Posted on 07/19/2006 7:15:14 PM PDT by ChessExpert
Well, the panic has only set in recently.
Thanks for the ping and keeping us informed.
My state has the highest property taxes in the nation (as my tagline says). School taxes make up the bulk of those taxes, and we homeschool our kids.
I understand the benefit in encouraging competition among schools, but that can be achieved just as well (and free from government intrusion) on the open market.
The solution is not government funding of more schools... The solution is to cut funding of education altogether. The general public has been conned into believing that children won't learn how to read, write, and do arithmetic unless the state is funding schools.
We pay a lot of money in school taxes every year so that the neighborhood kids, whose parents can afford to drive big SUVs and take expensive vacations to Disneyworld, can attend public school everyday. I don't want to have to pay for their private school tuition, either. I want their parents to foot the bill for their own kids, instead of raising school taxes year after year and taking even more money away from my kids.
Your idea is good, but it can't be done all at once. The only way to end the government school monopoly is for individual Americans to stop using public schools. Happily, things are beginning to move in that direction.
Are you familiar with the expression, "Rome wasn't built in a day"?
When people have (or perceive that they have) no good option, the only thing one can do is make the best of a bad situation.
This is it, and as for the goal of phasing out public education, it's a beginning.
I hope that the vouchers will apply to Home Schooling.
Better late than never. But just wait the NEA will go ballistic and spend millions to stop this. Amen.
Remember, their parents are being forced to pay into the system, too. Should their parents have to pay school taxes to foot the bill for all the fortunate, healthy kids to attend school, while their own kids are pushed aside?
I realize you're only expressing a thought openly - a thought I'm sure others have had. But it illustrates the logical conclusion of government funded education. As it grows and grows more and more expensive, they're going to start looking to cut it down. That's what the schools in my area are beginning to do.
I see it differently: Gov't-funded education to help with the severely and profoundly disabled is far more acceptable to me than gov't-funded education for healthy kids of highly-educated parents who should be able to foot the bill and/or educate them on their own.
But I don't want either. Schools receive more funding based on the number of kids who qualify for "special ed", and we know they jump hurdles to qualify anyone they can, including perfectly healthy kids. ;-)
I know families who are really struggling economically, and they're homeschooling. I've met people who have big families living in tiny spaces, people who have serious medical conditions, single moms, you-name-it, all homeschooling.
I'm not saying everyone should homeschool. Educate your children the way you see fit. Charity education can be handled on the local level for the small sections of the population earning very little. The feds don't have to get involved.
I would agree to your plan also...I simply want all American (legal citizen) kids to get the best education possible...and that always involves choice....
I thank God Almighty that the gubmint is not in the "grocery store" bidness....but give em the opportunity and they will....imagine gubmint produce.....Ummmmmmmmm....
I don't know...I don't know that you can actually call it "education". It's more like respite care for the parents or babysitting. I tend to think it ought to be separated from the school system, but that's just me.
As M0sby says, with some students there is progress, but with others, not really, and none is really expected because of the nature of the disability.
But I don't want either. Schools receive more funding based on the number of kids who qualify for "special ed", and we know they jump hurdles to qualify anyone they can, including perfectly healthy kids. ;-)
From what I've seen, that's a myth.
Frankly, I have seen a number of students who are borderline retarded, and the school refuses to place them in special education, saying that they are just slow learners. When you're within 1-2 points on an IQ test, I think it could go either way.
On the other hand, I've seen a number of parents who try to get their children placed in special ed. as ADHD, for instance, rather than just making them behave and do their work. These also tend to be the parents who threaten to sue the school if the students fail, even if it is because the student hasn't done any work.
It's funny you would put it that way. "Babysitting" is what many homeschoolers call the entire public school system - "a glorified babysitting service". But we're talking about the classes with the healthy kids.
I've seen a number of parents who try to get their children placed in special ed. as ADHD, for instance, rather than just making them behave and do their work.
My experience has been just the opposite - I know a lot of parents who were pressured into the ADHD diagnosis and medication by school teachers and administrators with the threat that, if their kids weren't medicated, they'd be placed in special ed. Most of the parents I know removed their children and either started homeschooling or put them in Catholic school.
One major reason why I won't put my sons in school is the tendency for the schools in our area to diagnose ADHD and push medication.
No, but they still make us pay for public schools, whether we use them or not. Until that changes, private education is a much larger financial burden than it would be in a free and fair market.
Though I was initially inclined to support vouchers (at the Federal level), I have to agree with you--they will just create more problems than they solve. The solution is to return more control to the states and local districts, who can then experiment with vouchers and other market-based solutions without the complication of Federal involvement.
A couple of points ...
1.The money doesn't have to be "new" money. The federal government already funds much of the cost of public schools in districts with disproportionate numbers of children from poor families. That appropriation can fall as federal opportunity scholarship money goes up.
2.The Democrats in the Senate cannot filibuster this matter, since it is a budget item.
3.What's MOST important about private schools is that they are free to bring God and prayer into the classroom.
4.A Baptist church in my little town recently re-located and, in conjunction with this, announced that it was going to change from a predominantly black church into a multi-racial church. With the re-location, it opened a K-12 school, and - almost overnight - it became multi-racial.
5.The public schools in my town meet our state's standards, and so no opportunity scholarships would be available to the children attending the other private schools here. I imagine, however, that if the feds started funding opportunity scholarships, we would start agitating our state legislature to expand choice in education.
I have heard that from other people as well. I'm a teacher, but we're not allowed to even suggest that a child might have ADHD, because that's a medical opinion/diagnosis we aren't qualified to make.
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