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Views on School Choice Vouchers

1 points by jseliger 4y ago

EddieDante 4y ago
"School choice" should not be a thing. School should teach reading, writing, arithmetic, logic, personal finance, first aid, civics, and physical fitness. Nothing more or less.
duped 4y ago
Disclaimer: I don't have kids. So my stake is minimal. I've lived places (North Carolina) where the public schools suck. And I've lived places (suburbs of Chicago) where public schools are "better" than private schools. So I've seen through family how the public system can fail and you would want a way to give some choice to parents, and others where there is no real choice. At the end of the day I see school choice vouchers as a failure of local and/or state government. It's possible to have great schools with good teachers and small class sizes (the latter of which overwhelming dominates students' success, based on all the data and studies), with nothing but public funding. The problem to solve with education is two part: first fund them, so they can pay enough teachers to have manageable class sizes; second to allow education professionals to professionally educate and defer to their expertise. Basically we live in an era where we know how to maximize the value of education. First have enough money available to have enough professionals teach. Second, prefer to listen to those professionals who have garnered through data and experience what and how to teach kids most effectively. You'll notice that parents are removed from the situation; everyone has to pay to get kids educated because it benefits us all (property taxes), and like we don't tell doctors what to treat us with, maybe we don't tell teachers what our students need to learn or what methods to use. So all in all, school choice vouchers are just a stopgap around a lack of taxes to fund public schools. Why give vouchers when you can raise taxes, except if those taxes aren't popular politically? And I don't think that's a valid question. Obviously all schools should be as good as they can be, and everyone should pay as much as they are able through taxes to maximize the quality of our schools. It's not an unknown, there are data and practices that are known to lead to the most success. However. In the United States, conservative ideology correlated with a lack of education. Fact has a liberal bias. We shouldn't tolerate a political ideology based in ignorance, because it's doomed to create education systems that fail for its own survival.

1 points by jseliger 4y ago

"School choice" should not be a thing. School should teach reading, writing, arithmetic, logic, personal finance, first aid, civics, and physical fitness. Nothing more or less.

duped 4y ago

Disclaimer: I don't have kids. So my stake is minimal. I've lived places (North Carolina) where the public schools suck. And I've lived places (suburbs of Chicago) where public schools are "better" than private schools. So I've seen through family how the public system can fail and you would want a way to give some choice to parents, and others where there is no real choice. At the end of the day I see school choice vouchers as a failure of local and/or state government. It's possible to have great schools with good teachers and small class sizes (the latter of which overwhelming dominates students' success, based on all the data and studies), with nothing but public funding. The problem to solve with education is two part: first fund them, so they can pay enough teachers to have manageable class sizes; second to allow education professionals to professionally educate and defer to their expertise. Basically we live in an era where we know how to maximize the value of education. First have enough money available to have enough professionals teach. Second, prefer to listen to those professionals who have garnered through data and experience what and how to teach kids most effectively. You'll notice that parents are removed from the situation; everyone has to pay to get kids educated because it benefits us all (property taxes), and like we don't tell doctors what to treat us with, maybe we don't tell teachers what our students need to learn or what methods to use. So all in all, school choice vouchers are just a stopgap around a lack of taxes to fund public schools. Why give vouchers when you can raise taxes, except if those taxes aren't popular politically? And I don't think that's a valid question. Obviously all schools should be as good as they can be, and everyone should pay as much as they are able through taxes to maximize the quality of our schools. It's not an unknown, there are data and practices that are known to lead to the most success. However. In the United States, conservative ideology correlated with a lack of education. Fact has a liberal bias. We shouldn't tolerate a political ideology based in ignorance, because it's doomed to create education systems that fail for its own survival.