RoR: Forum

Steve:

I disagree with a portion of your post. I really like the voucher system as a way to shift from what we have now - an effective monopoly by government schools - to a fully operational private school system.

Then, make the voucher system an opt-out, a credit to go to private school, not a chutes and ladders between adjacent public schools that effectively punishes successful school districts and rewards failures.

The public school districts that aren't failing are not failing because they aren't overloaded with cultural dumbasses, period. All this public-public transfer voucher system does is chutes and ladders dumbassess around, because the public schools at the other end are not mandated to deal with the real problem, which is, public school tolerance of dumbass gangsta wannabees.

Private schools should have no trouble dealing with dumbass behavior(by booting them out of school and not tolerating them in the least), but public schools cannot effectively do that.

And if a private school gets too jiggity with the tolerance of gangsta wannabe dumbassdom, then if that is unacceptable, then there are always other private schools. Private schools compete by following successful practices, not totally random and subsidized and mandated social experiments. Those are left for the public schools to struggle with, as mandates.

So, I agree that the voucher concept is a good thing, but to work, it has to punish dumbass social experiments in all public schools, not just shuffle dumbasses from ill equipped public school to to ill equipped public school.

Post 21

Monday, April 4, 2011 - 4:34pm

Fred,

My goodness!! What in the world would ever make you think I wanted to restrict vouchers schools to this or that kind of public school? Of course any private school could take the voucher check. To me, that is the whole point, the only point, the only reason for having a voucher system. It is to phase out public schools. To get rid of them.

That is why my second sentence said, "I really like the voucher system as a way to shift from what we have now - an effective monopoly by government schools - to a fully operational private school system."

After three or four years, and when people are happier with their schools they've chosen by the voucher system, and after there has been time for fair competition to vastly increase the number of private schools we might find that there are still one or two public schools left (competition would certainly not have left very many). At that time it would be wise to just start closing those few remaining public schools to complete the transition from government schools to private schools. Then keep decreasing the amount of money in each voucher to complete the transition from tax dollars spent on education, to private funds being spent on education.

I also wrote in that post, "Year 11, the voucher system goes out of existence and parents have gone from paying nothing to paying the full tuition of whatever school they choose in gradual steps." In my mind it would never ever be possible for a government school to keep up the decreasing costs and increasing quality and benefits of a private school - that is, they won't make it in a free market. And when the voucher system ends, any public school that was still in existence would lose all of its tax funding (vouchers) - it would have become a private school.

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 4/04, 4:41pm)

Post 22

Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - 4:55am

Steve:

My goodness!! What in the world would ever make you think I wanted to restrict vouchers schools to this or that kind of public school? Of course any private school could take the voucher check. To me, that is the whole point, the only point, the only reason for having a voucher system. It is to phase out public schools. To get rid of them.

I don't think that.

My original post in total, was an objection to the concept of 'free choice' vouchers applied to public-public school transfers. As in the following, the first line from my post 14:

The worst solution is a combination of public education and 'free choice' vouchers, which dumps students from 'failing' public districts into adjoining public districts.

As in, what the newly elected PA GOP Governor is proposing, and what my wife, president of one of the local public schoolboards, is scratching her head over as we speak. It is not the voucher system you are describing, which I agree would and should help break the public monopoly.

People in this area at first knee-jerk reacted when they heard 'voucher' and said 'that's a great idea! about time!'

But it is not what they think it is. It is, in fact, a redistributive scheme, but in this case, what is being redistributed is not money, but problematic dumbasses that no public school is equipped to adequately deal with, that only private schools would be(even if they were private reform schools with bars.)

It's like having two barrels of apples side by side, one over-run with mold, and one with fresh apples. What this 'public-public free choice voucher' system does is, provides a public shortcut to spread the mold around and ruin more barrels.

My argument is that, at the very least, formulate such public-public transfers(not the voucher system you are describing)such that the result is to rescue good apples from the rotten barrels, and leave the self-destructive gangsta wannabee shit for brains in place until they figure out the calculus of their own choices and behavior. IOW, make it selective, and add responsibility to the process.

Maybe some will never accept that responsibility, but making it painless for them to also disrupt and destroy currently successful adjacent school districts via these 'free choice public-public' voucher systems is just accelerating our current race to the bottom.

Post 23

Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - 10:43am

Fred,

I knew we really weren't in disagreement in this area - not on any principles.

I guess we should expect that moving forward in this area will involve lots of ups and downs especially those that are caused by the people who resent any move towards a good voucher system. They will work from the inside to corrupt it and turn it into something opposite or sabotage any chances at success.

One of the under-appreciated mechanisms of progressivism is their acceptance of program failures - even the ones they love. They put together a program full of flaws or allow a program to sabatoged by poor administration, or allow it to be corrupted and turned into something else... and we are puzzled because we can see that it won't work. But they understand that each failure, each collapse, is new crisis to be treasured for its opportunity to increase government participation, to exact more control, to "progress."

Post 24

Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - 12:21pm

"They will work from the inside to corrupt it and turn it into something opposite or sabotage any chances at success."

Reminds me of what I see happening - eventually - on just about 'every' PUBLIC internet discussion forum. Seems to me this site has managed to created some sort of "dumbass" repellant: wouldn't it be great if the same sort of methodology could be implemented with our educational system.

Post 25

Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - 1:15pm

I witnessed the collapse of a once great local school district. It took a few short decades, maybe two.

Had nothing to do with the schools, with the teachers, with the books, with the school district, with the system.

It had everything -- 100% -- to do with the change in local culture.

And, we adults are all standing around, afraid to point out the obvious. When the local culture is over-run with gangsta wannabe shit for brains showing nothing but contempt for their opportunity at a free education, then it is not the system which is 'failing,' -- other than its inability to adequately discipline dumbasses intent on being dumbasses, who slide through with an ingrained sense of entitlement prepared only for their entry into what they believe is going to be the endless Thirteenth Grade of Life and more of same.

A culture that is largely so mind numbingly stupid that, in spite of public free federal and state breakfast programs costing them nothing, cannot find the brainpower or character to insist that their children show at school to eat their free breakfast and be prepared to learn in school, as opposed to drift off, half malnourished, and fall asleep in the classrooms. (Actual lament of educator in 'failing' school district.)

This isn't "rich vs. poor." This is smart vs. dumbass.

Well, screw dumbass. Coddling dumbass is not why I was born.

Post 26

Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - 1:30pm

Fred, I sanctioned that.

Post 27

Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - 3:25pm

Terry Peters: "Seems to me this site has managed to created some sort of "dumbass" repellant"

The way that members here meticulously scrutinize every aspect of each other's posts: grammar, paragraph form, word meaning, logical fallacies, etc... I think its embarrassing for a "dumbass" when they post here. :)

Cheers to my fellows!
Dean
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores on 4/05, 3:26pm)

Post 28

Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - 6:32pm

Terry,

Reminds me of what I see happening - eventually - on just about 'every' PUBLIC internet discussion forum. Seems to me this site has managed to created some sort of "dumbass" repellant.

We do try to be a robust beacon of light in the contemporary thunderstorm. The average half-life for dumbasses around here is about 3 weeks.

:-)

The half-life for smart-asses though ... well, I wouldn't want to speculate on that.

:-)

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 4/05, 6:33pm)

Post 29

Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - 8:07pm

I think tax credits might be a better option than the voucher system which I won't be surprised to learn will eventually bring government into the private education business if it is not in already.

Post 30

Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - 12:37am

Michael,

I don't understand your suggestion of tax credits.

We all pay property taxes (directly or though the higher prices that landlords charge those that rent or lease since landlords have to cover their property tax bills). This money goes to the local government to pay for schools (and other things). You pay based upon the assessed value of your property. If someone has no children at all, they pay those taxes anyway. And if they live in a very nice house, they pay a lot. Presumably they won't be able to apply for a tax credit since they have no child. Or they will and they will get a lot because of the expensive property but having no kids it won't go to any school.

On the other hand, a family that lives in a hovel and has 5 kids pay very little in property taxes. Not enough to pay actual tuition costs. Do they get tuition free from public schools? Assuming they don't make that much money, they won't get much of a tax credit and they won't be able to pay tuition at any school. If public schools remain 'free' because they are paid for with the local taxes, they they still have that unfair advantage that keeps private schools from doing much competition.

Why should we pay taxes to the local government based upon property valuations, then apply for a tax credit from the Federal government when the tax credit won't be able to pay tuition for some families and will be more than needed for those in expensive houses? And the idea is to make a very rich, attractive market for private schools to pop up - an environment where they will easily out compete the public schools who will never be able to provide either the quality or the low costs.

And the tiny few public schools that do stay alive in that competitive environment will doing so fairly - no government subsidy beyond that same voucher check private schools get - so when they are totally cut loose and forced to list themselves as private organizations at the end of the 10 year program - when the vouchers are stopped - there will be no more public schools.

Post 31

Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - 3:29am

Terry -

Smartassdom is encouraged. Dumbass-ity, not so much.

An occasional dumbass will offer entertaining target practice for members, however. Its good to sometimes help keep these brainiacs out of those coaxing ivory towers, and all that. :)

Post 32

Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - 7:46am

Michael:

I think tax credits might be a better option than the voucher system which I won't be surprised to learn will eventually bring government into the private education business if it is not in already.

Ouch! You mean, screw another pooch. Good point about the likely impact of vouchers; they will come with unanticipated entanglements.

Post 33

Thursday, April 7, 2011 - 9:09pm

Steve,

Educational freedom means only one thing � no government interference. Put another way, it means the separation of school and state. Government-funded vouchers don�t remove government interference. They reorient and expand that interference, while sailing under the banner of free markets.

The Alliance for the Separation of School and State puts it well:

"By creating a flow of money from the state to private schools, vouchers pave a wide road for additional regulations and controls. 'When you reach for the money is when they slip on the handcuffs.'

"A common control is to require voucher-redeeming schools to administer standardized tests [which is included in NJ�s proposed Opportunity Scholarship Act]. These tests, in effect, dictate the curriculum, as the private schools do not wish to have lower test scores than the public schools.

"The net result of these flaws is that if vouchers become commonplace, private and religious schools will become more and more like public schools. In effect, vouchers and other plans for continuing to use tax revenue for schools will kill the goose that is laying the golden eggs of private education."

While some measure of educational improvement is bound to occur early on,the very advantages of private education that makes parental choice so appealing will eventually be washed away. They will get smothered by establishment conditions attached to their voucher checks, as the bureaucratic handcuffs are slipped on and their entrepreneurial freedom such as it is slips away.

It is a solution for the full government takeover of all education. The right path to take is for a system of comprehensive, non-redistributive tax credits for education

Post 34

Friday, April 8, 2011 - 5:15am

Right, Michael, we agree there. See my post #18 above. We have seen this interference in Michigan. The state constitution prohibits public money for religious instruction. Therefore, the state must ensure that vouchers do not go to schools that teach a religion (versus teaching "religion" as an academic subject, of course). The politics of religion then means that the State can target "conservative" schools and cut them off from voucher funding.

That said, vouchers would surely be - and truly are - better than the compulsory system of neighborhood schools now widely in place.

So-called "magnet" schools are another alternative. Allowing that the entire tax geography is the "neighborhood" then parents sign up first come first served to any school in the city (township, etc.). The good schools draw students.

That does, also, in theory allow schools to specialize. They must offer basically the same course, but the electives are the interest points: orchestras, advanced placements, foreign languages, industrial arts, etc. At least, that is the theory.

For all the theories, the only metric that actually correlates to pupil success is parental involvement. Money and race are not important.

Admittedly - and this is the upside to Fred's point, which, in fact, he ignored - the parents nominally were seeking a better education for their children. That is why they enrolled them there. However, apparently, there was no follow-up. The problem was not that "urban" kids came into his school, but that their parents did not.

It is easier to condemn an unnamed collective as "dumb asses" than it is being a single parent of two teens. So unless we have more than tales out of school, we cannot say which parents of which children needed to be more involved.

In addition, the reality of free will means that bad kids come from good homes and good kids come from bad homes and you have no control over it. I assure you from my studies of delinquency that there have been cases where the parents were (rightfully) accused of physical abuse, but further investigation revealed the child to be the willful perpetrator with the parents forced into a defensive posture in their own home.

I am only saying that institutional solutions of necessity ignore individual cases. That is why the market mode is superior: it allows and rewards individual choices.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 4/08, 5:16am)

Post 35

Friday, April 8, 2011 - 7:11am

Michael:

The problem was not that "urban" kids came into his school, but that their parents did not.

And the parents did not -- just as, increasingly, parents in the suburban schools do not -- because for decades, now, in our national political debate, the focus has been entirely on 'there is something wrong with the system.'

That is a national cultural change, foisted on us by power seeking politicians selling us political solutions to what are really cultural problems.

We have to bring back more 'blame students and their parents first' for their lousy choices and attitudes regarding education, not 'the system.'

Nobody said the problem is racial. But the problem for sure is cultural, and if that correlates by race, then so be it, it is what it is.

Didn't always used to be that way. There was a time in our distant past, when America was building the biggest productive beast on the planet, that parents used to hold their children responsible first for their own outcomes in school, not last.

As well as, even the most basic of basic parenting discipline, such as, 'Eat your breakfast before you go to school.' That fundamental parenting discipline -- once commonplace -- is endemically not happening in these 'failing' districts.

Or 'Is your homework done?'

Or 'It's a school night, you have to get your sleep.'

The most basic of parenting skills, widely not happening, sufficient for educators in 'failing' school districts to notice(kids literally falling asleep in class, undernourished and sleep deprived.)

Parents blaming the districts, the schools, hell, the buildings and the books -- is exactly the problem. "If only I send my kid to a shinier school in a successful district, then they'll fix my kid for me."

If they are going to do that public-public transfer thing, then make it merit based. Grades, behaviour. Save the good apples, and screw the gangsta wannabe shit for brains.

Yes. Cherry pick the 'failing' districts, and reintroduce reward/punishment for good/bad choices. Failure is education, too, and subsidizing failure at the expense of success serves no useful purpose except a race to the bottom.

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 4/08, 8:18am)

Post 36

Friday, April 8, 2011 - 10:53am

Well, Fred, we are still talking about "the schools." True educational freedom is beyond schools. You are telling the medieval lord that his manor should be a market-oriented castle surrounded by a market-oriented community of market-oriented serfs. What we are talking about is a different ethos entirely.

Just as we know there can be no political salvation until there is a philosophical revolution, so, too, is there no way to fix any school "system." It is not just a matter of parental responsibility - though there is that - any more than capitalism will come about from a return to "traditional American values." Objective morality demands rational-empirical truths applied to human action.

In this case, if you were a parent, you would find entrepreneurial opportunities for your child to learn from, putting your kid to work, away from school. I know that there are laws, but you can hide a kid in a family business, even if it is not your family. You can "homeschool" your child and have that include clerking in an office, or whatever. The problem has to be thought through from the ground up, from A is A for education. We have not done that.

In fact, Objectivists pretty much abandon the field to "Montessori." From ages 4 to 5, my daughter attended a Christian Montessori school. We have many of them hereabouts. I took her out after she came home unhappy about something or other and said that she wished she were dead so that she could be in heaven with Jesus. Montessori taught her that. ... or, actually, helped her to discover that on her own (ahem)...

Just a note, Fred...
Our local paper just published the results of the state standard MEAP tests for our county. The suburban/rual (white; Republican) districts did no better and some worse. (One, Manchester, the smallest and most distant, was better.) Here in Ann Arbor, however, where scores were up again, 25% of the people are Asian. Without resurrencting the Chinese Dragon Mother discussion we had here on RoR, the fact is that if you want to define the dumb ass culture by its race, you might not like the outcome. You rattled off in passing doing one's homework. Generally, the performing American kids do theirs -- but no more. They work until the work is done. On the other hand, in Asian homes (my limited experience is with Japanese, not Chinese), kids do a fixed number of hours of homework every night, working beyond the assignments. So, again, you have the wrong model, the losing American system that the perfect not worth the investment when all we need is what is good enough for right now.

Post 37

Friday, April 8, 2011 - 12:03pm

Michael,

You said, "The state constitution prohibits public money for religious instruction..."

I haven't read the wording of the constitution, and I do agree with separation of church and state, but I would argue that giving the parents a voucher that can be accepted anywhere that meets a valid definition of a school would not be a violation, but on the other hand, to tell the parents where they can send their children such that this or that religion being taught made a school unable to accept the voucher would be a violation. Once money is given to a private citizen they should not be told that there are religion-based restrictions on its use. Would a school that taught atheism be prohibited? The key to this is that the parent's choice determines the recipient, and that is very different from the government ear-marking taxpayer money to go to a church.

And the voucher system law should be designed to be self-terminating and in such a fashion that it leaves only private schools and no more vouchers.

Post 38

Friday, April 8, 2011 - 3:47pm

Michael:

Here in Ann Arbor, however, where scores were up again, 25% of the people are Asian. Without resurrencting the Chinese Dragon Mother discussion we had here on RoR, the fact is that if you want to define the dumb ass culture by its race, you might not like the outcome.

My point was about culture(for now the third time), and your example regarding asian culture reinforces the point, and I really wasn't asking for your help.

So, maybe not.

Screw white republicans. Screw race. Screw whites. Screw mobs in general. There are plenty of white trash gangsta wannabe shit for brains to go around.

Post 39

Friday, April 8, 2011 - 4:56pm