Not to be a kill joy, but:
What happens when the first Wiccan school opens via voucher system or the first string of Fundie Islamic schools?
Too late, Killjoy!
Those are excellent points. I'm for privatizing it as well. It's just got to be affordable to low income families. But this is America! We'd think of something.
What happens when the first Wiccan school opens via voucher system or the first string of Fundie Islamic schools?
This is why I am anti-voucher. Why be dependent upon the government for something that parents should be doing anyway?
I am more for no taxation without representation. Meaning tax only those who have children in the public schools and leave the rest of us alone.
Let them go to it. Survival of the fittest.
Seems to me that would better isolate the problem, eh?!
BTW, the question about an Islamic fundie school has been addressed long ago. The states all have standards relating to the curriculum. Then there are examinations. Presumably such a school would meet the standards.
We have such a school in Fairfax county ~ some of the kids in this neighborhood have attended. The only complaint has been that the school does not have organized athletic teams.
"Happens"? Why should anything "happen"? They can run their schools like they want, the same as anyone else.
If that's where people want to send their kids, then so be it. If people want it (demand), it will stay open (supply).
"What happens when the first Wiccan school opens via voucher system or the first string of Fundie Islamic schools?"
More power to 'em! If we can have Christian or Jewish schools, why do we care what they do, as long as they don't break the law at their schools?
You're right those are great reasons for supporting our disasterous public schools.
The typical Hillary Clinton argument. Parents are too stupid to make educational choices for their children according to Hillary.
Wicca is a religion recognized by the federal government, therefore, Wiccan schools could use vouchers. There are Islamic schools that are allowed to operate in my state (one is a couple of towns away from me). I imagine vouchers could be used for those students also as long as the schools don't break any laws.
What happens when the first Wiccan school opens via voucher system or the first string of Fundie Islamic schools?
Exactly. He who pays the piper calls the tune. If I plant my feet under the State's table, I have no right to complain about the menu. What it feeds me I must swallow.
Control always follows "free" government money. An Alaskan subsidy for home schooling got the camel's nose under the tent by offering a "free" computer. Three years later, the camel was in the tent, controlling the curriculum.
It is their money. Let them educate their children the way they want to.
You're missing the entire point.
If the government school systems were doing their job, there would be no demand for school vouchers, homeschooling or widespread demand for choice in schools. People would gladly put their kids in public schools! After all, they did for 150 years or so when secondary schools were decent places to send and educate growing children who you deeply care about.
Believe me. It is much cheaper and easier.
The Christian school movement (and later the homeschool movement) got started as a reaction against increasing secularization of teachers and curriculum, unionization (almost impossible to hold teachers and administrators accountable) and moral and educational decay of the public school culture. Parents saw bad things happening to their children. They wanted their kids to have the best education - not be put in a John Dewey straight jacket of PC indoctrination, Liberal cultural agendas and academic leveling as the norm, Their kids were essentially taken completely out of any semblance of parental control and supervision and put under those whom they grew to suspect had other than their best interests at heart.
American public schools were once either without peer or on a par with the very best public school systems anywhere in the world. Can anybody claim with a straight face today's public schools are by any measure even as good as decades ago even with the enhanced technology? Ask yourself, what happened about 40 or so years ago to change all this?
But, few want to "ask" the question. They would rather throw barrels of money at a monumentally failing system or blame concerned parents for pulling their kids out of these failed institutions mainly because they saw their kids being psychologically damaged and given a mediocre to poor education at best.
Sure, there are a few excellent public schools around, but they are mostly the exception not the rule. "Average" by 1950s standard is mostly unattainable today in even the best of public schools.
Today most schools are primarily educational warehouses cast to the lowest common denominator of standards as well as ersatz day care centers where so many kids go to get screwed up instead of educated. They are indocrination centers manned by Liberal ideologues who want to change the culture, not educate children to a high standard and make them independent thinkers.
When that changes, the concerned consumers will gladly return to the public schools. Not until.
"Madrassas" and "Wiccan" schools are entirely beside the point and are strawman arguments meant to divert concern over what has happened to our once great public school system.