So by your thinking, I couldn’t use any of my G.I. Bill money at, say, Marymount University located near here, since that money originally came from taxpayers as well?
Please explain. I’d appreciate your clear thinking here.
I’m working on it. So far, I have tuition and population figures from the 16 private high schools on Caffeine Addict’s linked list which give tuition figures. Your example, Archbishop Carroll, is the cheapest of the lot, of course. The priciest is Georgetown Prep at $22,650. If the student boards there, it’s $39,650.
I have found your figures of up to $7,500 of voucher money, and up to $3,000 in scholarship money. Up to from what? I haven’t stumbled across that yet, and the scholarship program’s page with all the figures is “coming soon.” I’ll get back to you.
According to Georgetown Prep’s website, they also offer need-based financial aid. So for purposes of this discussion, their “retail” price might not be relevant. And the same might apply to the other schools in your survey.
So if you could take that into consideration, that would be swell.
Cite please, for your claim above. PLease show how you arrive at that claim. You no doubt have numbers showing how many recipients of vouchers were already in a private school. I’d love to see those numbers. And as Renob pointed out, I guess all those kids’ parents in the article in the OP were just imagining receiving vouchers and their kids going to a different school. Odd, that.
This experiment has been going on for decades with no problems.
The Supreme Court has never found a problem with someone taking GI Bill money and going to BYU or Notre Dame, and neither do I.
Do you have the right to audit my spending when I received a military paycheck? After all, that cash came from the taxpayers first…
And again I ask
How do you decide what students are entitled to the better education?
How about only Anglo-American students get the vouchers? Would that be OK because at least some students are getting a good education?
How about only girls?
How about kids with hazel eyes?
Hopefully you see my point. Once a state starts distinguishing that only a certain group of students are entitled to a better education, then it is saying the rest of the kids can suck it.
Hypothetical. Let’s assume you have a child in the third grade at some crappy school. You cannot afford to move to a better neighboorhood or private school. The state comes in to her class of 35 and picks 5 students at random to get up to $10,000 in vouchers for the school of their choice. Your child is not picked and there is no appeal process. Would you honestly feel that it was OK because at least those five students get a state-subsidized better education?
The issue is one of fairness. It seems fir to me, that the people who should benefit from them are those who have been most egregiously failed by the public school system. That is not going to be done based on skin color, eye color etc. (that you would suggest so is quite bizarre), it would be done on test scores. In the end that will be particular neighborhoods and it will probably include much more blacks and hispanics, but that is just because there is a strong correlation between ethnicity, economic class, inner cities, and failing public schools.
Not the same thing at all. A mil paycheck is wages, and nobody cares what you spend wages on. A Pell Grant (notice the word grant?) is strictly limited. If you don’t spend it going to school, you’re going to be in trouble. The same goes for GI Bill money. If you take it out and buy a motorcycle with it, you’re going to hear a knock on your door.
I am not impressed with your “This experiment has been going on for decades with no problems” defense. Public schools were allowed to conduct in-school religious indoctrination until the early 1950s, “with no problems.” That is, parents who were not of the 3 categories of faith in the program had not sued until then.
Just because you’ve ignored the Constitution for decades, that doesn’t make it right.
I’m sure you think it would be swell to heap more work on my desk. Unless you can show me that need-based financial aid is provided to a significant segment of the student body, I’m sticking with the retail prices. You showed only skeletal information in your demand for a cite, based on the very cheapest high school, so I don’t owe you a research paper, professor.
I am also against any such voucher program. In a public school, I (as a taxpayer/voter get input as to what is taught and how it is taught. I get input as to how my tax dollars are spent. If my school system decides to no longer teach evolution, and start teaching creationism, I can protest, vote the bums out, go to the Grand Jury, or get other pols to intervene.
In a private school, they can teach whatever they want however they want and spend my tax dollars as they see fit.
No way.
All “voucher” systems are just a round about way to get tax dollars in to support more teaching of Christian ideas.
As to the “$18 million going toward the furtherance of educating DC’s underserved minority populations” that could be done better by funding Charter or Magnet schools.
And again I say, you have no quarrel with me or any other voucher supporter I’ve ever met. I think most (if not all) voucher supporters would, if they had their way, create a program that gives vouchers to every student. The only reason they do not do so is because vouchers are opposed very strongly by the entrenched education establishment. The only voucher programs that can succeed, politically, are the ones which are limited.
You need to look at the opposition by teachers’ unions and their allies as to why some kids receive vouchers and some don’t.
Honestly, yes. My kid is not worse off and some other kids are better off. Any opposition to this on my part is one based on pure envy. I don’t think envy is a good basis for public policy.
And since it would be done on test scores, and the private schools in question determine who they will or will not take based on admissions tests, then by far most of those students who would be eligible to receive vouchers would never be allowed to get anywhere near a private school.
Vouchers are a scam. One that proponents pretend is all about those who are getting shitty educations, thereby attempting to circumvent criticism. But I’ve yet to encounter an honest voucher fan who gives a damn about any kid save his or her own.
Cite, please. There are a variety of private schools with a variety of different admissions criteria. Since the kids in the DC voucher program have no trouble finding private schools to take them, your assertion seems to fly in the face of actual experience.
You must not know many voucher fans. I don’t have a kid, for instance. So am I some sort of faux voucher fan? Was Milton Friedman, the man who thought up the idea of education vouchers, only looking out for his kids? I’m sure he was able to afford to send them to private schools without any voucher.
Your tactic of questioning the motives of voucher proponents does nothing to address the merits or demerits of vouchers. Even if those supporting vouchers are motivated by self-interest, so what? Just because they want better education opportunities for their children does that mean they are evil?
Great. We will call them voucher educational grants. Works for me.
Let’s say you’re right, an a kid in a failing school will not gain admission to a top level private school (I don’t buy that, but let’s accept it as a hypothetical). Now just because a kid doesn’t get into a top tier school, does that mean he’s not getting the benefit of a better education? What if those vouchers go to kids who are currently in a failing school? Maybe the top tier private school might not take them, but maybe my new private school will? The important thing is to give kids an option to these schools that do an atrocious job by way of their students year after year. If you’re kid was scheduled to attend that school, would you rather keep him there or use a voucher to send him to my new school?
Look at colleges. Just because a kid doesn’t get into an Ivy League school (money aside), that doesn’t mean he can’t still get a good education.
Well, how about if vouchers were restricted to the worst schools and given for charter schools. What if they were available to only those kids in schools where kids were getting shitty educations? Would that make them okay in your book?
Wow. So, you’d rather a kid get a shitty education (poor reading, writing and arithmetic skills) and be shielded from religious doctrine than him getting a good education and learning about religious teachings? Glad Im not your kid. 
As far as your last point, you’re okay with Charter Schools? Great. I think that’s where we should concentrate.
Why do you think that “shitty educations” just occur in the public sector? Don’t you think that ignoring science is “shitty”? What on earth gives you the idea that religous teachings equates a good education ?
Of course, if we examine the Charter school movement we will find many of the same people who hate vouchers showing up to fight charter schools.
:dubious: 
:smack: :o 
:eek: :mad: :rolleyes: 
:smack: :dubious: :rolleyes: :mad: 
:o :eek:
You want to try that in English rather than lolspeak?