4 ms·

This is a good observation that I wish that more people understood around schooling and funding for the public good. I live in a small town with about 1000 chil

This is a good observation that I wish that more people understood around schooling and funding for the public good. I live in a small town with about 1000 children total in grades Pre-K through 12. Schools are funded through local property taxes, which almost entirely fall on home owners and renters. Every year we need to vote on the town budget which inevitably tweaks our taxes a little bit up or down. A few years ago our town approved a budget and then held another budget referendum about two months later. That’s not completely unheard of - we’ve needed it after natural disasters or other unexpected costs in the past - but what was weird is that taxes were going down in the proposed new budget. The cause was a single student who had moved out of the town that was costing the town more than $225,000/yr for special needs education. In the end, my taxes went down by a little over $100/yr as a result of the change which was strictly for a single student. All this goes to show that not only are vouchers a racket, because for the most part the private schools are getting more than it takes to educate an average student, they’re also a racket because students with additional needs don’t get enough funding for the private schools to take them. Further starving the system.

zamadatix 5y ago
I'm not pro-voucher but I think it's a bit unfair to compare case based public funding to flat value voucher funding and declare all voucher funding is a racket based on that comparison. There is no reason vouchers couldn't also have value based on how much the student costs, in fact some voucher systems work exactly this way. All that is to say: this is an example of why _flat rate_ vouchers don't make sense.
- TimPC 5y ago
  I agree this is a case for why what you call flat rate vouchers don't make sense. But what you call flat rate vouchers is also the predominant program of vouchers being advocated for in most policy. When the mainstream discussion moves on to better programs of vouchers I'm happy to discuss the separate merits of those programs. As long as people are advocating for stealing money from vulnerable groups I think that is the most important issue with these programs that needs to be highlighted.
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  I very often, though, this is how privatization schemes end up working. The private sector takes over the most profitable consumers, leaving the unprofitable, costly customers to the public sector. And realistically, if a voucher policy were implemented, it is unlikely that it will be perfectly designed. Unfortunately public policy is not driven entirely by well designed models.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  TFA mentions this but concludes that it is unlikely to nail that policy precisely enough to avoid the problem. Better to just avoid vouchers.
t0suj4 5y ago
IIRC the prior conversation the voucher system is supposed to enable people to choose winners and losers. Whether people should be able to choose where to put their children to get education is non-negotiable. Vouchers simply take away the burden of tuition from parents. Whether it is the best solution, that's debatable. If the alternative is that all children in a neighborhood must stay in poorly ran school then the voucher system is slightly better. It is clear that there will be more space for an industry of fraudulently ran private schools. But that will hardly change from what there is now. Whether the bad schools will survive depends on how much parents care about their children.
- TimPC 5y ago
  Vouchers don’t simply do anything though. They need to make assumptions when they decide how much to give a student and when those assumptions are made badly they can do lots of damage. There isn’t one voucher system that’s better or worse than a public system it’s a complex interaction. If some children leave a poorly run school by a program that steals money from special needs students to subsidize their tuition up to the amount a private school charges I don’t think that’s a moral trade.
daniel-cussen 5y ago
There for sure are students who need $225,000 a year for a dignified existence. There were some at Stanford, they'd advertise they needed a femme (meaning person without a penis, Stanford should put the definitions and meanings on a website somewhere. The only other way to figure it out is by inventing one yourself or witnessing punishment for trespassing a definition...I guess you could also tune in to the slander on every channel), at any rate, a femme like companion but not companion a different word, but someone who made sure the student survived the night and had dignity during the night shift. She needed 24 hour care. All that was expensive, I met another person with serious health problems and she was like an insurance lawyer by this point, she knew everything inside and out, Antonia her name was. Now I get that it's expensive, but helping others sure sometimes you can give someone a trivial piece of advice that changes their life, other times it's an uphill battle, fucking Iwo Jima. It's up to you if you want to or not.

zamadatix 5y ago

I'm not pro-voucher but I think it's a bit unfair to compare case based public funding to flat value voucher funding and declare all voucher funding is a racket based on that comparison. There is no reason vouchers couldn't also have value based on how much the student costs, in fact some voucher systems work exactly this way. All that is to say: this is an example of why _flat rate_ vouchers don't make sense.

TimPC 5y ago
I agree this is a case for why what you call flat rate vouchers don't make sense. But what you call flat rate vouchers is also the predominant program of vouchers being advocated for in most policy. When the mainstream discussion moves on to better programs of vouchers I'm happy to discuss the separate merits of those programs. As long as people are advocating for stealing money from vulnerable groups I think that is the most important issue with these programs that needs to be highlighted.
wbsss4412 5y ago
I very often, though, this is how privatization schemes end up working. The private sector takes over the most profitable consumers, leaving the unprofitable, costly customers to the public sector. And realistically, if a voucher policy were implemented, it is unlikely that it will be perfectly designed. Unfortunately public policy is not driven entirely by well designed models.
UncleMeat 5y ago
TFA mentions this but concludes that it is unlikely to nail that policy precisely enough to avoid the problem. Better to just avoid vouchers.

t0suj4 5y ago

IIRC the prior conversation the voucher system is supposed to enable people to choose winners and losers. Whether people should be able to choose where to put their children to get education is non-negotiable. Vouchers simply take away the burden of tuition from parents. Whether it is the best solution, that's debatable. If the alternative is that all children in a neighborhood must stay in poorly ran school then the voucher system is slightly better. It is clear that there will be more space for an industry of fraudulently ran private schools. But that will hardly change from what there is now. Whether the bad schools will survive depends on how much parents care about their children.

TimPC 5y ago
Vouchers don’t simply do anything though. They need to make assumptions when they decide how much to give a student and when those assumptions are made badly they can do lots of damage. There isn’t one voucher system that’s better or worse than a public system it’s a complex interaction. If some children leave a poorly run school by a program that steals money from special needs students to subsidize their tuition up to the amount a private school charges I don’t think that’s a moral trade.

daniel-cussen 5y ago

There for sure are students who need $225,000 a year for a dignified existence. There were some at Stanford, they'd advertise they needed a femme (meaning person without a penis, Stanford should put the definitions and meanings on a website somewhere. The only other way to figure it out is by inventing one yourself or witnessing punishment for trespassing a definition...I guess you could also tune in to the slander on every channel), at any rate, a femme like companion but not companion a different word, but someone who made sure the student survived the night and had dignity during the night shift. She needed 24 hour care. All that was expensive, I met another person with serious health problems and she was like an insurance lawyer by this point, she knew everything inside and out, Antonia her name was. Now I get that it's expensive, but helping others sure sometimes you can give someone a trivial piece of advice that changes their life, other times it's an uphill battle, fucking Iwo Jima. It's up to you if you want to or not.