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Actually, the vast majority of school districts in the U.S. have bureaucracies of about the size of medium corporations or, in many cases, even smaller. The US Dept. of Ed. and all 50 state depts. of ed., however, would shrink not in the least if vouchers were instituted--in fact, they would have to become even bigger bureaucracies to administer the vouchers.


Of course you feel that way; after all, the free market has always proven itself the best answer in the past: child labor made good sense; keeping wages at a subsistence level helped keep costs down and profits up; unchecked accumulation of wealth made it easier to keep track of who owned what; health benefits? the workers look healthy to me; energy deregulation--can you say 'rolling blackout'?; and who doesn't miss the 12-18 hour work day?

Or we could talk about privatization--the instances when privatization resulted in improved or comparable service at a cheaper price are the minority; in most instances privatization resulted in cheaper but inferior service, and it only remains cheaper until the public system it replaced is totally dismantled, then after a few years citizens find they're paying more than the public service would have cost and receiving much poorer service than what they'd enjoyed before privatization.

Under a voucher system, nobody wins but private schools; however, suggesting that any teachers would benefit goes beyond ridiculous. Unless private schools raise their tuition fees substantially (thus pricing themselves out of the 'good deal' category), they won't be able to afford qualified teachers. However, since vouchers would drain money from an already inadequately funded educational system, the public schools will become even more limited in their ability to attract and keep qualified teachers, much less provide necessary materials for their students. The teachers who don't quit or aren't laid off, along with the students who are left behind (which will likely be most of them including the most disadvantaged), will face even larger class sizes, even fewer resources with which to teach, and more disciplinary problems. But I see how this situation could be mistaken as more beneficial to teachers.

Mills, I don't think the people advocating for vouchers understand anything about logistics.

You might consider those variables in your own thinking on the subject; my point was that the SAT score statistics, such as what you cited, typically don't (though Timberlandko's article did, but only with regard to Catholic schools). And it's been my experience that many, if not most, parents will not exert themselves to take advantage of opportunities to enhance their children's educations. As a teacher, I can't even get parents to lean on their kids to do their homework; despite the fact that the school provides bus tokens for public transportation if kids miss their regularly scheduled school bus, the after-school tutoring programs attract only a few students (in a school with nearly 3,000 students)--parents are aware of these programs, but don't take advantage of them.


Not assumptions, but conclusions based on research, observations, and good old fashioned common sense--there's no reason to believe that subsidizing private schools will help correct the problems of public education because there's no logical reason to believe that private schools, in general, are really doing a better job--they simply don't operate in the same social reality as public schools. Educational experts--actual educational experts, not idealogues from conservative think tanks--have been making sound suggestions for years that are either ignored or implemented in such a half-ass fashion that they're doomed to fail.


Actually, I didn't say so. In fact, I said just the opposite. A public school student from a higher socio-economic background will tend to do as well on standardized tests as a private school student from a higher socio-economic background; a private school student from a lower socio-economic background will tend to perform as poorly as a public school student from a lower socio-economic background. The reason that private school test score averages are higher is because they have a much higher percentage of students from higher socio-economic backgrounds.


Aside from Edison schools which are operated for profit, most private schools are not operated for profit, and the schools catering to the children of the upper class don't need the money and charge much more for tuition than is spent per pupil in public schools (thus, we may presume, a voucher would be little more than a nice discount at these institutions). And privatization is nothing more than an ideological compulsion on the part of the right--it's never been shown to consistently offer better service at a better price than the public service-providers it seeks to replace.



The ACLU doesn't deal in morality--that's up to the individual; the ACLU does, however, deal in law and it is right and just that it should jealously defend our rights where ever they might be abridged. What rights has the ACLU ever attempted to take away?


It's not that everybody won't benefit, it's that most people won't benefit.


This is truly logic defying. Vouchers will help only a very few while digging a much deeper hole for everyone else to try to climb out of. And part of the problem with private schools is low teacher pay--they don't pay enough in most cases to hire college graduates much less certified teachers.

No, this is merely a demonstration of the normal working of human nature. If we're told enough times that something is true, we're very apt to believe it (this is a basic principle of marketing and propaganda). If we have to pay for something directly, or pay more for something, we're very apt to feel that it's worth more than an alternative product, even when that alternative is of an equal or higher quality.


Well, I know that if I pee without first lifting up the lid, I'll splatter urine all over the place, but I've never tried that, either.

Oh, give 'em the benefit of the doubt.

Thanks. Actually, I discussed The Christian Science Monitor article earlier, but I was too lazy to provide the link.

I wouldn't, however, put research appearing in Phi Delta Kappan on the same footing with research by a fellow with the Hoover Institute. Phi Delta Kappan is a professional and scholarly journal with no political or 'union' affiliations and no systematic ideological bend (it may suffer from the mild liberal bend that most academic journals suffer from, but it's as objective as humanly possible). The Hoover Institute, on the other hand, was founded specifically to develope and promote conservative ideology while sponsoring and nurturing conservative idealogues--there is no attempt whatsoever at objectivity. Any fellow at the Hoover Institute who expounded leftist ideology would quickly find him or herself out of a fellowship, and already leftist scholars are simply not hired by or awarded fellowships in the first place. In other words, the Hoover Institute is a conservative think-tank.

This is an interesting poll from the site but is dated 2002. They were having polls regularly up to 2002. Why did they stop?
http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kimages/k0209pol.pdf

I haven't explored all the site or all the links attached to the home page, but the organization itself, though liberal as Mills stated, does look okay at first blush. Some of the interesting things on the site is the steadily increasing support for vouchers.

But Mills thank you for your responses and for your cordial tone in providing them. I think you may be going as much by gut instinct as I am on some of the points raised, and I concede you are seeing stuff up close and personal and I don't have any recent first hand knowledge. But speaking of being realistic here, about that issue of teacher certification and pay. If private school teachers are less well educated and less well paid than are public school teachers, how do you account for the fact that private school children do as well as they do?

I sympathise deeply with your assessment of the problems in public school, most particularly the lack of parental cooperation. Wouldn't it be nice if you could require parental participation and cooperation? The private schools can and do. With a little public outrage and a few well placed demands, the public schools can too. They used to. And I would put my small town dirt water one horse town public school education up against anybodys. But that was decades ago when parents and schools worked together to educate the kids.

Why don't we put our heads together and see how that fortunate situation can be re-created. (But you'll have to stomp on a few ACLU toes I bet.)

PDK is not an expert in the field of education. Their support of NCLB flies in the face of hundreds of articles against NCLB. The following link has many disenting articles to NCLB, written by state school boards and other professionals with better credentials to speak on the topic. http://www.fairtest.org/k12toc.htm

This quote is taken from the second article of my link above. "Previous attempts to impose an Arizona high school exit exam were repeatedly postponed due to public opposition (see Examiner, Spring 2002)." This refutes Fox's contention (and the stats in her article) that the majority supports testing under NCLB.

What contention would that be CI? And it wasn't my article. It was on the site ehBeth and Mills promoted. And I don't recall even mentioning NCLB when I was talking re the poll and increasing support for vouchers.

Or are you even referring to the link I posted today?

Yes, it's in the link you posted today. Strike two.

Could you give me the post number CI? I would swear the only link I posted here today was the poll on the PDK cite--A gallup poll at that. Again what contention did I make that you say the poll or anything else refutes? It isn't a hard question. If you're going to strike me out, at least give me the courtesy of knowing what you're pitching.

Fox, Your link, http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kimages/k0209pol.pdf

If you look under the heading of No Child Left Behind, you will see a "national poll" on who is in favor of NCLB. It seems parents with children in school favors it by 62 percent according to the poll in your link, but the link I provided shows many in this country against the requirements of NCLB. So I repeat from my post above, This quote is taken from the second article of my link above. "Previous attempts to impose an Arizona high school exit exam were repeatedly postponed due to public opposition (see Examiner, Spring 2002)."

The following is taken from another article addressing NCLB.

"Underfunding . NCLB's unfunded mandate to eliminate all test-score gaps in 12 years assumes that schools by themselves can overcome the educational consequences of poverty and racism. Not only has the federal government failed to meet the social, economic, and health-related needs of many children, but NCLB itself does not authorize nearly enough funding to meet its new requirements. The Bush administration has sought almost no increase in ESEA expenditures for the coming year. The current education appropriations bill before Congress would underfund the already inadequate authorized spending levels by $8 billion. Meanwhile, states are suffering their worst budget crises since World War II and cutting education as well as the social programs needed by low-income people.

Testing . The one-size-fits-all assessment requirements-annual testing in reading and math and periodic testing in science-and the accountability provisions attached to them are rigid, harmful, and ultimately unworkable. They will promote bad educational practices and deform curricula in significant ways. In the end, they will lower, not raise, standards for most students. For example, the assessment requirements will lead to further devaluing of non-tested subjects like social studies, music, and art. NCLB focuses on large-scale testing, which is a poor tool for diagnosing individual students' needs and for assessing higher-order learning. The provisions of the law are turning large numbers of schools, particularly those serving low-income children, into test-prep programs. The testing regime punishes the teachers who choose to work in the nation's most under-resourced schools and fosters the inaccurate view that most of the nation's public schools are failing. In the end, NCLB will enforce lower standards, not high quality learning."

But CI, I didn't even mention NCLB in connection with my link. I just mentioned there is a poll at that site, I wondered why there isn't a more current one than 2002, and coincidentially mentioned it indicates a increase in those who approve of vouchers. I went there because Mills recommended the organization as a good organization. I agreed with Mills that the site itself tilted left but that I had no problem with what I saw there. I posted the poll because it was interesting.

So again, what contention did I make that was refuted? I don't accept that posting a poll infers anything other than that poll represents the results of a poll and perhaps the opinion of the pollsters about it.

Fox, You apologized for the conservative take of the organization that wrote that article, but didn't refute any of it's findings. If you post a link in-total, we must assume you agree with the articles findings. Otherwise, it would help us to respond appropriately if you say you agree or disagree with the article you post - or only parts of it. We're left to our own devices to make assumptions once you provide the link.

I only posted a link to the poll C.I. Just the poll. Somebody else may have posted a link to the site, but I posted a link to the poll. I posted no article today. You have no basis to assume I agree with an article's findings unless I say I do. I specifically referred to the date of the poll and an observation about vouchers. I billed it as a poll when I posted it and commented on the site.

Now unless you provide a link to whatever it is that you are accusing me of, I have no basis to believe anything other than you made up something just to be contentuous.

Mills 75:-

Your post 1352775 is loaded with unexamined assertions and obfustications.It is standard practice I know.It would take a book to deal with just those on this page.

Education here has had 130 years to get its house in order and has failed to do so.It has lowered standards for qualifications to such a point where they are more or less meaningless and employers have been forced to arrange themselves accordingly.We have recently arrived at the point that children up to 16 are under curfew after 9 pm so disorderly has their conduct become.I am told,though I can't vouch for it,that the maximum penalty for breaking this curfew is a £5,000 fine and two nights in the cells for the parents.Almost every news broadcast is covering the effects of young people's behaviour.

Is that not a measure of the failure of the educational system.To talk about results in exams is pointless when there are hardly any worthwhile standards left to go by.

Another result is to move more people into the "hanging and flogging" brigade.

Any bureaucratic swarming over a voucher system would simply represent political failure of nerve.

There are,of course,more dramatic solutions than the voucher system.If things continue the way they have been doing and the voucher system is successfully resisted by the complacent educational establishments I fear that these more dramatic solutions may gain in credibility and I don't think many of us here would seek such an outcome.

More of the same only more so hardly seems an option to an increasing number of people and at some point a politician will exploit this feeling.

There are schools for driving here.For cars and motorbikes,for rigids over 71/2 tons,for articulated trucks up to 44 tons and on into more specialised equipment.These are all worked on a free market basis,more or less,and the results are satisfactory.
Such a system applies to many other trades.

I know of one infant teacher who is on the scales at over 300lbs in wieght.What an example.How on earth does such a person come to be in authority over children?She is just an extreme.She can't be sacked,it seems,because the bureaucracy would have to define obesity and if that argument got started who knows what would happen.Under a voucher system she would not be chosen by most parents.

Bringing in to the argument conditions in the free market during the birth pangs of capitalism is a red herring.All societies moving from feudalism to modern capitalism will experience such things.One might feel sorry for them and seek to mitigate them but they are unavoidable.What matters is that they no longer apply.We have moved on.

Privatization is seen as a success here with the possible exception of the railways.

Obviously the government will see to it that any voucher system works reasonably well.To raise objections to it based on guesses or lack of confidence in the government is hardly an argument.It is defeatist.

The immigrant from wherever who arrives here is usually assimilated into the workforce almost straight away.He or she learns to speak and write English and to behave properly.The products of our educational system seem hell-bent on wrecking everything they can lay their hands upon.

I don't need to look at polls.I listen to what people say and I will bet that 90% of them believe that the educational system is failing the children and failing society.Sooner or later that is bound to translate into political action of a non-tinkering sort.

Are not the dollar bills you have vouchers.How would things be if a bureaucracy decided how your needs and desires were satisfied.That would be communism surely?And the Soviets discovered the uselessness of that.

You make some large assumptions.

Fox, I'm not going to belabor the point if you continue to deny what you've posted.

spendius, Standard testing of children will never work, because children do not come with the same skills and abilities. Trying to fit all children into a box is the most stupid way of teaching our children. Some children will learn quickly, and others slowly. It's up to our educational system to meet the needs of the child; not the child to meet up to some standards. With NCLB, most teachers in the poorest schools try to teach children to the test, because that's the only way they will get future funding. That's not what education should be about; it should be about teaching a child to reach their potential in a field that they will be successful at. NCLB does not test the child's ability in music, athletics, or liberal arts. It's sad that most people can't see the problems inherent in NCLB.

I don't deny what I posted C.I. I never deny what I post unless it was so long ago I forgot I posted it. What I object to is your characterization of my intent in posting it.

You may "object" all you want; it seems your difficulty with others speak for themselves.