Posted on 12/26/2014 3:44:37 PM PST by Coleus
Unlike any of the programs identified today as “school choice,” such as opportunity scholarships, charter schools and tax credits, universal school choice transfers control of education back to parents, where it rightfully belongs, by allowing public education funds to follow the child to the school chosen by the parents.
These funds — substantially less than current costs but sufficient to pay for a quality education at nonpublic schools — are made available to every parent in the form of a voucher that can be cashed only by a qualified school. With parental control comes responsibility — a prerequisite to success in any endeavor.
The late, world-renowned economist Milton Friedman first proposed universal school choice in his 1955 treatise “The Role of Government in Education,” where he compared education to other services: “In most industries, consumers are free to buy the product from anyone who offers it for sale, at a price mutually agreed on.
In the process, consumers determine how much is produced and by whom and producers have an incentive to satisfy their customers. These competitive private industries are organized from the bottom up. They have been responsible for truly remarkable economic growth, improvements in products and increased efficiency in production.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
No amount of education in any system is going to set the nation on a correct path. The only thing that will is that Christians repent of their sins and sinfulness, then pray and seek the will and way of the Lord, and turn from their own wickedness, then God will hear from heaven and restore the land and nation. (The wisdom of II Chronicles 7:14)
hear, hear... i have no understanding of how conservative parents can send their children day after day, week after week, year after year to government school...
At the STATE level - Not the federal.
Get the feds completely and totally out of education. If CA or MA wants to teach 4th graders how to put on condoms or use Rube Goldberg contraptions to solve basic math problems, that's their business - and that's THEIR money, not mine.
What happens when students show up who don't speak English, can't read, or have attitude? When they start threatening and intimidating students?
Hold students and parents accountable in their own neighborhoods. Shipping the li'l darlings somewhere else enables and spreads bad behavior.
I'm not inventing this scenario. It's already happening where there is open enrollment.
If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me.
[William Shakespeare (1564-1616), British dramatist, poet. Banquo, in Macbeth, act 1, sc. 3, l. 58-60. Speaking to the three witches.]
Your plan (do nothing) will ensure that they end up voting for a living instead. Universal education, where the money follows the child, will allow millions of students to become productive people, and it will help break the grip the unions, corrupt school boards, and statist politicians have on the education system right now.
Universal school choice will indeed result in the poorest schools being closed. However, those same school buildings, or others nearby, will soon open and will be run by people who know how to educate.
Along with school choice, the school chosen by the parent should be permitted to reject students who refuse to abide by school rules. That alone would bring parents onboard when it comes to discipline, as used to be the case.
Under universal school choice we would find all sorts of creative solutions to educating our kids, including schools that emphasized certain disciplines while others nearby concentrate on other disciplines. For that matter, nothing would stop a parent from sending a child to two or more schools during the week, provided the schools involved were structured to permit it.
I say try it and let’s see what American ingenuity can come up with. I’m reasonably certain the results will be far, far, better than current results.
When a neighborhood school is closed and all of the students end up elsewhere, it closes the lifeline and any community involvement that might have existed.
Have you ever actually been in a school where the top students with the most motivated parents have gone elsewhere? Have you ever been in a classroom that's swelled from 25 to 35 or more students, with the increased number being behind, disruptive, and have an attitude that the rules don't apply to them?
It's not pretty.
Two of my experiences were for private companies, one tutoring/learning program the other SAT prep. They both had pretty lousy curriculum materials and the teachers were no better than in the best of schools, from which many of these students came. Both programs were highly successful, to the point of a money back guarantee if the students followed the rules but didn't have measureable success.
To put it bluntly, they had to shut up and they had to do the work they were told to do. If they didn't, the parents had signed an agreement that the child would be removed and they would not get a refund.
What can American ingenuity come up with? How about going "back to the future" and including HS courses that are hands-on and prepare students for a career? A lot of that American ingenuity came from exposure to shop classes and other practical opportunities.
Yes, exactly why liberals oppose it.
Shutting down public education might accomplish that.
In the meantime, the only immediate method for impacting government education in a positive way is to create competition where the public option either gets better or gets beaten. As a matter of fact, public schools have been shown to improve their test in dramatic fashion by simply threatening to offer vouchers (see David Figlio's research).
If the school isn't serving the community, then it is better to let some escape than it is to trap everyone. This is just another way the left has managed to make a large segment of our population dependent on government. Your way ensures that at least another generation will grow up learning to vote for a living.
Before any “choices” are offered, eliminate the NEA, set new standards, test teachers abilities and then and only then offer such a school as an option.
you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink
you can force a feral to school, but you can’t make him think
Worth repeating...
"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."
Vouchers give Christian parents a chance to raise their children in a godly manner. It's an improvement over the status quo, so there's no reason for Christians to oppose it.
Do you think that an individual parent has any power over his local school?
Regardless, even if the school board cared about the desires of an individual parent, that responsiveness wold pale in comparison to the responsiveness to a customer who can flee at any time.
The money Friedman would attach to each student remains TAX DOLLARS and carries with it government control.
This is the strongest (and only?) argument against school vouchers. But in the worst-case scenario, a tax-funded school voucher program would simply revert to the status quo ante. Here's why.
Suppose that after the implementation of a voucher program the DOE decides to regulate non-governmental schools so severely that they become as bad as the few remaining government-run schools. In that case, the people who can now afford to send their children to private schools would still be able to send their children to non-voucher-redeeming schools, i.e., private schools as we know them today. We would have reverted to the status quo ante.
But this will not happen. If the government moves to severely restrict a Montessori school that parents have carefully chosen for their child, these voucher-holding parents will fight like badgers against the regulations. Parents who had chosen Hebrew, Baptist, Catholic, moonbat, or Waldorf schools would react similarly.
All of these parents would be united and highly motivated to fight against government control, and they would recognize the government as the enemy of parental rights.
This would represent an enormous improvement over the current situation. And I can't imagine the government winning this battle.
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