To Vouch or not to Vouch

Oct 19 03:52 UTC 2000

I've never really thought very much about the voucher issue.  I'm not
feeling very well informed on the issue, and have mixed feelings about
the whole thing.

Generally I approve of giving people more options.  The voucher system
would make private schools more affordable, giving people more options
for how their children should be educated.  That seems a good thing.

Of course, one of the functions of school is socialization, teaching us
all how to be proper cogs in our social structure - how to stand in
line, how to keep your head down around bullies, etc.  If we don't all
go to the same schools, would we form a less coherent society?  I doubt
it would make enough difference to matter.

It seems just fair that if a child is being school someplace else, at
least some of the money society set aside for her education should go to
the institution that schools her.  The plan on the ballot gives only
half of that money to the private school - the other half stays in the
public school.  So I can't see the public schools being too badly
starved.

Scattering the money around more places is sure to mean it gets used
less efficiently.  Tax increases are likely.

We publically fund education because we believe it is good for our
society as a whole to have the next generation educated.  But what do we
mean by "educated"?  Are there minimum standards of education that a
private school must meet to count as an alternative to public schools? 
I assume something like that must already exist.

Normally when we spend public money on something, we expect some public
accountability.  This plan does not seem to require private schools to
tell how they spent the money, nor does it give much government oversite
over the schools.  This is partly the point - they wouldn't be private
schools if the government was keeping them under their thumbs.  The idea
is to encourage diversity.  But I'm not sure all forms of diversity are
suitable objects for support by government funds:

  - Faith Bible School - dedicated to providing a rounded education
    based on Christian principles.

  - Nathan Forrest Elementary - promoting morality and Americanism.
    Operated by the Klu Klux Klan.  Black students need not apply.

  - Mr Wallace's School of Love - emphasizing tantric self-actualization
    and growth of minds unfettered by socially imposed sexual roles in
    an environment of total freedom.

While 2/3 of those are unlikely ever to exist, I don't see why the
aren't theoretically possible.  Even if the education provided by these
institutions meets the minimum standards required from all schools, that
education may be married with ideologies that we wouldn't normally
consider supporting with public funds.

If you are home schooling your kids, can you keep the voucher money?

response 2 of 150:

Oct 19 05:05 UTC 2000

The only way to "cog" a person into social interaction in a public school
better than a private school is to stick them into a homogeneous system built
to work for the most people.  That still leaves a good third in the dust,
precisely the situation the schools are supposed to work against.  A lot of
people stuck in public schools learn that they really don't fit in most large
social situations, and a lot of people are scarred by it.  The current system
just doesn't work for too many people.  There need to be better options.  If
not in other schools, than at least targetted programs within the same high
school that allow kids to find a niche and a focus that they can excel in.

response 4 of 150:

Oct 19 12:46 UTC 2000

I disagree.  As the beneficiary of a private school for 8 years, they were
even willing to lower the tuition to get me and my siblings in there.  I think
private schools may even do the same today.  It costs little mor to teach 20
as opposed to 10, adn the extra 30,000 in the school treasury can mean a lot
in equipment and pay raises for the staff.

response 6 of 150:

Oct 19 13:38 UTC 2000

(Did you mean "Hear hear!"?)

response 8 of 150:

Oct 19 14:14 UTC 2000

Public schools are at the end of a long trickle-down path through the
maze of government command and control.  

From my perspective, the great loss in this path is that every
taxpayer is funding this monopolistic, homogenized, pasturized,
lowest-common-denominator, educational system.  The risk of failing to
do so is threat of confinement.

If there is presented some challenge to the monopoly of education in
this country, where the penalty for failure is loss of students and
along with it revenue, I'm all for it.

There are many good alternatives to the elitist private schools.
Montessorie style is just one example.  Whether some private schools
react by creating an even greater wall for selection of preferred
students has nothing to do with this issue.  In general, I doubt very
much if Michigan has a major problem with "exclusivity."  Certainly,
nothing like New York State.

In any event, it should be a market issue.  We get poor choices for
educational alternatives.  Public schools work reasonbly well, but
they certainly fail in incentive.

response 10 of 150:

Oct 19 15:09 UTC 2000

        "de-federalizing" anything is a flat-out impossibility.

        When the NEA and the feds took over education, it was the
        beginning of the end. <shrug>

        Since you can't fix something which will never admit to being a
        failure, (the feds?? fail!?!), you need alternatives.. And, with
        that is the devote hope that a cancerous limb at least drops off.

response 12 of 150:

Oct 19 16:07 UTC 2000

I don't know that I have anything to add to the discussion, per se, but I side
with the anti-voucher group. I'm voting no for all the reasons mentioned above.
I think it will be more divisive than beneficial.

response 14 of 150:

Oct 19 17:46 UTC 2000

I agree with Sunny.

response 16 of 150:

Oct 19 22:28 UTC 2000

        I don't want to see a 500  person department in Lansing administering
this plan.
        I don;t see the connection of vouchers and teacher testing together.
I'll vote no.

response 18 of 150:

Oct 20 01:33 UTC 2000

I went to public school and hated it, but I still think vouchers are a bad
idea.  Unless we're going to pay to bus kids to private schools as well, the
poor and the kids with parents who just don't care are going to be left in
public schools which, with less funding, will get even worse than they are
now.  Even if you only take away half the funding per student lost, many
costs involved in running a school are fixed and don't scale that way.

This would also hurt special education students, since public schools are
required to take them and private schools aren't. (In fact, these programs
often take the form of "unfunded mandates" for public schools.) Actually,
that's one of the things that makes public schools very different from
private schools; they're required to take everyone.  They can't pick and
choose the kids they feel are "desirable" like a private school can.  If you
admitted the same selection of kids to a private school that a public school
gets, I bet the private school wouldn't do any better.  Their test scores are
higher because they skim off the cream.

response 20 of 150:

Oct 20 02:36 UTC 2000

re 18: "the
 poor and the kids with parents who just don't care are going to be left in
 public schools"  So, you think it is best to condemn a child who wants
to learn to stay in an environment where he won't be able to?

By the way, when a child uses a voucher, the remaining 1/2 of the state
aid is kept by the state.  (I called the Kids First Yes! 800 # for 
that info.)

response 22 of 150:

Oct 20 07:11 UTC 2000

I've got mixed feelings on this.

I support educational choice.  I was one of those people who didn't do very
well in some of the public schools I attended.  High school was another story
entirely.  Rather than going to the big neighborhood public school, my parents
and I chose one of Ann Arbor's "alternative" high schools, a school with (at
the time) 350 students, an open campus, lots of freedom to learn in ways other
than sitting in cassrooms, an environment that emphasized students making
their own choices, and many other differences that distinguished it from the
traditional high schools.  I had a wonderful time there, and found that it
really did suit my learning style much better then the traditional schools
I'd been in had.  The school I went to wasn't for everybody, though.  Some
people really didn't like that sort of environment, and liked the way
traditional high schools operate.  Others probably would have been happiest
with something entirely different from either model.  I am very glad that the
school I went to existed, and that I was able to choose to go there.  I think
other people should be able to choose schools in that way as well.

My school was part of the Ann Arbor Public Schools.  It existed because the
voters in the Ann Arbor School District kept electing board members who
supported it, or at least not electing enough board members who wanted to get
rid of it for such a move to be successful.  As part of the public school
system, it did have to go through the same administrative processes as the
other high schools, and it had to base admissions either on a first come first
serve basis or on a lottery, rather than being able to pick and choose its
students.  Since demand exceeded supply, not everybody who wanted to go there
could get in, but once admission was switched from waiting in line to a
lottery, it would have been hard to argue that it was discriminatory.  And,
since the school was part of the public school system, it was up to the school
board and administration to put together budgets that would support all the
schools well, rather than picking one over the others.

I'm not sure vouchers accomplish what I like about school choice.  As I
understand the various voucher programs, they don't include most of the rules
that public schools have to operate under.  Voucher supported private schools
would still be able to have selective admissions processes.  They could
incorporate school sponsorship of a religion, which, while better serving
their target audience, could make potential students of a different religion
very uncomfortable, in effect discriminating based on religion.  I would feel
much better about voucher supported schools if they had to follow the same
rules as the public schools.

My major concern about the voucher proposals, though, is the idea that
vouchers can be a replacement for faililng public schools.  The idea is that
if the school is doing badly, rather than fixing the school we subject it to
the marketplace, giving the students vouchers to let them go elsewhere.  Some
of them at that point probably will, and I'm assuming they'll be fine.  What
about the other kids, though, those that didn't get into the private school?
How many neighborhoods with schools doing badly to teh point where they're
thought to be unfixable, have enough and large enough private schools to be
able to educate all the school students?  I'm guessing that there will always
be some students left behind in the public schools, and if vouchers have been
selected as the solution for school problems, I don't think there's going to
be much pressure to fix the public schools for those kids who have been left
behind by the privatization.

I'll be voting no on the California equivelant of this proposal (proposition
38, I think), but I'm not sure I'll be voting the right way.

response 24 of 150:

Oct 20 13:54 UTC 2000

        I don't have a problem with being taxed to provide for public
resources;  it seems one of the most noble and reasonable uses of tax dollars
to provide for resources that the business sector wouldn't normally.

        It does confuse me, though, that the voucher program has been
considered seriously.  What if a number of folks asked for subsidization of
their country club fees because the public park they normally would go to is
underfunded or not up to their standards?