Originally posted by: alphatarget1
Originally posted by: eskimospy
What are you idiots babbling about?
Has Obama ever said you shouldn't send your kids to private schools if you can afford it? You can be for both sending your kids to private school and improving America's public schools. I am just floored sometimes at the leaps of 'logic' people here try to make.
Um, Obama is against school vouchers for poor parents who can't otherwise send their kids to private schools because they're poor. He panders to teacher's unions and just want to throw more money at the problem.
Ughhh.
Allow me to explain one more time why vouchers are an idiotic solution. Let's suppose you're one of those poor people. Your kids go to the public school. Down the road, there's a private school. The people who send their kids to the private school pay $20,000 to send their kids there. You think, "why won't the government give me 20k so I can send my kids there too!"
Guess what. If EVERYONE at your public school got 20k to send their kids to that private school, you think the private school is going to let you in?? Of course not. They're going to realize, "wow, we can really rake in the money now!" They raise the tuition to $30k, the rich people pay $10k less than they were before. You can't afford to send your kids there. And NOW, the public schools your kids are still stuck going to have $20k times the number of kids heading to the private school less to work with. Or, do you think the private school is going to open their doors and say "everyone's welcome! We're going to buy more chairs!"
They're not. They're going to screen the students. "Sorry, you're grades aren't good enough." "Sorry, you have special needs that cost 3 times what it takes to educate the average student." "Sorry, you're a trouble maker." Private schools aren't stupid. They're going to take the best students. If a student can't really afford it, but has a lot of potential, they'll offer the student a scholarship. I taught at a private Catholic school - I saw this first hand. If they had extra room, they did not turn away promising bright young students simply because the student couldn't afford to go there. Your family can only afford $100 a month? Fine. Here's a scholarship. Here's a work study program - you're going to clean classrooms for 1 hour a week. Your parents can "volunteer" to work on Bingo night.
All you have to do is look at higher education to understand exactly what would happen. Universities have been doing this for ages! Tell me, what's the tuition to get into Cornell? MIT? Harvard? Yale? Ya' think they let in average students? Why aren't you whining "I need the government to give me $50k per year so I can go to Cornell. I don't want to settle for the local community college" (not to besmirch the quality of education that some community colleges offer.) You think Cornell is going to say, "hey, let's double the size of our campus and let in twice as many students"? Or maybe, Cornell would say, "hey, the gov't is giving everyone who comes here a free $50k. Let's raise tuition since there's so much demand, and sink some extra money into our research facilities - buy better cutting edge equipment, attracting more of the top researchers in their fields. And, oh yeah, those community colleges that a couple lines ago I said had excellent programs - sorry guys, we have to cut your budget because we're giving that money to students who want to go to Cornell instead - the community college you'd be attending because with that extra cash allotment, you'd still not get into Cornell.
Originally posted by: ProfJohn
I always thought that providing vouchers would actually help the school system.
Here is how:
School system X has 1300 students and spends $13 million or $10k per student.
That is 100 students per grade. Say 4 classes for each grade or 25 per class.
Now they offer vouchers to parents in the amount of $5000, or half the cost of each student.
20% of all students take the offer.
That takes 260 students out of the system. 260 x $5000 cost them $1.3 mil. But still leaves them with $11.7 million or $11.2K per student.
So your class sizes are now reduced to 20 per grade.
And you have more money to spend per student.
The reason the unions are against vouchers, and thus the Democrats are against them, is the fear that 50% of students take them and you have to go from 4 classes per grade to 2 classes and thus teachers will lose their jobs.
That's idiotic at best. You seriously think that private schools have room for 50% of the public school's students??! You're delusional. Teachers at public schools are going to lose their jobs? Just who the hell is going to teach that 50% of the students who just left? Is the magic math fairy going to arrive at the private school and whisper math facts into the ears of children as they sit around quietly?
And guess what - again, they're going to take the best students. You're working with averages - it doesn't cost the same amount to educate each child. You apparently don't realize how much more expensive it is to teach students with developmental and learning disabilities. You think the private schools want those kids? Hell no! Not when Uncle Sam says "His IEP says he is to be in a 12-1-1 or an 8-1-1, or even a 6-1-1 classroom, meaning 6 students, 1 teacher, 1 aide. Or, "he needs someone provided to take notes," etc. You think you get to say to a teacher, "Okay, we're paying that teacher $40k, and he has 30 kids in his classroom. You only have 6, so you get 1/5th of his amount. Oh, and you have to split it with your aide.
But, let's assume 50% of students take them up on the offer. All you're going to end up with is a transfer of the best teachers from the public schools into the private schools. Everyone in a community seems to generally get a good feeling of who the better teachers are and who the worse teachers are. This is especially true for math, science, and foreign languages. You can't find them. There's a shortage. Heck, right when I graduated, I put my resume on N.C.'s state clearinghouse for teachers. Even into October, while I was already teaching, I'd get a call on the phone in the evening. With that southern accent, I'd hear, "Hello, Mr. DrPizza? Hello, this is <..> from such and such a school in N.C. We understand that you have a degree in mathematics and that you're certified to teach mathematics. We have a position available for you, you start Monday, we'll pay your moving expenses." (at least it seems I was offered moving expenses a couple of times; that was 7 or 8 years ago though.) That was it - they looked at my credentials and offered me positions without even an interview. Desperate for math teachers, they are. And, you think that the private schools are going to pull teachers out of a hat?
End result: you don't have the money available to meet the costs of educating students in your public school. Your school just got gutted of the brightest and best behaved students. Your school just lost a bunch of their best faculty.
Here's an idea - why not allow public schools the ability to pick and choose who they get to keep, and they pick who goes to the private schools, on the public's dime. Gee, suddenly it doesn't sound so fair, does it.
edit: oh, and in some thread or another, I said I'd be willing to run for President in 2012.
In addition to having competent advisors, and actually listening to what the experts say, rather than going with my gut instinct when I don't believe them (why wouldn't I?),
and in addition to trying to get the drinking age lowered to 16 so students can be under the watchful eye of their parents - well, for those with responsible parents - who can say when enough is enough, and in addition to raising the driving age & making it a hell of a lot more difficult to get a driver's license, I'm also going to add this to my platform:
We need sweatshops. Someplace where we can employ 10 year old kids. Not for the rest of their lives, but for, ohhhh, 6 months oughta do it. Oh noes! Your grades fell below standards. You only attempted 1 homework assignment out of 10. Well, since you're just wasting your teacher's time and don't want to learn this year, we'll let your work for a year, then you get to decide after that year, "do I want to go to school, pay attention, learn? Or do I want to graduate from the sweatshop to manager of McDonalds? (Not to besmirch McDonald's managers either.)