Posted on 06/30/2005 8:26:26 AM PDT by cinives
Interesting approach. I think a lot of homeschoolers do essentially that. Homeschool entirely through 8th grade, and then phase in community college courses and/or individual high school courses in school districts which allow that.
Another important issue, though, is the huge numbers of kids who just shouldn't be doing high school or college academic work at the traditional age. We're spending colossal amounts of education for kids in the 14-22 age range, which is a time when most them really care about nothing that isn't driven by hormones and/or lack of life experience. Except for the small minority who are really academically self-motivated at that age, they'd be better off doing something like working at McDonald's, and maybe taking one course at a time that meets 2-3 times a week, until such time as they are serious about pursuing education.
It's a horribly common pattern in the U.S. that young people totally waste their time in high school and college, while taxpayers and parents are footing the huge bill for the illusion that they are "studying" full time. Then when they reach their mid 20s or early 30s or whenever they get a clue, they'd really like to do it all over again and get a serious education that will land them good and steady employment, but the money's all been spent and nobody's offering them a free ride anymore, now that they're really serious about studying.
"every government dollar comes with strings attached"
This must never be forgotten.
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Yes, especially with the Bush 'faith based' ploy that will as Roy Black said, corrupt government and destory religion.
I agree Vouchers are flawed. Charter schools are teh answer, except that they should be considered for profit private schools and all private schools should be cosniderd charter schools:
http://www.neoperspectives.com/charterschoolsexplained.htm
I must agree. While vouchers would have the desirable effect of damaging the public schools and perhaps destroying the teachers' unions (an effect better than the first), it would bring most of homeschooling under direct government control--which will be a problem directly.
I have seen proposals in the past for a tuition tax credit instead of a voucher. What say you?
Why get the government involved at all ? As an example, catholic parochial schools educate the K-8 group at a cost of about $ 2000 per year. If I took my property taxes as somewhat standard for a suburban area, I could pay to put 4 kids thru K-8 without one additional dime.
Why do all of you insist the government still has a role at all ? No tax credits, no vouchers, no property taxes, no state subsidies, no federal tax dollars. You would be surprised how cheap education would be, and how well accomplished kids would become when it becomes a voluntary activity.
In colonial days, an educated citizen used to spend no more than 3 years in a school situation, and some additional years before that at home spending a few hours a day at home learning to read, write, and do arithmetic. The statistic is that 97% of the population was at least literate(could read). Boys used to start attending Harvard University at 14 or 15. Are we intellectually inferior than our ancestors ? Men and women became productive members of the business community without 16 years of schooling. And please, don't use technology as the excuse for a greater need for education. Kids teach themselves computer skills with no problem.
Government has no business at all in the educational field except to indoctrinate the young and control society.
No. We homeschool, and we are pretty confident that our childeren will be done with High School by ages 14 or 15.
Why do all of you insist the government still has a role at all ?
I don't insist this at all. (I merely posted this for comment, not to endorse it.) I agree that the ideal, perfect-world situation (and the one that I would pick when and if I am in charge of these things) would be to get government completely out of this field.
As a practical matter, however, I don't see them getting out of the "education" business (unless the government goes out of business altogether), and I would be interested in the possiblity of getting some of my taxes back that I'm paying into a failed "education" system that I have opted out of. Tuition tax credits seemed like they might be a less-intrusive method of doing this than vouchers. If it meant having to knuckle under to government's rules and indoctrination, however, they can keep the money. (Which is why I wouldn't do a voucher, BTW, for the reasons that have been discussed in the article.)
Government has no business at all in the educational field except to indoctrinate the young and control society.
Agreed. That's the biggest reason that we homeschool.
Nope, no thanks. I'm sick of the government trying to manipulate people's behavior through complicated tax schemes -- and a tax credit such as you propose would certainly not be made available to "high income" people (and like the current "alternative minimum tax" abomination, that would end up including people who live in very expensive parts of the country, who are struggling to pay for a very modest lifestyle -- did you see the article in the NYT a couple of days ago about the cheapest apartment for sale in Manhattan? $215,000 will get you a whopping 180 square feet, and of course on top of the mortgage you have to pay the coop/condo's monthly maintenance fee, which is usually well into the hundreds even for a tiny apartment, and if you want a parking space that will run another $350/month or so, so you'll probably decide to do without both the car and the parking space, even if you're making low 6 figures a year.).
And of course it's higher income people who currently pay a disproportionate percentage of the public school-supporting taxes, have fewer children on average than average and lower income people, and are usually paying the full tab for private schools for their own few children, while also paying the tab for other people's children to attend the public schools.
Enough already. Shut down all the public schools and hand out vouchers in the exact same amount for every child of a U.S. citizen. Anybody who wants a more expensive school for their child than the voucher will buy, can pay the difference out of pocket.
I agree with you, but from a political sense, it makes more sense to move to charter schools first, (as documented by my previous link), and then move to the pure libertarian system wherby eduacation is in the hands of the people and not in the power of government at all.
Step by step.
How about NOT making it a government dollar by never taking it from the parent in the first place? Allow parents a tuition tax credit per child sent to school.
Who the hell is "having eight kids?" Or is this just some hypothetical?
Is education a basic need? Probably. But you have to admit there is a terrible amount of diploma inflation out there - the need to have a piece of paper to prove you're somebody. It costs more to prove you're somebody these days than it used to, and you can't blame parents for inflating the value society puts on what is usually a pretty worthless peice of paper. To say they can't have 8 kids unless they can afford some some artificial pedigree is absurd. Government broke the education system, not the parents trying to provide a good start for their kids.
Most government dollars should never have left a private citizen's pocket in the first place. Sometimes you gotta take some risk to rectify a situation.
My thoughts exactly. There is so much diploma inflation today that Hertz Rent-A-Car hires only college graduates for their counter help. Yes, their counter help. You know, the person who helps you fill out the blank spaces in the form, runs your credit card, and says, Have A Nice Day. You need a $ 66,000 college education for that ? A person with a 10th grade education of 20 years ago would do that job just fine.
The only reason I don't like the tuition tax credit idea is that it implies that taxes for education were extracted already. I don't believe gradualism works at all. The only way to quit a bad habit is cold-turkey. The problem with gradualism is, the system still doesn't work, and you will get those on the left who will blame it on not enough government influence.
With your permission, I'd like to copy your response over at the other thread so that people investigating this option would have only one place to look...
Permission granted!
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