[MARYLAND JET]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Jet Set Junta[/i]@Oct 23 2003, 02:09 PM
[b] MD Jet, your post made good points and the ones I've heard time and again in the past. But, as people are so quick to point out with most "liberal" fixes, it seems to ignore a lot of the realities outside the box:

A - Who pays for and organizes the transportation for the "poor but concerned" inner city parent who wishes to use a voucher for their kid? That costs a lot more money than simple bus routes that feed to the local school. You criticize "funding education" as a "band-aid" solution when in fact there's an infinite number of [good and bad] ways to fund things, but are advocating a "solution" that basically dooms and screws anyone "left behind" in the "bad" schools.

B - What happens to all of the schools with students "left behind" because of greedy and/or unconcerned parents? Do those become warzones? prisons? The same ideology that insists a child HAS to be born if it was conceived seems to have no problem leaving the children of bad parents (let alone the unlucky children of parents who aren't successful in the voucher lottery) to suffer in an inner city school that would only be further ravaged by vouchers. And what of the teachers who are stuck there who are not getting the (admittedly corrupt and byzantine) union perks due to lack of seniority?

C - How do you ensure all schools have even enrollment, other than to reject a large percentage of vouchers if there's a clear lopsided "preference" of which schools kids SHOULD be sent to instead of their local feeder?

Look, I agree the teachers unions are too beaurocratic and corrupt for their own good. Throwing money at a problem, however, should NOT necessarily mean throwing money directly at the beaurocracy without demanding and enforcing some reform. I'd welcome a candidate from either side of the aisle who has sincere plans to cut administrative overhead WITHOUT necessarily cutting the programs that directly benefit the student. But "No Child Left Behind" has been a complete joke 3 years into Bush's term.

I think there needs to be a way to get schools to compete for funding and special projects instead of just competing for students from anywhere in the county. Whether it be in the form of tax breaks for those district parents, or more slush funding for luxuries once the basic standards of behavior and education are met across the county.

This probably needs its own thread since it came off another "WMD" post... [/b][/quote]
Jetset, you raise interesting questions, my responses :

A- While I haven't thought about all the nuts and bolts about how the transportation would work I'll just say I can't see how that would be a major obstacle, surely some students would face long trips to and from school but if given the choice of having my kid travel even 2 hours to and from school...or...have them stuck in a school with many thugs and malcontents, then I would opt for the long trip, Hopefully the kid will benefit in the long run.

As for the money what I'd like to see happen is for the government to basically freeze educational spending right where it is, since I believe we now spend too much anyway I don't forsee any harm, as a matter of fact if you freeze spending now and do the voucher program you'll have less kids in the failing classrooms so no increase would still be spending more per capita, per child than you were before.

Then I would take the monies that we were planning on increasing education by { cause we increase it every year } and toss that into a voucher program to help defray the costs of schooling / transportation etc.....If the education budget is around 750 billion, and I would estimate it grows by 5 % every year, then we'd start off the voucher program with about 37.5 billion, overall, a good start.

As far as the dooms and screws everyone left behind I don't think it's the system that's doing that, I blame the lack of parenting in alot of cases that dooms too many kids and especially inner city kids, I believe you could equip some of these schools with computer stations that would make NASA jealous, the best teachers money could by, brand new shiny buildings with all the extras and you still wouldn't be able to motivate most of the problem kids, all you would have accomplished is making yourselves feel better about the situation and alot of money wasted, so what do you do with then ?, You leave them where they are and pray some of them see the light and find some way to turn it around which sounds bleak but in reality is all we are doing now anyway.

B - The schools that students were left behind in would not be a pretty place, but, it's not like it's nirvana to be in there right now, I don't know exactly what would happen but they'd be getting more money per student so maybe that would help a little but I doubt it, I guess those students situations wouldn't change a whole lot and they're gonna have a tough time but that's the way it was gonna be anyway, atleast you've taken some students out of there and given them a shot to succeed which is better than we've been doing.

C - I believe that if people are dedicated to making the voucher system work it has the potential to help alot of kids, will there be some inequities as to where some students are placed ?, absolutely, will there be some kids with long commutes ?, you betcha, will it be fair that a situation will probably arise somewhere where some kid that lives down the block goes to a school an hour or so closer to the one you are assigned to ?, no it won't be but life isn't always fair, I think you just gotta look at the big picture, if you've got a class of 40 or so kids who are stuck in a school where the teachers are berated by students every day, where the thugs and malcontents roam the halls looking to cause trouble, where the administrators are unmotivated because they just want to get through the day with as little difficulty as possible, and you can send 15 or so of those kids to other school districts where they are mixed in with kids that are more motivated it can't help but have a positive effect on them and isn't that what it's all about, helping as many students as possible get an education and become productive adults, if that is the goal and we've pretty much proven that no matter how much money you sink into the present system it's never enough then I'm all giving vouchers a try, it can't possibly be any worse than what we're dealing with presently.