twk said:
aTmAg said:
Booma94 said:
harge57 said:
Antoninus said:
simple question.
Let's completely do away with public schooling.
Do you want 10 million people in this state exercising the franchise, with no education whatsoever. Unable to read. Unable to write. Unable to even remotely understand the issues.
Do you want those people selecting the members of the legislator and executive branch?
if you answered "no," then even you acknowledge that education is, at least in part, a "public ghod."
That is what is coming out of the public schools today.
No it's not. Not even close. Every college and university in the state is filled with public school graduates. The number of failing schools is a fraction of the total, but voucher proponents like to latch on to those few schools like they are the rule, when they are very much the exception.
Rightly so. As a voucher program would allow kids doomed to those few school to leave and go to better schools. It's ridiculous that you want to basically impose on them a life sentence of poverty because they live closer to a crappy school.
If vouchers were limited to kids trapped in attendance zones of failing schools, or means tested for lower income (lower middle class and poor), then that might happen. But, if we do across the board vouchers, available to everyone, we are just going to see most of that money eaten up by private school tuition inflation.
First of all, that statement implies that you don't understand inflation. There is no such thing as "food inflation" or "tuition inflation". Inflation is an undue expansion of the money supply that usually increases ALL prices. It's NOT merely "prices going up".
Secondly, current private schools do not try to compete against "free" public schools. They, by definition, are getting undercut and therefore would go out of business. So they focus on rich clientele that can afford to pay taxes AND pay a tuition on top. They are competing with each other, not public schools.
But after a voucher system, that would change. Afterwards, the demand for inexpensive private education would go WAY up, and new private schools would pop up to fill the demand. They would need to compete just like grocery stores and auto dealers. Depending on if taxpayers can keep the surplus, schools will either charge the voucher amount or less. Just like what occurs everywhere else in the market.