Milton Friedman was in favor of ‘em, so that’s all I’d ordinarily need to know. But the Seattle school district thing has brought this all to a head:
Supreme Court deliberations are private, but yesterday’s oral arguments on whether it is constitutional to allow school systems to use race in making school assignments became as much a public debate between the divided justices as a questioning of lawyers.
And after two hours, it seemed to reflect a court majority highly skeptical of the proposition that the benefits of racially diverse public schools can justify any restriction on an individual’s constitutional right to equal protection.
“You’re characterizing each student by reason of the color of his or her skin,” Justice Anthony Kennedy told a lawyer representing the Seattle school board. “And it seems to me that that should only be, if ever allowed, allowed as a last resort.”
The ultimate decision is likely to be one of the most defining of the court headed by the new chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., and a powerful statement about where the nation stands more than 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education demanded an end to segregated schools.
The core issue, and one I’m very familiar with living here in North County Coastal – a region we selected when we moved here based on local school performance – is that wealthier people not only pay more in the property taxes that turn around and get plowed back into local school budgets, but they tend to give more of themselves, both in money and time, to be a part of their children’s education. That doesn’t show up on the school’s balance statement, but over time, it can make all the difference between sharing textbooks on the one hand, and a new natatorium on the other.
It’s also something that a single parent trying to make ends meet by working two jobs can find pretty hard to do. Because frankly, poverty in America these days clusters as significantly around the single parent demographic as it does the traditional race/class segments. This matters: The net result is an almost insuperably inequal outcome in that most ostensibly egalitarian of institutions: America’s public schools.
I’ll regretfully lay aside the cherished opportunity to twist the blade on predominately liberal North Seattle, a region that favors all kinds of progressive agendas in general, and affirmative actions in particular – but just not in front of the Supreme Court, when those stances might negatively impact the future of their own children – to focus on the real shame: Poorer kids go to poorer schools, a regime that perpetuates the kind of class stratification inherently antithetical to the American dream. Our system only works because class envy is minimized – we all think that if we work hard enough, bring enough to the game and maybe catch a lucky break or two, we could make it big. We don’t feel stuck where we are. We’re optimistic.
But by meddling with the actual distribution of school students into high or low performing schools – especially using so inherently suspect a classification as race as a distinguishing characteristic – everything falls apart. High performing schools are incentivized to keep their performance high, thereby attracting kids whose folks have time and money to spend over and above their tax burdens. Lower performing schools, often clustered in disadvantaged neighborhoods, have to accept what’s left. Schemes like Seattle’s, which seeks to use race as selection criterion, seriously damage the entire system, as wealthier parents with students selected to be sent to underperforming schools opt out by sending their children instead to private, parochial or suburban schools. The ostensibly laudable goal of “diversity” – whatever that means – is not served and the entire district loses out as each departing student takes his attendee-based contribution elsewhere.
So why not vouchers? In fact, why not “earned income credit” vouchers, where the value of a student’s voucher increases in inverse proportion to his family’s income? Wealthier folks can still opt out and go private, while disadvantaged children bring real opportunity to their gaining school. Sure, maybe dad can’t show up for the school play, but it’s OK: Little Billy brought enough cash to make up the difference.
Make the schools compete for the students rather than the other way around and watch the machinery of the market spring into motion. Everybody has to raise their game, or get swept aside by Adam Smith’s invisible hand.
Right now, we’re competing to get into the best factory – what we ought to be competing for is making the best product. It’s not at all the same thing.
Lex:
The only comment I’ll make is that “opting out” by sending a child to a private school does not relieve a property owner of the school tax burden. Only when vouchers are provided, does the property owner receive some relief. This is one reason why vouchers are bitterly opposed by the educational establishment. The other reason I have heard repeatedly by sincere teacher friends, is that the logical end result of vouchers is that public education will receive only the lowest performers, with a reduced budget, at that.
Hmm. It’s a good point you raise (even if my antenna twitch at the notion that returning money a taxpayer earned back to the taxpayer who earned it to dispose of as he sees fit is poor policy) but it seems to me that the suggested alternative is to pay more money to the same people providing the original services that we are dissatisfied with, in the hopes that – thus incentivized – they will redouble their efforts. I’m pretty sure that most competitive industries would put the horse back in front carriage, there.
Oh, I know it’s more complicated than that, and that there are many other resources in play apart from salaries. It just seems that we’re valuing process above product.
Your point about lowest performers and reduced budgets brings up an interesting question of its own: Keeping in mind that the wealthiest parents dodge the system entirely, is the gain which attends to surrounding lowest performers with higher performing peers worth burdening the higher performing peers with the worst performers?
What is it, exactly, that we’re trying to get out of the system? The best possible education for the greatest number of students? Or the forced equality of mediocrity?
I’m not a big fan of vouchers myself. It feels like they will just end up taking resources away from the schools that need it the most. The invisible hand is only effective when there is suitable competition; I’m not sure the public education system is an environment that would benefit from free competition.
I wonder sometimes about tackling the problem from the other direction. Instead of giving vouchers to students, we could give a bonus to teachers for working with students in low income districts. In France, for example, they have PhD’s working in some of the toughest schools in the country because the government makes it worth their while.
Victor Davis Hanson would probably answer in the affirmative for the “forced equality of mediocrity”.
http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson102505.html
Public education is mostly about appeasing interest groups with practically guaranteed graft and a vague “process”. Teacher’s unions own the sinecure, but disown the feeble results. If public school students actually do succeed, well that’s a nice but irrelevant coincidence. Home schoolers and independent schools can pursue excellence without the burden of carrying a deadweight therapy culture, and the mediocrity it mandates. To each their own, I suppose.
Lex,
This was a great post about a subject that I care very much about. After many years of suffering through a public school system in the SF Bay Area that was more interested in teaching children from another country to speak English while the rest of the class sat there and bided their time, we made the toughest decision of our lives and sent our son to a private school (near you!).
Fortunately we had the resources to do so, but the thought that our school district tax dollars were of no use now was troubling. I disagree with your point about the wealthiest parents dodging the system, as they are still paying the taxes that everybody else is paying and getting nothing in return.
Let the free market have a crack at a very broken system. The teachers unions are afraid to compete?
Lex,
This was a great post about a subject that I care very much about. After many years of suffering through a public school system in the SF Bay Area that was more interested in teaching children from another country to speak English while the rest of the class sat there and bided their time, we made the toughest decision of our lives and sent our son to a private school (near you!).
Fortunately we had the resources to do so, but the thought that our school district tax dollars were of no use now was troubling. I disagree with your point about the wealthiest parents dodging the system, as they are still paying the taxes that everybody else is paying and getting nothing in return.
Let the free market have a crack at a very broken system. The teachers unions are afraid to compete…too bad. If their poor performance warrants an audience of the low performers and reduced budgets, then it should be so. I doubt that this will occur however. I suspect that there will be less class stratification with vouchers than more. All parents want the best for their kids and will make huge efforts to see that they are well educated, just as you took an economic hit to reside in an area with a good school district, these parents will commute to get their kids to a better place of learning. They need the district transfer rules removed and the economic incentive to take their own tax dollars and spend them where they want. That is not too much to ask.
The Army and Navy Academy was the best decision that we ever made in our son’s learning experience. He is now an undergraduate at Norwich University and majoring in computer security assurance and his future is bright.
Cheers!
Capo del Fuoco
Lex,
Washington DC schools have the highest per-pupil expenditures of almost any school district in the nation. They are also among the lowest performing schools in the nation. As a second example, look to the Fulton County (Georgia) schools. Fulton county is actually two counties, joined together in the 1920’s by the legislature. The City of Atlanta (with its own schools) divides the county geographically, leaving the poor, urban southern outskirts and the affluent, northern suburbs. The interesting thing is that all county schools are uniformly funded and have the exact same curriculum and standards across, yet one region consistently does well while another persistently fails. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to guess which is which.
Throwing money at the problem is not the solution. Introducing competition for the money is the solution. As was observed earlier, the Teachers Unions exist largely to prevent any type of competition that would actually allow one teacher to be measured against another. Break that monopoly (and vouchers is one of the best ways) and we all win.
As a side note, it would render the school prayer, homosexual student organizations, boy scout, ROTC, and other such discussions moot. We would not be dependent on the government to make all the decisions regarding education and the school environment. That potential loss of control and power is what likely has vouchers and any other education independence movement doomed from the start.
Shipmates,
The problem is with the Teacher’s Unions and the monopoly on education pssessed by the state.
For every single problem put forth in education, the prime response, in each and every case, will always be “more money!”. That’s the Hollywood solution. I’ve worked for quite some time in that industry, and it’s constant solution to any problem is to throw money at it until it goes away.
In the case of the entertainment industry, that’s all well and good. It’s THEIR money they’re tossing around. But with the schools, it’s OUR money that keeps getting siphoned off, and I am sick and tired of it.
One solution, of course, is to privatise education. It’s a newer solution, but one that’s beginning to gain some ground, and one I am inclined to support.
Since the states and Feds set the guidelines for performance of the student through standardised testing, results-based curriculum, etc, why not put it out to bid? That way you would be getting competition to produce a quality product at a cost the public would be willing to pay. The schools would HAVE to perform in order to keep the contracts, and make a profit.
Why should we constantly be fighting all these budget battles with school boards and inflated administrations and bureaucracies when we could, as a city or county system, negotiate for a fixed-price contract, or a per-pupil cost for their education?
The entire process means that the corporation would be responsible for the infra-structure, the physical plant, the staff, the textbooks and educational system. The various GO’s would establish the guidelines and markers to be met, and the oversight to see that the contract conditions are met.
I’m all for it. Realistically, we depend upon corporate America to provide almost evey other service or goods we require and/or want, so why not our children’s education. I mean, seriously, if it’s a good way to run the College and University progranms, why not the public schools?
Respects,
We’ve always had school choice for post-secondary education, and if you consider government grants and subsidized loans as vouchers, we’ve had vouchers at that level for over half a century. We’ve never had professors unions, not in significant proportion, anyway. Is it any coincidence that we have the finest post-secondary education system in the world, while our primary/secondary education system, with unionized teachers and administrators and no choice or vouchers, is the worst in the world in many metrics (especially performance per dollar)?
When I got to DC in 2000, big scandal in the papers about the teachers’ union president embezzling union funds with the help of her chauffeur. To its credit, the WaPo did remark that the teachers’ union’s president having a chauffeur was, in and of itself, emblematic of a problem.
“We?
“We’ve never had professors unions, not in significant proportion, anyway”
Really? Your universities don’t, as a matter of course, have faculty unions?
The way I see it, you get out of public school that what you put into it. My son spent his first 4 years in private school (a Montessori that was a feeder to Francis Parker in sandy eggo), and then we put him in public school in Clairmont area for 3rd grade. He was a year behind in math. The public school was great, I was on school site council, and became involved with the school. Result was a kid who loves to learn and go to school. I equate that to the effort we put forth into becoming involved with the school, as opposed to the early years when we trusted that our money was being well spent, HAH! We since have moved to NorCal, and all three of mine are in public school (2 elementary, and 1 middle school). The education they are receiving is very good. We’re involved, know ALL of their teachers, and make their schoolwork a priortiy in our lives (I also serve as the anchor to the opinions that they hear in school, and keep them in perspective by infusing common sense and encourageing them to formulate their own opinions…). So vouchers will only serve to educate those that are willing to put forth an effort to learn. Merely throwing money at a difficult situation (educating kids) will only serve to drain the coffers. Instead of letting the bad schools of the hook by vouchering the kids out, maybe the parents need to be more involved with the school and their kids.
I don’t disagree, Lee – in fact I think you’re making my point. Public schools can perform wonderfully. As I mentioned in the post itself, not being able to afford private education for all three of my children – and how do you pick between them? – we moved into a neighborhood that was a real stretch for us to buy into because of the reputation and performance of the local public schools. There’s no question that public schools with good parental involvement can succeed.
The problem is that there are far too many schools that are failing, and the ones that do so are failing horribly. If we allow clusters of endemic poverty and educational disarray feed upon themselves in a re-inforcing cycle, we’ll have a growing set of social problems much more significant than the “lack of diversity” issue that race-based programs are ostensibly created to counter.
Some schools can be rescued, some cannot. In either case, it is the students – our education customers – who pay the price initially, and all of the rest of us in time.
I would add to Lee’s observation, having placed all three of our children through public schools from k-12 in Hampton Roads and NoVa. Underscore as well what he wrote about involvement — it is as much an investment (if not more so) as your stock/mutual fund/401K, yet I see far more invlovement with the latter than the former.
There is also one other group that is primarily served by the public school system, at least in our experience, and those are the disabled — learning and physically disabled. With examples of both in our household we found our only solution through the public school system. Dealing with the bureacracy wasn’t the easiest at times – it is not a “set it and forget it” system (the head of the State Board of Education came to know us by our first names, un-hyphenated
) but it paid off demonstrably.
I am a believer in the public schools for a variety of reasons and it pains me to no end to see schools failing. FWIW, I have seen schools with wonderous physical plants planted in the wealthiest of communities fail because of lack of parental involvement and administrative leadership. Long story short, I will close referencing the HS our third child is attending. The catchment area is primarily low-middle class with a medium size immigrant/minority population, predominant 2-wage households (because it is NoVa afterall) and many of those are single parent. There are a fair number of military families — about typical for the outlying areas of DC. Per pupil spending is above average for VA as a whole, but less than our more affluent neighbors in Fairfax. That said, we have a very involved parental community – the Principal’s Advisory Board consists of 20 members, drawn from across all grades and social strata. We work hand-in-glove with a gifted leader who is our principal and with the businesses in our community as well. Amost every teacher has a master’s/MBA in their subject area and count not one, but 4 nationally certified teachers on the staff (recommended # is 1/1000 — we have just over 2K). We are also the county school for the Center for International Studies and Learning which has provided immeasurable benefits even for those not enrolled in the program. Bottomline — money is important, but without dedicated and trained teachers, inspired leadership from the administration and committed participation from the parents, the public school house becomes a mere holding tank and will utterly fail.
- SJS
Lex, that can o worms has already been cracked… “we?
Lex, that can o worms has already been cracked… “we’ll have a growing set of social problems much more significant than the “lack of diversity” issue that race-based programs are ostensibly created to counter.” We already have that, and a contributing factor (and in my estimation, a huge foundational problem) boils down to “Political Correctness”. PC is killing us, for we are too afraid to say what needs to said for fear of offending cetain groups tight-sphincted ball-whacking delicate sensibilities. Our schools have been partly hamstrung by NCLB (read: Some Child Left Behind), and more than a few teachers ‘teach to the test’ in schools across the land, but, opportunity almost always exists in even the worst of schools. Yes, some form of intervention is direly needed to save the worst of these schools. Now, I’m not one to bring problems to the table without solutions, but, this is a tough nut to crack. I don’t really know what the right answer is, but, if parents would take note of the fact that they need to put down their remotes every night, and put an effort into their kids future, then we’d be more’n half way to solving the issue (and American Idol contestants would be halved). I know, you can lead a horse to water…
Shipmates,
I agree that the way to boost your kid’s chances of getting a good education is through involving yourself in their school. However, that only works well if your school does more than pay lip service to the concept.
The school system where i live touts the mantra constantly of “paerntal involvement”, but makes certain that only the “right” parents are involved, they being those who will rubber-stamp the teacher’s union and the schools “philosophy”.
Had I the money, I would be placing my youngest in the local Catholic school, even though we’re not Christian. In fact, if I had the money I’d be suing the living daylights out our school system and the school board. It’s bad here. I have a collection of parents who feel as I do, but we are stymied at every turn. Every time we try to get reforms pushed through, bad things happen. it’s a small town. Folks who, for example, support the idea that the sports department should suffer the same cuts as, say, music and science and art and technology, can suddenly find themselves with reduced hours at work, or laid off due to a sudden need to “down-size” the local construction company (who is also a big cash booster of the football team, natch…).
Ever supported an unpopular idea at a school board meeting and suddenly had your house revalued for property taxes? Ever complained about the staff at school and had your kid’s grades take a tumble, or have them singled out by a teacher for “trying to destroy school spirit” in front of their classmates? Ever stood up against the teacher’s union and had your kid suddenly not get any playing time, or removed from the school play for some false reason?
I’ve seen every single example I’ve quoted. I personally had my oldest daughter dropped from consideration for the Gifted and Talented program, despite a better record than anyone else, after I complained about “Perace Cranes” being made in remembrance of the “victims” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and “other American War Crimes”. I kid you not. I also got a letter from the school, signed by the principle and the art and music teachers that my “racist and bigoted” comments would not be tolerated at the school, and that such beliefs were detrimental to my child’s education and warrented a report to the department of Human Services regarding my fitness as a parent. No joke. My crime? I complained about the blatant anti-American bias in the art department at the elemntary school. I didn’t swear nor raise my voice. I said I found it ironic that a nation that had yet to apologise for it’s actions in WWII, and had a more blatant disregard for human life than even Nazi Germany, could be so idolized by a teacher, and it’s citizens considered to be “victims” of “American War Crimes”. No friggin kidding.
Here in the People’s Republic of Maine you risk a great deal by speaking out against the Teachers Unions or any State Government entity. My goal is simply to be able to save enough money to move my family out of here, but with some of the nation’s highest taxes it’s hard just to save a dollar these days.
I’ve worked hard to see my kids educated. My oldest has a scholarship to a private college, no thanks to our school system, but all credit to her for working above and beyond to get a good education. My son also has a good head on his shoulders thanks to his own initiative, and my having a darned good library at home. However, i wouldn’t wish the troubles I’ve gone through on anyone. It’s a shame, and yes I some some related bitterness about it, but soon I’ll be living elsewhere. It might not be much better somewhere else, but it, at least, won’t be here.
Respects,
In public schools where learning is the priority, wonderful things do indeed happen, regardless of the amount of $ available. Parents, teachers and students all find something to excel at support each other doing so. Useful change is embraced, not feared. The school assumes its rightful proportion, providing a reliable result at an affordable price.
In public schools where ideology is the priority, PC witchhunts and emotional incontinence rule the day. Mediocrity is the standard that must be defended at all costs — Gaia forbid that any form of competition or excellence rear its racist, imperialist head. Self-esteem is more valued than the effort, discipline and sacrifice needed to achieve a worthwhile goal. Grievance-mongering is the means to advancement—-what you can extract by guilt from somebody else is preferred to toiling alone to meet an objective performance standard. Strivers might make someone look bad by comparision, and we can’t have that.
The first school is a dynamic learning community. The second school is a slow-motion hostage situation.
Hey AW1, it’d be drastic, but, get your collective together, and pull you kids for a week (assuming you can). That’d get their attention… maybe. As a 2nd generation Kalifornian, I always achieved great pride in the fact that Maine could trump us on liberal whacked out kooks (not in sheer numbers mind you, only in ratio!). I love your state, one of the most beautiful in this great nation of ours, I spent 9 mos there in a pre-com crew building a ship in Bath. Great place, but, which one of you is the one who doesn’t smoke? Good luck Bro.
Capt. J,
You couldn’t have put it any better. Up here, the schools have “diversity day” celebrations, and even my youngest has certain periods each week where the class sits down on the floor and each child has to say something nice about someone else. Emotional well-being is the prime directive here, with education following somewhere lower down the importance scale.
It’s frustrating as all get out because these same kids are going to hit the real world with no real sense of ever having failed, of ever having to deal with a situation where someone really DOESN’T like them. When that happens, the real world will smack back pretty hard and the only folks who’ll be succeeding will be the therapists.
I’m doing the very best I can with what I have to hand here, and so far we’ve righted our lifeboat and kept the provisions from being lost overboard. Everyone’s accounted for and so far so good. But it IS a lot of work, and requires a constant effort to keep things on course. I don’t mind doing that for my kids. I just wish I didn’t have to do ALL the work that my taxes were supposed to be paying for.
Respects,
Hey Tim,
Join the great migration south and come to Georgia. It seems everyone is moving here. While it is true that Cynthia McKenney was a representative from Georgia for a while, she no longer represents anyone officially. Jobs are good and housing is relatively cheap, especially compared to the Northeast. Traffic is terrible, but nothing is perfect.
And the winters are a bit milder, to understate the issue.
The schools suffer from the PC aspirations of those trained by the education establishment, but it isn’t nearly as bad as what you are saying. Most people here owe their success to education and hard work and teach their children appropriately. And they expect the schools to teach valuable knowledge, not PC gobbledygook. It is amazing how an active, independent PTA can steer a school in the right direction.
Practically everyone where I live is a newcomer, some just started out further away. Like China or India or France. The area was all horse farms until about 15-20 years ago when the road and subdivision builders showed up. We don’t have the old small town cliques and prejudices, but we stil have the small town-feel. Plus, we can always drive 30 minutes or so and have everything a big city can offer.
Just food for thought.
None of my colleges had professor’s unions, the main professors union in the US, the AFT, represents a tiny fraction of professors, and less than half of polled professors (in an AFL-CIO poll) wanted a union:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/04/22/poll
Professors are smart enough to know that in an American style union results only in additional bureaucrats and another automatic deduction from the paycheck, at best.
Craftsman,
That might well happen. My ancestors were from the Rome, Georgia area, back in the antebellum days. I’ve been through there many times, and really like the land, and especially like the food:)
Respects,
My wife got her degree in Chemistry, went on to get a California Teaching Credential (another year of instruction at CSUSM) and was told at EVERY single Public School interview that she would be lucky to start teaching Chemistry within 5 years of hiring.
She opted for a Private school (near you!) The Army and Navy Academy (thank you Capo del Fuoco for your patronage and my wife still misses your son as a student) and hasn’t regretted a single day of her decision.
I don’t understand teachers who are scared of testing as a measure of performance of their students. How can any teacher say (with a straight face) that testing a student on algebra is no way to determine if the student comprehends algebra.
Oh, you all make my eyes glaze over! You are slicing the bologna so thin as to read the WSJ stock pages through it! Cut to the chase and think about it! Time is short so don’t be distracted by the red herring of what’s called “popular” thinking.
The “voucher” is only a percentage of the money-per-student boards-of-education get. If all parents got vouchers so to send all their kids to schools other than public, then the public schools and all their employees would have no kids, no class rooms, no books, chairs, no eracers, etc. but still have a whole bunch of money. What’s not to like about that if you’re a board-of-education employee? You wouldn’t even have to show up to “not work”. Just, “Direct deposit the check in my account thank you very much”. (…Coitainly the way things are done here in Doity Joisey doncha know. AKA, the land-of-the Sopranos).
I’m thinking the real reason is the “professional education establishment”, (from the Feds on down), doesn’t want any competition or any “sunlight” to shine in and illuminate their incompitance or mediocrity. It took 40 years, (and a little more), but the “forces-of-darkness”, (those who are stupid and/or superstitious), have used Political correctness destroy many of our institutions along with public education and to institutionalize racism or sexism or some other “ism”, (After all, if an “ism” is made to exist, there will always be something to “fight”, “control”, “regulate”, or “manage” so as to not “offend” anyone). And, following this path leads to mediocrity, not to excellence. …One hellova state of affairs.
Oh, and one final note: For your edification and enjoyment, check out SAT scores….. The lowest are in education. Hummm, the ones who say they know best how to educate our kids.
….And that’s my rant, gentle readers. I’m gonna pour myself 2 fingers of Jack Daniels now, get horizontal on my couch and watch today’s propaganda on the Television……
Re: Post #21
Alen,
If all the public school teachers had the talent that your wife does, this would not even be an issue. She has and continues to, influence many. Your input had no small influence in our son’s career choice as well I surmise.
Best to the both of you!
Capo
“So why not vouchers?” – Simply because vouchers exacerbate the problem.
Vouchers take money away from public school systems. But vouchers do not cover all of an individual student’s private tuition. Therefore, vouchers will benefit the more affluent, while they simultaneously penalize the less affluent who, even with vouchers, are still stuck in now ever worsening, if not failing schools.
Not all will have the freedom of choice. And woe to them that don’t!
Effective education for all is a necessary and fundamental cornerstone of our country’s strength. It should not be weakened.
Making this bad situation worse with vouchers will only increase the burgeoning class divide between “haves and have nots,” and could portend much more serious social crises in the future.
As I said before fliterman, failing schools are failing miserably – it’s hard to see how it could be any worse for the students stuck in them. And the social crises you allude to are already here! It’s just that by kow-towing to certain self-interested parties inside public employee unions and subscribing to feel-good PC affirmation notions we’re sprinkling fairy dust over the problem, and hoping no one will notice.
And you misunderstand me – I don’t mean only private schools should get funded and I believe I’ve answered your concerns about inequity and affluence with my suggestion for “earned income credit” vouchers, by which a child’s voucher decreases in value as his family’s income increases.
And even if I was a fan of purely private education (which I am not) there are not remotely enough seats to give every secondary student a shot a private education.
No, what I’m talking about is making all the schools, public and private, compete for a per-pupil share of spending that is portable to the child. Good schools are rewarded, bad schools close. The fixed costs that went to supporting the bad school are rolled over to the high performing schools – probably with some sort of award fee – for new infrastructure to support their growth.
Anyway, I find it passing strange that the same people who’d go to the mattresses over a mother’s absolute right to choose whether or not terminate her child before she is born would turn around and deny her the choice of how to educate her afterwards.
I guess there’s all kinds of choices, yah?
Fliterman, I wonder if you could tell me where are all those “affluent” parents who currently have their children enrolled in the chronically and completely failing schools that “qualify” for vouchers? You know, the ones you claim will be the only beneficiaries.
As far as being sufficient, that’s because the unions have blocked or castrated most school choice programs. But if parents were given vouchers equal to only half the per/pupil costs, plenty of education could be purchased. AFter all, in DC that would be $7800/year, and that can buy as lot of superior education, whether public or private.
http://www.dcfpi.org/?page_id=125
Plus, the free market would ensure that new schools were created to service this new market of students. Unlike the unionized world, the real world is not static.
I also find it illuminating that anti-choice, status quo proponents always assume that the schools in question are incapable of changing in such a way that they would attract students, rather than drive them away. That, to me, is very telling.
re- “No, what I?
re- “No, what I’m talking about is making all the schools, public and private, compete for a per-pupil share of spending that is portable to the child.”
Sounds egalitarian, but I ain’t sure of the word “making”. Sounds Un-Lex-Like.
As you know Lex I opt out of govmint and pay for my kids schooling. Pay twice that is because I pay a good chunk of state/local tax (as a resident). I’m not going to critisize public schools here but my better 1/2 is a middle school math teach at a locally touted public school so I have some insight.
I have thought about this in the past and I will tell you I am lukewarm to vouchers and even tax breaks! (don’t choke filterman)
How can that be? Well, I can say it’s not from any social justice, levelling the playing field or reapportioning the wealth, ideas. Rather, IMV, everytime you obligate yourself to the govmint (tax break/voucher) there are strings. Next thing you know they are mandating cirriculum. ex- here in the Napoleonic dictatorship I dwell in the pols are always trying to ingratiate themselves to the parochial school voters by providing state textbooks and tax paid bus transportation. Both of those are materials and services, right? Sort of like snow plow service. Pay a tax, get a service, right? Makes sense but it is never simple. Caveats abound. Caveats are strings.
Nope. I’d rather pay once for one bad (inefficient?) system and once for the system of MY choice. I would prefer not to pay for two bad systems….
B2
I’m suddenly speechless…
Is that all it takes?
Something that has always struck me about teacher’s unions opposition to vouchers is that it seems that just assume without argument that if anyone can possibly opt out of the public school system, they will.
It’s almost as if they’ve given up, or don’t think they can possibly cut the mustard.
Oh yeah. I forgot to add:
Before you think I am one of them thar Choate type WASPs who’ve always attended the right schools.
Wrong. Me a PS grad.
I pay, but I also drive a vehicle (car is too nice a word) w/250K. No ski trips, no Carribean Cruises, inheritance, etc.
Not a downside here. No sympathy required. Just a reality from a choice made. Maybe someday.
Unless the voucher or tax break was offered because it was fair to all and offered a choice to those who actually benefit most (those living in crappy school districts w/out choice) I want nothing to do it.
b2