Vouchers yes!
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"Steve Jaros" sjar...@cox.net
Tip of the hat to the Supreme Court on this one. The only people who are really afraid of vouchers are the teacher's unions and public school bureaucrats who fear the loss of the captive audience (and the captive bucks) of families that now perhaps can choose to bail out of atrocious public school systems.
--
"No people in history have preserved their freedom who thought that by not being strong enough to protect themselves they might prove inoffensive to their enemies".
- NSC-68-1950
jbird jb...@pitt.edu
except that no voucher program I've seen accepts all children in the same way that the public school system does. If it accepts ALL kids (no entrance exam) and pays for EVERYTHING (so it doesn't just become a channeling of governtment funds to religious organizations) then it will be ok with me. PP PP PP PP PP tt tt PP PP PP tt tt PP PP tttttt ttttttt PP PP ii ttt ttt PP ii ii it tt tt tt tt PP iii iii ttt tt
Jeffrey Davis res09...@verizon.net
The Supreme Court got rid of TV and endemic American anti-intellectualism?
Nikk Pilato pilat...@cmr.fsu.edu
Steve Jaros wrote the following: Wouldn't the money that will be used toward these vouchers be better spent: a. On updated textbooks.
b. On beter facilities.
c. On better conditions at existing schools.
d. On lunch subsidies for poor and low-income students.
e. On funding for the fine and performing arts in schools.
f. On funding for field trips so that the kids can get out there and experience some of their lessons.
g. On better pay for teachers.* h. On more nutritional fare in the cafeteria.
i. On security resources so our children can feel safe at school.
*The reasons for the decline in public schools are many, but I don't hold teachers blameless, even if I am one. I have worked with too many teachers who have "given up." The problem with that is that we are not getting tons and tons of new teachers, and the reason for that is the lousy pay. In Japan, a teacher is on the same level as a lawyer, a doctor, etc. They know that without a GOOD teacher, these kids don't have many options.
Of course, they pay very well in Japan. So you end up with a lot of very qualified individuals who don't MIND making a career out of teaching.
Here in the States, the low pay discourages a lot of people from becoming teachers.
I mean, really...what are the perks you use to draw in new teachers from college?
"Hey kid...become a teacher." "Why should I?" "Well, you'll be dealing with a ton of kids, many from homes where the parents openly deride their teachers thereby undermining you from the start. They love to bandy about that old line 'Those who can, do, those who can't teach.' SO they'll p*** that attitude right on into their children. These kids will come to you with an attitude of 'Teach me if you can.' Not to mention that so many parents are busy being "friends" rather than parents that the kids will have severe disciplinary problems.
They'll openly tell you to shut up, and when you give them a referral, the parents will complain that you are unfair, unfit, and unacceptable as a teacher." "Wow." "Oh wait, it gets better. You'll be dealing with politics in the form of your administration, and the local school board. You will see poor teachers being rewarded with tenure, while you have to wait and 'prove' yourself. You'll see teachers who teach maybe 50% of the time if the kids are lucky, and ***ign busy work the rest of the time, or give meaningless lectures...and you WON'T be able to change the system. You'll be threatened by a student at least once a year, and you will be threatened by a parent at least once a month. Unless you play it safe, p*** everyone, and not really teach." "Anything else?" "Yup. Your pay will be lousy. Despite the fact that teaching is one of the professions where you want the best minds possible in order to influence our youth positively, we will pay you next to nothing.
Sanitation personnel will make more than you. Some of the kids you teach will be driving better cars than you, because you won't be able to afford it on yoru salary. Oh, and get this...the money that could have been used to fund better programs for our public schools and for bettering teacher pay? It will go instead to fund someone to go to private school. You know, the same type of private school that can charge as much as $15,000 a year to go to school there (I am not making this up...at least one school in Broward county has a yearly tuition of $15,000 per kid). ALl that money will instead go to a private institution BECAUSE a kid won't want to go to public school BECAUSE of the lack of facilities and good teachers BECAUSE there isn't enough money for public schools, yet we can still find a few million to send kids to private schools instead." "Um...sure, where do I sign up....NOT!" Sheesh.
I understand that parents want the best for their children, and I don't blame one single parent for taking advantage of this decision. It is the fault of the government for not properly addressing the issues, pressing issues, that have been at the forefront of education reform for the last two decades.
Sending kids off to Private School will NOT make public schools better, especially if the millions of dollars used could have been used in fixing the system. What are we going to do eventually? Send ALL kids to private schools?
No, and I'm not disagreeing with you Jaros, just because I happen to find you obnoxious...I am disagreeing with you because this is a band-aid on a cut that requires stitches. This is a short-term solution, and nothing is being done for the long run.
Sorry, but I can't agree that vouchers are good for the OVERALL problem.
++ np nikk@nikk#nospam#nakks.net "This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper" -T.S. Eliot
Carl Banks imbo...@vt.edu
Nikk Pilato, exactly what drugs were you under the influence of when you wrote: Nothing like a little competition to get into the "teaching spirit".
The fact the public schools don't have to compete is, I think, the real reason they suck. If ineffective public schools have to worry about paying all kinds of vouchers, they might put forth a better effort.
But it's not an overall solution. If I were in charge, I would set up direct competition between public schools. Every community would be a part of two school districts, and parents would have a choice which district to enroll their kids in. Tax money would be apportioned to the districts according to enrollment.
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CARL BANKS http://www.aerojockey.com "Nullum mihi placet tamquam provocatio magna. Hoc ex eis non est."
jbird jb...@pitt.edu
Charter schools offer better competition than voucher programs. PP PP PP PP PP tt tt PP PP PP tt tt PP PP tttttt ttttttt PP PP ii ttt ttt PP ii ii it tt tt tt tt PP iii iii ttt tt
"Scott I. Ferrell" lordrea...@earthlink.net
Many of which contain egregious errors in basic concepts.
Or a new office for the Vice-Under-Secretary to the Dean of Sudent's personal washboy Blame the people who vote down property taxes.( Old farts in Floirda I'm looking at you) Corruption and fraud left and right. The students get the shaft.
Bullshit. Teach Johnny to read and write first, then we'll discuss trombone cl*** This I have nmo problem with.
Arm the teachers?
In Japan, 12 and 13 year olds commit suicide because they don't get into the most prestigious High Schools.
But there's the Union benefits!
What benefits?
Well....after you give your so^hh^H dues to the Union, we'll protect you against any and all accusations of malfeasance, incompetence, criminal activity etc.
<snip> Entry level jobs suck on a universal level.
I got out (graduated) just before it started to get really bad (1993).
The problem with public schools has three points: 1) Cirruculum- Too much bullshit, not enough fundamentals.
2) Bad Teachers- Union drones who don't give a flying ****.
There are good teachers, but they are becoming a lost breed.
3) Parents- The inability( or some cases, flat refusal) of parents to discipline their children. In Florida, when I was in school, teachers give out the 800 # to HRS and told the kiddies that if Mommy or daddy hit them that they should call and they'd be safe.
Wow.
Both my brother and I got our ***es whipped when we deserved it, it seems that if only some of these kids got the occasional ***-whippin' they'd be less likely to be a problem in cl***. It snowballs from there.
SIF
"marty mcmahone" mmcmaho...@hot.rr.com
While slightly simpathetic to this argument, I don't completely buy it either. My wife is going back to teaching next year after taking a year off with our daughter. She's going to take 2/3 of the pay to teach in a private school rather than mess with the public school system. It would take a huge increase in pay to motivate those who are skipping teaching because of the pay to want to do it. we could get more improvement for the buch by making it a job people desire -- specifically, eliminating a lot of the silliness and getting back to teaching. Parents and society have significant blame to accept here -- as you touched on -- but the education system has gone a long way toward making teaching no fun.
Marty
"Jim Roberts-Miller" jammer...@mindspring.com
I propose that if the gobs of money in the public school system were actually spent on these things, there wouldn't be this argument.
I don't know where this money is going now, but last time I looked, per-student spending (in constant dollars) had gone up a LOT since since, I dunno, 1960. In fact, per student expenditure *has* more than doubled since 1960, AFTER adjusting for inflation: "The expenditure per student in public schools rose significantly during the late 1980s, but increased more slowly during the first part of the 1990s. Between 1984-85 and 1989-90, current expenditures per student in fall enrollment grew 20 percent, after adjustment for inflation. From 1989-90 to 1994-95, expenditures per student grew by less than 1 percent. Between 1994-95 and 1999-2000 expenditure per student in fall enrollment rose 6 percent to $6,584." http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/digest/Ch2.html#6 The education establishment has *ruined* their credibility on this, because we found out that despite the good grades and diplomas, kids weren't actually learning anytyhing. Then they tell us they need all this money in order to fix the problem they had pretended wasn't there, despite the fact we're spending more per kid than we ever have in the history of the country.
Perhaps vouchers are not the answer. But by golly, there has to be something better than throwing more money on the problem. Maybe vouchers will provide the shakeup to force the public schools to clean up their act.
Jammer Jim Roberts-Miller
--
Texas A&M '89, '91 "Is there in Truth no Beauty?" "Of course, you do not have to go to the moon to find cold, dark, and inhospitable...conditions. Much of Canada will do." -- the Economist http://www.mindspring.com/~jammerjim/jimpg01.html
"Steve Jaros" sjar...@cox.net
? That's not realistic. I mean, what if there is an exclusive private school that charges $25,000 a year to attend. It would bankrupt the government to try and give every kid $25,000...
Ideally, it would be nice if the government could fund every kid to the tune of $100,000 a year so all of us could go to Harvard, but why must a voucher program do so for it to be ok with you?
Look at it this way: What if in a particular city we have a) a public school system that sucks, b) some ultra-exclusive private schools that charge $20,000 a year, c) some other private schools that charge $5,000 a year *but* refuse to participate in any voucher program because they discriminate - i.e., they won't accept students who are learning-disabled, aren't of the right religion, etc., d) some other private schools that charge $4,000 a year and take anyone who pays.
Now, if there is no voucher plan and a child can't afford $4,000 tuition, what are his choices? He must go to the public schools. What if a $5,000 a year voucher plan is instituted? The parents of those children now have a choice - send their kids to the public school system or to the $4,000 a year or (in the cases of some parents) the $5,000 a year private schools. That added choice has to be an improvement over the status quo, even if the voucher plan isn't perfect, i.e., it doesn't provide enough for all kids to go to the very best schools. No?
--
"No people in history have preserved their freedom who thought that by not being strong enough to protect themselves they might prove inoffensive to their enemies".
- NSC-68-1950
--
"No people in history have preserved their freedom who thought that by not being strong enough to protect themselves they might prove inoffensive to their enemies".
- NSC-68-1950
"Jim Roberts-Miller" jammer...@mindspring.com
Charter schools are only slightly less anathema to the education establishment than vouchers. Actually, to the edu establishment, they are just as bad. It's the PFTAW types that hate vouchers more.
Jammer Jim Roberts-Miller
--
Texas A&M '89, '91 "Is there in Truth no Beauty?" "Of course, you do not have to go to the moon to find cold, dark, and inhospitable...conditions. Much of Canada will do." -- the Economist http://www.mindspring.com/~jammerjim/jimpg01.html
Steve sk...@kermit.cyto.perdue.edu
Don't underestimate the m***ive amounts of resources consumed by technology in schools.
My impression, partly formed by working on a distance-learning for high-school project, is that: a.) A mind-bogglingly enormous amount of money is sucked up into school computers, which is b.> Mostly useless, since even so it isn't enough to keep the systems up to date.
There are other problems with the whole 'computers in schools' movement besides simple cost, but I think that really is a big one.
Think about the old, pre-PC days in school. What would be an appropriate amount to spend equipping cl***rooms with the business tools of the day - typewriters and adding machines? Why should it be so much different now? Please think carefully, and don't use vaporware or vague future possibilities to rationalize today's expenditure.
Steve
"WiNK" elvistc...@yahoo.com
I say a big HURRAY!! And just in time.........
Peach
Jeffrey Davis res09...@verizon.net
This belief in "competition" for almost every facet of life seems to me to be a kind of superstition. What's a well-educated person? That's a definable, measurable goal?
Jeffrey Davis res09...@verizon.net
Charter schools tend to pull up stakes when the start-up money dries up.
"WiNK" elvistc...@yahoo.com
If this is true, why do they do so many damn fundraisers during the school year? As if our school was poor. (Well, not "our school" next year.) The population of the town this school resides in has quadrupled in 25 years....a lot more businesses are in the town (almost zilch in the way of businesses when I was a kid), doesn't that mean more tax dollars for the school? What gives? Am I not getting something?
Also, parent volunteers. I attended the same school as my daughter....25 years ago. (Same school as above.) There weren't parents helping tutor the slow children, stapling papers, grading tests, etc. Today......parents are at the school daily doing this. Why? Is there more work to do now and less time? Doesn't improved technology help in some way?
These are issues that have me scratching my head about our hometown's public elementary school.
Peach
Mike Dahmus mdahN%O!SPAM$PORFAVOR...@io.com
He's talking about the fact that private schools don't have to accept any student whatsoever, as the public schools do. Expensive special-ed cases; violent barely-non-delinquents; etc.
Mike Dahmus http://www.io.com/~mdahmus/
"Jim Roberts-Miller" jammer...@mindspring.com
I don't know.
There *are* poor school districts. There *are* places where the issue really is they have no money.
But in a lot of places its hard to make that argument wash, and its why a lot of people are getting pissed off enough to support vouchers and such.
Jammer Jim Roberts-Miller
--
Texas A&M '89, '91 "Is there in Truth no Beauty?" "Of course, you do not have to go to the moon to find cold, dark, and inhospitable...conditions. Much of Canada will do." -- the Economist http://www.mindspring.com/~jammerjim/jimpg01.html
"mdatek" mda...@worldnet.att.net
my sentiments exactly
"WiNK" elvistc...@yahoo.com
Yes....there are, indeed, poor school districts. I find it hard to believe ours is one. (Especially when you look at the town itself......enormo-houses, yuppies, 2 golf courses {in a town of 12,000??}, etc......) Still.......students panhandling for money many times during the year.
Did I mention my daughter is starting private school this fall? ;-) Peach
"Steve Jaros" sjar...@cox.net
If a parent chooses to invest their voucher money in any school, public or private, presumably that school has to or might choose to provide its students with textbooks, facilities, conditions, lunch, fine/performing arts programs, field trips, pay for teachers, and security. If i had a child and were considering a private school, i'd certainly check on those things before enrolling him or her. So since voucher money will necessarily (since the laws require that it be spent on education) go to all those kinds of things, what you are really asking is 'wouldn't it be better if that money was spent on those things in the -public- schools'.
And the answer to that is possibly, but that's best left to the clients of the system - the guardians/parents of the schoolchildren- to decide. If they agree with you, they will commit their voucher dollars to the public school system. If they think a private school will do a better job of educating their kids, they'll take their dollars out. What's wrong with that? Most voucher systems expand the educational options of even the poorest kids. Now that doesn't mean they give the same range of choices that wealthy kids have.Some private schools will charge tuition that is too costly for the vouchers. But some private schools will become affordable to kids previously restricted to public schools, so they are better off than they were before, i.e., when their "choice" was limited to the public school system.
Currently, public schools have a monopoly - a guaranteed client base -
among kids who are too poor to afford anything else. Monopoly tends to breed complacency because there isn't a "do better or die" incentive to innovate.
Sans vouchers, private school systems have had to be at least as good as the public schools in their areas because they competed with them for the kids whose parents were wealthy enough to have a choice. Public schools could benefit from the competition. Or perhaps they would fail to rise up and meet the challenge. If so, why lament their extinction?
Teacher pay varies not only between private and public schools, but among public school systems as well, which i'm sure you found out when you were on the job market. Wealthy school districts often pay much more than poorer ones, just as they tend to pay their firemen, policemen, and other government workers better as well. And that allows them to attract the highly qualified teachers.
I guess the world might be a better place if the well-off in Palm Beach decided to send some of their local tax money south to Liberty City to improve not only teacher pay but pay for all other municipal services in the inner city as well. But most people are selfish and like to spend their money on themselves and their close relations. That's human nature, and we have those funding disparities right now in all places, the vast majority of which don't have voucher programs. So it's not like vouchers can be blamed for creating that problem.
I'm surprised it isn't higher than that. The best-funded *public* school system in Virginia - the Arlington county system - funded education to the tune of $14,000 per student last year.
But two things. First, most voucher programs aren't nearly well-funded enough to pay the tuition at a $15,000 school. That's because government does have to spend money on other vital services so there isn't an unlimited amount that can be spent on education. Also, you make it sound as if that voucher money is automatically diverted from the public schools. It isn't.
That only happens if parents choose to do so. So what you are really objecting to is parents who currently are too poor to have a choice suddenly being able to walk with their feet.You want them to be compelled (in effect) to put their kids in the public school system.
Vouchers don't exist in 99% of the country. Yet public school systems are failing all over the place anyway. So you can't really blame vouchers for that. If a voucher program is instituted and large numbers of parents immediately choose to leave the public schools, it's because those schools have failed their kids and they want another way out.
But you'd prevent them from making that choice. So obviously their perceived best interests aren't what's closest to your heart.
Fair enough. And in case you were wondering, i'm not disagreeing with you just because i think you are a dipshit. If anyone else had made the same post, i'd have made the same reply.
--
"No people in history have preserved their freedom who thought that by not being strong enough to protect themselves they might prove inoffensive to their enemies".
- NSC-68-1950
"Steve Jaros" sjar...@cox.net
...and those kids can still go to the public schools.
--
"No people in history have preserved their freedom who thought that by not being strong enough to protect themselves they might prove inoffensive to their enemies".
- NSC-68-1950
Jon Enslin ensl...@uww.edu
Most states impove revenue caps on school districts. Whenever my kid is asked to sell candy or whatever for a fund-raiser, I just write a check for whatever profit they expect per child. I find it demeaning for my son to sell candy to play in the band...I would rather send in the $50.00.
Jon
Nikk Pilato pilat...@cmr.fsu.edu
Lone Victor wrote the following: Surely you will argue it intelligently.....
.....right?
Instead of just saying no and expecting people's opinion to change? ++ np nikk@nikk#nospam#nakks.net "This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper" -T.S. Eliot
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