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To: GOPPachyderm
That's an interesting proposal. But wouldn't you have inequity between schools across the country?

Yes...but we already have inequality in educational outcomes across the country...and there seems to be little relationship between the quality of education and financial inputs...some of the most costly school systems produce the worst results. For example, in the "Kansas City Experiment" where a Federal court ordered lavish expenditures resulted in no achievement gains.

Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil--more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers' salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.

The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration.

Actually, "inequality" is a good thing, since students and parents are not all the same, they will have a much better chance of getting their needs met by the wider variety of educational choices that would be made available by getting the government out of schooling.

The Alliance for the Separation of School & State has an article addressing this:

"Equality" vs. "Equity"

The incredible diversity of the human being is explored here by George Resch in chapter two of The twelve-year sentence: Radical views of compulsory schooling (ed. William F. Rickenbacker, San Francisco: Open Court Publishing, Inc./Fox & Wilkes, 1998 — reproduced by permission).

According to Resch, the biological, environmental, cultural and religious differences among us are so vast, they pose special difficulties for standardized democratic public education. Resch points toward the need for a free, pluralistic school system in a pluralistic culture, as the best way to guarantee maximum opportunity for each child.

310 posted on 01/06/2006 10:50:12 AM PST by MRMEAN (Corruptisima republica plurimae leges. -- Tacitus)
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To: MRMEAN

Interesting! I think it should be given a chance.


325 posted on 01/06/2006 6:29:54 PM PST by GOPPachyderm
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