Posted on 02/19/2017 5:54:30 AM PST by davikkm
Homeschooling families throughout the nation are voicing opposition to a Republican-sponsored school choice bill that they say will ultimately result in regulation of homeschooling in the United States. Many parents who homeschool their children, as well as their numerous local and national homeschooling organizations, are protesting the bill, introduced by Iowa Rep. Steve King (R), and calling upon the members of Congress who are its sponsors to leave homeschooling families alone.
School vouchers created by H.R. 610, the Choices in Education Act of 2017, would be a slippery slope toward more federal involvement and control in homeschooling, asserts William Estrada, director of federal relations for the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
I’m all about school choice. It can only help to allow parents to choose how and where their kids are educated. I’m gobsmacked that some homeschoolers are opposed.
Right now, homeschoolers (and private school parents) still have to pay taxes to support public schools...that is, this set of parents is double-paying...once for public school taxes and again for private school tuition or homeschooling expenses. This bill wouldn’t take those taxes away but would make it so they only pay once for their choice.
It seems homeschoolers may have some tin foil on here.
Private schools now may choose not to accept a student and to kick students out. With this bill, that may then become true for public schools...and that will help.
When our nation was founded there was virtually ZERO PUBLIC EDUCATION at national or state level.
The state systems of public education emerged in the 1800s based on what Europe was doing with education and led by Protestants like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s husband in Ohio.
Can’t fully prove since I don’t have the quotes but the times in which public education was being established were times when Irish immigrants were coming into the country and Catholicism was feared by the Protestants.
There were riots in the 1840’s and the Know-Nothing Movement in the 1850’s.
My grandmother who was born in 1893 and passed away in the 1990’s had a name for the old public schools, “Protestant schools” she called them.
I was really hoping DeVos was hired to dismantle the Federal DOE. Maybe not.
1) Businesses pay property and other taxes and those costs are passed on to you in the form of higher prices on every good or service that you and I use. At every level of manufacture, from getting the raw materials out of the ground to finally sitting on the store shelf, each business passes on its school taxes to the final consumer. You and Me!
2) And...Then schools accounting would make an Enron accountant blush. Many expenses that private schools must cover are supplied by the state and county governments with government schooling. For example, in my state, retired teachers are considered state employees and their pensions and health expenses come from the general state tax revenue. School security, some maintenance, and landscaping are provided by the county. All of this is paid by **me** and my fellow citizens.
I can understand the goal of ensuring every child has the opportunity for a decent education, and that it will require tax money. That doesn’t translate to the state providing only one schooling option and refusing to let the funds be transferred to a school of the parents’ choice.
And...Yes,...The expression, “Protestant schools” was still in use even in the 50s, especially among the nuns who staffed the Catholic schools I attended.
No. The State needs to be OUT also. as the above poster wrote so elegantly—as Socrates brilliantly noted, the State will never educate; it will just make slaves for the state:
“You’re correct in the sense that the Constitution does not even mention one word about education, but incorrect that education is a right of the States. It is a responsibility of parents to ensure the education of their children.
U.S. Constitution, Article [X] (Bill of Rights, Amendment 10 - Reserved Powers)
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Education is a “power” reserved to the people, who may choose to retain that power or delegate it to whomever they wish. “
Education of a child is the biological parents’ Natural Duty (which is embedded in the Constitution) and is an unalienable Natural Right of the parents and child from God and can’t be given away or taken by the State.
Liberal busybodies never leave anyone alone.
Job #1 should be getting rid of Common Core (or whatever ‘they’ ultimately call it) and STOP the indoctrination.
Without that being accomplished, nothing else really matters.
The risk is that private schooling or homeschooling will morph into government schooling with all of its controls and evils.
However...I support vouchers, tax credits, and charters. The goal and push must always be toward complete separation of school and state. We are a generous nation. Charity will step up to care for the education of the poor.
What is your solution?
How do we shut down the government schools?
“”On an annual basis, on a date to be determined by the Secretary, each local education agency shall inform the State educational agency of the number of eligible children within each local educational agencys geographical area whose parents elect to home-school their child.””
It should read “legal resident children”. Far too many schools count illegal aliens children as students to pump up the money.
“” He said he and his staff have asked homeschoolers to hold back on their open criticism of the bill until he could meet with them.”””
Does he mean he plans to travel to all fifty states and talk to every one or just the lobbyists?
I agree - leave home schoolers out of this. The CRITICAL step is to break the Government/Educational Complex, and this can be done without offering any goodies to home schoolers...setting up states to regulate them is not doing home schoolers any favors.
“Private schools only because they keep the riffraff out. School choice is going to completely ruin private schools by letting them in.”
That’s not necessarily true - no school will be required to take vouchers, and there’s no reason that the riff-raff that has to be allowed to ruin government schools, will be protected to do the same in private schools. That is a construct of the left - called ‘mainstreaming’, and private schools will have nothing to do with that - they will kick out the troublemakers.
As to school choice overall - our system is TERRIBLY BROKEN simply because 90% of the country either doesn’t have the resources to get their kids out of public schools, or doesn’t set that as a priority (meaning they THINK they don’t have the resources, which is no different than not having the resources). Only when these parents are empowered to get their kids out, will the monopoly start to be broken.
So, yes, there is a good part of the Republican Establishment that agrees with you - keep the government out of private education, even if it means that 90% of our kids have to suffer through today’s government schools, but most here don’t think that’s good for the country overall, and we want to see government schools DEFEATED, once and for all...and if it potentially, possibly, means some level of risk to private schools, so be it.
Only humans have rights, God-given. Not governments, not sub-groups of societies, not animals, not plants, not rocks.
There is no 'right' to education, health insurance, home insurance, car insurance, pet insurance, food, housing, welfare checks, reparation, violent protests or safe spaces.
There is a right to pursue such things as part of life, liberty and happiness, so long as another's rights are not infringed by it.
If I’m not mistaken this ESTRADA guy was going along with this Republican agenda item...I guess somebody finally schooled him. I recently got a full bio report for board members at a Bill and Melinda Gates CHOICE/CHARTER school. It is a very leftist yet corporate board.
Choice is really not choice at all. We are better off without it.
Thanks for the reply wintertime.
I don’t understand homeschooler objection. The risk that homeschooling or private will end up controlled by government exists now - and imo this bill lessens that risk.
Maybe homeschoolers and/or private schools see it differently.
But when individuals have choice - any choice at all - in how their taxes are spent that’s a good thing imo.
From what I get from the article, some homeschoolers say this bill makes things worse.
I’ve said for years that the elimination of compulsory education under the law would be the single most effective way to change this country in a positive way.
BINGO The money follows the child (ESSA) child goes into a building using fed money-school must meet Title IX regs...etc..you get the picture.
On top of that ESSA unleashed a plethora of psychological services.
Lamar Alexander if he backs it you know its trouble
“What is your solution?
How do we shut down the government schools?”
Well stated. Probably not here, but those on the left will use that argument to trick our side into NOT supporting vouchers (i.e., be careful what you wish for, as we, the government, will go after your precious private schools if we, the government, start sending money to them). And a lot of people on our side believe that...even though it’s certainly not true at the college level (other than some recent Title 9 crap from Obama), so why would it have to be true at lower levels?
As to your question above...they don’t have an answer...or their implied answer is that government, at all levels, get out of funding education...and so kids whose parents are unwilling (or unable) to cough up the money needed to educate them will simply be out of luck and will have to go through life illiterate. They won’t say that...but they certainly imply that.
Besides keeping the riffraff out, most private schools are good because they have very high involvement by concerned parents.
Suddenly millions of people who never considered private schools will send their kids to a school with no thought by those who worked hard to make the schools great.
It’ll be like illegals coming into Southern USA because it is better than Mexico, but suddenly it becomes just like Mexico.
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