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Stuff like this is why I will remain a proponent for true vouchers for the rest of my life. No parent should be stuck without options when educational governanc

Stuff like this is why I will remain a proponent for true vouchers for the rest of my life. No parent should be stuck without options when educational governance goes sideways like this. Pull your kid. Find them a school that gives them the greatest opportunity to succeed and use the funds earmarked for their education to ensure they receive it. Currently, options are restricted to parents who can afford to move to a different school zone, afford private school or have a parent available who can facilitate a home school environment. Letting parents vote with their kids placement will force schools to truly advance.

scarmig 3y ago
There's the theory that, by forcing the kids with the most engaged parents to go to schools with the kids of less engaged parents, the engaged parents will drive school districts to implement good educational policies. In reality, though, that doesn't seem to have worked. School board elections have very low turnout usually, and the people elected to them are disproportionately ideologues who treat engaged parents with contempt for being "privileged."
- okeuro49 3y ago
  I agree, and particularly this part > There's the theory that, by forcing the kids with the most engaged parents to go to schools with the kids of less engaged parents is really rough on the kids of engaged parents, forcing them to be responsible for "fixing" systems that they didn't create. In the UK, we used to have "grammar schools" that selected on ability based on a standardised test. They were responsible for many working- and middle class children being propelled into high positions in industry and politics, including Prime Minister. However the whole idea was deemed inequitable, so they were dismantled. Now privately school educated children have less competition.
  - declan_roberts 3y ago
    Also being treated like a privileged enemy of the school while trying to fix it.
  - nsxwolf 3y ago
    And if you could fix the system, it would have been fixed by now. If you have a kid today, you have 5-6 years to fix the system before it starts failing them. Your kid will be grown before any meaningful change is made, and any harms caused by the current system will be fully baked in. If you have money, you have an escape hatch right now. Vouchers make that escape hatch available to more people. Public education doesn't have to mean public schools.
    - mfer 3y ago
      You need a decent school option within an acceptable travel distance. There are many who don't have a good choice like that.
      - nsxwolf 3y ago
        New schools appear as soon as the money is available.
      - tastyfreeze 3y ago
        If there is money available the choices will appear. When it stops being about the building and government curriculum and starts becoming about satisfying parents desire to have their child educated, anybody can become a teacher or organize a school. If the teacher fails to deliver the parents will go elsewhere. The free market for schools and teachers is created the moment Department of Education is eliminated and replaced with education vouchers for all.
    - KerrAvon 3y ago
      Actually, public education has to mean public schools. Vouchers are a band-aid invented by right-wing nutjobs to allow religious schools to be funded by public money; they do this by taking money away from secular public schools. If public schools are broken, we need to fix the public schools, not break them further.
      - nsxwolf 3y ago
        I'm almost 50. I've watched this scam play out my entire life. We've gotta fix the public schools, they said, when I was in public school. They said it year after year, generation after generation. It's never happening. We absolutely should allow vouchers to go to religious private schools and secular private schools alike. It's time to bleed the public schools dry and use their lots to build more housing.
  - blowski 3y ago
    There are still some grammar schools, but they are badly distributed, because it’s based on political views from past ages. For example, the city of Southend in Essex has about 7000 grammar school places. Entire counties of Norfolk and Suffolk have none.
  - gadders 3y ago
    Grammar schools do still exist in a few hold-out counties like Kent. One thing that was repealed by the last Labour government was the Assisted Places Scheme [1]. If you scored highly enough the government would pay for a child to go to private school. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_Places_Scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_Places_Scheme
- brightball 3y ago
  That’s a good case for vouchers. Instead, kids with engaged parents will flee to better schools. The other parents will either follow, growing the new school and model, or the other school will adapt in order to retain students. Engaged parents are your early adopters. Without vouchers, most people can’t even afford to enter the market.
  - xcxcx 3y ago
    What if you launch convenience store-style mini schools with really terrible infrastructure and content but within five blocks from many buildings? You could literally rewrite history and language and program an entire generation of future voters. Imagine the possibilities
  - altcognito 3y ago
    One of the purposes of public education is also assimilating children into the shared values of society. In the US this has been forgotten despite guys like Jefferson talking about this exact thing. The free market can be good at optimizing for certain outcomes, but I don't think you're going to get a lot of buy in with the current political climate being what it is, and a lack of consensus around what kind of outcomes should be required. Furthermore, making schooling a purely financial transaction? Where do you think that leads?
    - bamfly 3y ago
      Yeah, I'm OK paying taxes to get to live in a society with universally-available (mostly) fee-free primary and secondary education that aspires to some set of standards. I'm not OK paying taxes to help Bobby Baptist send his kids to Jesus Is Lord Day School. Or kick in to rich parents' budget for Phillips Exeter. If we must have vouchers, let people keep their own tax money that would have gone to schools and use that for the vouchers. I'm not interested in handing people my cash to fund private education. I'm interested in having a public education system. That, I'll pay taxes for.
      - busterarm 3y ago
- Kalium 3y ago
  I strongly suspect that in practice, those engaged parents handle it by moving to the next polity over that's not trying to use them to improve policies.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    They often don't have a choice. They can stay, but as just one vote they cannot reform the system. They can fight for thier kids, but they may have limited results. (My mom faught hard in ~1965 to be able to take shop, but it was a boys only class and she didn't win)
    - autoexec 3y ago
      I'd bet that the school she went to would let a girl into shop class today (assuming the school and class are still around). Change is possible, but it's slow. It also matters if there's one girl who wants to take shop class vs many girls who are asking for it. Parents and students can work to change the ways their schools are run. They may have to campaign for and promote their causes so that "one vote" grows into more votes, but votes still mater.
      - bluGill 3y ago
        Sure, but it was too late for my mom. My mom would have been better off finding a different district that would let her in (this may not have been possible), instead of fighting a system that ultimately failed her.
        nobody9999 3y ago
        >Sure, but it was too late for my mom. My mom would have been better off finding a different district that would let her in (this may not have been possible), instead of fighting a system that ultimately failed her. An interesting and important anecdote. But rather than focusing on your mom's inability to take shop class, perhaps you might reflect on the fact that your mom (and many other women/girls) fought for such changes and, eventually (albeit too late for your mom), won. That's how change happens. If you just throw up your hands and say "well, I/my mom/whoever couldn't have something that was good and important. So there's no reason to ever fight for change," seems incredibly reductive and doesn't reflect how change has been wrought throughout history. Please understand, I'm not poking at you or your mom (in fact, I don't know her, but I think she's fabulous!). Rather, I'm taking issue with the idea that we "can't win, so don't try." That's a recipe for those who understand how change is made to create the world in their image, whether you like it or not.
- vuln 3y ago
  > School board elections have very low turnout usually, and the people elected to them are disproportionately ideologues who treat engaged parents with contempt for being "privileged." Not only the School Board but the Teachers Unions and the United States Government are anti parents attending School Board meetings to support their children. Red or Blue, 6 or 600, it doesn’t matter when the USG decides to make parents the enemy of the state. https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/chairman-jordan-expands-investigation-biden-targeting-parents-school-board https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/chairman-jo... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/03/29/garland-school-board-memo-fbi/11561422002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/03/29/garl... https://apnews.com/article/merrick-garland-school-boards-violence-daaff3f659981354b7a9a536db5cf2e2 https://apnews.com/article/merrick-garland-school-boards-vio...
  - thebooktocome 3y ago
    Parents are merely exercising their First Amendment rights when they threaten violence against school teachers & staff? That’s an interesting position.
  - declan_roberts 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - ambicapter 3y ago
      I find it hard to believe that you find it hard to believe that law enforcement was called in to deal with individuals threatening violence on others, regardless of whether these were parents at a school board meeting.
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      The article cites a parent physically attacking a school board member and your response is shock that authorities were involved?
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    I dunno--if you want to see America's mental illness problem on full, public display, just do a YouTube search for "school board meeting outrage". It's great when concerned, non-ideological, rational parents show up to have a voice in how the school is run, but the flip side of that coin is ugly, belligerent, and counter-productive.
- api 3y ago
  > the engaged parents will drive school districts to implement good educational policies. This assumes that it's actually possible for parents to override insulated bureaucrats whose heads are stuffed completely up their own derrieres. Political hyper-polarization doesn't help either. If your local crazy-left school board abolishes merit in the name of equity, you could always replace them with crazy-right Republicans who believe the Earth is 6000 years old and Qanon is real.
- matrix_overload 3y ago
  >the people elected to them are disproportionately ideologues who treat engaged parents with contempt for being "privileged." There are grim economic shifts behind this. The majority of people are now priced out of raising their own kids to a good standard (i.e. stay-at-home mum). So, more and more people feel envy towards those who can, and various "equity" movements pop out (that all focus on bringing top performers down, rather than bottom performers up). The only way to fight it is move to an area where most people can still afford kids, and in our generation it may mean moving out of U.S. entirely.
- orangepurple 3y ago
  In this case it is abundantly clear that the school district gave up trying to fix underperformers and threw in the towel. Engaged parents are domestic terrorists: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/01/13/school-board-association-domestic-terrorism/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/01/13/school-b... The only option is do not help and do not engage. There is no point in expending effort trying to fix a system led by people that hate you.
- blobbers 3y ago
  Wow you hit the nail right on the head. That's exactly what's happened at our board level. The PTA of the school itself is the involved parents, and the schoolboard has the utmost contempt for them! None of the involved parents are willing to put in the effort or have the desire to be elected to the schoolboard though.
  - ineedasername 3y ago
    My experience coincides with yours with respect to the disregard school boards have for, not just the PTA, but the will of parents in general. Although I don't think that, at its base, it started with contempt-- I think it began with actual disregard or maybe apathy in favor of their own pet projects and ideas of how things should be regardless of the parents' wishes. Contempt only entered the picture when parents voices dissent. But that's only what I see locally for my district, I'd certainly believe you if you reasserted that no, in your district it did actually begin with contempt as well. With respect to the GP comment, I don't think things are quite as pre-planned as a deliberate effort to have engaged parents sort of subsidize the lack of effort by less engaged parents. That might be the net result, but attributing that to a deliberate and coordinated plan on the part of school boards or the broader public education system is, to my thinking, giving them too much credit in their ability to so coordinate and engage in such complex efforts. They bicker far too much among themselves pursuing their own agendas to agree long enough for that level of strategy. And there are on occasion parents truly willing to put in the effort and get elected, but end up quickly disillusioned on their hopes for affecting any change and leave to spend their time more productively. Often enough those who seek & stay in these board position aren't even parents of children who currently or even attended the schools in the district. Again though, I'd temper my statements with the caveat that they're based on my own singular experience, and I'd readily believe that elsewhere there are boards who arrive at the same state of affairs with a bit more deliberate actions. It's all a mess.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  It's a fool's quest. Assume for a moment that my vote matters... in the sense that who I choose is elected. Further, assume that I get to craft and design these magical candidates like it the sandbox mode of some video game. So, after all this, these candidates of mine are in charge of the school board, and no one can cockblock them. At this point, does it change the quality of the school's education? Not necessarily for my kids... that's a more difficult thing. Maybe it's a great school, but my kid's just one of those left behind by random individual circumstances. Just on average, does this school improve? Turns out, not really. That school system is still limited in many ways beyond the school board's ability to affect on any reasonable timescale. There is not just a finite talent pool to hire from, but quite limited. And the resources to somehow expand that talent pool are limited too (and it seems likely that even if you could offer $500k salaries, you're attracting money-grubbers more than great teachers). Your capacity for the HR system to even pick the best of that talent pool is sketchy. Textbooks? Limited by what textbooks are offered on the open market. Limited by whether parents will accept that Timmy really is a D+ student, and doesn't deserve automatic Bs for showing up and not acting the maniac. Limited by the "culture of public education"... if the best field trip ever could only happen at the end of July, that doesn't happen because we have ideas about how public schools are supposed to work and they're just not "on" during that part of the calendar. If I was some angsty nihilist, I'd be ranting about how school boards cockblock everything public schools should be doing. But it's so much worse than that. If they did cockblock those things, it'd mean they had some idea what they should do, and were for some reason opposed to it. They don't know. And if they did, it wouldn't matter. The system is designed in such a way as to be completely orthogonal its imagined purpose. And you don't have to be especially intelligent or attentive to recognize any of this enough that you just don't bother with the school board elections. Why would anyone bother to vote? The truth of the matter is it's mostly between worse-and-worst candidates who have no true desire to see any sort of real improvement, and your one vote's not enough to sway it to one or the other.
- Justsignedup 3y ago
  It only works when everyone is committed. When there can be no private schools. If everyone is committed, everything must improve for you to see changes. If everyone is not committed they'll just send their kids to the best schools and ignore the problematic ones.
deleted 3y ago
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thebooktocome 3y ago
[flagged]
- jdminhbg 3y ago
  I'm for vouchers because I don't think I should have to pay with my taxes for religious indoctrination masquerading as public education.
  - LexiMax 3y ago
    Please elaborate on your equivocation. On first glance, you're comparing apples and oranges, and it doesn't make much sense.
    - pierat 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - LexiMax 3y ago
        Oh, so in a voucher system I would've had to choose between receiving a worthwhile education and being queer. Got it.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Places with public school vouchers as law allow said vouchers to be used at 100% religious schools This isn't a requirement for vouchers. You can simply state that religious schools aren't eligible.
        LexiMax 3y ago
        What is the realistic likelyhood of this being mandated, given how many religious private schools there are and how much money they have to lobby with?
        3y ago
11101010001100 3y ago
As a parent I'm realizing that many of the institutions not only set up kids to fail, but set up parents to fail too.
yxwvut 3y ago
What's your solution to stop runaway education costs in this 'voucher first' world? It's not exactly going well in secondary education.
- xcxcx 3y ago
  Automate/centralize management staff
- busterarm 3y ago
  Private schooling is already on average cheaper than public schools in primary education at the dollars spent per child level. The reason education costs are screaming out of control in secondary education is because the government isn't responsible for student loans but students are and they have no opportunity to discharge to bankruptcy and there are no normal consumer debt protections for them. It's guaranteed free money for universities without any underwriting process and an albatross on the neck of the middle class. Tuitions will remain high for as long as they have students desperate or ignorant enough to make poor financial choices. The sad part is that this continues despite universities largely not meeting society's needs nor the needs of the students.
  - bigbacaloa 3y ago
    Private schools are mostly quite bad and worse than typical public schools. A few outliers distort the general picture.
    - busterarm 3y ago
      Multiple decades of studies produced by the NAEP directly refute your argument. I would reference the confirming NAIS studies as well but they've got some self-interest in those results.
      - persedes 3y ago
        I was curious and only found: https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.aspx https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.a... the data is very very old (20 years), but they did not find significant differences after adjusting for the schools / students characteristics. Unadjusted scores however do look better for private schools.
rayiner 3y ago
There’s a reason that folks who are all about “equity” and “centering black voices” are silent about the fact that black people overwhelmingly support school vouchers: https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/new-survey-shows-black-parents-want-school-choice-options-education-vouchers-charter-schools-open-enrollment https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/new-survey-shows-black-pa.... Many of the issues the “equity” folks talk about recieve far less support from black people, including racial preferences in admissions and hiring (which the majority of black people oppose) and even the notion that government has a special duty to help the social and economic status of black people (which is 50/50) or even the idea that the government has an obligation to racially integrate schools (which is also 50/50).[1] [1] https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/the-roots-of-black-political-unity https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/the-roots-of-black-politic...
- synetic 3y ago
  People who have a higher propensity to live in a district with shittier schools overwhelmingly support an alternative. This isn’t shocking. What most people, including it seems you, haven’t thought about are the long term consequences to universal voucher programs given the current idiotic system of school funding being largely based on a how much the houses in the area are worth. The long term consequences are bad and quite predictable. EDIT: There are lots of papers regarding school vouchers and private schools and why it’s a bad idea. Simplistic solutions to complex problems tend not to work and have bad unintended consequences.
  - Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
    >current idiotic system of school funding being largely based on a how much the houses in the area are worth. The long term consequences are bad and quite predictable. This hasn't been true for decades: >on average, both Black and Latinx total per pupil expenditures exceed White total per pupil expenditures by $229.53 and $126.15, respectively.[0] Almost all federal funds go to poor areas, so much so that they have more funding on average. [0]https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858419872445 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198724...
hot_gril 3y ago
My goal is to get enough money to afford private education when I have kids. Forget the other noise.
eitally 3y ago
I don't completely disagree with you, but where's the incentive for a government to give you vouchers to spend on non-governmental education, directly taking away funding from the schools the same government is responsible for managing? If it was a different pool of money, I get it, but -- speaking specifically about the Bay Area -- one of the reasons public schools have suffered is because of attrition toward parochial & private options. When school attendance shrinks, so does funding, which creates a downward spiral of performance in many cases. And it isn't even that all the private options are superior, but because public school funding is dependent on attendance, they detract from the capability & capacity many of these schools have to deliver high quality education. I'm sure it isn't unique, but I've never lived in a place that had such a high proportion of kids in parochial & private schools, and it absolutely does harm the public schools. Compare this to somewhere like Massachusetts, which is equally progressive, treats teachers equally well (better), and has much higher performing public schools -- largely because fewer families with means to pay for private actually do, and those kids & households further support the teachers and administration of their neighborhood schools.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  > And it isn't even that all the private options are superior, By what metric are the private options not superior to the Bay Area Public Schools?
  - RavingGoat 3y ago
    No education requirements for private schools is one way they aren't superior. I would pose that segregation would be the other way private schools aren't superior.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > where's the incentive for a government to give you vouchers to spend on non-governmental education, directly taking away funding from the schools the same government is responsible for managing The schools are there for the kids. They aren't cattle to be used as a commodity input to a jobs and spending program.
jedberg 3y ago
This only works if you require all schools getting vouchers to accept all students. Otherwise you end up with all the special needs kids in the public schools that are required to take them and all the high performers in private schools. And even then you still have the problem of transportation. Only the more well off families have the time and means to get their kids to somewhere that isn't their closest home school. Unless you require the school to accept vouchers from anyone who wants to go and provide them transportation, you're still going to get inequalities of outcomes.
- Aloha 3y ago
  The first part of your comment I think is key, we also dont give schools significantly more money for special ed, as we should.
  - jasonlotito 3y ago
    Transportation is also essential. Why would we accept less going "private"? As for not giving schools significantly more money for special ed, what is significant in your eyes?
    - Aloha 3y ago
      I think you can ignore the transportation part, if for no other reason than impracticality - not all districts offer effective or workable transportation now. I'd suggest that additional funding for special education, on a per student basis could be based on some sort of disability index, whereas the more services they require gets the district more money. Ideally some formula that is a mix of numbers based on local assessments, and weighted to similar districts in size and socioeconomic backgrounds of their residents. Like if a district games the system, the weighting should result in them being brought back into some mean.
      - jasonlotito 3y ago
        > I think you can ignore the transportation part, No. Why should I accept less from a private school when the public school already guarantees it? This is incredibly important for special needs students and families. > I'd suggest that additional funding for special education... This already happens. In part, it depends on the state and county. Schools get more money for special needs students. I'm fine with them getting more money, but let's not pretend that the school receives the same funding for special-needs and non-special needs students.
weaksauce 3y ago
except this is histrionics. there was a fervent backlash against this and they revised the proposal to make it a schools choice to teach it or not. > Stuff like this is why I will remain a proponent for true vouchers for the rest of my life. The only thing that does is line the pockets of fundamentalist christian schools with money and increase the inequality. schools should not be tied to local taxes by and large... there should be a equality of funding.
- bigbacaloa 3y ago
  Not teaching algebra and calculus should not be an option, particularly if one is concerned about equity.
JTbane 3y ago
Charter school vouchers are a corrupt way to siphon off public funds.
- churchill 3y ago
  So taxes the state collects from me automatically become 'public funds' I have no say over?
pierat 3y ago
[flagged]
- electriclove 3y ago
  I definitely don’t want religious brainwashing. I also definitely do not want the indoctrination that is taking place in our public schools.
  - pierat 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - snapcaster 3y ago
      Would it be possible to interpret the comment you're responding to more charitably and respond to that?
      - pierat 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- bluGill 3y ago
  You should not make that point. Society works much better if you accept the wierd beliefs of as many people as you can. Fight againt cannibalism (does any of that even exist anymore?), but be very careful about even that.
  - pierat 3y ago
    Simply put: why does their religion get money from the state when mine does not? I dont care if you have weird beliefs. I just don't want weird beliefs funded by the state. And that's also including my own weird beliefs.
tgv 3y ago
> Letting parents vote with their kids placement will force schools to truly advance. That's naive. How much effort will be required to get your kid to a better school? Daily effort? Schools get selected because of convenience (distance, cost), and because the neighborhood friends go there as well. Homo economicus does not exist. Furthermore, it presupposes an open competition between schools without restrictions on placement, and all information available and understandable to everyone. It's not going to work. There's also the effect of mixing children with different backgrounds. A good school with can absorb a small amount of deficient students and stimulate them. Having everyone fight for the same school will cancel that, certainly if there also are programs that advance one group over another. The only result of a free market for schooling will be that well-informed parents with some means will be able to select better schools for their kids. This being a (near) zero-sum game (you can't find a million good teachers), it'll mean the rest will be off worse.
vkou 3y ago
> No parent should be stuck without options when educational governance goes sideways like this. You say this, but what you actually mean is no wealthy parent should be stuck without options. The hoi polloi that can't afford the voucher plus mountain of money private school tuition will still be quite stuck without options, except that you've also created an explicit two-class system. I hear those do wonders for social cohesion. As will opening a firehose of money into the insane fundamentalist indoctrination that so many parents wish to inflict on their children, but can't in public school.
- rory 3y ago
  > The hoi polloi that can't afford the voucher plus mountain of money private school tuition What are you talking about? The voucher is supplied by the state, and charter schools are definitionally tuition-free to students and their families.
- b800h 3y ago
  Bit of a weird position to take that you're in favour of schools doing indoctrination, just as long as it's away from the viewpoint you don't like. That's pretty authoritarian; seems to be on the rise these days.
  - vkou 3y ago
    > Bit of a weird position to take that you're in favour of schools doing indoctrination, just as long as it's away from the viewpoint you don't like. No, it's not. Society only works when people believe in a shared fiction, and when they stop believing it, things go completely to shit. I would absolutely oppose indoctrination into a bad shared fiction, just like a religious person would oppose indoctrination into a 'religion is the opiate of the masses and must be purged from society' shared fiction, or like a pro-democracy person would oppose indoctrination into 'the way forward is installing an autocracy that will seize power through force of arms' shared fiction, or like how most of us would probably have issues with pro-ISIS indoctrination.
    - b800h 3y ago
snarf21 3y ago
I understand why you would want the choice but I think history has already shown that vouchers don't work. You have to remember that the thing vouchers do is take money out of the school you are leaving. (A better approach would be for there to be a private school tax deduction alongside programs like 529). This leaves the students that are already behind fewer resources to catch up. We need school reform desperately and this new program is very bad and not it. However, allocating extra resources for those who needed most hasn't been a priority writ large either or we wouldn't be where were are now. We also forget that there are many social aspects that drive under performers. Food insecurity, family stability, safe quiet place to read and do homework, etc. have a huge impact on student performance. School breakfast/lunch/dinner should be free for all students. We should have more after school programs built into the schools for students that need it so they can get tutoring on-prem before they even return home to a potentially unstable home life. Unfortunately we don't approach all the interconnected issues holistically. (Similar to how trivial it would be solve most homelessness if we had the political courage to change our approach). You claim that you shouldn't be "stuck" with a bad school program but you aren't. You can run for school board along with other like minded student-focused parents and get the thing corrected.
- madrox 3y ago
  So the answer is to take on a second job, spending several years fixing the system (and contending with people who don't agree with you) so that it will be fixed near the time my child has moved on? That isn't a real answer. What will really happen is what happens today. Kids whose parents have options just get put in private schools and the problem gets ignored. The kids whose parents have no options get left behind.
insanitybit 3y ago
At least in NYC the DOE has to at least subsidize your private school if you show that your child has needs that require that school.
pkulak 3y ago
And now you've limited education to families that can drive their kids 20 miles one way, twice daily, during work hours. If American cities were known for amazing public transport, and changing schools only meant changing the subway stop, I'd agree with you.
tmpz22 3y ago
This is a really important discussion and as a non-parent who hasn't been through the process i'll reserve judgement. But I wonder: Are there circumstances where the availability of vouchers results in a parent making a worse educational selection for their student? Would this leave educational marketing to lean towards populist institutions (like Kanye West's "schools" or Megachurch-derived schools)?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
kaitai 3y ago
Disagree for a number of reasons. 1) A good public education should be available to all students, with reasonable transportation provided. This is an axiom for me. 2) Private schools do not seem consistently provide a better education, but they do enable siphoning and segregation of students. Students with disabilities of various types can be excluded; the education can be explicitly religious; private education can really enable exclusivity of many kinds. On one level all that is fine -- but I don't want taxpayer dollars to support it. Raise money thru your church to send kids to that stuff. In addition, I think your premise is false. In the school district I live in, children can apply to attend any school in the district. Charter schools are available as well as public schools. Choice is available with a publicly funded model, and as a parent I am partaking in that and switching a kid from a high-scoring school that I'm nevertheless not fully satisfied with to another high-performing school that rivals the privates for about $30k less a year. But in the end, I actually don't think competition forces improvement. The misalignment of incentives is too great. Individual teachers want to do their best for their kids, in general, and they also want to improve their income. To do their best, they try to help the visible high achievers if they can but they absolutely must take time on the kids acting out. Administrators have to deal with district edicts and teacher demands, but they don't have the money to support teacher development (which would be the #1 thing to help both teachers and kids). School districts/boards need to show they're "using technology" and "being equitable" and "being innovative" and all sorts of stuff that is not the same as improving outcomes. Everyone is supposed to do well on the tests, even when the tests are stupid (and whoo-hoo are some of them terrible). Schools have to deal with homelessness and hunger, because no other regional agency deals with all the kids in the area. Nothing lines up and so we end up with free lunch that's not so nutritious but does hit a calorie bar, attempts at equity without supports (putting kids with behavioral problems into crowded and understaffed classrooms), a bunch of teachers who are scared of math yet have to teach it, who would benefit most from upgrading their skills....
pwthornton 3y ago
On the math front, what we have seen a lot is that parents from families with means or who really care get their kids tutors or math services outside of school like Kumon. Some do pull their kids from school, but if you just want accelerated math, you can do so without needing an expensive private school. Something like Kumon is like $200 or less a month. The best argument I have heard for not getting into algebra too quickly is that kids are often not getting enough time spent on foundational math skills, and then that leads them not to have those foundations as math ramps up in difficulty. I don't think eliminating advanced math for equity's sake makes any sense, but we should also be careful not to rush through lower-level math and leave even strong students without foundational skills. Math education in the U.S. is not working for the vast majority of students. We need to find a way to make it more engaging and applied. We may also need to just spend more time each day on math.

scarmig 3y ago

There's the theory that, by forcing the kids with the most engaged parents to go to schools with the kids of less engaged parents, the engaged parents will drive school districts to implement good educational policies. In reality, though, that doesn't seem to have worked. School board elections have very low turnout usually, and the people elected to them are disproportionately ideologues who treat engaged parents with contempt for being "privileged."

okeuro49 3y ago
I agree, and particularly this part > There's the theory that, by forcing the kids with the most engaged parents to go to schools with the kids of less engaged parents is really rough on the kids of engaged parents, forcing them to be responsible for "fixing" systems that they didn't create. In the UK, we used to have "grammar schools" that selected on ability based on a standardised test. They were responsible for many working- and middle class children being propelled into high positions in industry and politics, including Prime Minister. However the whole idea was deemed inequitable, so they were dismantled. Now privately school educated children have less competition.
- declan_roberts 3y ago
  Also being treated like a privileged enemy of the school while trying to fix it.
- nsxwolf 3y ago
  And if you could fix the system, it would have been fixed by now. If you have a kid today, you have 5-6 years to fix the system before it starts failing them. Your kid will be grown before any meaningful change is made, and any harms caused by the current system will be fully baked in. If you have money, you have an escape hatch right now. Vouchers make that escape hatch available to more people. Public education doesn't have to mean public schools.
  - mfer 3y ago
    You need a decent school option within an acceptable travel distance. There are many who don't have a good choice like that.
    - nsxwolf 3y ago
      New schools appear as soon as the money is available.
    - tastyfreeze 3y ago
      If there is money available the choices will appear. When it stops being about the building and government curriculum and starts becoming about satisfying parents desire to have their child educated, anybody can become a teacher or organize a school. If the teacher fails to deliver the parents will go elsewhere. The free market for schools and teachers is created the moment Department of Education is eliminated and replaced with education vouchers for all.
  - KerrAvon 3y ago
    Actually, public education has to mean public schools. Vouchers are a band-aid invented by right-wing nutjobs to allow religious schools to be funded by public money; they do this by taking money away from secular public schools. If public schools are broken, we need to fix the public schools, not break them further.
    - nsxwolf 3y ago
      I'm almost 50. I've watched this scam play out my entire life. We've gotta fix the public schools, they said, when I was in public school. They said it year after year, generation after generation. It's never happening. We absolutely should allow vouchers to go to religious private schools and secular private schools alike. It's time to bleed the public schools dry and use their lots to build more housing.
- blowski 3y ago
  There are still some grammar schools, but they are badly distributed, because it’s based on political views from past ages. For example, the city of Southend in Essex has about 7000 grammar school places. Entire counties of Norfolk and Suffolk have none.
- gadders 3y ago
  Grammar schools do still exist in a few hold-out counties like Kent. One thing that was repealed by the last Labour government was the Assisted Places Scheme [1]. If you scored highly enough the government would pay for a child to go to private school. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_Places_Scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_Places_Scheme
brightball 3y ago
That’s a good case for vouchers. Instead, kids with engaged parents will flee to better schools. The other parents will either follow, growing the new school and model, or the other school will adapt in order to retain students. Engaged parents are your early adopters. Without vouchers, most people can’t even afford to enter the market.
- xcxcx 3y ago
  What if you launch convenience store-style mini schools with really terrible infrastructure and content but within five blocks from many buildings? You could literally rewrite history and language and program an entire generation of future voters. Imagine the possibilities
- altcognito 3y ago
  One of the purposes of public education is also assimilating children into the shared values of society. In the US this has been forgotten despite guys like Jefferson talking about this exact thing. The free market can be good at optimizing for certain outcomes, but I don't think you're going to get a lot of buy in with the current political climate being what it is, and a lack of consensus around what kind of outcomes should be required. Furthermore, making schooling a purely financial transaction? Where do you think that leads?
  - bamfly 3y ago
    Yeah, I'm OK paying taxes to get to live in a society with universally-available (mostly) fee-free primary and secondary education that aspires to some set of standards. I'm not OK paying taxes to help Bobby Baptist send his kids to Jesus Is Lord Day School. Or kick in to rich parents' budget for Phillips Exeter. If we must have vouchers, let people keep their own tax money that would have gone to schools and use that for the vouchers. I'm not interested in handing people my cash to fund private education. I'm interested in having a public education system. That, I'll pay taxes for.
    - busterarm 3y ago
Kalium 3y ago
I strongly suspect that in practice, those engaged parents handle it by moving to the next polity over that's not trying to use them to improve policies.
- bluGill 3y ago
  They often don't have a choice. They can stay, but as just one vote they cannot reform the system. They can fight for thier kids, but they may have limited results. (My mom faught hard in ~1965 to be able to take shop, but it was a boys only class and she didn't win)
  - autoexec 3y ago
    I'd bet that the school she went to would let a girl into shop class today (assuming the school and class are still around). Change is possible, but it's slow. It also matters if there's one girl who wants to take shop class vs many girls who are asking for it. Parents and students can work to change the ways their schools are run. They may have to campaign for and promote their causes so that "one vote" grows into more votes, but votes still mater.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      Sure, but it was too late for my mom. My mom would have been better off finding a different district that would let her in (this may not have been possible), instead of fighting a system that ultimately failed her.
      - nobody9999 3y ago
        >Sure, but it was too late for my mom. My mom would have been better off finding a different district that would let her in (this may not have been possible), instead of fighting a system that ultimately failed her. An interesting and important anecdote. But rather than focusing on your mom's inability to take shop class, perhaps you might reflect on the fact that your mom (and many other women/girls) fought for such changes and, eventually (albeit too late for your mom), won. That's how change happens. If you just throw up your hands and say "well, I/my mom/whoever couldn't have something that was good and important. So there's no reason to ever fight for change," seems incredibly reductive and doesn't reflect how change has been wrought throughout history. Please understand, I'm not poking at you or your mom (in fact, I don't know her, but I think she's fabulous!). Rather, I'm taking issue with the idea that we "can't win, so don't try." That's a recipe for those who understand how change is made to create the world in their image, whether you like it or not.
vuln 3y ago
> School board elections have very low turnout usually, and the people elected to them are disproportionately ideologues who treat engaged parents with contempt for being "privileged." Not only the School Board but the Teachers Unions and the United States Government are anti parents attending School Board meetings to support their children. Red or Blue, 6 or 600, it doesn’t matter when the USG decides to make parents the enemy of the state. https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/chairman-jordan-expands-investigation-biden-targeting-parents-school-board https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/chairman-jo... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/03/29/garland-school-board-memo-fbi/11561422002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/03/29/garl... https://apnews.com/article/merrick-garland-school-boards-violence-daaff3f659981354b7a9a536db5cf2e2 https://apnews.com/article/merrick-garland-school-boards-vio...
- thebooktocome 3y ago
  Parents are merely exercising their First Amendment rights when they threaten violence against school teachers & staff? That’s an interesting position.
- declan_roberts 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - ambicapter 3y ago
    I find it hard to believe that you find it hard to believe that law enforcement was called in to deal with individuals threatening violence on others, regardless of whether these were parents at a school board meeting.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    The article cites a parent physically attacking a school board member and your response is shock that authorities were involved?
- ryandrake 3y ago
  I dunno--if you want to see America's mental illness problem on full, public display, just do a YouTube search for "school board meeting outrage". It's great when concerned, non-ideological, rational parents show up to have a voice in how the school is run, but the flip side of that coin is ugly, belligerent, and counter-productive.
api 3y ago
> the engaged parents will drive school districts to implement good educational policies. This assumes that it's actually possible for parents to override insulated bureaucrats whose heads are stuffed completely up their own derrieres. Political hyper-polarization doesn't help either. If your local crazy-left school board abolishes merit in the name of equity, you could always replace them with crazy-right Republicans who believe the Earth is 6000 years old and Qanon is real.
matrix_overload 3y ago
>the people elected to them are disproportionately ideologues who treat engaged parents with contempt for being "privileged." There are grim economic shifts behind this. The majority of people are now priced out of raising their own kids to a good standard (i.e. stay-at-home mum). So, more and more people feel envy towards those who can, and various "equity" movements pop out (that all focus on bringing top performers down, rather than bottom performers up). The only way to fight it is move to an area where most people can still afford kids, and in our generation it may mean moving out of U.S. entirely.
orangepurple 3y ago
In this case it is abundantly clear that the school district gave up trying to fix underperformers and threw in the towel. Engaged parents are domestic terrorists: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/01/13/school-board-association-domestic-terrorism/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/01/13/school-b... The only option is do not help and do not engage. There is no point in expending effort trying to fix a system led by people that hate you.
blobbers 3y ago
Wow you hit the nail right on the head. That's exactly what's happened at our board level. The PTA of the school itself is the involved parents, and the schoolboard has the utmost contempt for them! None of the involved parents are willing to put in the effort or have the desire to be elected to the schoolboard though.
- ineedasername 3y ago
  My experience coincides with yours with respect to the disregard school boards have for, not just the PTA, but the will of parents in general. Although I don't think that, at its base, it started with contempt-- I think it began with actual disregard or maybe apathy in favor of their own pet projects and ideas of how things should be regardless of the parents' wishes. Contempt only entered the picture when parents voices dissent. But that's only what I see locally for my district, I'd certainly believe you if you reasserted that no, in your district it did actually begin with contempt as well. With respect to the GP comment, I don't think things are quite as pre-planned as a deliberate effort to have engaged parents sort of subsidize the lack of effort by less engaged parents. That might be the net result, but attributing that to a deliberate and coordinated plan on the part of school boards or the broader public education system is, to my thinking, giving them too much credit in their ability to so coordinate and engage in such complex efforts. They bicker far too much among themselves pursuing their own agendas to agree long enough for that level of strategy. And there are on occasion parents truly willing to put in the effort and get elected, but end up quickly disillusioned on their hopes for affecting any change and leave to spend their time more productively. Often enough those who seek & stay in these board position aren't even parents of children who currently or even attended the schools in the district. Again though, I'd temper my statements with the caveat that they're based on my own singular experience, and I'd readily believe that elsewhere there are boards who arrive at the same state of affairs with a bit more deliberate actions. It's all a mess.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
It's a fool's quest. Assume for a moment that my vote matters... in the sense that who I choose is elected. Further, assume that I get to craft and design these magical candidates like it the sandbox mode of some video game. So, after all this, these candidates of mine are in charge of the school board, and no one can cockblock them. At this point, does it change the quality of the school's education? Not necessarily for my kids... that's a more difficult thing. Maybe it's a great school, but my kid's just one of those left behind by random individual circumstances. Just on average, does this school improve? Turns out, not really. That school system is still limited in many ways beyond the school board's ability to affect on any reasonable timescale. There is not just a finite talent pool to hire from, but quite limited. And the resources to somehow expand that talent pool are limited too (and it seems likely that even if you could offer $500k salaries, you're attracting money-grubbers more than great teachers). Your capacity for the HR system to even pick the best of that talent pool is sketchy. Textbooks? Limited by what textbooks are offered on the open market. Limited by whether parents will accept that Timmy really is a D+ student, and doesn't deserve automatic Bs for showing up and not acting the maniac. Limited by the "culture of public education"... if the best field trip ever could only happen at the end of July, that doesn't happen because we have ideas about how public schools are supposed to work and they're just not "on" during that part of the calendar. If I was some angsty nihilist, I'd be ranting about how school boards cockblock everything public schools should be doing. But it's so much worse than that. If they did cockblock those things, it'd mean they had some idea what they should do, and were for some reason opposed to it. They don't know. And if they did, it wouldn't matter. The system is designed in such a way as to be completely orthogonal its imagined purpose. And you don't have to be especially intelligent or attentive to recognize any of this enough that you just don't bother with the school board elections. Why would anyone bother to vote? The truth of the matter is it's mostly between worse-and-worst candidates who have no true desire to see any sort of real improvement, and your one vote's not enough to sway it to one or the other.
Justsignedup 3y ago
It only works when everyone is committed. When there can be no private schools. If everyone is committed, everything must improve for you to see changes. If everyone is not committed they'll just send their kids to the best schools and ignore the problematic ones.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

thebooktocome 3y ago

[flagged]

jdminhbg 3y ago
I'm for vouchers because I don't think I should have to pay with my taxes for religious indoctrination masquerading as public education.
- LexiMax 3y ago
  Please elaborate on your equivocation. On first glance, you're comparing apples and oranges, and it doesn't make much sense.
  - pierat 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - LexiMax 3y ago
      Oh, so in a voucher system I would've had to choose between receiving a worthwhile education and being queer. Got it.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > Places with public school vouchers as law allow said vouchers to be used at 100% religious schools This isn't a requirement for vouchers. You can simply state that religious schools aren't eligible.
      - LexiMax 3y ago
        What is the realistic likelyhood of this being mandated, given how many religious private schools there are and how much money they have to lobby with?
        3y ago

11101010001100 3y ago

As a parent I'm realizing that many of the institutions not only set up kids to fail, but set up parents to fail too.

yxwvut 3y ago

What's your solution to stop runaway education costs in this 'voucher first' world? It's not exactly going well in secondary education.

xcxcx 3y ago
Automate/centralize management staff
busterarm 3y ago
Private schooling is already on average cheaper than public schools in primary education at the dollars spent per child level. The reason education costs are screaming out of control in secondary education is because the government isn't responsible for student loans but students are and they have no opportunity to discharge to bankruptcy and there are no normal consumer debt protections for them. It's guaranteed free money for universities without any underwriting process and an albatross on the neck of the middle class. Tuitions will remain high for as long as they have students desperate or ignorant enough to make poor financial choices. The sad part is that this continues despite universities largely not meeting society's needs nor the needs of the students.
- bigbacaloa 3y ago
  Private schools are mostly quite bad and worse than typical public schools. A few outliers distort the general picture.
  - busterarm 3y ago
    Multiple decades of studies produced by the NAEP directly refute your argument. I would reference the confirming NAIS studies as well but they've got some self-interest in those results.
    - persedes 3y ago
      I was curious and only found: https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.aspx https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.a... the data is very very old (20 years), but they did not find significant differences after adjusting for the schools / students characteristics. Unadjusted scores however do look better for private schools.

rayiner 3y ago

There’s a reason that folks who are all about “equity” and “centering black voices” are silent about the fact that black people overwhelmingly support school vouchers: https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/new-survey-shows-black-parents-want-school-choice-options-education-vouchers-charter-schools-open-enrollment https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/new-survey-shows-black-pa.... Many of the issues the “equity” folks talk about recieve far less support from black people, including racial preferences in admissions and hiring (which the majority of black people oppose) and even the notion that government has a special duty to help the social and economic status of black people (which is 50/50) or even the idea that the government has an obligation to racially integrate schools (which is also 50/50).[1] [1] https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/the-roots-of-black-political-unity https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/the-roots-of-black-politic...

synetic 3y ago
People who have a higher propensity to live in a district with shittier schools overwhelmingly support an alternative. This isn’t shocking. What most people, including it seems you, haven’t thought about are the long term consequences to universal voucher programs given the current idiotic system of school funding being largely based on a how much the houses in the area are worth. The long term consequences are bad and quite predictable. EDIT: There are lots of papers regarding school vouchers and private schools and why it’s a bad idea. Simplistic solutions to complex problems tend not to work and have bad unintended consequences.
- Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
  >current idiotic system of school funding being largely based on a how much the houses in the area are worth. The long term consequences are bad and quite predictable. This hasn't been true for decades: >on average, both Black and Latinx total per pupil expenditures exceed White total per pupil expenditures by $229.53 and $126.15, respectively.[0] Almost all federal funds go to poor areas, so much so that they have more funding on average. [0]https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858419872445 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198724...

hot_gril 3y ago

My goal is to get enough money to afford private education when I have kids. Forget the other noise.

eitally 3y ago

I don't completely disagree with you, but where's the incentive for a government to give you vouchers to spend on non-governmental education, directly taking away funding from the schools the same government is responsible for managing? If it was a different pool of money, I get it, but -- speaking specifically about the Bay Area -- one of the reasons public schools have suffered is because of attrition toward parochial & private options. When school attendance shrinks, so does funding, which creates a downward spiral of performance in many cases. And it isn't even that all the private options are superior, but because public school funding is dependent on attendance, they detract from the capability & capacity many of these schools have to deliver high quality education. I'm sure it isn't unique, but I've never lived in a place that had such a high proportion of kids in parochial & private schools, and it absolutely does harm the public schools. Compare this to somewhere like Massachusetts, which is equally progressive, treats teachers equally well (better), and has much higher performing public schools -- largely because fewer families with means to pay for private actually do, and those kids & households further support the teachers and administration of their neighborhood schools.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
> And it isn't even that all the private options are superior, By what metric are the private options not superior to the Bay Area Public Schools?
- RavingGoat 3y ago
  No education requirements for private schools is one way they aren't superior. I would pose that segregation would be the other way private schools aren't superior.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> where's the incentive for a government to give you vouchers to spend on non-governmental education, directly taking away funding from the schools the same government is responsible for managing The schools are there for the kids. They aren't cattle to be used as a commodity input to a jobs and spending program.

jedberg 3y ago

This only works if you require all schools getting vouchers to accept all students. Otherwise you end up with all the special needs kids in the public schools that are required to take them and all the high performers in private schools. And even then you still have the problem of transportation. Only the more well off families have the time and means to get their kids to somewhere that isn't their closest home school. Unless you require the school to accept vouchers from anyone who wants to go and provide them transportation, you're still going to get inequalities of outcomes.

Aloha 3y ago
The first part of your comment I think is key, we also dont give schools significantly more money for special ed, as we should.
- jasonlotito 3y ago
  Transportation is also essential. Why would we accept less going "private"? As for not giving schools significantly more money for special ed, what is significant in your eyes?
  - Aloha 3y ago
    I think you can ignore the transportation part, if for no other reason than impracticality - not all districts offer effective or workable transportation now. I'd suggest that additional funding for special education, on a per student basis could be based on some sort of disability index, whereas the more services they require gets the district more money. Ideally some formula that is a mix of numbers based on local assessments, and weighted to similar districts in size and socioeconomic backgrounds of their residents. Like if a district games the system, the weighting should result in them being brought back into some mean.
    - jasonlotito 3y ago
      > I think you can ignore the transportation part, No. Why should I accept less from a private school when the public school already guarantees it? This is incredibly important for special needs students and families. > I'd suggest that additional funding for special education... This already happens. In part, it depends on the state and county. Schools get more money for special needs students. I'm fine with them getting more money, but let's not pretend that the school receives the same funding for special-needs and non-special needs students.

weaksauce 3y ago

except this is histrionics. there was a fervent backlash against this and they revised the proposal to make it a schools choice to teach it or not. > Stuff like this is why I will remain a proponent for true vouchers for the rest of my life. The only thing that does is line the pockets of fundamentalist christian schools with money and increase the inequality. schools should not be tied to local taxes by and large... there should be a equality of funding.

bigbacaloa 3y ago
Not teaching algebra and calculus should not be an option, particularly if one is concerned about equity.

JTbane 3y ago

Charter school vouchers are a corrupt way to siphon off public funds.

churchill 3y ago
So taxes the state collects from me automatically become 'public funds' I have no say over?

pierat 3y ago

[flagged]

electriclove 3y ago
I definitely don’t want religious brainwashing. I also definitely do not want the indoctrination that is taking place in our public schools.
- pierat 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - snapcaster 3y ago
    Would it be possible to interpret the comment you're responding to more charitably and respond to that?
    - pierat 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
bluGill 3y ago
You should not make that point. Society works much better if you accept the wierd beliefs of as many people as you can. Fight againt cannibalism (does any of that even exist anymore?), but be very careful about even that.
- pierat 3y ago
  Simply put: why does their religion get money from the state when mine does not? I dont care if you have weird beliefs. I just don't want weird beliefs funded by the state. And that's also including my own weird beliefs.

tgv 3y ago

> Letting parents vote with their kids placement will force schools to truly advance. That's naive. How much effort will be required to get your kid to a better school? Daily effort? Schools get selected because of convenience (distance, cost), and because the neighborhood friends go there as well. Homo economicus does not exist. Furthermore, it presupposes an open competition between schools without restrictions on placement, and all information available and understandable to everyone. It's not going to work. There's also the effect of mixing children with different backgrounds. A good school with can absorb a small amount of deficient students and stimulate them. Having everyone fight for the same school will cancel that, certainly if there also are programs that advance one group over another. The only result of a free market for schooling will be that well-informed parents with some means will be able to select better schools for their kids. This being a (near) zero-sum game (you can't find a million good teachers), it'll mean the rest will be off worse.

vkou 3y ago

> No parent should be stuck without options when educational governance goes sideways like this. You say this, but what you actually mean is no wealthy parent should be stuck without options. The hoi polloi that can't afford the voucher plus mountain of money private school tuition will still be quite stuck without options, except that you've also created an explicit two-class system. I hear those do wonders for social cohesion. As will opening a firehose of money into the insane fundamentalist indoctrination that so many parents wish to inflict on their children, but can't in public school.

rory 3y ago
> The hoi polloi that can't afford the voucher plus mountain of money private school tuition What are you talking about? The voucher is supplied by the state, and charter schools are definitionally tuition-free to students and their families.
b800h 3y ago
Bit of a weird position to take that you're in favour of schools doing indoctrination, just as long as it's away from the viewpoint you don't like. That's pretty authoritarian; seems to be on the rise these days.
- vkou 3y ago
  > Bit of a weird position to take that you're in favour of schools doing indoctrination, just as long as it's away from the viewpoint you don't like. No, it's not. Society only works when people believe in a shared fiction, and when they stop believing it, things go completely to shit. I would absolutely oppose indoctrination into a bad shared fiction, just like a religious person would oppose indoctrination into a 'religion is the opiate of the masses and must be purged from society' shared fiction, or like a pro-democracy person would oppose indoctrination into 'the way forward is installing an autocracy that will seize power through force of arms' shared fiction, or like how most of us would probably have issues with pro-ISIS indoctrination.
  - b800h 3y ago

snarf21 3y ago

I understand why you would want the choice but I think history has already shown that vouchers don't work. You have to remember that the thing vouchers do is take money out of the school you are leaving. (A better approach would be for there to be a private school tax deduction alongside programs like 529). This leaves the students that are already behind fewer resources to catch up. We need school reform desperately and this new program is very bad and not it. However, allocating extra resources for those who needed most hasn't been a priority writ large either or we wouldn't be where were are now. We also forget that there are many social aspects that drive under performers. Food insecurity, family stability, safe quiet place to read and do homework, etc. have a huge impact on student performance. School breakfast/lunch/dinner should be free for all students. We should have more after school programs built into the schools for students that need it so they can get tutoring on-prem before they even return home to a potentially unstable home life. Unfortunately we don't approach all the interconnected issues holistically. (Similar to how trivial it would be solve most homelessness if we had the political courage to change our approach). You claim that you shouldn't be "stuck" with a bad school program but you aren't. You can run for school board along with other like minded student-focused parents and get the thing corrected.

madrox 3y ago
So the answer is to take on a second job, spending several years fixing the system (and contending with people who don't agree with you) so that it will be fixed near the time my child has moved on? That isn't a real answer. What will really happen is what happens today. Kids whose parents have options just get put in private schools and the problem gets ignored. The kids whose parents have no options get left behind.

insanitybit 3y ago

At least in NYC the DOE has to at least subsidize your private school if you show that your child has needs that require that school.

pkulak 3y ago

And now you've limited education to families that can drive their kids 20 miles one way, twice daily, during work hours. If American cities were known for amazing public transport, and changing schools only meant changing the subway stop, I'd agree with you.

tmpz22 3y ago

This is a really important discussion and as a non-parent who hasn't been through the process i'll reserve judgement. But I wonder: Are there circumstances where the availability of vouchers results in a parent making a worse educational selection for their student? Would this leave educational marketing to lean towards populist institutions (like Kanye West's "schools" or Megachurch-derived schools)?

deleted 3y ago
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kaitai 3y ago

Disagree for a number of reasons. 1) A good public education should be available to all students, with reasonable transportation provided. This is an axiom for me. 2) Private schools do not seem consistently provide a better education, but they do enable siphoning and segregation of students. Students with disabilities of various types can be excluded; the education can be explicitly religious; private education can really enable exclusivity of many kinds. On one level all that is fine -- but I don't want taxpayer dollars to support it. Raise money thru your church to send kids to that stuff. In addition, I think your premise is false. In the school district I live in, children can apply to attend any school in the district. Charter schools are available as well as public schools. Choice is available with a publicly funded model, and as a parent I am partaking in that and switching a kid from a high-scoring school that I'm nevertheless not fully satisfied with to another high-performing school that rivals the privates for about $30k less a year. But in the end, I actually don't think competition forces improvement. The misalignment of incentives is too great. Individual teachers want to do their best for their kids, in general, and they also want to improve their income. To do their best, they try to help the visible high achievers if they can but they absolutely must take time on the kids acting out. Administrators have to deal with district edicts and teacher demands, but they don't have the money to support teacher development (which would be the #1 thing to help both teachers and kids). School districts/boards need to show they're "using technology" and "being equitable" and "being innovative" and all sorts of stuff that is not the same as improving outcomes. Everyone is supposed to do well on the tests, even when the tests are stupid (and whoo-hoo are some of them terrible). Schools have to deal with homelessness and hunger, because no other regional agency deals with all the kids in the area. Nothing lines up and so we end up with free lunch that's not so nutritious but does hit a calorie bar, attempts at equity without supports (putting kids with behavioral problems into crowded and understaffed classrooms), a bunch of teachers who are scared of math yet have to teach it, who would benefit most from upgrading their skills....

pwthornton 3y ago

On the math front, what we have seen a lot is that parents from families with means or who really care get their kids tutors or math services outside of school like Kumon. Some do pull their kids from school, but if you just want accelerated math, you can do so without needing an expensive private school. Something like Kumon is like $200 or less a month. The best argument I have heard for not getting into algebra too quickly is that kids are often not getting enough time spent on foundational math skills, and then that leads them not to have those foundations as math ramps up in difficulty. I don't think eliminating advanced math for equity's sake makes any sense, but we should also be careful not to rush through lower-level math and leave even strong students without foundational skills. Math education in the U.S. is not working for the vast majority of students. We need to find a way to make it more engaging and applied. We may also need to just spend more time each day on math.