No destroying the local schools so you can get what you believe are your rightful dollars is selfish, ntm short-sighted. You don't understand the ways privatization marginalizes those with the greatest need. You think it's all so simple, like everyone's life should be just handy dandy easy peasy. That's not reality. Those with the greatest need rarely get to take advantage of the schools you falsely believe to be a step up.
For the 100th time. Im not trying to keep my money for me. My kids are not impacted by this. My kids have never been to a private school. 2 have graduated. Both have been in public schools at the time they graduated and two public universities have been part of our present...and my 13 year old will never go to a private school.
No, it isn't. Somebody paid you that money. Then you paid that money to pay for things like...helping lower income folks have better options. So it isn't your money "to start with" (it passes through numerous hands before your hands) nor is it your money after you pay it out. It is only your money for a period of time between transactions. Regardless, the argument that vouchers are the person's money and should be some sort of an aid program are fundamentally contradictory.
No. My job is to prepare and certify teachers to teach. Public, private, charter. I don't prep teachers to teach in public schools. Let it sink in for a sec. Our grads are teaching in all of those schools. Just ran into a former student who took a gig at a private. Several of our grads have taught in charters. GREAT! I'm all for it. I'm not all for the privatization movement which has hoodwinked folks into thinking it's for the betterment of education. It's not. It's a boondoggle, a money grab, theocratic approach (in some instances), and a means for segregation. So no, I'm not in public education. I'm in the music teacher prep profession and tend to be pretty well-informed when it comes to matters of pedagogy & ed policy. I support public schools because I understand that a strong public school system is good for the community & nation.
Its only contradictory if i want the money for myself. I used to have a more broad view on vouchers but have since come to believe that strict limits should exist on them.
It’s honesty difficult to understand what you arguing, since pretty much no voucher program limits itself to what you are saying, and all of them ARE actually doing what we are warning of (undermining public school funding). I think most people, or even practically everyone, are OK with the opaque idea of school choice. That’s like saying “I want my government to be more efficient”. As with most things, digging into the details of what’s actually happening and analyzing downsides matters.
No, the contradictory part is trying to claim that an aid program (which is how you are presenting your view of vouchers) is just giving people their money back when those people never had that money. In fact, while wanting the money back for yourself might be selfish, it would be less contradictory.
This is a message board. I have given my personal opinion of how I think it should be. That's it. I stand somewhere between vouchers for all and giving as much as a penny will destroy the golden institution that is public school. Sliding scale. Based on income. With a line set that makes you ineligible. My position is the opposite of the "you just wanna give rich people more money" tripe that keeps getting tossed around.
EXCEPT that is exactly what’s happening. There is no means testing for these tax dollars. It’s a scheme to resegregate schools and promote political/religious indoctrination among other things. There are no certifications/qualifications required for teachers and no background checks in some instances. Taxpayers should not be on the hook for this nonsense.
Its odd that education choice is where some on the left draw the line at where our tax dollars go to.
The left isn’t against choice per se. The issue is these vouchers offer as much “choice” to some, as the “equal” in separate but equal. Did you believe separate but equal resulted in anything being “equal”? It may seem counterintuitive, but the problem is thus: even with vouchers, the better schools are still priced out for the vast majority of students. Not that everyone can or should be entitled to an “elite” high priced school. Yet, as it stands states doing vouchers are giving the very wealthy and upper middle class just straight up windfalls back into their pockets for elite schools they were already attending and paying for. But hey, maybe with a bunch of families getting $30k or $40k a year in straight up stimulus money from governments we see a boom in luxury car and boat sales as a result of… {checks notes}… school vouchers. There’s going to be working class families that for the first time can afford to send their kids to religious schools too. Maybe not “elite” prep schools, just your typical school associated with a religious institution. Everyone in my family went to Catholic schools, so I have plenty of familiarity with them. This does certainly give them a choice, but the problem is their choice isn’t coming “free”, it’s at the expense of the people still at the public school! For the poor, even with the voucher all you are leaving them is the “choice” of a diminished public school, or an oft shady charter. Even with this windfall, any type of private school tuition will still be out of reach or not on their radar, thus their so-called “choice” still isn’t really one at all. With a diminished public school system we are worsening the situation for that cohort of students. This is also unquestionably the objective of every Republican politician that does this. Bonus points when their pals open up new charter schools and grift off the top of the tuition vouchers I realize you keep saying you think people should only get back what they put in or it should have income caps, but we can only discuss the way things are (and what Republicans keep putting forth). Not what you claim to wish they would do.
I personally draw the line at my tax dollars being used for resegregation and Christian nationalist agendas. That’s just me though.
Funny, that's quite a stretch. There was nothing about good parenting in my post that you responded to. I give you credit for being creative tho.
This is what’s getting lost. Everyone I know that’s giddy with the $8k checks was already either sending or planning to send their kids to expensive private schools. These schools are $40-50k a year. And these are 2-3 kid families. I would be fine with what Tilly said. Cap it at a certain income level. But this is just a money grab. Welfare for the wealthy. $24k will fund nice family ski vacation to the Alps.
One side believes in government trying to manipulate everything, including pick winners and losers. The other believes in removing as many obstacles from the individual as possible and putting as much power in the individual's hands as is reasonably possible. The latter sounds much fairer to me. The reason vouchers hurt public schools is because people don't choose public schools when given the choice via voucher. That says more about the public school system itself than it does about vouchers.
I've never understood why vouchers are seen as welfare programs. All it does is let people decide directly where public funding goes. Opponents of vouchers think it should generally go towards public schools, supporters of vouchers think it should generally go where the people want it to go. Should we treat all parents who send their kids to public schools like welfare queens now?
Perhaps we should just go more with Tillys ideas and trust the Republicans that these vouchers will be super egalitarian, not go to the rich, and not result in denigration of public schools. All that is what's happening in Florida, right? I mean....it's not like we don't have a pretty good example to look at. And if it DID turn out to be unfair, Republicans would change things, right? They've got the greater good prioritized, right?
So the guy who wants to keep more of his own money is selfish, but the moocher who wants to forcibly take someone else's money via government proxy isn't?
