There are students located in every square mile of the USA. The location of the schools must be within a reasonable distance...45-60 minute one-way commutes are too much. Travel time and population alone dictates how many schools we will have. Once they are in place, as they are today, it's silly to have the individual schools compete against each other?! It is incumbent upon government or administrators to provide equitable education in every school location. There is no 'denying low income kids to get a quality education'? If all schools are created equal then all kids have access to education. If the current public education system is a failure to low income students then replace all the administrators, the DECISION makers, until you can find someone who can effectively manage the program. Vouchers are not needed for this accountability. Schools MUST not be competing against each other for teachers, equipment, funding, etc.! Forget vouchers, forget charter schools, forget alternative schools, etc...all of these are Bandaid solutions! We need a single education system that treats all kids equitably...
We've been waiting for the public school reform supermen for decades - it ain't gonna happen. That's the beauty of competition - it results in the best product without command/control human intervention. With the teacher's unions running the school systems who are interested in the welfare of the teachers and not the students the public school system is compromised. There is no competition for funding as each student brings their individual education monies with them. Competition will weed out the failed schools and fund the successful ones plus additional schools based on the most effective models. As far as location goes - let the parents make that decision. Buses, carpools, etc can easily solve the transportation problems as they do today. There are many kids and parents in NYC who are willing to drive time consuming distances to get there kids to the KIPP schools. A single system and bureaucracy does not innovate or achieve excellence because there is no competition. The US university system does this because of competition and also provides a diversity of educational opportunities. Why can't the K - 12 system do the same.
Like I said, if the administrators are incapable of designing and managing an equitable public education system then get rid of them and find others who will. If a kid leaves School A for School B and takes the funding with them, School A now has less funding. This is a competition for funding. Location does matter because all kids do not have parents or rides or money to travel longer distances. K-12 cannot charge $20K/year tuition depending on state and federal government funding. There are only a 'few' universities compared to the quantity of public schools. Public schools are REQUIRED in areas in which universities will never locate. If the government does not create an equitable education program for all kids in all locations this will leave many areas, as we have today, sorely wanting...
And the competition for the individual student's voucher money will result in better overall quality in the education system. That is exactly what is desired. Some schools will go out of business just as some businesses shut the doors because their products are inferior. With regard to transportation again let parents decide. And if there is demand schools will come to the kids or the schools will set up busing systems. The gov has had decades to solve this problem - the gov and it's bureaucracies are the problem and not the solution. School boards & administrators and politicians are in bed with the teacher's unions. The welfare of the students is secondary to the welfare of the teachers. Politicians supporting this corrupt system are the recipients of campaign contributions from the teacher's unions and consequently will not support school reforms. The D party who claims to be champions of education are in fact champions of teachers unions.
You understand so little. Capitalism is a daily fight for survival. Nothing can be more motivating. this is how humans evolved. A school monopoly will of course fail. This is something a child should be able to grasp. Who runs faster, someone who runs for fun or someone who runs to survive. Now do you understand?
I have never understood this arguement...no one is suggesting someone who works at McDonalds should make as much as a brain surgeon.
You are not considering all kids or communities and are fine with education disappearing in areas which cannot compete. You dismiss the issues with transportation and the costs and time and availability of parents to do so. Your plan will close 2 or 3 out of 5 schools which leaves thousands of kids without access to education. Abandoning kids and communities in the name of competition is not a viable solution...
Charter schools and the current voucher approach are fine, but have little impact on a failed education system. Large school systems are now obsolete. 1. Give provisionally certify all college graduates to teach or form very small independent schools in their homes or office space. 2. Permit the use of public domain teaching materials via the internet. 3. Divert all revenue collected for education into parent/guardian vouchers Corrupt, failed education systems need to be dismantled and replaced - immediately.
I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that the establishment of new charter and/or private schools will compete for the students. Because of this competition some schools may close. This is the process of creative destruction which is responsible for the great increases in the standard of living in capitalistic economic systems. And I'm advocating that parents make the final decision on where their kids go to school. In rural areas which already use busing the publicly funded busing system can be used to service all schools participating in the voucher system. Or the parents can create car pool "clubs" just as they form babysitting clubs.
of course they are. It is basic Marxism. "To each according to his needs", not according to what he earns. Once you open the door to liberalism it cant be closed.
Good ideas. It may be the case that some public school systems can and will provide good education opportunities. I was fortunate to benefit from such a system in the 50' - 60's. It can be done and the parents should have the final school choice decision.
Good schools don't need vouchers. They already have all the resources they need and the people who send their children to them are content with funding them as they are currently. That is why there is so much resistance to funding schools through vouchers. Besides that, a voucher system would remove much of the local control that many school systems currently enjoy, which is what enables them to engender quality education in their school systems. The last thing many people want is the state to tell them how much they can spend on their schools, which are funded mostly with local money, money that they have a say about. Bad schools suffer mostly from underfunding and just tossing them aside and providing the same amount of funds through vouchers will just make matters even worse. There will be no long or even medium term educational planning because all schools will be subject to the whims of voucher holders who will flock to and from schools willy nilly on whatever arbitrary criteria they dream up. Poor children in wealthy school districts get the same quality education as every other student but that will change when the best schools charge a premium over the voucher, which will shut them out and make the education system even more classed based than it is now, If you want the US education system to become as arbitrary and capricious as US health care then go right ahead with your voucher program but expect many states and municipalities to tell you to just go away because they are doing just fine.
Nonsense. All parents and guardians would prefer to have control of the money and a choice. Teachers would also prefer to work outside the now very oppressive government school system. Thousands of them would be eager to open their own independent schools. Parents and teachers - now there is a HUUGE voting block just waiting for a populist advocate.
Bad schools need a voucher system - to either put them out of business or force improvements and competitiveness.
I'd be cautious about speaking for no one, when you doyou speak for everyone. There are folks who have argued each should contribute according to his ability and be supported according to his need. Not paid by what they contribute. When you promise a living wage you promise an income based on a person's needs, not their contributions. You shift the responsibility for the needs of their life to the shoulders of their neighbor. I understand that some of our neighbors, due to bad choices or bad luck have problems that may overwhelm them. I'm fine with offering charity. I think we're stronger for it as a group and I'm good with using the government to regulate that charity. But when you hide that charity in the form of an inflated wage there is a problem. People receiving it don't recognize it as charity. The since of urgency to meet their own needs goes away, because they're tricked into believing they have already done so. Robbing folks of that incentive, can lead to a sense of complacency that reduces our overall productivity and makes us weaker for it as a group.
actually there is no comparison. With a voucher system parents use their own tax dollars to select the school of their choice for their kids; with health care you don't spend your own money carefully, you spend Medicare Medicaid VA TriCare or insurance company money in a near monopoly controlled by the libcommie Feds
Schools are funded mostly by property taxes. The biggest chuck of those school funds come from a very small group of people. If you pool those funds and then allocate them with vouchers... dunno. Everyone spending that pooled school money with a handful of school choices seems very similar to everyone spending pooled insurance money with a handful of hospital choices.
In thousands of communities across the USA there is only one school choice which means that ALL public schools must be equitable regarding facilities, teachers, administrators, equipment, etc. If we must do this for these thousands of communities then we can do it for all urban schools as well...
Two choices would be better for both choices. Many low income communities have been waiting for decades for alternative and better school choice. The fact that the reforms haven't happened in the existing system is a good indicator that they never will happen. Competition is the only solution.
yes nothing else can encourage excellence on a daily basis like Republican competition and the battle for survival.
Can never buy this...I don't want an education system which is based on competition because it will present more losers than winners. Makes no difference if past reforms have worked or not instead it simply means we have not done our job...
But that's like saying that you only want PC's from IBM because there will be more losers than winners. The current system clearly has not done it's job. What makes you think that it will ever do it's job? We need to shake the current system up. The only thing a bureaucracy does well is grow.
I'll tell you why we don't do better; it's because we don't want to know the true answer! The first issue in all of our problems is coming up with more money which means more taxes. Second, we need greatly improved administrators and teachers and they simply do not exist. Next we need state-of-the-art education facilities. We don't have the people and we don't have the money! And even if we did we have perhaps millions of kids who simply are going to struggle caused by personal limitations, parents, environment, lack of focus, laziness will continue to fail the system. Your competition is nothing but a Bandaid solution doing nothing about the root problems...
