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Good News For School Choice

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
The problem is Daniels, the governor of Indiana, cut and hacked at the education budget and has left it broke for years and will not increase the budget. If public schools weren't in the condition they are, being overcrowded classrooms, vanishing enrichment and extra-curricular classes and activities, over worked teachers, and lagging in technology it might be an idea to try.
But first the public schools need to be moved out of the poor house.
Perhaps this is the best time to try it.
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
If one can't get more funding, then one must do the best one can with the funds one has.
The only computer classes my high school had were ones that taught you to type, use Microsoft Office, and CISCO. They canceled the others because of a lack of funding my freshman year. They were going to offer earth science, astronomy, advanced level theatre classes, and a few others, but it turned out the school just didn't have the funds to do it. They were going to remodel the high school, but they had to build a water tower (something about it was needed to raise the water pressure incase a fire happened) and that project cut too much into the budget that remodeling the high school still hasn't happened. I even know of one school that cut out their bowling team because they just couldn't afford it.
Education is extremely expensive, but what many Republicans who hack away at it's budget do not realize is it the best investment for a nation. Schools should not be forced to make do with what they have, especially when it is hurting students.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
The only computer classes my high school had were ones that taught you to type, use Microsoft Office, and CISCO. They canceled the others because of a lack of funding my freshman year. They were going to offer earth science, astronomy, advanced level theatre classes, and a few others, but it turned out the school just didn't have the funds to do it. They were going to remodel the high school, but they had to build a water tower (something about it was needed to raise the water pressure incase a fire happened) and that project cut too much into the budget that remodeling the high school still hasn't happened. I even know of one school that cut out their bowling team because they just couldn't afford it.
Education is extremely expensive, but what many Republicans who hack away at it's budget do not realize is it the best investment for a nation. Schools should not be forced to make do with what they have, especially when it is hurting students.
Here, I don't see quite the extreme Dem vs Repub split that you do.
 

xkatz

Well-Known Member
Ravitch was a supporter of charter schools, but became disillusion with the veracity of the claim that private schools perform better than public schools.

As someone who has been to both a private and public schools, I have to say public is far better.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
If one can't get more funding, then one must do the best one can with the funds one has.

Which doesn't include vouchers, IMO. When you're trying to do more with less, it isn't the time to start paying for more stuff. Using limited budgets as the excuse for extending public education funding to private schools makes about as much sense as using household belt-tightening as the excuse to go out and buy a second car.

When you're having trouble paying for what you have, you don't go out of your way to find new financial obligations to take on. I thought this was just common sense.

School vouchers aren't an example of a new approach to public schools; they're an example of siphoning money away from public education.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Which doesn't include vouchers, IMO. When you're trying to do more with less, it isn't the time to start paying for more stuff. Using limited budgets as the excuse for extending public education funding to private schools makes about as much sense as using household belt-tightening as the excuse to go out and buy a second car.
When you're having trouble paying for what you have, you don't go out of your way to find new financial obligations to take on. I thought this was just common sense.
School vouchers aren't an example of a new approach to public schools; they're an example of siphoning money away from public education.
You're missing the opportunities associated with decreasing public school attendance,
eg, building closures, staff cuts, fewer junkets to Las Vegas on the taxpayer's dime.

As someone who has been to both a private and public schools, I have to say public is far better.
This....from a guy who thinks Michigan State is a university?
But then, it is more advanced than most day care facilities.
(Told ya I'd git ya!)
 
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Mathematician

Reason, and reason again
I think programs accepting vouchers should held be to the same standards as the local public schools as a minimum; anything else is just a handout to whoever can start up a "school." Private schools should not, however, receive the same dollar amount per peer unless they commit to accepting any applicant and promoting special ed programs like their public peers. Make the competition fair. Perhaps base the alloted money on "acceptance rate." Full acceptance of all applicants gets 100% funding (or what the student would get afforded in public school). Those wealthy private academies will get < 2% funding.

Oh, and no funding strictly religious classes or "science" classes that treat Earth as a 12,000 year old antique or something. Sowry.

I'm a pre-service libertarian socialist teacher, and I have no objections to competition in education so long as it's recognized that education should be treated as a public good. I don't think it's a contradiction to see market competition and public goods as coexistent.
 
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Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Absolutely....hold their feet to the fire & make'm teach a solid curriculum.
No teechy, no money.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
You're missing the opportunities associated with decreasing public school attendance,
eg, building closures, staff cuts, fewer junkets to Las Vegas on the taxpayer's dime.
Closures? I thought vouchers were supposed to increase choice. Wasn't that the point? How do you have more choice if your local public school closes?

But you aren't going to get those cost savings... or at least, there will be severely diminished returns. For one thing, you need some level of certainty that enrolment really is going to go down before you can actually close a school. For another, if you do close schools, the students still have to go somewhere. What you save in operating costs at the school you close (in the long run - in the short term, it'd probably result in some major expenditures) will be offset by things like increased transportation costs as you now have to bus many more people to handle the larger catchment areas of the remaining schools.

And there's a limit to how much you can cut. You may be able to shrink a school board, but you can't have half of a school board chair, half of a maintenance facility, half of a psychologist, etc. In many regards, you're working against economies of scale in these sorts of cuts.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Closures? I thought vouchers were supposed to increase choice. Wasn't that the point? How do you have more choice if your local public school closes?
We have a plethora of schools. So perhaps instead of 10 public elementary schools, it might 7 or 8....still a whole lotta choice.

But you aren't going to get those cost savings... or at least, there will be severely diminished returns. For one thing, you need some level of certainty that enrolment really is going to go down before you can actually close a school. For another, if you do close schools, the students still have to go somewhere. What you save in operating costs at the school you close (in the long run - in the short term, it'd probably result in some major expenditures) will be offset by things like increased transportation costs as you now have to bus many more people to handle the larger catchment areas of the remaining schools.
As I previously said, there'd be turmoil in the short run.

And there's a limit to how much you can cut. You may be able to shrink a school board, but you can't have half of a school board chair, half of a maintenance facility, half of a psychologist, etc. In many regards, you're working against economies of scale in these sorts of cuts.
I think you're generalizing from the case of very small school districts....not a very cromulent argument.
I don't think vouchers would have much applicability there.
 

Songbird

She rules her life like a bird in flight
I think the school district my kids are in has done a good job of creating competition. There are public magnet schools with different focuses - an arts school, a Spanish immersion school, a math and science school, as well as typical public schools, vouchers for private schools, and a plethora of charter schools. We also have a large homeschooling population. Recent charter school laws have become more stringent, causing many to close - which is good, because the former laxity led to several schools underperforming and mismanaging resources.

But this range of choices doesn't ensure that low-income families will access them. Low-income families are less likely to take advantage of these options.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
We have a plethora of schools. So perhaps instead of 10 public elementary schools, it might 7 or 8....still a whole lotta choice.
So then there was choice - and therefore competition - available in the first place? Why the need for vouchers, then?

But even in a large school district, consider this: urban and suburban public schools, especially elementary schools, are generally laid out so that the vast majority (if not all) of students are within walking distance of their school. When you close 20 to 30% of public schools like you describe, the catchment areas of the remaining schools would have to increase. Those students coming from the new, expanded parts of the catchment areas will typically live too far from the school to walk (since normally, if they could've walked before, they would've been in the catchment area to begin with).

This means more buses, which means more expense to the school board. Here in Ontario, on average, busing costs $371.74 per year per student bussed to school. This means that even before you consider factors like economies of scale or the other problems I mentioned before, vouchers will have created a significant new cost to public schools even before the kids step through the school doors in the morning.

What could a cash-strapped school board do with an extra $372 per student? What would that board have to give up in order to come up with the money to bus these new students?

If the board is lucky enough to be in a jurisdiction where they get more money (from the state, for instance) to offset this cost, that money's still not free. What would the state government have to give up to fund all those new buses?

As I previously said, there'd be turmoil in the short run.
Yes - and slow decay in the long run. I don't see any upside to these sorts of programs.

I think you're generalizing from the case of very small school districts....not a very cromulent argument.
I don't think vouchers would have much applicability there.
So... vouchers aren't really practical in the sorts of districts that actually do suffer from lack of competition?
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
So then there was choice - and therefore competition - available in the first place? Why the need for vouchers, then?
Quantity does not equal quality, diversity or even the opportunity to choose between them.
I don't think there's much more to say about it. I simply favor some experimentation with vouchers to see if we can improve education.
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
Quantity does not equal quality, diversity or even the opportunity to choose between them.
I don't think there's much more to say about it. I simply favor some experimentation with vouchers to see if we can improve education.

If it works it could do wonders for Texas.

The problem is Texas is cutting so much from public education that they need all the money they can get.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
Quantity does not equal quality, diversity or even the opportunity to choose between them.
But you just argued that it did equal choice! :facepalm:

Somehow, having 7 or 8 public schools allows choice, but having 10 doesn't? How does this make sense at all?

I don't think there's much more to say about it. I simply favor some experimentation with vouchers to see if we can improve education.
And I favour the approach that says that when budgets are tight, you try to plug the monetary leaks in the system, not create new ones. If you don't have enough money to go around, you look for cost savings, not increased expenditures.

Personally, I think it's fundamentally dishonest to say that vouchers are about improving public education. They're not; they're about removing public education from the equation altogether... at least for the people who can afford other options.

Actually, I think in all this, the biggest problem I have with the idea of vouchers is that it throws away the idea of the social contract. If we deem it necessary and beneficial for a childless retired person to pay for schools he will never use himself or never send one of his own children to, why wouldn't we make the same demands on everyone equally, even parents who choose to send their kids to private schools?

Conversely, if it's not necessary for those parents to pay their share for the public school system, how can we say it's necessary for the person who will never use that system at all to pay for it? I think the next step from vouchers is to de-fund public education generally.
 

ninerbuff

godless wonder
I look at it this way...........if a college student gets a loan and has money to go to just about any college he wants, the college still has to ACCEPT him. And there lies the problem. Put the decision making on who can and can't attend will segregate students.
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
There isn't enuf money on Earth to properly edumacate Texans.
Yooz guys just need to move to a real state.

That may well be the truth.

It would be easier if everyone in the country didn't want to move here. The DFW area is the fastest growing area in the nation, but the job market can't keep up. That results in tons more kids, and the state requires more schools to be built and there isn't enough tax revenue from the new folks. Other cities like Houston and Austin are in the same boat, as well as all our border towns.

The state also is imposing new requirements and standards on school districts - most of which require money and almost all of them hinder education.

We've got a real mess down here and it's utterly hopeless. For a variety of reasons, Republicans hate children and education. It's no wonder that we're almost dead last in the union and our own universities don't want to accept Texas public high school graduates because they have to take remedial classes in everything, even with advanced diplomas and good grades. The management of our education system on the state level is criminal and the people responsible for it should be executed.
 
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