First Amendment no big deal, high school students say

[lastchance]

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Vouchers allows the free market to close poor schools and reward good schools with more money....

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Yeah. Aren't those the people who need public schooling the most? Do you expect to send everyone from a bad school to a good one?

[Felix_Nietsche]

Yes

[BCPVP]

Would you rather they stayed in the bad ones, lastchance, as long as the teachers get paid more?

[lastchance]

We're both too lazy to do any research on the topic, so let's just leave it at that, k?

[lastchance]

Of course.

Seriously, I think a state tax that is distrubuted to worse schools would work better than mass vouchers.

Vouchers would increase commute time a lot, and under mass vouchers and school closings, richer communities will have to pick up the tab for the increase in school size anyway.

Plus, they should increase teacher pay in exchange for accountability.

[BCPVP]

Well, that's the catch. The Teacher's Union is going to fight for higher wages, but they balk at accountablity.

Then you have to weigh which is more important: that our kids don't have to travel far for school, or that they get a better education at the expense of longer bus/car rides. Adding to that, you can build private schools closer to places with greater demand. I think it's harder to force a bad school to become good than it is to simply open up another school.

Distributing money to bad schools will not necessisarily make them better. In the U.S., we have one of(if not the) highest per student costs yet we aren't in the top ten as far as math, reading, and science. Throwing money at the problem is not solving it.

[dcoles11]

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Teacher's unions have been screwing up public education for the last 40 years through the introduction of Politically Correct school books and GROSS mismanagement of money on TOP HEAVY administration......... The average 20 year old has no clue the subtle brainwashing introduced in the school curriculum...

Competition will cure the country's education woes.... And the public schools that provide a good education, will be flooded with students. Those schools who don't will close and private schools will flourish at their expense.

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It is false to believe that armed with a school voucher, parents could send their kid(s) to any public or private school they wanted. The word private is key in this arguement. A private school has no gun held to its head to accept any student with a voucher, students with a record of bad behavior, a learning disability, or any other of a number of things could be and would easily be rejected. In most areas the only available private schools are of a religious kind and not all parents want to send their kids to a religious school or the families religion may not be represented by any near by private school. If your kid is left out of private school because of any of these reasons he or she will be left to a now even more underfunded public school system.

Also, though school vouchers offer assistance in paying tuition, nothing is keeping a private institution from raising it's tuition cost to the point where vouchers are no longer covering the bill. Look at the costs of higher education in this country to see where private school tuitions could go.

[vulturesrow]

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Seriously, I think a state tax that is distrubuted to worse schools would work better than mass vouchers.

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Of course lets just ignore the fact that most of the school districts with the highest spending have the worst performance! Pumping more money into the system is not the answer. Do you keep pumping oil into the car when the line springs a leak?

[BCPVP]

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A private school has no gun held to its head to accept any student with a voucher, students with a record of bad behavior, a learning disability, or any other of a number of things could be and would easily be rejected.

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Perhaps. But the current system isn't working for those groups anyway. And there are private schools for people with learning disabilities. And I don't hear people advocating the total elimination of public schooling. Just parents having more freedom to determine where their kid has the option of going to school.

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In most areas the only available private schools are of a religious kind and not all parents want to send their kids to a religious school or the families religion may not be represented by any near by private school.

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Perhaps. But like you said, no one is forcing this kids anywhere. The issue is about choice. However, if the influx of demand is greater than available supply, the market will work to balance itself out. More private schools would be built, many with non-religious foundations.

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If your kid is left out of private school because of any of these reasons he or she will be left to a now even more underfunded public school system.

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I don't think there's going to be a mass exodus of kids from schools. But say there were. The reason would be because the public school wasn't keeping up with the private school. Should we force all the kids who have to go to bad schools to stay there just to make sure a small percentage is allowed to stay in a well-funded bad school?

I think you're making the mistake of assuming that well-funded = good. A gov't will waste money because it is a gov't and they can always raise the taxes. But a private school doesn't have such a luxury so they're naturally going to be less wasteful of the revenue they do receive.

[lastchance]

Geez, now you've made me do research. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Better news, you're right.