School Vouchers
 

What do y'all think of school vouchers? I think they're a pretty good idea. Thoughts?

They suck and teach kids a terrible lesson - throw something aside instead of fixing it. They also do nothing for children in rural areas and contribute to the demise of neighborhoods.

And incidentally I am registered Republican but this is one of the party's views that I am against 100%.

I think they are a good idea...........:p

I think they are a bad idea because, the way they've been proposed in Michigan (and defeated), they really only gave benefit to the rich who wanted to send their kids to really really expensive private schools. I can give more detail if anybody wants it.

Dee

Interesting-- could you share how the contribute to the demise or neighborhoods?

I am absolutely opposed to them. Money should be spent to better public schools so all children can benefit from it. I also don't want any of my tax dollars being used to send kids to religious schools.

Bad Idea.

I mean, you don't get to "opt" out of any other taxes - do you? It's like saying you shouldn't have to "subsize" medicare because you go to a private clinic.

Parents should have the power to choose where their children go to school. Their taxes cover their schooling and the type of schooling should be something parents get to choose. Some close-minded people might disagree.

However, school vouchers also create a problem where funding for bad schools would be drained and parents who care would flee.

At this current stage, I am against it. This is one of those things that's great on paper only. Should there be more equality in funding for education and education itself more equal from school to school, then it would be a good idea.

-Rudey

The children don't know their neighbors. Their schoolmates are miles away.

The parents care nothing about supporting a neighborhood school because their children don't go there.

The children are given a very bad message that they are "superior" to the children in the school nearest to them - it's a Bad School that Mommy and Daddy said wasn't good enough for them.

Neighborhood schools bring neighborhoods together, vouchers tear them apart.

Question: How much would parents get back, in general? The previous Ontario government was going to issue a tax credit of up to $3000 to parents who sent their kids to private school (the current government scrapped the bill, but the new PC Leader may look into it again). Depending on where the child is attending, $3000 may very well be a good chunk. The "real" religious schools don't generally charge nearly as much as the older private schools (these schools may or may not be religious, but are not seen as such).

The way it had been proposed in Michigan, the amount of money per child would be the same, it would just be sent to a private school instead of their public school. The key problem is that not all schools receive the same amount of money per child. My school district gets $7300 per child per year. One of the wealthier suburban school districts gets $11,900 per year. So, if I wanted to send my child to a school with $10,000 a year tuition, I would still have to pay $2700 out of pocket, whereas if the parent from the wealthier school district wanted to send their child to the same school, it would be free for them.

The way taxes are paid for schools varies greatly by state so the logistics of this program would also have to vary greatly.

I also have a HUGE problem with my tax dollars paying for a religious school.

Dee

In IA each public school gets the same amount of money per child from the state, supposedly. So a voucher would not have a monetary skew if a child were to go to a private school. The biggest problem is in some of the rural areas of the state the only private school option is 1 religious-based school (either Catholic or Protestant). If you have 2 or 3 failing school districts near each other- you're screwed if you dont want your kid to be taught by a curriculum strongly influenced and infused with X religion.

100% opposed, and I'm a mixed parochial/public school kid.

Against it... and I went to both public and private schools growing up.

against them.....i see why they are a good idea....but i think the money would be better spent on public schools....

It's not really fair to doom some kids to an inferior education based upon where they live and their parents lack of income. I'd rather that administrators and teachers be held accountable for the state of their schools though. I could see myself supporting this measure if it was used only after a vast variety of other options had been exhausted.

My girlfriend teaches band in a public school -- many of her kids are urban poor on social programs, etc. Although they get some of what many would call the "worst" kids, as a public school they do a decent job. If the kids try to succeed, they can. If not, they don't. She gave a pretty scary statistic to me (if it's true) the other day when she said that 35% of her kids in mid-high are the major decision makers of their family -- they don't respond well to being told to shut up and sit down in class when they're the ones buying groceries and paying their parents' bills.

I see this as a good thing. Bad schools should be put out of business.

The only problem with vouchers, as I see it, is when only a nominal ammount is offered, like $500. This does benefit the rich only. When vouchers are offered that are equal to what public schools spend per child ($12,000 in NYC) then children will be able to escape the incompetence of so many public schools, and finally get a decent education.

The US spends more money per child on education than at any time in its history, and the results are not very good. Pouring more money into public education is just throwing good money at bad.

As someone who is pro-choice about everything, I can only hope that the public school system follows the same fate as the Berlin Wall.

all you'll then have is overcrowding of good schools. schools will get overcrowded and might not have the resources or space to expand.


parents DO have a choice where they send their kids to school. they have to choose a home in a decent district. obviously not everyone has money and can't buy a home, even in a lower priced neighborhood. that's why "bad" schools have to be improved, not closed. solve the problem, don't put a band-aid on it.

Well i think i would say i am for it. I would want my child to get more out of school especially in a more advanced school than a local elem school that severely lacks things. that was my promise i made to my son when he was born. With schools being so overly crowded i would rather put him into a facility that expands and excels than those who are lacking the tools to really teach our youth. Granted the money goes into our local schools but by the time the political red tape is cut and dug through our children are not benetting from them

So basically school vouchers are a way to create a two-tier education system? Or should the education system be entirely privitized?

Create a two-tier education system? It is multi-tiered under the status quo. Nice try.

Full vouchers will narrow the gap, especially for economically disadvantaged children who are currently held hostage by the incompetence of the public school system monopoly (it is a monopoly for the poor, because there is no widely available choice.)

Should the entire education system be privatized? Let the market place decide. Let parents have the right to choose where their children attend school.

That's a specious argument because the supply of schools is not static. New private schools will open up to fill the demand far faster than a public school system can expand to fill growing enrollment.

Only if the parents can afford to live in a district with good schools. The status quo hurts poor children more than anyone. Bad schools are money pits, and children should not have to suffer to placate a teachers union. They should absolutely be closed.

I think the teacher's union should be abolished as it is a corrupt and disgusting system that places the needs of awful teachers over those of students.

-Rudey

Public schools should be improved as a whole. Not all of them are bad---I went to public schools from K-12 and thrived in college, even though I had the option of going to out-of-region boarding schools for high school. My parents made the choice to move to a district that sends 95% of its students to 4-year colleges. I made the choice to stay there, and I made the choice to apply to some of the best colleges in the nation, successfully.

Perhaps some districts and education systems need to be completely overhauled, but to say that the entire system should be toppled is ignorant at best.

Actually, that's a question, not a jab. The city I grew up in was very one-tier so that's all I've known.

I used the Berlin Wall as a metaphor for public education, particularly in poor neighborhoods. Free choice would have the effect of toppling some of these districts, and that would be a good thing. Refusing to reflexively defend a status quo that has failed is anything but ignorant.

I also went to good high schools. I went to public school in the 10th grade at Brooklyn Tech. I went to a mid-tier Manhattan private school in the 11th and 12th grades at New Lincoln. That experience made me realize how much students at public schools are suffering. New Lincoln was really a much better educational environment than Brooklyn Tech, and Brooklyn Tech was, and is one of the best public high schools in New York.

Oh shit you went to Tech?

And I don't think a private school is definitely a better experience than Tech was. In fact if I had to bet, I'd say Tech would beat most private schools. I had the opportunity to take 11 college classes, take classes at Columbia university, work on 2 large research projects with several universities all through Tech.

-Rudey

Why can't the public schools in poor neighborhoods be fixed? Some cities have had a good experience in turning some inner-city schools into magnets.

Also, students at all public schools are not "suffering." If that was true, my high school's graduation rate from college would not be what it was. That might be true for some NYC schools. There are also some private schools that I would not send my child to at all.

Some people will choose to go to the school that's closer than their homes, or where their parents went--regardless of educational quality.

So does that mean that the percentage of students who, say, go to university, is roughly the same througout London? That is kind of different compared to Toronto. If you live in, say, Willowdale or the northern part of the old City of Toronto, you'll probably find a very high university entrance rate. Things might be different in other areas.

This is what I was told by an education professor:

Any public high school in the old City of Toronto that is a Collegiate Institute will historically have a very high university matriculation rate because that's what those schools prepare you for. They offer few General (now called Applied) stream courses. Then there are technical and commercial schools, which historically offered more general level courses. Any school that is called a "high school" (i.e. Leaside) or "secondary" is probably newer or had a name change (Northern Secondary used to be called Northern Technical). They offer a wider range of courses.

I do worry about public schools sometimes. Lately, there has been a building buzz in many of the older private schools. The kids are getting new gyms, equipment, classrooms, etc. Technology is increasing, and some schools require their students to carry laptops. But doesn't that further remove the difference between public and private?

some good points by everyone. What about this-- if there are no vouchers and parents choose to send their kids to private schools, I don't think those parents should have to pay the taxes for the public schools.

But then.... why should people without children be forced to pay taxes on public schools?

Because an uneducated citizen is the shame of the entire country.

It is this uneducated citizen that leads hate rallies.

It is this uneducated citizen that falls into a life of crime that society then spends money to jail instead of spending money to educate.

It is this uneducated citizen that shoots an innocent 5 year old boy on the street in a drive by.

It is this uneducated citizen that doesn't understand his health. He can spread disease quickly to others.

It is this uneducated citizen that hurts his children - children who deserve better and keeps a cycle of going on and on.

-Rudey

Sure. But then EVERYONE should have to pay in. If the tax payer pays for public education, then everyone should pay. Taxes should not be discriminatory.

If the tax payer pays? Who isn't a tax payer? Who is everybody?

-Rudey

Bump
 

With the election, I forgot about this thread.The problem with a school like Brooklyn Tech (and Bronx Science and Stuyvesant) is the way that the faculty and administration is assembled. The principles and assistant principles at these schools are not chosen on merit. They're chosen based on political connections. Its well known among NYC teachers that those who are well connected with the Union will use their leverage to spend their remaining years, before retirement, at a cushy assignment like Tech. So you wind up with a school leadership that is not highly motivated, nor necessarily the best qualified.

The teachers, to a lesser extent also represent good political connections, but there are some very good teachers at these schools. There also teachers at these schools that simply don't belong there.

What made Tech great was the quality of the student body, and a time proven curriculum that was very rigerous. If you put a bunch of really smart kids together, you're probably going to get a school culture that reflects this.

We now have decades of hundreds (if not thousands) of dysfunctional school districts. As time has gone by, more money has been spent on these districts. The track record of turning these around is poor. Can these schools be turned around? In theory, yes. In reality, you probably have less than a 1% chance of being able to do this, and sustain the success for at least 5 years.

I don't count changing a dysfunctional school into a successful magnet school as part of the solution. This is just replacing everything, including the student body. What happens to the students that used to go to that magnet school? They're just shifted to someplace else.

The issue with successful public schools is somewhat specious because they reflect choice. These are schools where the parents have the means to choose where to live.

School choice is often, demagogically, painted as a way to transfer money to people who don't need it. It is an issue about empowering parents who have no choice. This is about parents and children who can't pick up and move to a quality public school when the need to do so is clear. Its about tearing down bueracracies and making the primary and secondary schools allocate their funds responsibly.

In NYC, public schools spend about $12,000 per child per year. Less than half of that makes its way to the classroom. This is a disgrace. The solution is not to spend more money. $12,000 is a lot. The solution is to replace a Soviet style command-and-control educational system with an American style market based system.

For the sake of those parents and children who are completely disempowered, I hope that this happens soon.

Re: Bump
 

I went to Bronx Science and I think that it hurt us as much as it helped us. A lot of the teachers there were really unmotivated and couldn't care less about their students. While I had some absolutely great teachers who would bend over backwards to make sure that their students understood what was being taught and were interested in it, I also had some teachers where the classes were basically sink or swim. Because Bronx Science is a specialized high school, we ended up getting less funding than other public schools. For things like AP classes, where we got no funding at all, our Parent's Association had to pay for things like books. As a result, the school could only afford to have at most 45 or so kids in an AP class. When we applied to colleges, they would look at our transcripts and be impressed by the fact that we went to Bronx Science, but then they would wonder why we didn't take more AP's than we did. They just didn't understand that in a grade of 650 kids, about 340 of them met the criteria for taking AP's, but the school had room for only 40. Then, the colleges would get transcripts for kids from smaller schools or private schools or suburban public schools where there were more resources for kids to take AP's and be impressed by that. I remember when I first got to college, a lot of my friends were surprised that in high school we even had to apply for AP's.

I went to Stuyvesant and the school is successful in spite of the board of ed not because of it. I actually almost got into an argument with a girl in my anthropology class that refused to believe Stuy got less money. In order to pay for all the great things stuy had we were constantly obsessed with fundraising. Our musicals and plays supported a lot of the student activities. Their was an annual phoneathon asking every parent in the school to give money. Last week I attended a gala that charged $250 - $1000 a plate raising money for the school. The fact is stuyvesant succeeds b/c the students and parents demand it.

I believe that if everyone demanded a quality education they would get one but they don't. We say we want better schools but no one really stands behind it on election day. One of my sisters is in her second year teaching at a NYC public school and she has all these rules about miniscule little things from how to sort her classroom library to what should be posted on bulletin boards. They think these reforms will make a difference but the only thing that will is more money and smaller classes. these teachers know what they are doing but how do you teach classes of 25-35 students most of whom are below grade level in reading. you simply can't give student the attention they need to succeed.

I have always been conflicted about vouchers especially since they often involve religous schools but you have to look at this from the side of desperate parents. It easy to say they should be spending the money on fixing the schools instead but is it really fair short change children in that environment until the gov't finally does fix things. While in theory there is school choice income dictates where people live and lower income areas have worse schools. In addition every year some students applying to new york city high schools (a proccess almost as complicated as applying to college) get rejected from all the high schools they apply to and often are placed in less desirable schools as a result.

I believe unless the govt can provide all students a proper education in the public schools they should be reqired to offer an alternative.

This whole discussion makes me think of a great quote: "It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."

Integration
 

Did you - do you - support the bussing plans used to promote school intergration?

Amen
 

Amen.

Although if you had to work in the public schools, supervised by the jerks who often become principals, fearing a lawsuit anytime you do something, you would probably join the union too.

Many people join the teachers' union, because all members have a million dollar liability insurance coverage and the union has a staff of lawyers.

In many smaller systems, teachers/staff/bus drivers can be fired without cause, and the union protects these people.