Posted on 11/07/2007 2:39:08 AM PST by The Raven
Voters decisively rejected the will of the Utah Legislature and governor Tuesday, rejecting what would have been the nation's most comprehensive education voucher program in a referendum blowout.
...
Voucher supporter Overstock.com chief executive Patrick Byrne - who bankrolled the voucher effort - called the referendum a "statewide IQ test" that Utahns failed.
"They don't care enough about their kids. They care an awful lot about this system, this bureaucracy, but they don't care enough about their kids to think outside the box," Byrne said.
(Excerpt) Read more at origin.sltrib.com ...
The upside, is that it appears (from their statements) that they will not be union members next year. Hopefully, this will serve as an eyeopener to other teachers as well on how the union operates.
In earlier days I think the mindset in Utah was that public schools were the Mormon’s private schools.
This is just proof of that.
And also proof of how incredibly stupid the average voter has become!
IMO, Utah is far from the best state for this type of system - it's not as conservative as many think.
See post#19 (especially, the part of Utah being deceptive for conservatives).
Let me rephrase:
Utah is far from the best state to attempt passing a voucher system...
Utah seems conservative in the sense that they are reluctant to change the status quo, thus they rejected a major change such as vouchers.
People need to remember that all red states are not the same, just as all blue states aren't the same. Maybe in a less traditional but Republican state, vouchers would have a better chance.
No, it’s not permanent. It is slowly collapsing all over the country. Another 15-20% of kids will eventually leave, and the system will go into financial cardiac arrest. The collapse needs to be accelerated, however, because the public school system destroys more lives and more of our culture every additional day it is in existence. Voucher politics is not the answer - taking children out is. Deprive the schools of enough revenue units and its over. Even if I were wrong about this, and I’m not, parents who take their children out of the government school system are least rescuing their children from a dark and decaying system that takes otherwise normal children and turns them into functional illiterates with dead souls.
That was the impression I got when I lived there. Let's face it, vouchers are seen as helping students who go to religious schools, and those religions aren't the majority one in Utah.
“Smartest State” rankings: http://www.morganquitno.com/edrank.htm
Factors used in determining “the smartest state” rankings:
http://www.morganquitno.com/edfact06.htm
Actually, taking you kid out wouldn’t hurt them (at least in Utah). Here, property and income taxes go to schools regardless if you child is in the school or not. Taking kids out would only give them more money (still get the tax $, but no kid to educate).
That would be odd, because every state I’m aware of has an ADA formula that also applies to federal money. Fewer children in a given school means fewer federal and other dollars. I don’t believe that Utah has a system that would give the same amount of money to a school that has 100 students as it would to a school with 10,000 students. My taxes certainly go to the school system whether I have a child there or not, but whether my child is there affects funding formulas.
When vouchers are proposed in amounts that are a tiny fraction of public schools’ and private schools’ per student expenditures, it’s little wonder most people fote against them. Their taxes will go up and they still won’t be able to afford to put their children in private schools. I want to see vouchers in exactly the same amount as public school per student expenditure. THAT would shut down a lot of public schools and force dramatic change at nearly all the rest, and cause a wide array of private schools to pop up. There should also be a mechanism to make the funds available to homeschoolers (including those who are schooling OTHER people’s children in their own homes).
Another thing to remember is if people pulled their kids from the union schools, funding may be hit, but, more importantly, the union would loose an awful lot of power and members ($$$).
Presumably there is also much less dissatisfaction with the public schools in Utah, since there is one overwhelmingly dominant religion, and the schools no doubt reflect its values to a large degree. Outside of SLC and immediate surroundings, a public school would be hard pressed to find any teachers to hire who aren’t at least somewhat active Mormons.
I think this might have been used as a stepping stone for such. I also didn’t like the part of the bill that gave the rich only $500 for taking their kid from the public school while the middle class and poor got $3000. What makes my kid worth $3000, but a rich person’s child worth only $500?! Especially, I’m willing to bet that the rich guy pays way more (monetarily and proportionally) into the system than the poor/middle class.
Over the last few years, there seems to have been an upsurge in school teacher sex/abuse scandals (last week, I think another two teacher-student sex charges came out). That doesn't reflect the values of society but it keeps happening. Again, most people here are pretty clueless to this stuff, however, and I don't know what it will take for them to wake up.
I had heard stories about how nonconformist it was outside of the greater metropolitan area, but I thought most of that was rogue polygamists and such. I guess with Batter's experience, there are a lot of "just leave me alone to do my own thing" types in rural Utah, but I really don't think they had much influence over the election.
Rural Utah is virtually 100% Mormon (mostly the normal kind, and the others have their own private schools). Of course, not everybody is is active or even believing, but outward shows of reasonably conforming to local culture would be virtually essential to getting a job as a teacher or school administrator (and pretty much any job).
It’s not like there’s a population of card-carrying ACLU members available to hire from, and even if there were a few here and there, they’d be unlikely to get hired, and even more unlikely to be able to influence the goings-on at school in a way that was in conflict with the Mormon-dominated local culture. It would be like a staunch conservative getting hired by the NYC public school system. Every now and then one probably slips through, but none is ever able to make a dent in the status quo.
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