What has Bush killed.

I don't remember if any of you here live in the Chicago area, but there is a suburb of Chicago called Lake Forest. They have a school system there that spends approximately 25k per student. About 50 miles away in a place called Ford Heights they have a failing school system where they spend less than 6k per student. The system is funded based on the property taxes, like in many states, of the school district that the school is in. So lets use the voucher. Lets give Lake Forest kids 25k vouchers and give the Ford Heights kids their 6k. Both amounts will probably send kids to private school, but private schools are going to sprink up around the Lake Forest area that charge 15 or 20K per student and Ford Heights will have schools that charge 6k per year. Both should get good educations but the Lake Forest kids are going to get a better education still. So what do you do? Do you tell the Lake Forest kids they can't have vouchers equal to the amount of money spent on their peers in the public schools? That would not be very egalitarian of you.
 
They pay less taxes...there is a point when you just have to realise that there is always going to be class inequality.

I don't really support vouchers, just making a point.
 
Superfreak said:
How is it a welfare system?

State has "x" dollars per child for education.

Parent says my kid is going to school "y".

State sends school "y" the money. Whether it is a public school or a private school that the parent chooses.

Please explain how this is welfare? It is money that is paying for the kids education one way or another. Changing the school the money goes to does not magically turn it to some sort of welfare system.
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See my post above. Not all school system are created equally. Not all school systems use Robin Hood funding so the poor schools get less from taxes than the rich schools. It is a system designed to aid wealthy fundamentalists and punish poor kids from poor school districts.
 
Socrtease said:
See my post above. Not all school system are created equally. Not all school systems use Robin Hood funding so the poor schools get less from taxes than the rich schools. It is a system designed to aid wealthy fundamentalists and punish poor kids from poor school districts.
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In almost every case where vouchers are proposed or adopted the "rich" get less than the poor. It is every case where they were adopted, in those places the "rich" just get to pay and get screwed it becomes a welfare scheme rather than an education plan. It is still far preferrable to the same system giving rise to ever lowering test scores when compared to the rest of the modern world.

Thankfully we have Socrtease to champion the status quo rather than delve into any ideas that may improve the situation.
 
Socrtease said:
I googled the story and this came up

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JAS/is_6_35/ai_n17115704

This is why vouchers will not work, also why the current system does not work. But vouchers are not going to make life better on the Ford Heights kids and give them an education that is even comprable to the kids in Lake Forest public schools.
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reading, will address your previous posts and this one when done.

check that.... I don't have time for all four pages right now. I have a meeting in a few minutes. I will get back to you tonight.
 
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Socrtease said:
I googled the story and this came up

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JAS/is_6_35/ai_n17115704

This is why vouchers will not work, also why the current system does not work. But vouchers are not going to make life better on the Ford Heights kids and give them an education that is even comprable to the kids in Lake Forest public schools.
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California takes money from wealthier districts and give it to poorer districts. It's why you see the wealthier districts holding so many fund raisers for their schools. Of course you hear parents bitch about paying so much to live there for the good schools and then having to give the school a bunch more money after that.

Vouchers aren't about giving one kid $25k and another $6k. It doesn't work that way. Each city that is using vouchers now has come up with their own set of rules. Cleveland, Milwaukee and somewhere in Florida I know have experimented with vouchers. But it has never been discussed or attempted to use in the way you describe.
 
Damocles said:
In almost every case where vouchers are proposed or adopted the "rich" get less than the poor. It is every case where they were adopted, in those places the "rich" just get to pay and get screwed it becomes a welfare scheme rather than an education plan. It is still far preferrable to the same system giving rise to ever lowering test scores when compared to the rest of the modern world.

Thankfully we have Socrtease to champion the status quo rather than delve into any ideas that may improve the situation.
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Not true! I gave solutions. They envolve tracking, they envolve on hard ass standard for each track. The system seems to work just fine in Germany and other school systems in other countries. But we want to give small towns the chance to have their own school district so if the CHOOSE to teach the earth is flat and 300 years old, well then so be it.

And in Western States your voucher program amounts to the status quo anyway. Kids in Lordsburg NM have no choice for schools outside of their four Elementary schools, one middle school and One Highschool. It is 60 miles in any direction to the next nearest town with a school system. Same for small towns in Nevada, Utah Arizona and your state of Colorado.
 
Socrtease said:
Not true! I gave solutions. They envolve tracking, they envolve on hard ass standard for each track. The system seems to work just fine in Germany and other school systems in other countries. But we want to give small towns the chance to have their own school district so if the CHOOSE to teach the earth is flat and 300 years old, well then so be it.

And in Western States your voucher program amounts to the status quo anyway. Kids in Lordsburg NM have no choice for schools outside of their four Elementary schools, one middle school and One Highschool. It is 60 miles in any direction to the next nearest town with a school system. Same for small towns in Nevada, Utah Arizona and your state of Colorado.
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As has been stated, vouchers are not intended as an end all be all to the education challenge. The initial impetus was on inner-city schools not the hinterland.
 
Socrtease said:
Not true! I gave solutions. They envolve tracking, they envolve on hard ass standard for each track. The system seems to work just fine in Germany and other school systems in other countries. But we want to give small towns the chance to have their own school district so if the CHOOSE to teach the earth is flat and 300 years old, well then so be it.

And in Western States your voucher program amounts to the status quo anyway. Kids in Lordsburg NM have no choice for schools outside of their four Elementary schools, one middle school and One Highschool. It is 60 miles in any direction to the next nearest town with a school system. Same for small towns in Nevada, Utah Arizona and your state of Colorado.
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I was being fascetious.

However, they do have the choice to school at accredited online schools that they otherwise could not attend. Many of them would flourish in such an environment, but they are required to either attend the schools you think stink so bad, or home school. Usually the parents cannot afford the Online schools....

Methinks that you need to keep up a bit with technology. Shoot nowadays you can even find online schools with "classroom" environments where the teachers lecture live and answer questions via cam.
 
Damocles said:
I was being fascetious.

However, they do have the choice to school at accredited online schools that they otherwise could not attend. Many of them would flourish in such an environment, but they are required to either attend the schools you think stink so bad, or home school. Usually the parents cannot afford the Online schools....

Methinks that you need to keep up a bit with technology. Shoot nowadays you can even find online schools with "classroom" environments where the teachers lecture live and answer questions via cam.
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Me thinks you might be right as far as online elementary and secondary education. However, I still think kids benefit from the socialization of a real school. I mean look at homeschooled kids, public school kids would never wear their hair like that and would never wear tennis shoes with a skirt.
 
Socrtease said:
Me thinks you might be right as far as online elementary and secondary education. However, I still think kids benefit from the socialization of a real school. I mean look at homeschooled kids, public school kids would never wear their hair like that and would never wear tennis shoes with a skirt.
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Yet we find that later in life they more than are able to have strong relationships and haven't been wrecked by home schooling. They may appear odd as kids, but it does not effect their later success.
 
I was just being stupid in that post
Needed to say more than "Damo was right I need to be more up on on-line schooling".
 
Our school systems which are failing are cash starved.

You can pretend its not true but it is .

You get what you pay for.
 
Desh said:
Our school systems which are failing are cash starved.

You can pretend its not true but it is .

You get what you pay for.
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And sometimes you get gypped. Many schools flush with cash still produce low scores.

Now, while nobody said, "give them no more money" everybody here gave other solutions with one notable exception. Money is not the only answer, not even the best one.
 
cawacko said:
As if on clockwork I knew this would be the response, more money. That has been the cry for years, 'schools need more money'. And we have continued to throw more money at our schools with no increase in results.

Desh, those advocating for vouchers and school choice are doing so with the interest of those kids in the lowest performing schools at heart. It is actually trying to make a real change other than just saying we need more money which is not helping to make the necessary changes.
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Here you go. He doesnt want any more money "thrown" at the problem.

Funny how taking money out of the system is the answer instead of fully funding our system so it can work.
 
Desh said:
Here you go. He doesnt want any more money "thrown" at the problem.

Funny how taking money out of the system is the answer instead of fully funding our system so it can work.
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"fully funded" what does that mean? It's basically saying 'give us a blank check and we can never be held accountable because our excuse will be we always need more money'.

It's going on about 30 years now this 'we need more money'. Of course schools could use more money. Many things could use more money. You offer nothing than 'we need more money'. They passed Title I and inner-city schools still suck.

What we need are people who can think creatively and outside the box not someone who can repeat the same 'we need more money' mantra that we've heard for three decades now.
 
Desh said:
Here you go. He doesnt want any more money "thrown" at the problem.

Funny how taking money out of the system is the answer instead of fully funding our system so it can work.
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What you quoted was a response of mine to you. I'm not sure who the "he" was in your response to me.
 
Desh said:
Here you go. He doesnt want any more money "thrown" at the problem.

Funny how taking money out of the system is the answer instead of fully funding our system so it can work.
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Here's a good article for you. Sounds like we are getting a great return on our investment.

"""The United States was also cited as having the poorest outcomes per dollar spent on education. It ranked 28th of 40 countries in math and 18th in reading."""

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/national/07student.html
 
Better throw more good money after bad so it can be said to be "fully funded" by Desh. Only the US spends that much and gets so little for it, but heck we can't work with any new ideas....
 
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