New Education Secretary: Will it make a difference?

musicprnt
Wed, 14 Dec 2016 21:17:18 +0000

@kelsmom:
I think I confused Michigan with Indiana,I did some quick research and attempts to pass via ballot initiative a voucher program failed (needless to say, the DeVos were big supporters of the voucher initiative), Indiana does have such a program from what I read. I do know that voucher programs in places like Milwaukee and in Charleston (which were privately funded, to allow kids to go go parochial schools who were in failing public schools) did not work as planned, the outcomes for the kids who moved was pretty much indistinguishable from those who stayed in the public schools.
In some ways, voucher programs for low income kids to escape failing schools to me represent more of the 1950’s myth, the heyday of Catholic parochial schools was during that decade (today the number of kids going to Catholic parochial schools is about a 5th of those who attended in the 1950’s), and people assume that the schools today will do the same thing for the kids. Standard parochial schools would likely be doable for a poor family with a voucher (which generally range from about 4k-7k a year, depending on where someone is), because those schools are subsidized by the church. In terms of other kinds of private schools, it is highly unlikely it would help poor kids get into them, given that in most places private schools like that, religious or secular, are usually many times what the voucher gives, 20k is a typical tuition for a private school these days.

I also question whether the voucher program is to help kids in failing schools, or if the real goal is to make it a subsidy for better off parents who want to send their kids to private schools, especially the kids from evangelical families that want their kids going to ‘their’ schools, I have a big problem with that. If people want to send their kids to private schools they have every right to do so, but I don’t think it should be paid for by the public dime either. My son went to private schools, but I sacrificed to pay the tuition, and I still was paying property taxes on my house that mostly go to the schools, so I am not talking as an outsider looking in. I didn’t think the public schools would do my son well, but I also didn’t think it was right to deny other kids the money I pay towards taxes, any more than I think it right where religious groups take over a town government and slash public school spending because their kids don’t use the public schools, the public schools are a common basis of society and it is to everyone’s benefit to have them there and hopefully be good as well. I don’t think vouchers will solve the problems with failing public schools, I do think that in terms of the schools there are major reforms that are needed, I think schools being off in the summer is an anachronism that hurts poor kids a lot more than the well off, I think there needs to be a better aproach to aduction then the rigid and formulaic way it has been done and continues to be done, but paying people in a sense to take kids out of the public schools isn’t the answer, the claim that vouchers will solve the problem only does so IMO from the viewpoint of those who want the public schools to disappear, and a lot of them are people who see public schools as Godless atheists destroying traditional values. I have no love for the teacher’s unions particularly or the teaching college theorists for that matter, but I also think that the public schools were the bulwark of why the US became what it did.