Toto

A committee of state legislators approves a school voucher program right after accepting $78,300 from its backers.

Feather

If there were a stronger representation of completely secular private schools I wouldn't have as much of a problem with vouchers.

The whole "vote buying" thing is par for the course, I suspect.

keitht

I tend to agree with Feather, only with less reservations. I think if the market appears, the secular schools will follow. Religious schools will be the initial benefactors of most voucher programs, but until some sort of competition is able to break the government school monopoly, there will be no way for lower and middle class parents (the real customers of the K-12 school system) to have any say about the service they receive. If the real goal is to ecucate the children, then what difference does it make who's school they attend. Until the attitude changes that the tax money is allocated to the child, and not the school, then there is little incentive for the school to improve.

My two cents (if you don't count taxes).

Keith

themistocles

I used to be against vouchers, but I've been convinced under a few conditions:

1. That the family be provably indigent. Tuition is at odds with rent, bills, and groceries, not whether or not mom can make the Lexus payment or they'll have to cut the pool cleaning service. This would prevent a windfall of student migration, since part of the reason private schools are superior is their typically small size, plus it truly serves the public good by giving a helping hand.

2. That the private school has the right to turn down anyone, the voucher is not an admission ticket. Part of the reason that private schools are superior to public schools is that they more or less "choose" their student body. They don't have to take the dead weight the public system has to entertain.

3. Private schools otherwise would retain their private status, students would have to follow the private school's rules, etc.

And it should be understood by all involved that vouchers are not a cure-all solution for American education, but rather just a help for a select group of people.

Calzaer

This is horrible. If private schools get to remain selective, we'll have the cream of the crop skimmed off from the public schools, leaving PS with the behavior problems, the low IQs, and the learning disabilities... and with less funding to deal with them (since that's where the money for vouchers is going to end up coming from). Truancy laws (as well as individual ethics) require us to try and teach these kids, but the gap between the "smart" kids and the "dumb" kids gets an order of magnitude wider, with fewer opportunities for the "dumb" kids to get caught up to speed.

If this is the voucher plan, you may as well just replace public schools with Juvenile Detention Centers.

The solution to the education of our children is not to simply leave the struggling ones in the dust. The solution is not to give the smart kids an insane advantage (apart from the advantage they already have) and give the less-smart ones an insane disadvantage (apart from the disadvantage they already have). Improving educational quality for smart children is great, but NOT if it comes at the expense of the rest of them.

I suppose, at this point, the discussion is going to degenerate into a value-laden social darwinism argument, but as a future teacher I have an ethical obligation to do my best to make sure ALL children get decent educational opportunities. Not just the ones with 124IQ, or 4.0s, or perfect parents.

At the moment, a the substantial majority of public school children have access to at least a marginally mediocre education. Under the plan described above, a few children get access to an exceptional education, and rest are left with an abysmal one. It would be better to *slightly* improve everyone's educational experience than to give an immensely better educational experience to the kids who learn how to step on the less fortunate peoples' heads to aid their climb to the top.

Philosoft

I don't know if this is strictly the case. I'm going from memory, but here in Florida, prior to the court challenge, it went something like this:[list=1][*]Private schools apply to accept voucher students.[*]A certain number of vouchers are allotted to each school, based on districtwide testing.[*]Vouchers are distributed individually by a lottery system.[/list=1]

I don't honestly know the degree of autonomy the private schools retain, but I don't think it's absolute. I believe there are some conditions the schools must agree to.

nogods4me

If you want to improve the public school system, simply abolish private schools. How quickly would public schools improve once the movers and shakers were required to have their own children enrolled?

Ab_Normal

There you go! I never understood the invocation of "competition" as a way to improve public schools. I like your idea a lot better.

Ab_Normal

On a more serious note... Calzaer, I agree with you. If there are problems with the public school system, I believe it behooves us, as a society, to correct them directly. Trying to correct them indirectly by providing competition will only lead to a stratified educational system, with the public schools getting all the kids the private schools don't want.

I say this as a parent of an above-average child, whom I'm trying to get into a private school in order to meet her educational needs. My state does not have a voucher system; if it did, I'd like to think I wouldn't apply for one. (Ah, who am I kidding; at $12K a year, I'd take all the help I would get, and deal with the slimy feeling.)

Calzaer

Vouchers themselves won't cause that, as long as we take away the selectiveness of the private schools who want to accept vouchers. If vouchers become an admission ticket as well as tuition, kids of varying abilities will be mixed in different settings.

Further, it will completely destroy the myth that private schools are lightyears better than public schools, since the only thing that makes their test scores look nicer is their selectivity. Once people realize that private schools only look SO MUCH better by picking the kids that will make them look so, maybe public schools will start getting the attention they deserve to bring them up to par with the *actual* performance of non-selective private schools.

I'm not saying private schools aren't of a better quality than public schools. I'm saying that they're not really the million-per-cent better that they appear to be.

In the end, though, I'm still very much against vouchers simply because they're probably going to be implemented in such a way as to cripple the lower tier of students. The "competition" argument blows my mind. Since when has anything the government runs ever been able to "compete"? Hell, when the feds took over the Mustang Ranch, they had to close it down! Only the federal goverment could LOSE money on a BROTHEL.

The point being, the government isn't created to compete, it's created to provide. That's OUR tax money up there, we shouldn't have to "compete" for it.