhaps most, parents would do.
Let’s look at some of the factors that might influence a voucher using parent’s choice of school other than a sound education. Some might choose on the basis of advertising provided by the private competitors. Others might be influenced by the quality of the football program or other athletics. Others no doubt would be concerned about the quality of the school as a baby-sitting service – is it convenient to drop their kids off and pick them up with there be a minimum of hassle with things like homework? Some parents would want to make sure there were lots of other students with the same ethnic background so their own kids would fit in better and perhaps be able to speak their native language. Other parents might be more concerned about avoiding certain ethnic groups they dislike. Some will want their schools to teach supposed moral values like sexual abstinence and rejection of homosexuality and abortion. Other parents might seek to avoid sex education and teaching of evolution. And of course many will want indoctrination into their particular religion.
In short, the free market does a wonderful job of giving people what they want, and in most cases that is exactly what it should do. However in the case of education, there can be a big difference between what parents want and what is good for the country. Schools competing for parent’s choice will no doubt do a good job of pleasing parents, but that may be very different from doing what is best for the country as a whole and for me as a taxpayer.
I don’t have the research in front of me, in my Math of Econ, that was the finding of some studies. I.e parents that “care” about education by overspending their budget on expensive neighborhoods, tutoring, private schools, magnet programs, etc. tend to support vouchers to subsidize the money they are already spending and those that “don’t care” (don’t have their kids in programs outside of basic school) tend not to use vouchers.
Clearly you are unfamiliar with DC public schools.
That sounds good to me. However, you need to take up your argument with the anti-voucher folks. I’ve never met one voucher proponent who, if they got their wish, would limit vouchers to any racial/income group. Voucher proponents want all kids to have them. These proponents must bow to political reality, though, and only agree to limited voucher programs. If you want vouchers for everyone then don’t attack pro-voucher folks. They want what you want.