School Vouchers In Action, NY Times Report
Grinch
New York Times, 9/29/97, p. B1
(Edited somewhat for brevity -- feel free to look up the original)
HOW TO MAKE A POOR SCHOOL CHANGE
A Well-Financed Exodus of Students Is Countered by a Flurry of Fixing
By James Dao
ALBANY, Sept. 25 - Last winter, a philanthropist from Manhattan
named Virginia Gilder decided that she wanted to dramatize what she
considered the collapse of inner-city public education. So she went
shopping for a school in need of fixing.
By spring, she had found one: Giffen Memorial, Albany's
lowest-performing primary school, situated on the city's poor,
drug-infested south side. Setting aside $1 million of her Wall Street
fortune, Mrs. Gilder offered scholarships of up to $2,000 to any
Giffen student who wanted to attend private school. As many as 105
children, or a sixth of the school, accepted.
With her gifts, Mrs. Gilder thrust Albany overnight into the center
of the national debate over school vouchers, which allow children of
low-income parents to attend schools of their choice. Such programs
are being tried in three dozen cities, including New York.
But it was not just the sudden exodus of Giffen children that
intrigued scholars and made the Giffen tale singular. It was also the
way the school system responded.
Though the Albany Board of Education initially ridiculed Mrs.
Gilder's program as a "political stunt," it quickly made sweeping
changes this summer to restore community confidence in Giffen. It
replaced the principal, brought in nine new teachers, added two
assistant principals and pledged an additional $125,000 for books,
equipment and teacher training.
"That support came out of the fact that A.B.C. focused attention on
that school," said Lonnie Palmer, Albany's School Superintendent,
referring to the initials of Mrs. Gilder's program, A Better Choice.
It is too early to know whether or how the program will help either
the students who left Giffen or those they left behind. But in their
overhaul of Giffen, city school officials seem to have inadvertently
bolstered a central argument for vouchers: that they foster
competition and thereby force public schools to improve . . .
"A.B.C. made them take a look at what was happening and not
happening at Giffen, and take actions they may not otherwise have
taken," said Anne Pope, president of the Albany branch of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People . . .
Under the program, Mrs. Gilder will pay 90 percent of the tuition,
up to $2,000 a year, to any of about 30 parochial and other private
schools in the Albany region. She has agreed to pay for at least
three years of school, or through the sixth grade, whichever is
longer. . .
Experts say that A.B.C. is the first voucher program in the country
to focus on just one school, meaning its effect on the public system
might be easier to measure. The nation's other 32 privately financed
voucher programs spread small numbers of scholarships across entire
districts. In New York City, for instance, a program begun last year
provided vouchers to 1,165 of the city's one million public school
students. . .
"Why should a waitress or cleaning lady not have the ability to
send her kids to any school she chooses?" Mrs. Gilder said, "It's not
democratic that low-income people are stuck with one possibility."
Giffen, on the surface at least, does not look like a failing
school. The single-story, yellow brick building of 1960's vintage has
ample classroom space, a large gym and clean tile floors. A computer
room is stocked with 24 machines.
But the school clearly has its problems. Last year, only 44 percent
of its third graders read at the state's minimum level, compared with
79 percent for third graders statewide. Fights are common, students
say.
The new principal, Maxine Fantroy-Ford, contends that the school's
low performance was largely owing to social problems beyond her
predecessor's control. But she acknowledged that the school had
languished and that greater energy and accountability from its staff
might have helped, "There was a sense that the school was chaotic,
expectations were low," she said. "We're trying to change that" . . .
The vast majority of the A.B.C. program's scholarship students have
gone to two Albany parochial schools . . . One of those schools, St.
Casimir's, also in a poor neighborhood, appears less well equipped to
serve poor urban families than Giffen. The squat three story brick
building has no gym, and its classrooms are cramped. Lunch is served
in the basement. A cordoned-off alcove nearby serves as the library.
A parking lot at the church across the street is the playground.
But 30 Giffen students transferred to St. Casimir on A.B.C.
scholarships, and St. Casimir's principal, Art Farrington, has a
one-word answer when asked why: structure. "You can't roam the halls,
all the teachers know you, there's more homework, there's a code of
conduct," he said, "When I tell parents this, they say good. They
like it."
Several parents of children in the program agreed. They said the
parochial schools seem to be more demanding not only on students, but
also on parents, who are expected to play active roles in their
children's education. For some, that has caused problems. Many others
have welcomed it.
Debbie Wilson, a 34-year-old single mother of five, has two sons
enrolled at Albany's St. James Institute on A.B.C. scholarships. Her
10-year-old, Aaron, is struggling to keep up. But the 11-year-old,
Brandon, says he finally feels challenged at school.
"I'd prefer to support my community school," said Ms. Wilson, a
data processor for the State Department of Health. "But I couldn't.
It just didn't seem like anybody was paying attention."
-- end --
Rich Johnson
Grinch (OldN...@mindspring.com) wrote:
: New York Times, 9/29/97, p. B1
: (Edited somewhat for brevity -- feel free to look up the original)
: HOW TO MAKE A POOR SCHOOL CHANGE
: A Well-Financed Exodus of Students Is Countered by a Flurry of Fixing
: By James Dao
: ALBANY, Sept. 25 - Last winter, a philanthropist from Manhattan
: named Virginia Gilder decided that she wanted to dramatize what she
: considered the collapse of inner-city public education. So she went
: shopping for a school in need of fixing.
: By spring, she had found one: Giffen Memorial, Albany's
: lowest-performing primary school, situated on the city's poor,
: drug-infested south side. Setting aside $1 million of her Wall Street
: fortune, Mrs. Gilder offered scholarships of up to $2,000 to any
: Giffen student who wanted to attend private school. As many as 105
: children, or a sixth of the school, accepted.
Interesting article. The silence from the public school advocates
is deafening.
Rich
Andrew Rogers
In article <60tupq$o...@fcnews.fc.hp.com> ri...@fc.hp.com (Rich Johnson) writes:
>: New York Times, 9/29/97, p. B1
>: Setting aside $1 million of her Wall Street
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>: fortune, Mrs. Gilder offered scholarships of up to $2,000 to any
^^^^^^^
>: Giffen student who wanted to attend private school. [snip]
>Interesting article. The silence from the public school advocates
>is deafening.
Maybe they have no complaints because no public funding is involved?
Andrew
Andrew Rogers
In article <60u5kc$14p$7...@paperboy.ids.net> zarl...@conan.ids.net (Michael Zarlenga) writes:
>: : ALBANY, Sept. 25 - Last winter, a philanthropist from Manhattan [snip]
>This is why we can't have vouchers : the children would escape the
>worst public schools and get an education, putting lots of horrendous
>NEA and AFT teachers out of work.
If you can't understand the distinction between private philanthropy and
taxpayer dollars, then *you're* the one who must have attended the worst
public schools.
Andrew
Michael Moy
A rediculous number of crossposts removed.
I don't think that he was referring to complaints. I think he was
referring to the improvements in the public school as a result
of a challenge.
--
Michael Moy
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8208/index.html
Send mail to my address at hotmail.com for faster response.
Michael Zarlenga
: : ALBANY, Sept. 25 - Last winter, a philanthropist from Manhattan
: : named Virginia Gilder decided that she wanted to dramatize what she
: : considered the collapse of inner-city public education. So she went
: : shopping for a school in need of fixing.
: : By spring, she had found one: Giffen Memorial, Albany's
: : lowest-performing primary school, situated on the city's poor,
: : drug-infested south side. Setting aside $1 million of her Wall Street
: : fortune, Mrs. Gilder offered scholarships of up to $2,000 to any
: : Giffen student who wanted to attend private school. As many as 105
: : children, or a sixth of the school, accepted.
This is why we can't have vouchers : the children would escape the
worst public schools and get an education, putting lots of horrendous
NEA and AFT teachers out of work.
That one-sixth of the school that fled Giffen now has a chance to make
something of their lives. Good for them.
--
-- Mike Zarlenga
finger zarl...@conan.ids.net for PGP public key
"As we say down at the Post Office, 'Here's lookin' up your address.'"
Cliff Clavin
Michael Zarlenga
Andrew Rogers (rog...@star.Hi.COM) wrote:
: >This is why we can't have vouchers : the children would escape the
: >worst public schools and get an education, putting lots of horrendous
: >NEA and AFT teachers out of work.
: If you can't understand the distinction between private philanthropy and
: taxpayer dollars, then *you're* the one who must have attended the worst
: public schools.
Eh? I understand the difference just fine. Regardless, I see that
16% of the kids allowed to escape Griffin Public school did. Where
the money for that escape comes form is another issue ... the fact
remains that one-sixth of the kids left as soon as they could.
And *that's* the reason why the NEA and AFT are fighting vouchers
with all their hearts. They would allow kids to escape their current
enclaves of job security : the nation's public schools.
Rich Johnson
Andrew Rogers (rog...@star.Hi.COM) wrote:
: In article <60tupq$o...@fcnews.fc.hp.com> ri...@fc.hp.com (Rich Johnson) writes:
: >: Setting aside $1 million of her Wall Street
: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
: >: fortune, Mrs. Gilder offered scholarships of up to $2,000 to any
: ^^^^^^^
: >: Giffen student who wanted to attend private school. [snip]
: >Interesting article. The silence from the public school advocates
: >is deafening.
: Maybe they have no complaints because no public funding is involved?
: Andrew
Well, it will be interesting to see if the education of those fortunate
enough to benefit from this private largess will be better than that
received by those at the public school. If so, it seems to me that
better education is the important thing rather than adherence to an
ideological prohibition against public funding for people to send
their children to the school of their choice. I realize that the jury
is still out on whether the education recieved in a private education
is superior to that recieved in public school but I suspect that
question will be settled, once and for all, in the coming years.
The important thing here is how to best educate our children, after
that comes ideology.
Rich
RHA
In article <60ukpr$59q$1...@paperboy.ids.net>,
Michael Zarlenga <zarl...@conan.ids.net> wrote:
>: : ALBANY, Sept. 25 - Last winter, a philanthropist from Manhattan
>: : named Virginia Gilder decided that she wanted to dramatize what she
>: : considered the collapse of inner-city public education. So she went
>: : shopping for a school in need of fixing.
>: : By spring, she had found one: Giffen Memorial, Albany's
>: : lowest-performing primary school, situated on the city's poor,
>: : drug-infested south side. Setting aside $1 million of her Wall Street
>: : fortune, Mrs. Gilder offered scholarships of up to $2,000 to any
>: : Giffen student who wanted to attend private school. As many as 105
>: : children, or a sixth of the school, accepted.
>
>do any good, above we see the result of less than *HALF* that amount,
>only called a "scholarship." To the family, the effect and choices are
>identical as if it were a "voucher" : a) keep the child(ren) in the
>public school or take $2,000 and spend it on the school of their choice,
>paying any remaining fees and expenses out-of-pocket.
How many scholarships have you provided to the deserving poor?
Oops, you demand someone else provide the cash....how conservative
of you.
--
rha
C Post
Andrew Rogers wrote:
>
> In article <60u5kc$14p$7...@paperboy.ids.net> zarl...@conan.ids.net (Michael Zarlenga) writes:
>
> >This is why we can't have vouchers : the children would escape the
> >worst public schools and get an education, putting lots of horrendous
> >NEA and AFT teachers out of work.
>
> If you can't understand the distinction between private philanthropy and
> taxpayer dollars, then *you're* the one who must have attended the worst
> public schools.
The distinction being, presumably, that it's perfectly OK to _waste_
taxpayer dollars, but not the dollars of private philanthropists, on a
system that by its most fundamental design can _never_ produce the
desired results at a reasonable cost.
Michael Zarlenga
: : ALBANY, Sept. 25 - Last winter, a philanthropist from Manhattan
: : named Virginia Gilder decided that she wanted to dramatize what she
: : considered the collapse of inner-city public education. So she went
: : shopping for a school in need of fixing.
: : By spring, she had found one: Giffen Memorial, Albany's
: : lowest-performing primary school, situated on the city's poor,
: : drug-infested south side. Setting aside $1 million of her Wall Street
: : fortune, Mrs. Gilder offered scholarships of up to $2,000 to any
: : Giffen student who wanted to attend private school. As many as 105
: : children, or a sixth of the school, accepted.
And to those who claim that a voucher of $5,000 would be too small to
do any good, above we see the result of less than *HALF* that amount,
only called a "scholarship." To the family, the effect and choices are
identical as if it were a "voucher" : a) keep the child(ren) in the
public school or take $2,000 and spend it on the school of their choice,
paying any remaining fees and expenses out-of-pocket.
--
Joe Myers
Once again, the pipedreams of right-wing ideology are faced with
reality.
Vouchers May Open Few Doors
D.C. Students Would Find Costs High and Openings Scarce
By Cindy Loose and Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 30, 1997; Page A01
The Washington Post
Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) told colleagues that he was disheartened by
the "squandered potential" of poor children in D.C. public schools but
that he had something "immediately helpful and hopeful" to offer.
Vouchers for $3,200, he urged last week, would allow nearly 2,000
children to attend public and private schools throughout the
Washington area.
But there is a question about how much choice those vouchers would
buy.
Suburban public schools charge out-of-county students about three
times as much as the voucher payments provide, and many have no extra
room.
The vast majority of secular private schools -- and many religious
schools -- also charge much more than $3,200, and students must
compete for openings.
Most schools that are affordable are Catholic elementary schools. Yet
even parochial schools are full in the Virginia and Maryland suburbs,
though the Archdiocese of Washington has empty seats in the District's
16 inner-city schools. Moreover, opponents of vouchers say they will
challenge in court any move to allow public money to be spent in
religious schools.
If the opponents are successful, as they have been elsewhere in the
country, that would leave little choice.
The Senate is scheduled to vote today on a measure to cut off debate
and force a vote on the voucher amendment, which is tacked on to the
D.C. appropriations bill. Yesterday, the House Appropriations
Committee approved its D.C. spending bill, which includes the voucher
proposal, and sent it to the House floor for a vote next week.
Opponents say they expect the voucher measure to pass the House but
are unsure what will happen in the Senate.
The diametrically opposed philosophies dividing voucher opponents and
proponents promise a continued debate. But there are indications that
a voucher system would provide fewer options for students in public
and private schools than proponents contend.
Without massive subsidies and the sudden appearance of empty desks,
suburban public schools would remain off limits to most
voucher-holders.
"Our schools are filled to the brim, and some are overcrowded," said
Lisa Farbstein, of the Arlington schools.
County school systems also have high tuition. Elementary-age children
who live outside Arlington County are charged $9,866 to attend schools
there; secondary students are charged $10,785. For special education,
the county spends $13,416 to $25,900 per student, Farbstein said, and
would charge a similar amount to outsiders.
Montgomery County schools have few empty desks, said spokeswoman Kate
Harrison, and $3,200 would not buy even a half-day of kindergarten in
county schools. Asked whether the county might make up the difference
between the voucher and the $7,484 spent annually on each secondary
student, she said, "I don't see why or how."
In Prince George's County, out-of-state students are charged $5,167
for elementary school and $5,570 for secondary school. Tuition waivers
sometimes are granted on a case-by-case basis, a spokesman said.
Erik Hotmire, a spokesman for Coats, said a congressional survey found
six private secular and 54 religious schools in the Washington area
that charge $3,200 or less. But his data was gathered from the
Independent Schools Guide for the 1995-96 school year, and tuition at
many schools has increased since then.
Asked to identify the six secular schools that charge no more than
$3,200, Richard Diamond, press secretary for House Majority Leader
Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.), pointed to two: Roots Activity Learning
Center and the Nation House of Watoto. Both are small,
African-centered schools in the District.
A spokeswoman at Roots said not a single seat was available. The
Nation House of Watoto, which has about 90 students from nursery
school through 12th grade, has some openings.
Diamond said that prices had gone up at the four other secular schools
identified by voucher advocates but that they are "still in the
ballpark." One of them, Little People's Paradise in the District, now
costs $3,400, he said. At the three Virginia schools initially
identified -- all Montessori schools -- prices "went up a lot," he
said. No secular schools that charge $3,200 or less have been found in
Maryland.
Hotmire said that even if the voucher does not cover the full cost of
tuition, "people or schools manage to come up with the difference."
Full vouchers would be available only to students with family incomes
below the poverty line, $16,036 for a family of four last year.
Partial vouchers -- a maximum of $2,400 -- would be available to
students in families with incomes below 185 percent of the poverty
line.
Fifteen percent of children in the area already attend private
schools, mostly parochial. Most private schools do not go beyond
eighth grade, and there are fewer slots available in private high
schools. The most prestigious cost about $14,000. Among the 80 schools
belonging to the Association of Independent Schools of Greater
Washington, the median price is $10,075 for elementary and $12,800 for
secondary schools.
The association has taken no position on vouchers, according to
Executive Director Ritalou Harris, who said, "Lots of money needs to
be provided before the voucher is meaningful." She noted that schools
in the association already raise $26 million a year in financial aid
for 4,700 students to whom they are committed until graduation.
Even at parochial schools, there are issues of cost and crowding.
"Trying to accommodate more kids is a real concern this year," said
Lawrence Callahan, superintendent of schools for the Catholic
Archdiocese of Washington. In suburban Maryland, the archdiocese has
waiting lists, although in the District's inner city, enrollment
ranges from just over 50 percent of capacity to 95 percent.
Tuition varies from less than $2,000 to as much as $12,995.
In June, one day before they proposed the voucher program, Sens. Coats
and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) invited reporters on a tour of the
Nannie Helen Burroughs School in far Northeast. It was to be an
example of the excellence that would be available to D.C. students
with vouchers.
But Principal Shirley G. Hayes, a retired D.C. principal, said last
week that she had concerns about the voucher program and that she
wondered how many schools could make a go of it by charging only
$3,200 per pupil.
Most of her teachers are retired from D.C. schools, and she can afford
to pay them only $17,000 a year. "Isn't that awful?" she said.
Thanks to the low salaries and free space provided by the Progressive
National Baptist Convention, tuition at the school is just $3,400. But
the budget is so "bare-bones," Hayes said, that she would be unable to
accept anyone with $200 less than that unless a benefactor could make
up the difference.
She was surprised that her school was being held up as a model for the
voucher program but said it was valuable for important people to meet
her bright, articulate boys and girls.
"The two congressmen in question had never been this far out in
Northeast Washington," she said. "It was good for them to see."
alizar...@usa.net
to the Giffen School students and ex-students...
A.Lizard
****************************************************************
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alizard(at)ecis.com
To see a draft of a new full-funding voucher initiative,
point your browser at www.ecis.com/~alizard/voucher.html
****************************************************************
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alizar...@usa.net
Zepp
On 1 Oct 1997 19:52:00 -0700, boo...@primenet.com (Joe Myers) wrote:
Thanks for posting this, Joe. As you are probably aware, Eleanor has
been touting the Washington DC voucher plan for the past few weeks,
and as usually, her data is one-sided, misleading, and sometimes just
plain dishonest. This article blows her arguments right out of the
water.
=====================================================================
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
Agree with that? Fine. So do I. You have free exercise. Take your
God, stick him on a leash, and walk Him. Just don't ask the state
to do it for you.
Be good, servile little citizen employees, and pay your taxes so the
rich don't have to.
=====================================================================
When replying by e-mail, remove the third "P" placed there to foil
spambots.
Porgy Girl
Michael Zarlenga
Zepp (ze...@snowcrest.net) wrote:
: Thanks for posting this, Joe. As you are probably aware, Eleanor has
: been touting the Washington DC voucher plan for the past few weeks,
: and as usually, her data is one-sided, misleading, and sometimes just
: plain dishonest. This article blows her arguments right out of the
: water.
The article makes one relevant, central point ... that the existing
private school system may not be able to handle the tremendous influx
of new students when those in DC's public schools are allowed to leave.
That argument, though, is analogous to keeping government-run stores
that sell spoiled food at high prices open in low-income neighborhoods
because the better stores might not be able to handle all the new cus-
tomers they would get if the terrible "public food stores" shut down.
Porgy Girl
Porgy Girl
kenfran
So you should be advocating that the public schools get more money, not
less. The voucher system will drain money from the public schools. We
need to fix the problems in the public schools, not destroy them. If you
look at only the public schools in affluent suburbs, you will not find
much of a problem with public education. And these are the people who
usually go to private schools. So what needs to be done is to make the
inner city schools more like the suburban schools, instead of stripping
them of money and of many of their best students.
--
Andreas announces that global capitalism is a delusion. "There isn't
one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not
one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of
politicians. People who are not in the Midwest do not understand
that this is a socialist country."
--Dwayne Andreas, head of Archer Daniels Midland
kenfran
Michael Zarlenga wrote:
>
> : : ALBANY, Sept. 25 - Last winter, a philanthropist from Manhattan
> : : named Virginia Gilder decided that she wanted to dramatize what she
> : : considered the collapse of inner-city public education. So she went
> : : shopping for a school in need of fixing.
> : : By spring, she had found one: Giffen Memorial, Albany's
> : : lowest-performing primary school, situated on the city's poor,
> : : drug-infested south side. Setting aside $1 million of her Wall Street
> : : fortune, Mrs. Gilder offered scholarships of up to $2,000 to any
> : : Giffen student who wanted to attend private school. As many as 105
> : : children, or a sixth of the school, accepted.
>
> worst public schools and get an education, putting lots of horrendous
> NEA and AFT teachers out of work.
>
> something of their lives. Good for them.
So what we need is a special tax on landlords that will go exclusivly to
giving scholarships to inner-city school children.
>
> --
> -- Mike Zarlenga
> finger zarl...@conan.ids.net for PGP public key
>
> "As we say down at the Post Office, 'Here's lookin' up your address.'"
> Cliff Clavin
--
kenfran
Rich Johnson wrote:
>
> Grinch (OldN...@mindspring.com) wrote:
> : New York Times, 9/29/97, p. B1
> : (Edited somewhat for brevity -- feel free to look up the original)
>
> : HOW TO MAKE A POOR SCHOOL CHANGE
>
> : A Well-Financed Exodus of Students Is Countered by a Flurry of Fixing
>
> : By James Dao
>
> : ALBANY, Sept. 25 - Last winter, a philanthropist from Manhattan
> : named Virginia Gilder decided that she wanted to dramatize what she
> : considered the collapse of inner-city public education. So she went
> : shopping for a school in need of fixing.
> : By spring, she had found one: Giffen Memorial, Albany's
> : lowest-performing primary school, situated on the city's poor,
> : drug-infested south side. Setting aside $1 million of her Wall Street
> : fortune, Mrs. Gilder offered scholarships of up to $2,000 to any
> : Giffen student who wanted to attend private school. As many as 105
> : children, or a sixth of the school, accepted.
>
> is deafening.
>
What >I< find interesting is that you snipped the part about school
officials suddenly putting a lot of money into the school due to the
publicity. Most of the public schools with problems are inner city
schools that are starved of funds and somehow end up with the
least-qualified teachers in the system, and the poorest equipment, the
least computers, etc. (Note that I do not say that all teachers in
inner-city schools are unqualified. There are many dedicated
professionals who do what they can under bad conditions. But teachers
are a resource, and when the resources get passed out, the inner city
schools are the last to receive anything.)
Jim Richardson
In article <60unuj$s...@praline.no.neosoft.com>,
ri...@praline.no.neosoft.com (RHA) wrote:
> In article <60ukpr$59q$1...@paperboy.ids.net>,
> Michael Zarlenga <zarl...@conan.ids.net> wrote:
> >: : ALBANY, Sept. 25 - Last winter, a philanthropist from Manhattan
> >: : named Virginia Gilder decided that she wanted to dramatize what she
> >: : considered the collapse of inner-city public education. So she went
> >: : shopping for a school in need of fixing.
> >: : By spring, she had found one: Giffen Memorial, Albany's
> >: : lowest-performing primary school, situated on the city's poor,
> >: : drug-infested south side. Setting aside $1 million of her Wall Street
> >: : fortune, Mrs. Gilder offered scholarships of up to $2,000 to any
> >: : Giffen student who wanted to attend private school. As many as 105
> >: : children, or a sixth of the school, accepted.
> >
> >And to those who claim that a voucher of $5,000 would be too small to
> >do any good, above we see the result of less than *HALF* that amount,
> >only called a "scholarship." To the family, the effect and choices are
> >identical as if it were a "voucher" : a) keep the child(ren) in the
> >public school or take $2,000 and spend it on the school of their choice,
> >paying any remaining fees and expenses out-of-pocket.
>
> How many scholarships have you provided to the deserving poor?
> Oops, you demand someone else provide the cash....how conservative
> of you.
> --
> rha
I for one would be happy simply to cease being forced to pay for the public
schools. Then pay for my kids, out of _my_ pocket. But I am forced to pay
for a poor excuse for education whether I have kids in the public school or
not, wo who is demanding what from whom?
--
Jim Richardson
http://www.eskimo.com
anarchist, pagan and proud of it
"Socialism requires ignorance"
Gack
Joe Myers wrote:
>
> Once again, the pipedreams of right-wing ideology are faced with
> reality.
>
> Vouchers May Open Few Doors
>
> D.C. Students Would Find Costs High and Openings Scarce
>
> By Cindy Loose and Valerie Strauss
> Washington Post Staff Writers
This is an obvious crock.
The people opposing vouchers are opposing them out of
fear they *would* work.
You are not suggesting, are you, that Ted Kennedy is filibustering
a 6 million dollar program because he thinks it will be a
waste of money?
Ted Kennedy wouldn't bat an eye on spending 1000 times as much
on a program if he thought it wouldn't work.
I'm sure there are dozens of programs spending 10s of billions
that Teddy doesn't think will do any good that he's never
filibustered.
Its the programs he fears would work, and would embarass his
union buddies by working, that rouse him to filibuster.
Joe Myers
zarl...@conan.ids.net (Michael Zarlenga) wrote:
>Zepp (ze...@snowcrest.net) wrote:
>: Thanks for posting this, Joe. As you are probably aware, Eleanor has
>: been touting the Washington DC voucher plan for the past few weeks,
>: and as usually, her data is one-sided, misleading, and sometimes just
>: plain dishonest. This article blows her arguments right out of the
>: water.
>The article makes one relevant, central point ... that the existing
>private school system may not be able to handle the tremendous influx
>of new students when those in DC's public schools are allowed to leave.
Interesting that you (in the interest of preserving band width, no
doubt, and _only_ in the interest of preserving band width. uh huh)
snipped the real-world report of the real-work consequences of
vouchers. In the real world, only the people who can already afford
vouchers get to use them. We're subsidizing educating the elite, and
socializing private education in the process.
>That argument, though, is analogous to keeping government-run stores
>that sell spoiled food at high prices open in low-income neighborhoods
>because the better stores might not be able to handle all the new cus-
>tomers they would get if the terrible "public food stores" shut down.
So, improve conditions at your "government-run stores" because the
gourmet food stores aren't going to try to lower their prices or
sacrifice the exclusivity franchise they've owned in the private
sector.
The Education Department released a study today that noted the
corelation between an active father and school performance. Well,
duh!
The reason private, and for that matter home schooling, succeeds is
because parents are actively involed in their children's educations.
The single most powerful argument for public education is that it is
society that says every child has a right to a good education. The
tragedy of the 20th Century is that there are people who don't give a
rat's ass about the quality of their children's education.
The irony of the whole voucher argument is that they compare the
achievement scores of American students with kids whose schools are
administered by their nations' central governments. Kids in America
can't compete with kids in nations that expect national standards to
be met in schools? The right wing answer is to further decentralize
school standards, and socialize private education. I think I speak
for all Americans when I say, "Huh?"
Ultimately, the issue is moot. We will see the end of church basement
schools about the time church school graduates start trying to get
into medical school with the belief that the dinosaurs were killed in
Noah's flood.
The key to all of the right wing education reform can be found in the
realization that, while all conservatives are not ignorant, all
ignorant people are conservatives.
Keep your kids out of a real school, 'wingers. Keep them out of the
real world. Teach them your myths and multiplication tables by rote.
They'll be endoctrinated alright; but they won't be educated. They
won't learn how to learn to learn.
They will become truckdrivers and Teamsters. And we will be proven
right.
Matthew Alexander
On Thu, 02 Oct 1997 15:43:37 -0400, Gack <ga...@geech.goof> wrote:
>Joe Myers wrote:
>>
>> Once again, the pipedreams of right-wing ideology are faced with
>> reality.
>>
>> Vouchers May Open Few Doors
>>
>> D.C. Students Would Find Costs High and Openings Scarce
>>
>> By Cindy Loose and Valerie Strauss
>> Washington Post Staff Writers
>
>This is an obvious crock.
>
>The people opposing vouchers are opposing them out of
>fear they *would* work.
>
>You are not suggesting, are you, that Ted Kennedy is filibustering
>a 6 million dollar program because he thinks it will be a
>waste of money?
>
>Ted Kennedy wouldn't bat an eye on spending 1000 times as much
>on a program if he thought it wouldn't work.
>I'm sure there are dozens of programs spending 10s of billions
>that Teddy doesn't think will do any good that he's never
>filibustered.
>Its the programs he fears would work, and would embarass his
>union buddies by working, that rouse him to filibuster.
So... are you suggesting that the above article is a piece of
anti-voucher fiction made up by stats-quo Democrats, or do have some
other solutions in mind for the obvious problems with this particlar
program?
Or maybe you didn't read the article at all, knee-jerkingly assuming
that anything Kennedy's against must be good?
-><- Matt Alexander
"Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water!
And East is East and West is West and if you take cranberries and stew
them like applesauce they taste more like prunes than a rhubarb does.
Now, uh.. Now you tell me what you know." -Marx*
RHA
In article <warlock-ya0240800...@news.eskimo.com>,
Tell ya what, good buddy, the day you rise up to stop the
gouging of us with no children to subsidize youse wid'
little chilluns, is the day I'll stop laughing at your
childish whining.
--
rha
Herman Rubin
In article <60u5kc$14p$7...@paperboy.ids.net>,
Michael Zarlenga <zarl...@conan.ids.net> wrote:
>: : ALBANY, Sept. 25 - Last winter, a philanthropist from Manhattan
>: : named Virginia Gilder decided that she wanted to dramatize what she
>: : considered the collapse of inner-city public education. So she went
>: : shopping for a school in need of fixing.
>: : By spring, she had found one: Giffen Memorial, Albany's
>: : lowest-performing primary school, situated on the city's poor,
>: : drug-infested south side. Setting aside $1 million of her Wall Street
>: : fortune, Mrs. Gilder offered scholarships of up to $2,000 to any
>: : Giffen student who wanted to attend private school. As many as 105
>: : children, or a sixth of the school, accepted.
>This is why we can't have vouchers : the children would escape the
>worst public schools and get an education, putting lots of horrendous
>NEA and AFT teachers out of work.
>That one-sixth of the school that fled Giffen now has a chance to make
>something of their lives. Good for them.
Would they just escape the WORST schools, or would they also escape
other schools?
With widespread vouchers, we could have academic schools springing
up, which would allow unusual children the right to use their mental
abilities to develop better than the current public school setup
will allow.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
alizar...@usa.net
On 2 Oct 1997 19:30:02 -0700, boo...@primenet.com (Joe Myers) wrote:
> zarl...@conan.ids.net (Michael Zarlenga) wrote:
>
> >: Thanks for posting this, Joe. As you are probably aware, Eleanor has
> >: been touting the Washington DC voucher plan for the past few weeks,
> >: and as usually, her data is one-sided, misleading, and sometimes just
> >: plain dishonest. This article blows her arguments right out of the
> >: water.
>
> >private school system may not be able to handle the tremendous influx
> >of new students when those in DC's public schools are allowed to leave.
>
> Interesting that you (in the interest of preserving band width, no
> doubt, and _only_ in the interest of preserving band width. uh huh)
> snipped the real-world report of the real-work consequences of
> vouchers. In the real world, only the people who can already afford
> vouchers get to use them. We're subsidizing educating the elite, and
> socializing private education in the process.
This problem can be solved without precluding freedom of choice
for anyone except people with upscale incomes.
1. Require that all funds currently being spent on public
school students be translated into voucher funds, and make ALL
of this money available on a per pupil basis attached to each
voucher.
2. Require that all schools accepting vouchers accept them as
100% of tuition / textbook cost.
> >That argument, though, is analogous to keeping government-run stores
> >that sell spoiled food at high prices open in low-income neighborhoods
> >because the better stores might not be able to handle all the new cus-
> >tomers they would get if the terrible "public food stores" shut down.
>
> So, improve conditions at your "government-run stores" because the
to change their product?
> gourmet food stores aren't going to try to lower their prices or
> sacrifice the exclusivity franchise they've owned in the private
> sector.
their market, and there will be a financial incentive for new
places to open up. I suspect that if voucher funds become available
on this basis, some private schools intentionally catering to the
upscale will increase their prices to keep "the riffraff" out. This
suits me, we won't have to help pay to educate the children of the
rich.
> The Education Department released a study today that noted the
> corelation between an active father and school performance. Well,
> duh!
by any change to the public schools.
> The reason private, and for that matter home schooling, succeeds is
> because parents are actively involed in their children's educations
private schools work for this reason? How do private schools get
better parental participation than public schools?
> The single most powerful argument for public education is that it is
> society that says every child has a right to a good education.
funding per student to support REAL freedom of choice.
> The
> tragedy of the 20th Century is that there are people who don't give a
> rat's ass about the quality of their children's education.
there's a smaller group who don't give a rat's ass about public
education because their kids are in private school.
> The irony of the whole voucher argument is that they compare the
> achievement scores of American students with kids whose schools are
> administered by their nations' central governments. Kids in America
> can't compete with kids in nations that expect national standards to
> be met in schools? The right wing answer is to further decentralize
> school standards, and socialize private education. I think I speak
> for all Americans when I say, "Huh?"
appropriate comment. If the way that kids education is paid for
in a state is via voucher, whether presented at a public school or
a private school, we are talking about:
1) Massive centralization in oversight. SOMEONE is going to be
responsible for seeing that the money raised from state taxpayers
and being spent at each school is spent on education... This
includes standardized testing and the defunding of schools whose
students consistently fail to meet statewide norms. A voucher
system that doesn't meet this standard probably will be tossed
out in court. This implies a certain amount of standardization at
the core curriculum level.
2) Massive decentralization at the policy level. A voucher funded
school isn't going to have a school board sitting over them to
tell them what the kids' dress code, if any is going to be...
whether the kids should have condoms available...
> Ultimately, the issue is moot. We will see the end of church basement
> schools about the time church school graduates start trying to get
> into medical school with the belief that the dinosaurs were killed in
> Noah's flood.
ism" as legitimate science lately to cater to the ultra-right?
If you believe that this is a bad thing, you should support
vouchers... as a way to limit the spread of superstition. This
way, the right-wing pressure to propagate weird ideas in schools
will only be relevant to schools where right-wing parents who
have students in them.
> The key to all of the right wing education reform can be found in the
> realization that, while all conservatives are not ignorant, all
> ignorant people are conservatives.
ignorant people, I might have let this pass.
I've seen ignorant people across the political spectrum. Why
don't you check out the list of people who voted in favor of
the CDA... certifiably ignorant people... Republicans and
Democrats alike across the nominal political spectrum are threaten
ing our freedom of speech and our ablity to make a living.
Senator Kerrey, author of the latest anti-Internet bill is a
certified liberal...
A.Lizard
**************************************************************
alizard(at)usa.net
For my current version of a voucher initiative,
check http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/voucher.html
alizar...@usa.net
On Thu, 02 Oct 1997 07:51:30 GMT, ze...@snowcrest.net (Zepp) wrote:
> On 1 Oct 1997 19:52:00 -0700, boo...@primenet.com (Joe Myers) wrote:
>
> Thanks for posting this, Joe. As you are probably aware, Eleanor has
> been touting the Washington DC voucher plan for the past few weeks,
> and as usually, her data is one-sided, misleading, and sometimes just
> plain dishonest. This article blows her arguments right out of the
> water.
discussed in the portion of the NY Times article below I just
zapped, I don't really need to.
Any voucher program that doesn't provide full funding, i.e.
at minimum, that doesn't make available ALL the money public
schools spend per pupil to schools receiving vouchers as
student tuitiion can be considered just another scam to force
taxpayers to subsidize the education of a minority... those
kids belonging to households who already have kids in private
schools and presumably can afford to keep them there without
our help.
I have opposed in the past and will continue to oppose in future
any voucher initiative that doesn't provide full funding. As to
whether this is enough... open question. This probably depends
on how much funding is already being made available per student,
it's a state-by-state thing.
> >Once again, the pipedreams of right-wing ideology are faced with
> >reality.
education is a "right-winger" is bullshit.
When did the preservation of the status quo in public education
in the inner city become a "liberal" or "left-wing" cause,
anyway? Did the consensus of the "left" change from "let's
help these kids any way we can" to "let's write these kids off"
without anyone telling me?
A.Lizard
************************************************************
alizard(at)usa.net
To read about my proposed voucher initiative,
http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/voucher.html
> >Vouchers May Open Few Doors
> >
> >D.C. Students Would Find Costs High and Openings Scarce
> >
> >By Cindy Loose and Valerie Strauss
> >Washington Post Staff Writers
> >Tuesday, September 30, 1997; Page A01
> >The Washington Post
> >
> >Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) told colleagues that he was disheartened by
> >the "squandered potential" of poor children in D.C. public schools but
> >that he had something "immediately helpful and hopeful" to offer.
> >Vouchers for $3,200, he urged last week, would allow nearly 2,000
> >children to attend public and private schools throughout the
> >Washington area.
> >
> >But there is a question about how much choice those vouchers would
> >buy.
> >
> >Suburban public schools charge out-of-county students about three
> >times as much as the voucher payments provide, and many have no extra
> >room.
> >
> >The vast majority of secular private schools -- and many religious
> >schools -- also charge much more than $3,200, and students must
> >compete for openings.
> >
Bill Duncan
In article <613547$1j...@mean.stat.purdue.edu>,
Herman Rubin <hru...@mean.stat.purdue.edu> wrote:
>>That one-sixth of the school that fled Giffen now has a chance to make
>>something of their lives. Good for them.
>
>Would they just escape the WORST schools, or would they also escape
>other schools?
>
>With widespread vouchers, we could have academic schools springing
>up, which would allow unusual children the right to use their mental
>abilities to develop better than the current public school setup
>will allow.
Do you think so? Poorer urban areas don't seem to get banks - they get those
expensive check cashing places instead. They have money to shop, but instead
of supermarkets usually only have access to expensive little markets.
I think the same would happen with vouchers - a bunch of little, trashy places
whose only goal is to pick up those voucher checks, and whatever else they can
get.
Bill Duncan
--
--
Any comments or statements made are not necessarily those of
Fidelity Investments, its subsidiaries, or affiliates.
--
Van
Gack <ga...@geech.goof> banged out:
>Joe Myers wrote:
>>
>> Once again, the pipedreams of right-wing ideology are faced with
>> reality.
>>
>> Vouchers May Open Few Doors
>>
>> D.C. Students Would Find Costs High and Openings Scarce
>>
>> By Cindy Loose and Valerie Strauss
>> Washington Post Staff Writers
>This is an obvious crock.
>The people opposing vouchers are opposing them out of
>fear they *would* work.
Bull manure. The people pushing vouchers are being good little toadies and
frantically trying to find ways to pay off the christian coalition. In Pat
Robertson's own words -
"We've had a major presence in one of the major parties. We still haven't
gotten the influence I think we ought to have inside the Republican Party --
we're still not totally like we should be."
"I told (the new coalition president) Don Hodel when he joined us, 'My dear
friend, I want to hold out to you the possibility of selecting the next
President of the United States,' -- because I think that's what we have in
this organization."
--Pat Robertson discussing the coalition's needs and goals at their recent
convention.
"There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that sanctifies the separation of
church and state."
--Pat Robertson
-------
______________________________________________________
For better or for worse, our company (News Corp)
is a reflection of my thinking, my character,
my values. -- Rupert Murdoch
______________________________________________________
To live is to battle with trolls
in the vaults of heart and brain
To write: that is to sit
in judgement over one's self.
-Ibsen
______________________________________________________
Herman Rubin
In article <3433CD...@concentric.net>,
kenfran <ken...@concentric.net> wrote:
>Rich Johnson wrote:
>> Andrew Rogers (rog...@star.Hi.COM) wrote:
>> : In article <60tupq$o...@fcnews.fc.hp.com> ri...@fc.hp.com (Rich Johnson) writes:
..................
>So you should be advocating that the public schools get more money, not
>less. The voucher system will drain money from the public schools. We
>need to fix the problems in the public schools, not destroy them. If you
>look at only the public schools in affluent suburbs, you will not find
>much of a problem with public education. And these are the people who
>usually go to private schools. So what needs to be done is to make the
>inner city schools more like the suburban schools, instead of stripping
>them of money and of many of their best students.
This is assuming that the public schools would improve their educational
practices given more money. I wish it were the case, but there is little
they can do as long as they teach according to nearly the low end of the
perceived level of those in a class, and keep children by age.
There was a _60 Minutes_ program on a school in Kansas City where this
inpouring of money was done, with even an attempt to make it a magnet
school. Alas, this school improved less than the rest of the underfunded
inner city schools.
Money is not much of the problem. Deciding to educate the individuals
who have the ability and desire to be educated as well as they can be,
and then doing the best for the next group, etc., is needed instead of
low-level teaching and age grouping.
Even the West Lafayette school system, which is in the top few percent,
only achieves some semblance of this because of the level of the students,
with much of their teaching coming from their parents and fellow students.
Veblen
bi...@ripag1.fmr.com (Bill Duncan) wrote:
>Herman Rubin <hru...@mean.stat.purdue.edu> wrote:
>>
>>With widespread vouchers, we could have academic schools springing
>>up, which would allow unusual children the right to use their mental
>>abilities to develop better than the current public school setup
>>will allow.
>Do you think so? Poorer urban areas don't seem to get banks - they get those
>expensive check cashing places instead. They have money to shop, but instead
>of supermarkets usually only have access to expensive little markets.
Just the way it is with public schools now.
Did you ever notice how public school systems in big cities mandate the
same teacher-student ratio city wide, but let teachers take seniority
transfers to the assignments they want anywhere in the system?
Which way do you think those teachers migrate over a career? If you
guess from "bad" poor neighborhoods to "good" rich ones, you are
correct.
And when do teachers make the largest salaries? After they have
seniority, of course.
So as the high-paid senior teachers move to the rich neighborhoods,
leaving the poor neighborhood schools staffed by uncertified teachers
and beginners, which neighborhoods get *more money per student*? The
good neighborhood schools, of course. A *lot* more.
Last year the NYC Schools Chancellor released the first school-by-school
*real dollar* spending figures for the NYC schools *ever* published --
not the phony "formula dollar" or "allocation unit dollar" figures used
previously in NYC, and still used in (and reported in the press for) all
other big city school systems.
The result showed that the 25th percentile school funding-wise spent
*double* per student than the 75th percentile school. Guess which
neighborhoods got double the money, and which half the money?
Of course, it's not just teachers who make seniority transfers,
everybody in the union/civil service system does. And the rich
neigborhoods are much more influential in the drafting of "formulas"
under which funds are dispensed. Overall, the Chancellor's report found
that at the extremes, the richest schools were spending *eight to ten
times as much* as the poorest schools, per student.
The joke is, of course, that so many well-meaning people defend the
obviously failing public schools because they believe public schools
give equal funding to the poor. Ha, ha, they fooled you!
>I think the same would happen with vouchers - a bunch of little, trashy places
>whose only goal is to pick up those voucher checks, and whatever else they can
>get.
You sound so sincere in your concern -- but not sincere enough to notice
this is what the urban public schools are delivering to inner city poor
neighborhoods right now.
In contrast, one of the major points of vouchers is that they force the
*same* amount of money per student to be spent in each school -- because
funding is school based, not system based, money can't be siphoned out
of the poor schools to the rich ones through seniority transfers, the
superior political organization of parents in rich neighborhoods, and
the like.
With vouchers, if a $60,000 senior teacher transfers from a
poor-neighborhood school to a rich-neighborhood school, the poor
neighborhood school will be able to hire *two* $30,000 teachers, and at
least be able to compensate for the loss of experience with reduced
class size.
But the way big city public schools run today, the $30,000 teacher and
the $60,000 teacher are deemed the "same" -- one teacher per 25 students
(or whatever number) -- and the poor-neighborhood school gets its
instructional budget slashed by an amount that becomes the
rich-neighborhood school's gain.
Herman Rubin
In article <60unuj$s...@praline.no.neosoft.com>,
RHA <ri...@praline.no.neosoft.com> wrote:
>In article <60ukpr$59q$1...@paperboy.ids.net>,
>Michael Zarlenga <zarl...@conan.ids.net> wrote:
>>: : ALBANY, Sept. 25 - Last winter, a philanthropist from Manhattan
>>: : named Virginia Gilder decided that she wanted to dramatize what she
>>: : considered the collapse of inner-city public education. So she went
>>: : shopping for a school in need of fixing.
>>: : By spring, she had found one: Giffen Memorial, Albany's
>>: : lowest-performing primary school, situated on the city's poor,
>>: : drug-infested south side. Setting aside $1 million of her Wall Street
>>: : fortune, Mrs. Gilder offered scholarships of up to $2,000 to any
>>: : Giffen student who wanted to attend private school. As many as 105
>>: : children, or a sixth of the school, accepted.
>>And to those who claim that a voucher of $5,000 would be too small to
>>do any good, above we see the result of less than *HALF* that amount,
>>only called a "scholarship." To the family, the effect and choices are
>>identical as if it were a "voucher" : a) keep the child(ren) in the
>>public school or take $2,000 and spend it on the school of their choice,
>>paying any remaining fees and expenses out-of-pocket.
> How many scholarships have you provided to the deserving poor?
> Oops, you demand someone else provide the cash....how conservative
> of you.
Does he have a spare million? Do you have a spare million? Do I
have a spare million?
Do we have the spare cash to "look for a school"? I would be glad to
contribute quite a bit to found a real academic school, but I cannot
manage this by myself.
I consider that we have a big problem for those who would not qualify
for scholarships, but cannot manage an academic private school. For
one, there may not exist one in the vicinity; when our local school
suggested one for my son, there was one in the entire state, and it
was too far away.
Jim Richardson
In article <6125la$m...@praline.no.neosoft.com>,
ri...@praline.no.neosoft.com (RHA) wrote:
> In article <warlock-ya0240800...@news.eskimo.com>,
> Jim Richardson <war...@eskimo.com> wrote:
> >In article <60unuj$s...@praline.no.neosoft.com>,
> >ri...@praline.no.neosoft.com (RHA) wrote:
> >
> >> In article <60ukpr$59q$1...@paperboy.ids.net>,
> >> Michael Zarlenga <zarl...@conan.ids.net> wrote:
> >> >: : ALBANY, Sept. 25 - Last winter, a philanthropist from Manhattan
> >> >: : named Virginia Gilder decided that she wanted to dramatize what she
> >> >: : considered the collapse of inner-city public education. So she went
> >> >: : shopping for a school in need of fixing.
> >> >: : By spring, she had found one: Giffen Memorial, Albany's
> >> >: : lowest-performing primary school, situated on the city's poor,
> >> >: : drug-infested south side. Setting aside $1 million of her Wall Street
> >> >: : fortune, Mrs. Gilder offered scholarships of up to $2,000 to any
> >> >: : Giffen student who wanted to attend private school. As many as 105
> >> >: : children, or a sixth of the school, accepted.
> >> >
> >> >And to those who claim that a voucher of $5,000 would be too small to
> >> >do any good, above we see the result of less than *HALF* that amount,
> >> >only called a "scholarship." To the family, the effect and choices are
> >> >identical as if it were a "voucher" : a) keep the child(ren) in the
> >> >public school or take $2,000 and spend it on the school of their choice,
> >> >paying any remaining fees and expenses out-of-pocket.
> >>
> >> How many scholarships have you provided to the deserving poor?
> >> Oops, you demand someone else provide the cash....how conservative
> >> of you.
> >> --
> >> rha
> >I for one would be happy simply to cease being forced to pay for the public
> >schools. Then pay for my kids, out of _my_ pocket. But I am forced to pay
> >for a poor excuse for education whether I have kids in the public school or
> >not, wo who is demanding what from whom?
>
> Tell ya what, good buddy, the day you rise up to stop the
> gouging of us with no children to subsidize youse wid'
> little chilluns, is the day I'll stop laughing at your
> childish whining.
er, I _have_ no children...and have and do oppose public education on many
grounds..
Zepp
On Fri, 03 Oct 1997 23:44:05 -0400, Veblen <V@spam_me_not.com> wrote:
>bi...@ripag1.fmr.com (Bill Duncan) wrote:
>
>>Herman Rubin <hru...@mean.stat.purdue.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>With widespread vouchers, we could have academic schools springing
>>>up, which would allow unusual children the right to use their mental
>>>abilities to develop better than the current public school setup
>>>will allow.
>
>>Do you think so? Poorer urban areas don't seem to get banks - they get those
>>expensive check cashing places instead. They have money to shop, but instead
>>of supermarkets usually only have access to expensive little markets.
>
>Just the way it is with public schools now.
>
>Did you ever notice how public school systems in big cities mandate the
>same teacher-student ratio city wide, but let teachers take seniority
>transfers to the assignments they want anywhere in the system?
Um, no, we haven't. Could you name a school system that operates (or
fails to operate might be a better term) under these circumstances?
>
>Which way do you think those teachers migrate over a career? If you
>guess from "bad" poor neighborhoods to "good" rich ones, you are
>correct.
>
Actually, the best teachers tend to prefer challenges.
>And when do teachers make the largest salaries? After they have
>seniority, of course.
>
So, after whining that teachers don't have incentive to stick around,
you want to eliminate seniority raises. Smaaaaaart move, Sherlock!
>So as the high-paid senior teachers move to the rich neighborhoods,
>leaving the poor neighborhood schools staffed by uncertified teachers
>and beginners, which neighborhoods get *more money per student*? The
>good neighborhood schools, of course. A *lot* more.
>
"Staffed by uncertified teachers"? I don't think I need to add
anything there. Your statements speaks for itself quite well.
>Last year the NYC Schools Chancellor released the first school-by-school
>*real dollar* spending figures for the NYC schools *ever* published --
>not the phony "formula dollar" or "allocation unit dollar" figures used
>previously in NYC, and still used in (and reported in the press for) all
>other big city school systems.
> The result showed that the 25th percentile school funding-wise spent
>*double* per student than the 75th percentile school. Guess which
>neighborhoods got double the money, and which half the money?
>
Why don't you tell us? The voucher scam artists like to talk about
Washington DC, one of the worst systems in the country, and how
expensive it is. Show why they are full of it.
>Of course, it's not just teachers who make seniority transfers,
>everybody in the union/civil service system does. And the rich
>neigborhoods are much more influential in the drafting of "formulas"
>under which funds are dispensed. Overall, the Chancellor's report found
>that at the extremes, the richest schools were spending *eight to ten
>times as much* as the poorest schools, per student.
>
Even if Xfers were as easy as you think, you haven't addressed what
private schools would do to stop this. Chain them to their desks,
perhaps?
>The joke is, of course, that so many well-meaning people defend the
>obviously failing public schools because they believe public schools
>give equal funding to the poor. Ha, ha, they fooled you!
>
Nope, they fooled you. Folks have been fighting for better schools in
troubled areas for years, but folks like you have been fighting it
tooth and nail.
>>I think the same would happen with vouchers - a bunch of little, trashy places
>>whose only goal is to pick up those voucher checks, and whatever else they can
>>get.
>
>You sound so sincere in your concern -- but not sincere enough to notice
>this is what the urban public schools are delivering to inner city poor
>neighborhoods right now.
>
Just out of curiousity, have you ever been in an inner-city school?
Do you even know someone who attended one? You sound like a
suburbanite who doesn't like what he sees as he looks off the edge of
the freeway overpass on his morning commute, and bases his social
expertise on that.
>In contrast, one of the major points of vouchers is that they force the
>*same* amount of money per student to be spent in each school -- because
>funding is school based, not system based, money can't be siphoned out
>of the poor schools to the rich ones through seniority transfers, the
>superior political organization of parents in rich neighborhoods, and
>the like.
>
But schools set their own tuitions! Now THIS is one of the most
amazing pieces of disinformation this side of Rotthoff.
>With vouchers, if a $60,000 senior teacher transfers from a
>poor-neighborhood school to a rich-neighborhood school, the poor
>neighborhood school will be able to hire *two* $30,000 teachers, and at
>least be able to compensate for the loss of experience with reduced
>class size.
>
One year, Nolan Ryan, the pitching legend, went 16-14 with the
California Angels, and Gene Autry dumped Ryan at the end of the
season. Someone asked Autry how he would ever replace Ryan. "With
two 8-6 pitchers!", Autry growled. Ryan went on to win 75 more
games, strike out another 2,000 batters, and get two more no-hitters
on his way to the hall of fame. Autry went on to win nothing, and
eventually sold the team after never realizing his dream of going to
the world series.
Now, tell us more about your scheme to get teachers for half price.
>But the way big city public schools run today, the $30,000 teacher and
>the $60,000 teacher are deemed the "same" -- one teacher per 25 students
>(or whatever number) -- and the poor-neighborhood school gets its
>instructional budget slashed by an amount that becomes the
>rich-neighborhood school's gain.
=====================================================================
Michael Zarlenga
: > >That argument, though, is analogous to keeping government-run stores
: > >that sell spoiled food at high prices open in low-income neighborhoods
: > >because the better stores might not be able to handle all the new cus-
: > >tomers they would get if the terrible "public food stores" shut down.
: >
: > So, improve conditions at your "government-run stores" because the
: > sacrifice the exclusivity franchise they've owned in the private
: > sector.
And, after 20 years of pumping endless streams of cash into those
government-run stores, only to see that vast majority of the money
got spent on more and more fat-assed, do-nothing public store bur-
eaucrats (an astounding 58% of the nation's public school employees
do NOT TEACH) instead of MORE REAL WORKERS in the stores, after see-
ing that the best workers are routinely fired or leave on their own
and the worst, but most "tenured" workers get annual raises and guar-
anteed lifetime employment, after seeing quality remain LOW and costs
escalate, after seeing this year after year after year, what then?
Throw more money into the pit?
When do you finally realize that the only way to get that store and
its bureaucrats to change for the better (lower costs, higher quality)
is competition?
For how many more decades would you like to deny that?
Zepp Weasel
Ah. There you have it, folks: He got HIS public education, has no
further need for it, so fuck all the rest of us.
>--
>Jim Richardson
>http://www.eskimo.com
>anarchist, pagan and proud of it
>"Socialism requires ignorance"
=====================================================================
***NOTE*** Name cleverly altered to confuse
Dittoheads.
Novus Ordo Seclorum Volpus de Marina
=====================================================================
Michael Zarlenga
Andrew Rogers (rog...@star.Hi.COM) wrote:
: >That one-sixth of the school that fled Giffen now has a chance to make
: >something of their lives. Good for them.
: I thought that "handouts just encourage dependency"?
Sometimes they do, but when personal charity can save 100+ kids
from a lifetime of menial labor thanks to a terrible public school
education at Giffen,. I'm all for it.
RHA
In article <6168ql$1a...@navajo.gate.net>,
Caliban <cal...@navajo.gate.net> wrote:
>In talk.politics.libertarian Michael Zarlenga <zarl...@conan.ids.net> wrote:
>: Zepp Weasel (zeppN...@snowcrest.net) wrote:
>: : Ah. There you have it, folks: He got HIS public education, has no
>: : further need for it, so fuck all the rest of us.
>
>_my_ attitude is, "I got a good education, and I want
>everybody else to be able to get the best that they can,
>and I don't care whether it's public or private."
>
>: Is that any worse than the attitude of NEA and AFT teachers : "I got
>: my raise and paycheck, who the fuck cares if the kids learn anything?
>: Screw 'em, I get paid regardless."
>
>What confuses me is the attitude of those who care more
>about preserving government schools than about the quality
What confuses me is rightwing BS that liberals want
government schools rather than quality schools. That
is simply a lie. First off, if private schools have
this as their goal, why don't they just offer it, why
did take **public** schools before every child was
expected to get an education? Second, liberals want
public schools to be properly **and fairly** run, no
more robbing of inner-city schools to fund schools
on the outer periphery. Third, raise teachers salaries
to reflect the value of teaching children (would you
accept a teacher's salary). We have more bad teachers
today because qualified people can earn more doing less
inportant work in business.
Finally, liberals would line up with conservatives to
clean up public school systems, if that would be the
sole goal. But conservatives want divisive religious and
social goals, as well.
>of those schools. If Albert Shanker or his successors had
>explained why they thought that government schools were
>better -- or at least as good -- as private schools, then
Because no one is turned away.
>I would have respected them, even if I thought they were
>mistaken. But when someone complains that school choice
>"will destroy the public school system" and they oppose
We already have school choice, just like we have car choice,
I can chose any school just like I can choose a Rolls-Royce,
now I just need the money.
Conservatives try hard to ignore the fact everyone liked
our public school system...until desegration.
>it even when it will improve every student's education,
>then I can only see their prejudice. It's the equivalent
>of the Archbishop of Canterbury complaining that allowing
>religious freedom "will destroy the Church of England,"
>without justifying why such a church is worth saving. :-(
>--
>Caliban
>cal...@gate.net
>ENTJ/6w5
>"Tolerance and respect do not conflict with compassion and caring.
>Libertarians can hold both."
Both what? Tolerance is not synonymous with respect, compassion
is less then caring (a compassionless doctor can give care to
a patient). Another soundbite bites the dust.
Your post is an exercise in denial.
--
rha
Robert Sturgeon
I don't think so. But yours is certainly an excercise in emotionalism
and class warfare, as well as intolerance for religion. I, for one,
would rather have a competent doctor, sans copmpassion, tending to my
illness than the opposite. As for soundbites, you have very little else
to offer.
--
Robert Sturgeon
"Tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect."
After 65 years, it's still working.
Jim Richardson
> zarl...@conan.ids.net (Michael Zarlenga) wrote:
>
> >Zepp (ze...@snowcrest.net) wrote:
> >: Thanks for posting this, Joe. As you are probably aware, Eleanor has
> >: been touting the Washington DC voucher plan for the past few weeks,
> >: and as usually, her data is one-sided, misleading, and sometimes just
> >: plain dishonest. This article blows her arguments right out of the
> >: water.
>
> >The article makes one relevant, central point ... that the existing
> >private school system may not be able to handle the tremendous influx
> >of new students when those in DC's public schools are allowed to leave.
>
> Interesting that you (in the interest of preserving band width, no
> doubt, and _only_ in the interest of preserving band width. uh huh)
> snipped the real-world report of the real-work consequences of
> vouchers. In the real world, only the people who can already afford
> vouchers get to use them. We're subsidizing educating the elite, and
> socializing private education in the process.
>
Interesting that you failed to mention, that the school system in question
poured money and work into the system to stop the fleeing of the students
(and the money the state paid the school to warehouse them) So the students
who _didn't_ leave benefitted from the vouchers.
> >That argument, though, is analogous to keeping government-run stores
> >that sell spoiled food at high prices open in low-income neighborhoods
> >because the better stores might not be able to handle all the new cus-
> >tomers they would get if the terrible "public food stores" shut down.
>
> So, improve conditions at your "government-run stores" because the
> gourmet food stores aren't going to try to lower their prices or
> sacrifice the exclusivity franchise they've owned in the private
> sector.
>
The conditions have been getting worse for years, and no amount of arm
waving by the 'crats and pols has helped in the least. They just keep
dumbing down the standards.
> The Education Department released a study today that noted the
> corelation between an active father and school performance. Well,
> duh!
>
Yeah duh, we pay our poorest citizens to _not_ marry the fathers of their
children...
> The reason private, and for that matter home schooling, succeeds is
> because parents are actively involed in their children's educations.
> The single most powerful argument for public education is that it is
> society that says every child has a right to a good education. The
> tragedy of the 20th Century is that there are people who don't give a
> rat's ass about the quality of their children's education.
and a lot of them are taking govt paychecks home maybe. There is no reason
for them to improve, they have a captive market.
>
> The irony of the whole voucher argument is that they compare the
> achievement scores of American students with kids whose schools are
> administered by their nations' central governments. Kids in America
> can't compete with kids in nations that expect national standards to
> be met in schools? The right wing answer is to further decentralize
> school standards, and socialize private education. I think I speak
> for all Americans when I say, "Huh?"
>
"socialize private education" ??
We compare auto workers with countries whose central govt runs the auto
industry. Do the private workers do better or worse? Does Boeing build
better/cheaper airplanes than MiG and Anatov ? (actually, those two
factory systems are privatised now, and are getting contractors from
western aerospace firms to help them revamp...)
> Ultimately, the issue is moot. We will see the end of church basement
> schools about the time church school graduates start trying to get
> into medical school with the belief that the dinosaurs were killed in
> Noah's flood.
>
Strawman...
> The key to all of the right wing education reform can be found in the
> realization that, while all conservatives are not ignorant, all
> ignorant people are conservatives.
>
Since we are all ignorant of one thing or another...
(Does mean that anyone who has ever said "I don't know" is conservative?
strange definition...)
> Keep your kids out of a real school, 'wingers. Keep them out of the
> real world. Teach them your myths and multiplication tables by rote.
> They'll be endoctrinated alright; but they won't be educated. They
> won't learn how to learn to learn.
nah, they'll just win the national spelling bees and get better scores on
the gat and sat scores than public school students.
Ron McDermott
alizard/spam/@usa.net wrote:
>
>
> I haven't seen the DC voucher plan... but from what was
> discussed in the portion of the NY Times article below I just
> zapped, I don't really need to.
> Any voucher program that doesn't provide full funding, i.e.
> at minimum, that doesn't make available ALL the money public
> schools spend per pupil to schools receiving vouchers as
> student tuitiion can be considered just another scam to force
> taxpayers to subsidize the education of a minority...
In our previous discussions, I thought we had gone
over the misleading "cost per pupil" figure and its
lack of meaning in the context you're using it? If
you mean per pupil FUNDING from state to the school,
that's another thing...
Andrew Rogers
>In article <60u5kc$14p$7...@paperboy.ids.net>, Michael Zarlenga <zarl...@conan.ids.net> wrote:
>That one-sixth of the school that fled Giffen now has a chance to make
>something of their lives. Good for them.
I thought that "handouts just encourage dependency"?
Andrew
Erik C. Hjerpe
I love the idea of vouchers, except that they require a large capital base
to fund them. Once again it comes down to the liberal idea of distribution
of wealth. I earned my money, and want to use it in my way. I contribute
much to charity, and can do a better job than the government. If I want the
government to mismanage my money I'll go to a socialist country.
Erik
Michael Zarlenga
Zepp Weasel (zeppN...@snowcrest.net) wrote:
: Ah. There you have it, folks: He got HIS public education, has no
: further need for it, so fuck all the rest of us.
Is that any worse than the attitude of NEA and AFT teachers : "I got
my raise and paycheck, who the fuck cares if the kids learn anything?
Screw 'em, I get paid regardless."
--
Caliban
: : Ah. There you have it, folks: He got HIS public education, has no
: : further need for it, so fuck all the rest of us.
As a libertarian (and as a compassionate human being),
_my_ attitude is, "I got a good education, and I want
everybody else to be able to get the best that they can,
and I don't care whether it's public or private."
: Is that any worse than the attitude of NEA and AFT teachers : "I got
: my raise and paycheck, who the fuck cares if the kids learn anything?
: Screw 'em, I get paid regardless."
What confuses me is the attitude of those who care more
about preserving government schools than about the quality
of those schools. If Albert Shanker or his successors had
explained why they thought that government schools were
better -- or at least as good -- as private schools, then
I would have respected them, even if I thought they were
mistaken. But when someone complains that school choice
"will destroy the public school system" and they oppose
Veblen
ri...@praline.no.neosoft.com (RHA) wrote:
>Caliban <cal...@navajo.gate.net> wrote:
>>
>>What confuses me is the attitude of those who care more
>>about preserving government schools than about the quality
> What confuses me is rightwing BS that liberals want
> government schools rather than quality schools. That
> is simply a lie. First off, if private schools have
> this as their goal, why don't they just offer it, why
> did take **public** schools before every child was
> expected to get an education?
The crux of universal education is *financing* it. And the current
method of financing public schooling is a historical consequence of the
partisan politics of 150 years ago.
When New York City was establishing the nation's first major, and
largest, public school system in the 1840s, two methods of financing it
were proposed -- what would today be called a "voucher" system was
proposed by Governor Seward to provide government financing to all
children attending *any* school, while the New York City political
establishment put up a rival plan in which only schools it owned and
managed would obtain government financing.
It was a classic upstate/downstate, Whig/Democrat, bitter partisan
fight for political gain. The final legislative vote was 13-12 for the
Whig plan, April 8, 1841. One Democratic opponent of the bill was absent
due to illness. His vote would have blocked it.
That's where "government schools" as we know them today came from.
Public education was *very* close to being something *very* different.
Does that answer your question?
It is curious that "liberals" have become so ideologically wedded to the
notion of government-run schools when the great founders of Liberalism
and first champions of universal education were so *opposed* to
government-run schools.
See the extract from John Stuart Mill making the argument *for*
universal schooling in "On Liberty", which I am posting in a new
thread: "John Stuart Mill invented School Vouchers"
> Second, liberals want
> public schools to be properly **and fairly** run, no
> more robbing of inner-city schools to fund schools
> on the outer periphery.
Are you sure about this? Or because of your liberal good intentions, do
you feel excused from checking the facts.
The reality is that big-city urban school systems systematically shift
money from poor neighborhoods into rich ones, "robbing", as you say,
poor-neighborhood schools of money to fund rich-neighborhood schools.
I'm talking about within a single city school district with a
"uniform" funding formula -- not different districts with different
funding levels.
The two big causes of this:
[] Unions insist that their members have system-wide seniority-transfer
rights. This results in the most senior, highest paid, presumably most
skilled teachers migrating into the best, rich-neighborhood schools over
their careers. Since all these big school systems also have mandated
class sizes (it would be *unfair* to have some children stuck in classes
twice as large as others) the result is that the good-neighborhood
schools often have budgets *twice* as large or larger than
poor-neighborhood schools.
[] Rich neighborhoods are politically much better organized than poor
neighborhoods, and much better at getting extra resources out of the
politically-managed public schools bureaucracies.
Don't take my word for it. Read the analysis of NYC Board of Ed Budget
Director Robert Sarrell in RESOURCE ALLOCATION AND PRODUCTIVITY: A
FINANCIAL ANALYSIS OF THE NEW YORK CITY HIGH SCHOOLS, 178 pages. UMI
Dissertation Services, 800-521-0600
Put it all together, and you get *actual dollar* spending for rich- and
poor-neighborhood urban schools like this, from a 1996 audit of the NYC
Public Schools:
[I first put these up for Zepp, but twice is nice]
Top spending schools, located in Manhattan and Riverdale:
PS 207 $14,807 per student
IS 252 $11,008
IS 137 $10,188
IS 229 $ 9,469
PS 50 $ 9,384
Lowest spending schools, in neighborhoods like Central Brooklyn and the
South Bronx:
IS 287 $ 1,775, per student
PS 173 $ 2,636
PS 376 $ 4,677
PS 171 $ 4,937
IS 25 $ 5,075
Is this the kind of *fairly run* public school system that's so
important to your liberal ideals?
> Third, raise teachers salaries
> to reflect the value of teaching children (would you
> accept a teacher's salary). We have more bad teachers
> today because qualified people can earn more doing less
> important work in business.
Teachers salaries in NYC today are roughly $30,000 to $70,000. Some
would say that's "not so bad" for a 180-day work year, 6.5 hour work day
with *impregnable* job security.
Of course, if you want to pay more, that's OK. There's plenty of
money in the urban school systems for teacher raises, if you want to
take some of it from politically-motivated, noninstructional school
system programs. To quote NYC Budget Director Sarrell:
"The figures are shocking and indicate that less than one-third
(32.3%) of the dollars provided by the various funding sources to the
Board of Education ever get from the school board to the chalkboard.
"[p. 113]
"Almost 46% of all personnel now are non-teaching, and even some
staff on teaching lines are relieved of pedagogic responsibilities."
[p.144]
"The New York City school system has a vast bureaucratic structure,
and it is inconceivable that the public willingly supports this
structure as a valid educational expense..." [p.86]
Of course, with higher pay should come at least some responsibility.
Along these lines, NYC taxpayers might be reluctant to support big pay
raises for teachers when in their daily newspapers they so often read
stories like these:
* Jay Dubner, teacher, convicted of dealing cocaine from his school
office and sentenced to serve two-to-five years in a maximum security
prison. His tenure rights rights enabled him to to continue
collecting his teaching salary after his conviction and, upon his
release from jail, to have his teaching privileges restored to him. (New
York Times, 6/28/94, page one)
* Arthur Blouin, teacher, convicted of "possessing cocaine with intent
to distribute". He took a leave of absence to serve his prison sentence
-- after which he exercised his tenure rights to be returned
to the classroom, where he remains today. (New York Times, 12/11/96, p.
B3)
* Franklin Lim, teacher, convicted of earning extra money from a second
career conducting fraudulent medical practice billing Medicaid for
procedures not performed and patients not seen. He was ordered to pay
restitution, fined and placed on five years probation. He is now
teaching at Brooklyn Tech over the public objection of the school's
principal, Mr. Lee McCaskill, who told the NY Times, "It doesn't seem to
me appropriate that felons should be working with children." (New York
Times, 12/11/96, p. B3)
* Kenneth Cotton, teacher, convicted of taking bribes to fix grades and
alter school system records. He received a sentence of six months in
jail, five years' probation, and $2,500 fine. But due to his tenured
status, Mr. Cotton was never removed from the payroll and returned to
work upon his release from prison. (New York Post, 2/9/97).
Etc., etc.,
Can you imagine a private school keeping any of these guys in the
classroom after being convicted -- and paying their salaries while they
were in jail?!
> Finally, liberals would line up with conservatives to
> clean up public school systems, if that would be the
> sole goal. But conservatives want divisive religious and
> social goals, as well.
Read the John Stuart Mill post on this.
> We already have school choice, just like we have car choice,
> I can chose any school just like I can choose a Rolls-Royce,
> now I just need the money.
And it seems like that's just the way you want to keep it -- denying
choice to anyone who can't afford a Rolls.
> Conservatives try hard to ignore the fact everyone liked
> our public school system...until desegration.
A statement that reveals total ignorance of the history of the public
schools.
Try reading *any* history of public schooling, say "The Great School
Wars", and you'll see the *irony* is that all these "new" problems that
people are so heatedly discovering and arguing about were being just as
heatedly argued about 100 years ago -- although "liberals" and
"conservatives" often were on opposite sides of the same issues then
than they are now. ;-)
Hey, vouchers weren't invented by the Reagan adminstration -- they
were invented in the 1840s by liberals, there were riots about them in
the streets of NYC, and they were just narrowly defeated -- by the
city's Protestant religious conservative establishment!
> Your post is an exercise in denial.
Add ignorance, then look in the mirror.
Ed Redondo
In article <6168ql$1a...@navajo.gate.net>, Caliban <cal...@navajo.gate.net> wrote:
>What confuses me is the attitude of those who care more
>about preserving government schools than about the quality
>explained why they thought that government schools were
>better -- or at least as good -- as private schools, then
>I would have respected them, even if I thought they were
>mistaken. But when someone complains that school choice
>"will destroy the public school system" and they oppose
>it even when it will improve every student's education,
>then I can only see their prejudice. It's the equivalent
>of the Archbishop of Canterbury complaining that allowing
>religious freedom "will destroy the Church of England,"
>without justifying why such a church is worth saving. :-(
The fly in the ointment in the voucher system is that all proposals I have
read do not provide the cash that the good private schools are charging
today. Yes, private education is reported to give better results, but look
at what they actually charge.
All the proposals I have read to date, provide only a fraction of the cost
of private education. The result, *if* the current proposals are adopted,
well may lead to; 1) a flood of get-the-buck, cheap, private schools (like
what is happening today with the student loan programs), 2) private schools
trying to provide education that matches what vouchers will pay for (make
the programs cheaper by providing less), 3) only the upper middle class
and above being able to afford private education and having to settle for a
public education anyway.
Unless very carefully crafted, any voucher system *may* not lead to better
education. The question is, can we trust our law makers to write such a
law (ignoring *all* the special interest groups) and concentrate on
the goal of providing good education to all our children?
Part of the problem with public education is that tax payers only pay lip
service to the idea. When asked to actually put their money where their
mouth is, it's another story. The other problem is the idea of graduating
students from grade to next on other than merit. That is, graduating them
even if they don't pass the grade.
==== Ed Redondo ====
Have you noticed that if you ignore the space between the words,
"THE IRS" becomes "THEIRS?"
sockeye
Joe Myers wrote:
>
> Once again, the pipedreams of right-wing ideology are faced with
> reality.
>
> Vouchers May Open Few Doors
>
> D.C. Students Would Find Costs High and Openings Scarce
the DC public schools?
--
* Eric Fowler
* Email responses to: sockeye [AT] rmii [DOT] com
Ron McDermott
LQuest wrote:
>
> Of course, in their infinite greed and avarice, government arrogantly expects
> me to continue paying school taxes even though MY child is not costing the
> public school system one dime of expense! For better or worse, dear fellow,
> THAT is why the voucher system is an idea that is gaining steam in the
> population as a whole.
Perhaps you should just consider that you're paying
back for your own education?
Jim Richardson
In article <34367fc4...@news.snowcrest.net>, zeppN...@snowcrest.net
(Zepp Weasel) wrote:
>>
> >> Tell ya what, good buddy, the day you rise up to stop the
> >> gouging of us with no children to subsidize youse wid'
> >> little chilluns, is the day I'll stop laughing at your
> >> childish whining.
> >
> >er, I _have_ no children...and have and do oppose public education on many
> >grounds..
>
> further need for it, so fuck all the rest of us.
> >Jim Richardson
> >http://www.eskimo.com
> >anarchist, pagan and proud of it
> >"Socialism requires ignorance"
is that? (you're wrong btw, but assume away pal)
Besides, my sexual exploits, and the choice of partner(s) is my own, your
'offer' is refused.
Phil Nicholls
>Michael Zarlenga <zarl...@conan.ids.net> wrote:
> ALBANY, Sept. 25 - Last winter, a philanthropist from Manhattan
> named Virginia Gilder decided that she wanted to dramatize what she
> considered the collapse of inner-city public education. So she went
> shopping for a school in need of fixing.
> By spring, she had found one: Giffen Memorial, Albany's
> lowest-performing primary school, situated on the city's poor,
> drug-infested south side. Setting aside $1 million of her Wall Street
> fortune, Mrs. Gilder offered scholarships of up to $2,000 to any
> Giffen student who wanted to attend private school. As many as 105
> children, or a sixth of the school, accepted.
In fact, less than 100 of the students at Giffen actually took
advantage of the scholarship program. The vast majority of
those students transfered to inner city parochial schools. Less
than 10 were able to get into the more exclusive suburban private
and parochial schools and it is very likely that once the
spotlight is gone they will be forced to return to Giffen next
year when the scholarship money runs out.. Lack of
transportation and the fact that most of the suburban schools
charge tuitions far in excess of the $2,000 scholarship somewhat
limited the "choice" available to Giffen students.
All said and done, more than 80% of the Giffen parents declined
Mrs. Gilder's offer. I'm not exactly sure why voucher
proponents find this so impressive.
Phil Nicholls
pn...@capital.net
"To ask a question, you must first know
most of the answer." Robert Sheckley
Phil Nicholls
alizard/spam/@usa.net wrote:
>
>On 2 Oct 1997 19:30:02 -0700, boo...@primenet.com (Joe Myers) wrote:
>> zarl...@conan.ids.net (Michael Zarlenga) wrote:
>> Interesting that you (in the interest of preserving band width, no
>> doubt, and _only_ in the interest of preserving band width. uh huh)
>> snipped the real-world report of the real-work consequences of
>> vouchers. In the real world, only the people who can already afford
>> vouchers get to use them. We're subsidizing educating the elite, and
>> socializing private education in the process.
>
>I've said repeatedly and loudly that this is a bad idea.
>
>This problem can be solved without precluding freedom of choice
>for anyone except people with upscale incomes.
>
>1. Require that all funds currently being spent on public
>school students be translated into voucher funds, and make ALL
>of this money available on a per pupil basis attached to each
>voucher.
>
>2. Require that all schools accepting vouchers accept them as
>100% of tuition / textbook cost.
I'm a public school teacher and I am not opposed in principle to
vouchers. However, the two requirements above do not go far
enough.
Add these:
3. All schools accepting vouchers may not discriminate on the
basis of race, ethnicity or religion.
4. All schools accepting vouchers may not use an admissions test
(i.e., no "cherry picking" by private schools). In the case of
more students applying than seats available, a lottery should be
used.
5. All schools accepting vouchers must accept students with
special needs and abide by state and federal laws that require
students to be placed in the "least restrictive" educational
environment. (Designated special education students should get
a larger voucher).
6. Vouchers may be used in religious schools but students in
such schools should not be required to take classes in religion.
These conditions would place non-public schools on an equal
footing with public schools.
Phil Nicholls
zarl...@conan.ids.net (Michael Zarlenga) wrote:
>Andrew Rogers (rog...@star.Hi.COM) wrote:
>Sometimes they do, but when personal charity can save 100+ kids
>from a lifetime of menial labor thanks to a terrible public school
>education at Giffen,. I'm all for it.
And you KNOW that these kinds received a terrible education at
Giffen because ....... ?
LQuest
Ron McDermott <rom...@ibm.net> wrote:
Great idea! Except for tens of thousands of dollars confiscated from my
parents to pay for my education. Of course in those days the public school
system was of a far higher quality. It was not burdened by infantile,
irrelevant political intrigue -- at least not to the grotesque extent that it
is today. I am now paying $4,900 per year to send my 7th grader to a private
Catholic school with a proven track record of producing students of such
excellence that over 80% of them get private scholastic scholarships for
college (this has been going on for over 35 years!). Between my wife and I,
we work 4.5 jobs to maintain this option. We aren't even Catholic! I could
not care less about the religion part. I just want a quality education for my
daughter. My ONLY public school option is a local middle school where armed
guards patrol the halls and grounds and metal detectors are installed at every
external doorway. It is utterly obscene for me or ANY parent, rich or poor to
be forced at what amounts to gun point, to support the socialist public school
system. American society MUST have an educated public. Poor children deserve
as good as any children. As long as the arrogant, self-infatuated "annointed"
in America continue to resist the means by which parents of ALL socio-economic
classes can CHOOSE ANY school for their children, we will continue to have
these stupid political disruptions draining energy from the most important
task of ANY civilized society -- the proper, effective education of their
future leaders and workers. The free market works well when allowed to. Let
it work by allowing ALL parents to spend the annual education cost of state
schools on the free market school of their choice. The ONLY qualification for
a school that can use the vouchers should be basic safety rules and basic
academic standards (reading, writing, math.) Free market competition and
civil liability will assure the remaining quality issues.
--Mike
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The curse of the 'intelligentsia' is their ability to rationalize
and re-define. Ordinary people, lacking that gift, are forced
to face reality." -Thomas Sowell
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Evans
Try my webpage! http://www.webspawner.com/users/RichardEvans
Resident of:alt.music.nin, alt.music.depeche-mode,
alt.politics.libertarian,
http://www.wise.wnpb.wvnet.edu and the state of West Virginia.
My new e-mail for now is: rlevans at eastky.net
> The article makes one relevant, central point ... that the existing
> private school system may not be able to handle the tremendous influx
> of new students when those in DC's public schools are allowed to leave.
>
> That argument, though, is analogous to keeping government-run stores
> that sell spoiled food at high prices open in low-income neighborhoods
> because the better stores might not be able to handle all the new cus-
> tomers they would get if the terrible "public food stores" shut down.
>
RE-Then they would begin building more private schoools to handle the
increase.
C. Smith
In article <34388526...@news.megsinet.net>, msi...@tefbbs.com wrote:
: You ought to read "Dumbing Us Down" by John Gotto - New York State
: (Public School) Teacher of the year.
:
: He claims that literacy rates have been dropping since public schools
: took over education.
:
: Simon
<sigh> Yes, this is something that has been utterly and completely
disproven in these thread over and over and over again...
Just go to http://www.ed.gov/NCES/pubs/
C. Smith
msi...@tefbbs.com
What is your source for the 20% figure?
Gotto says it was greater than 95%.
Simon
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ze...@snowcrest.net (Zepp) wrote:
>On Mon, 06 Oct 1997 06:31:28 GMT, msi...@tefbbs.com wrote:
>
>>You ought to read "Dumbing Us Down" by John Gotto - New York State
>>(Public School) Teacher of the year.
>>
>>He claims that literacy rates have been dropping since public schools
>>took over education.
>
>He must be a complete whack, then. When public schools were founded,
>the literacy rate was about 20%.
>[snip]
>=====================================================================
>"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
> or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
>
> Agree with that? Fine. So do I. You have free exercise. Take your
> God, stick him on a leash, and walk Him. Just don't ask the state
> to do it for you.
>
>Be good, servile little citizen employees, and pay your taxes so the
>rich don't have to.
>=====================================================================
>When replying by e-mail, remove the third "P" placed there to foil
>spambots.
Opinions expressed herein are solely my own and may or may not reflect my opinion at this particular time or any other.
Zepp
Gack
Matthew Alexander wrote:
>
> On Thu, 02 Oct 1997 15:43:37 -0400, Gack <ga...@geech.goof> wrote:
>
> >Joe Myers wrote:
> >> Vouchers May Open Few Doors
> >>
> >> D.C. Students Would Find Costs High and Openings Scarce
> >>
> >> Washington Post Staff Writers
> >
> >This is an obvious crock.
> >
> >The people opposing vouchers are opposing them out of
> >fear they *would* work.
> >
> >You are not suggesting, are you, that Ted Kennedy is filibustering
> >a 6 million dollar program because he thinks it will be a
> >waste of money?
> So... are you suggesting that the above article is a piece of
> anti-voucher fiction made up by stats-quo Democrats, or do have some
> other solutions in mind for the obvious problems with this particlar
> program?
>
The above article is a piece of anti-voucher fiction
made up by reporters.
Reporters as a general rule have even
less understanding of economics than politicians.
Of course the market isn't going to run empty schools just waiting
for vouchers to come along.
If they establish a voucher program, existing schools will expand,
and new schools will open.
Last year the market produced X cars in the US. Do you think
if the Federal government announced they would give everybody
a voucher for $3000 towards a new car that the market would
be unable to produce more than X cars this year?
Also, in contrast to the assumption
of the reporters, many of the parents might supplement
the voucher. You won't find a better way to get parents involved
than if some of them put up a little bit of the cost.
You can bet that then they'll be checking to make sure
junior learns something.
Common, Matthew, answer my question. Do you think Ted Kennedy
is rising to filibuster this program because he thinks it won't
work or because he thinks it will? Billion dollar
giveaways to corporate interests get passed every year,
without Ted filibustering those. Why is he filibustering
a 6 million dollar program if he's afraid it won't work?
Hey, Matthew, say it didn't work because the reporters are right,
and there's no room in the schools. What would the problem be
in your view? If the kids couldn't find private school spots,
I guess they'd stay where they are, in which case they would
be no worse off, the taxpayers would be no worse off, and
the voucher proponents would have a major black eye.
Why are you so opposed to that?
BTW Matthew, I'm against vouchers, on the grounds
that I don't want the gov't taking over the private schools,
which is where I fear it will lead. But I know BS when I smell
it, and this Post article is ripe.
Gack
Joe Myers wrote:
> So, improve conditions at your "government-run stores"
Funny, everybody in the world is in favor of better schools.
But the government schools are worse now than they were 30 years
ago, although 4 times as expensive, and worse than they
were 100 years ago.
> The reason private, and for that matter home schooling, succeeds is
> because parents are actively involed in their children's educations.
> The single most powerful argument for public education is that it is
> society that says every child has a right to a good education. The
> tragedy of the 20th Century is that there are people who don't give a
> rat's ass about the quality of their children's education.
Funny, in the 19th century, before there was free public education,
literacy in England was approaching 100%. Likewise in the US
northeast, literacy was approaching 100%. Parents then
seemed to care enough about their children's education to spend money
on it, poor as they were. Government involvement lessening parents
involvement in their children's education is not a new phenomenon.
In the 60's (that's the 0060's) Pliny the Younger wanted
to endow a secondary school, but rather than endow it totally
decided to give only one third of the cost, saying:
*** would promise the whole amount were I not afraid that someday my
gift might be abused for someone's selfish purposes, as I see
happen in many places where teachers' salaries are paid from public
funds. There is only one remedy to meet this evil: if the appointment of
teachers is left entirely to the parents, and they are conscientious
about making a wise choice through their obligation to contribute to the
cost. People who may be careless about another person's money are sure
to be careful about their own, and they will see that only a suitable
recipient shall be found for my money if he is also to have their own...
***
> The key to all of the right wing education reform can be found in the
> realization that, while all conservatives are not ignorant, all
> ignorant people are conservatives.
>
You know, time was when you could easily have said that most
communists were intellectuals. I'm reading "Modern Times" by
Paul Johnson, which I recommend highly. It notes that in
1920 a very prominent journalist (Lincoln Steffens) went to
Russia and met with Lenin, coming back to say "I've seen
the future and it works". Johnson asks: what could Steffens
have possibly seen? At the time the economic system in Russia
was so broken (due to communism) that it was nearly impossible to
get food in the cities. As a result, half the
people in the cities had left and gone back to the countryside,
where there was some hope of scrimping by on a subsistence diet.
Industrial production, with noone left in the factories,
was way down-- iron production for example was something like
10% of what it had been before Lenin.
Steffens and many of the rest of the intellectuals went on
to support Stalin etc.
Perhaps the moral is: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Larry Sanger
> What is your source for the 20% figure?
>
> Gotto says it was greater than 95%.
He also says it was "still struggling toward a 70% literacy rate" in
the 19th century. Who knows what he believes or where he gets his
figures from.
I would like to see some references on *any* literacy figures from
the 19th century, though. Where did Gotto get his "greater than
95%" figure?
Larry Sanger
--
To reply remove "NOSPAM" from the address
tubm...@gte.net
In article <3438eab...@news.capital.net>,
pn...@capital.net (Phil Nicholls) wrote:
>
> zarl...@conan.ids.net (Michael Zarlenga) wrote:
>
> >Andrew Rogers (rog...@star.Hi.COM) wrote:
>
>> And you KNOW that these kinds received a terrible education at
> Giffen because ....... ?
>
> Phil Nicholls
>
1) Unless you're some kind of bigot, you assume the students are roughly
equivalent at the start of their school life, or at least exhibit the
same range as suburban, middle class kids. 2) It's not the neighborhood,
since parochial schools in the same neighborhoods do a better job. 3) The
donor went looking for a school with low statistics. 4) Testimony of
former State school teachers. 5) Analogy with other State-monopoly
enterprise in the US and elsewhere. Malcolm Kirkpatrick
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
Zepp Weasel
On Mon, 06 Oct 1997 09:23:04 -0400, Gack <ga...@geech.goof> wrote:
>Joe Myers wrote:
>> So, improve conditions at your "government-run stores"
>
>Funny, everybody in the world is in favor of better schools.
>But the government schools are worse now than they were 30 years
>ago, although 4 times as expensive, and worse than they
>were 100 years ago.
They are far better than they were 100 years ago, when the country was
still struggling toward a 70% literacy rate and only one on twenty
Americans graduated from high school. That they are more expensive is
a function of the failure of capitalism to provide for those
kids--meals and dealing with the problems generated when you create an
underclass are expensive. It would be nice if all schools had to do
was teach.
>
>
>> The reason private, and for that matter home schooling, succeeds is
>> because parents are actively involed in their children's educations.
>> The single most powerful argument for public education is that it is
>> society that says every child has a right to a good education. The
>> tragedy of the 20th Century is that there are people who don't give a
>> rat's ass about the quality of their children's education.
>
>Funny, in the 19th century, before there was free public education,
>literacy in England was approaching 100%.
England had public schools beginning in 1832. Prior to that,
measurements of literacy didn't exist, but it was almost certainly
under 50%. Just because YOU weren't taught history doesn't mean the
rest of us weren't.
>Likewise in the US
>northeast, literacy was approaching 100%.
In the 19th century? Surely you jest.
>Parents then
>seemed to care enough about their children's education to spend money
>on it, poor as they were. Government involvement lessening parents
>involvement in their children's education is not a new phenomenon.
>In the 60's (that's the 0060's) Pliny the Younger wanted
>to endow a secondary school, but rather than endow it totally
>decided to give only one third of the cost, saying:
>
>*** would promise the whole amount were I not afraid that someday my
> gift might be abused for someone's selfish purposes, as I see
>happen in many places where teachers' salaries are paid from public
>funds. There is only one remedy to meet this evil: if the appointment of
>teachers is left entirely to the parents, and they are conscientious
>about making a wise choice through their obligation to contribute to the
>cost. People who may be careless about another person's money are sure
>to be careful about their own, and they will see that only a suitable
>recipient shall be found for my money if he is also to have their own...
>***
How touching. Of course, Pliny thought well of slavery, too.
>
>> The key to all of the right wing education reform can be found in the
>> realization that, while all conservatives are not ignorant, all
>> ignorant people are conservatives.
>>
>
>You know, time was when you could easily have said that most
>communists were intellectuals. I'm reading "Modern Times" by
>Paul Johnson, which I recommend highly. It notes that in
>1920 a very prominent journalist (Lincoln Steffens) went to
>Russia and met with Lenin, coming back to say "I've seen
>the future and it works". Johnson asks: what could Steffens
>have possibly seen? At the time the economic system in Russia
>was so broken (due to communism) that it was nearly impossible to
>get food in the cities. As a result, half the
>people in the cities had left and gone back to the countryside,
>where there was some hope of scrimping by on a subsistence diet.
>Industrial production, with noone left in the factories,
>was way down-- iron production for example was something like
>10% of what it had been before Lenin.
>Steffens and many of the rest of the intellectuals went on
>to support Stalin etc.
>Perhaps the moral is: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Perhaps it is, at that. Collectivism hadn't taken place in the USSR
yet--that came under Stalin--and the biggest problem the USSR had was
that when the Bolsheviks defeated the Mensheviks (who in turn defeated
the Whites), there was no economy left--not that there was much of one
in the wake of the war, anyway.
You also forgot to mention that by the time of the Beria purges in
1937, western Intelligensia had totally abandoned dialectic
materialism as a realistic course of action.
Not that I'm trying to defend the Soviet state or 1920s'
intellectuals, but you left some salient facts out--mostly, I suspect,
because you are unaware of them. As you say, a little knowledge is a
dangerous thing.
=====================================================================
***NOTE*** Name cleverly altered to confuse
Dittoheads.
Novus Ordo Seclorum Volpus de Marina
=====================================================================
Ron McDermott
LQuest wrote:
>
> Ron McDermott <rom...@ibm.net> wrote:
>
> >LQuest wrote:
> >>
> >> Of course, in their infinite greed and avarice, government arrogantly expects
> >> me to continue paying school taxes even though MY child is not costing the
> >> public school system one dime of expense! For better or worse, dear fellow,
> >> THAT is why the voucher system is an idea that is gaining steam in the
> >> population as a whole.
> >
> >Perhaps you should just consider that you're paying
> >back for your own education?
>
> Great idea! Except for tens of thousands of dollars confiscated from my
> parents to pay for my education.
Or was it for THEIR education? ;-)
Reuel Nash
Larry Sanger wrote:
>
> In article <3438e34...@news.megsinet.net>, msi...@tefbbs.com wrote:
>
> > What is your source for the 20% figure?
> >
> > Gotto says it was greater than 95%.
>
> He also says it was "still struggling toward a 70% literacy rate" in
> the 19th century. Who knows what he believes or where he gets his
> figures from.
>
> I would like to see some references on *any* literacy figures from
> the 19th century, though. Where did Gotto get his "greater than
> 95%" figure?
Table 6--Percentage of persons 14 years old and over who
are illiterate,1/ by race and nativity:
1870 to 1979
___________________________________________________________
| | White |
| |_____________________________| Black
Year | Total | Total | Native | Foreign | and
| | | | born | other
_________|_________|_________|_________|_________|_________
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
_________|_________|_________|_________|_________|_________
1870 ....| 20.0 | 11.5 | --- | --- | 79.9
1880 ....| 17.0 | 9.4 | 8.7 | 12.0 | 70.0
1890 ....| 13.3 | 7.7 | 6.2 | 13.1 | 56.8
1900 ....| 10.7 | 6.2 | 4.6 | 12.9 | 44.5
1910 ....| 7.7 | 5.0 | 3.0 | 12.7 | 30.5
| | | | |
1920 ....| 6.0 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 13.1 | 23.0
1930 ....| 4.3 | 3.0 | 1.6 | 10.8 | 16.4
1940 ....| 2.9 | 2.0 | 1.1 | 9.0 | 11.5
1947 ....| 2.7 | 1.8 | --- | --- | 11.0
1950 ....| 3.2 | --- | --- | --- | ---
| | | | |
1952 ....| 2.5 | 1.8 | --- | --- | 10.2
1959 ....| 2.2 | 1.6 | --- | --- | 7.5
1969 ....| 1.0 | 0.7 | --- | --- |2/ 3.6
1979 ....| 0.6 | 0.4 | --- | --- |2/ 1.6
_________|_________|_________|_________|_________|_________
1/Persons are counted as illiterate if they cannot read or
write in any language.
2/Based on black population only.
---Data not available.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the
Census, Historical Statistics of the United States; and
Current Population Reports, Series P-23, Ancestry and
Language in the United States: November 1979. (This
table was prepared September 1992.)
--
Reuel Nash
re...@sgi.com
Reuel Nash
Jim Richardson wrote:
> Interesting that you failed to mention, that the school system in question
> poured money and work into the system to stop the fleeing of the students
> (and the money the state paid the school to warehouse them) So the students
> who _didn't_ leave benefitted from the vouchers.
>
Perhaps the students at that particular school did, but all the
other students at all the other schools in that system lost
benefits. Extrapolate to what would happen with a generally available
voucher system where there's no other public schools to take anything
from. All the children remaining in all the public schools lose.
--
Reuel Nash
re...@sgi.com
msi...@tefbbs.com
You ought to read "Dumbing Us Down" by John Gotto - New York State
(Public School) Teacher of the year.
He claims that literacy rates have been dropping since public schools
took over education.
Simon
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ri...@praline.no.neosoft.com (RHA) wrote:
>In article <6168ql$1a...@navajo.gate.net>,
>Caliban <cal...@navajo.gate.net> wrote:
>>In talk.politics.libertarian Michael Zarlenga <zarl...@conan.ids.net> wrote:
>>: Zepp Weasel (zeppN...@snowcrest.net) wrote:
>>: : Ah. There you have it, folks: He got HIS public education, has no
>>: : further need for it, so fuck all the rest of us.
>>
>>As a libertarian (and as a compassionate human being),
>>_my_ attitude is, "I got a good education, and I want
>>everybody else to be able to get the best that they can,
>>and I don't care whether it's public or private."
>>
>>: Is that any worse than the attitude of NEA and AFT teachers : "I got
>>: my raise and paycheck, who the fuck cares if the kids learn anything?
>>: Screw 'em, I get paid regardless."
>>
>>What confuses me is the attitude of those who care more
>>about preserving government schools than about the quality
>
> What confuses me is rightwing BS that liberals want
> government schools rather than quality schools. That
> is simply a lie. First off, if private schools have
> this as their goal, why don't they just offer it, why
> did take **public** schools before every child was
> expected to get an education? Second, liberals want
> public schools to be properly **and fairly** run, no
> more robbing of inner-city schools to fund schools
> on the outer periphery. Third, raise teachers salaries
> to reflect the value of teaching children (would you
> accept a teacher's salary). We have more bad teachers
> today because qualified people can earn more doing less
> inportant work in business.
>
> Finally, liberals would line up with conservatives to
> clean up public school systems, if that would be the
> sole goal. But conservatives want divisive religious and
> social goals, as well.
>
>>of those schools. If Albert Shanker or his successors had
>>explained why they thought that government schools were
>>better -- or at least as good -- as private schools, then
>
> Because no one is turned away.
>
>
>>I would have respected them, even if I thought they were
>>mistaken. But when someone complains that school choice
>>"will destroy the public school system" and they oppose
>
> We already have school choice, just like we have car choice,
> I can chose any school just like I can choose a Rolls-Royce,
> now I just need the money.
>
> Conservatives try hard to ignore the fact everyone liked
> our public school system...until desegration.
>
>
>>it even when it will improve every student's education,
>>then I can only see their prejudice. It's the equivalent
>>of the Archbishop of Canterbury complaining that allowing
>>religious freedom "will destroy the Church of England,"
>>without justifying why such a church is worth saving. :-(
>>--
>>Caliban
>>cal...@gate.net
>>ENTJ/6w5
>>"Tolerance and respect do not conflict with compassion and caring.
>>Libertarians can hold both."
>
> Both what? Tolerance is not synonymous with respect, compassion
> is less then caring (a compassionless doctor can give care to
> a patient). Another soundbite bites the dust.
>
> Your post is an exercise in denial.
>--
>rha
alizar...@usa.net
On Mon, 06 Oct 1997 14:15:33 GMT, pn...@capital.net (Phil Nicholls) wrote:
> zarl...@conan.ids.net (Michael Zarlenga) wrote:
>
> >Andrew Rogers (rog...@star.Hi.COM) wrote:
>
> >from a lifetime of menial labor thanks to a terrible public school
> >education at Giffen,. I'm all for it.
>
> Giffen because ....... ?
with their feet to get out of Geffen at the first possible
opportunity, and the school district in effect admitted that
Geffen was neglected to the tune of $125,000 when they suddenly
decided to pour that amount of supplemental funding in. What do
you want, Geffen to take out Web ads saying "Geffen SUCKS?"
A.Lizard
************************************************************
For information about my draft voucher initiative, go to
www.ecis.com/~alizard/voucher.html
the above address is a spam trap, I'm at alizard(at)usa.net
************************************************************
--
Posted using Reference.COM http://www.reference.com
Browse, Search and Post Usenet and Mailing list Archive and Catalog.
InReference, Inc. accepts no responsibility for the content of this posting.
alizar...@usa.net
On Sat, 04 Oct 1997 14:09:47 GMT, ze...@snowcrest.net (Zepp) wrote:
> On Fri, 03 Oct 1997 23:44:05 -0400, Veblen <V@spam_me_not.com> wrote:
>
> >bi...@ripag1.fmr.com (Bill Duncan) wrote:
> >
> >>Herman Rubin <hru...@mean.stat.purdue.edu> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>With widespread vouchers, we could have academic schools springing
> >>>up, which would allow unusual children the right to use their mental
> >>>abilities to develop better than the current public school setup
> >>>will allow.
This is true, IF AND ONLY IF the voucher initiative is written
to support this. People discuss "vouchers" as if there was some
sort of Platonic ideal voucher initiative that all real-world
voucher initiatives will be identical to. A good part of the
discussion I've seen here doesn't mean much, because it isn't
tied to SPECIFIC initiative proposals or to provisions that
should be included or specifically excluded from a voucher
initiative.
> >Which way do you think those teachers migrate over a career? If you
> >guess from "bad" poor neighborhoods to "good" rich ones, you are
> >correct.
> >
> Actually, the best teachers tend to prefer challenges.
Therefore, all the best teachers should be in the inner city
schools. Reality check time.
> >And when do teachers make the largest salaries? After they have
> >Last year the NYC Schools Chancellor released the first school-by-school
> >*real dollar* spending figures for the NYC schools *ever* published --
> >not the phony "formula dollar" or "allocation unit dollar" figures used
> >previously in NYC, and still used in (and reported in the press for) all
> >other big city school systems.
> > The result showed that the 25th percentile school funding-wise spent
> >*double* per student than the 75th percentile school. Guess which
> >neighborhoods got double the money, and which half the money?
Equalizing funding spent per student in publically funded schools
would probably improve the worst schools by quite a bit. One
way to do this is via voucher funding with provisions forbidding
supplemental monetary contributions by parents for tuition and
books.
> Why don't you tell us? The voucher scam artists like to talk about
> Washington DC, one of the worst systems in the country, and how
> expensive it is. Show why they are full of it.
Let's see YOUR numbers. Either your perspective is based on
paranoia about "Those EVIL right-wingers who want do DESTROY
public education by using VOUCHERS" or it's got some facts
behind it. Let's see some.
> >Of course, it's not just teachers who make seniority transfers,
> >everybody in the union/civil service system does. And the rich
> >neigborhoods are much more influential in the drafting of "formulas"
> >under which funds are dispensed. Overall, the Chancellor's report found
> >that at the extremes, the richest schools were spending *eight to ten
> >times as much* as the poorest schools, per student.
> >
> Even if Xfers were as easy as you think, you haven't addressed what
> private schools would do to stop this.
See above remarks about equalizing funding. I want to know what
they are spending the money on. It CAN'T be all on teachers...
how much of this is on amenities which don't mean all that much
to education?
> Chain them to their desks,
> perhaps?
How about improving the school environment such that teachers
can safely teach students without fear of being interrupted by
drive-by shootings, major discipline problems, improve the
facilities so that teachers can be physically comfortable...
Many of the new voucher schools admitting inner-city might be
on the edge of the inner city. Some might be in YOUR neighborhood.
Could this be why you object to vouchers?
Do you think this is likely in an environment controlled by
giant educational bureaucracies unresponsive to any inputs
other than their own?
> >The joke is, of course, that so many well-meaning people defend the
> >obviously failing public schools because they believe public schools
> >give equal funding to the poor. Ha, ha, they fooled you!
> >
> Nope, they fooled you. Folks have been fighting for better schools in
> troubled areas for years, but folks like you have been fighting it
> tooth and nail.
You're demonizing again. Ever occurred to you that there might
be well meaning, intelligent, and informed people who disagree
with you... for good reason?
> >>I think the same would happen with vouchers - a bunch of little, trashy places
> >>whose only goal is to pick up those voucher checks, and whatever else they can
> >>get.
Given what I call a "full funding" voucher initiative, there will
***CERTAINLY*** be scam academies. That's why voucher initiatives
have to have monitoring provisions built in, so interested members
of the public have access to budget information, so that schools
that don't teach kids as measured by standardized tests get
closed for non-performance.
Even with this, some voucher schools will still suck. However,
with this cleanout mechanism, unlike the present, the worst
schools will go away. I submit that this is an obvious improvement
on the current system.
> >You sound so sincere in your concern -- but not sincere enough to notice
> >this is what the urban public schools are delivering to inner city poor
> >neighborhoods right now.
> >
> Just out of curiousity, have you ever been in an inner-city school?
> Do you even know someone who attended one? You sound like a
> suburbanite who doesn't like what he sees as he looks off the edge of
> the freeway overpass on his morning commute, and bases his social
> expertise on that.
>
> >In contrast, one of the major points of vouchers is that they force the
> >*same* amount of money per student to be spent in each school -- because
> >funding is school based, not system based, money can't be siphoned out
> >of the poor schools to the rich ones through seniority transfers, the
> >superior political organization of parents in rich neighborhoods, and
> >the like.
> >
> But schools set their own tuitions! Now THIS is one of the most
> amazing pieces of disinformation this side of Rotthoff.
The idea that this can't be FIXED is disinformation.
Require that any school accepting voucher funds accept them for
full payment of books and tuition. Any school that doesn't want
to accept voucher funds is free not to do so. Of course, the
schools whose market base is intended to be middle-income might
find a good number of their students leaving. The upscale
schools who are interested in being "exclusive" schools where
the riffraff aren't welcome won't be affected much by this...
we don't pay to educate these kids, nor should we.
> >With vouchers, if a $60,000 senior teacher transfers from a
> >poor-neighborhood school to a rich-neighborhood school, the poor
> >neighborhood school will be able to hire *two* $30,000 teachers, and at
> >least be able to compensate for the loss of experience with reduced
> >class size.
> >
> One year, Nolan Ryan, the pitching legend, went 16-14 with the
> California Angels, and Gene Autry dumped Ryan at the end of the
> season. Someone asked Autry how he would ever replace Ryan. "With
> two 8-6 pitchers!", Autry growled. Ryan went on to win 75 more
> games, strike out another 2,000 batters, and get two more no-hitters
> on his way to the hall of fame. Autry went on to win nothing, and
> eventually sold the team after never realizing his dream of going to
> the world series.
>
> Now, tell us more about your scheme to get teachers for half price.
Here, you're actually making sense. What if that $60K teacher
gets a small raise to stay in a poor school... and lots of
help from parent volunteers and paid non-certificated assistants
under that teacher's supervision.
> >But the way big city public schools run today, the $30,000 teacher and
> >the $60,000 teacher are deemed the "same" -- one teacher per 25 students
> >(or whatever number) -- and the poor-neighborhood school gets its
> >instructional budget slashed by an amount that becomes the
> >rich-neighborhood school's gain.
>
Vouchers will force honesty into this situation. The schools
will be working within fixed budgets, the only exception will
be corporations who have decided consciously to buy market
share by putting extra funds into the system.
A.Lizard
************************************************************
to find out about my voucher initiative work in progress,
go to http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/voucher.html
e-mail me at alizard(at)usa.net
Gack
Not a Republican wrote:
>
> Zepp Weasel wrote in article <343948c1...@news.snowcrest.net>...
>
> >On Mon, 06 Oct 1997 09:23:04 -0400, Gack <ga...@geech.goof> wrote:
> >
> >>Funny, everybody in the world is in favor of better schools.
> >>But the government schools are worse now than they were 30 years
> >>ago, although 4 times as expensive, and worse than they
> >>were 100 years ago.
> >
> >They are far better than they were 100 years ago, when the country was
> >still struggling toward a 70% literacy rate and only one on twenty
> >Americans graduated from high school.
I don't doubt the nationwide literacy rate was lower 100 years ago
than today. Literacy has improved with wealth and inclination.
Literacy rapidly rose in the period before government schooling.
The best available evidence indicates literacy
reached levels close to 100% in the northeast by 1850,
and close to 100% in England before the advent of free government
schools there in 1892. In the southern US, women became educated later
and slaves were of course uneducated-- in fact the government
had passed laws against teaching slaves to read. Your 70% figure
is fiction, however. The most pessimistic report I've seen put
nationwide literacy at 80% in 1870, including 20% literacy of
blacks (many of whom had been slaves as children). Folding
in the 16% of the population who were immigrants even this figure
of 80% is consistent with a literacy rate in the middle 90's
for Americans born here and free in 1870. By 1900, literacy
was higher still.
The rate at which literacy rates were rising, and the fact that
in the northeast and England they attained heights at least
comparable to today, before government schools gives
every reason to believe the government
schools added little if anything to the process in the 19th century.
But it is evident they have detracted in the 20th century.
I said above that "the government schools are ...worse now than they
were 100 years ago". It is true that there are more of them, graduating
more people. However it is a fact that individually the schools
are worse. They are unsafe. The curriculum has been dumbed down.
I will append below a test taken by 8th graders in 1900 for comparison.
The students who graduate from 8th grade today are no comparison
to those who graduated from 8th grade in 1897, which included the
great majority of the children in most parts of the country.
This is a tragedy. In almost every endeavor of humans--
medicine, agriculture, athletics, management, retailing, etc. etc.,
except schools, we have made enormous strides. Grade school today
is backward from where it was 100 years ago, although it should
have advanced mightily, if it were not captive to a government
monopoly.
It is true that there are more high school graduates today.
It is not clear that they have learned more than 8th graders 100 years
ago. I expect that in an educational free market a good fraction
of the kids would choose to apprentice themselves or go to specialized
schools instead of high school. That was the norm at the time
of De Tocqueville (the 1830's) when almost all kids went to
school through 8th grade, and then specialized. It is not clear
it would be bad today.
---------------------------------------------------
I claimed that 8th graders in 1900 were more literate
than 17yr olds today. Here are some
test questions from an 8th grade exam in Rural Kansas in 1900.
The kids who took this test didn't have electricity or indoor
plumbing, and I expect some of them had dirt floors.
An "orthography" section asked students to spell 20
words, including "elucidation, abbreviated, assassination, and
animosity" , and to divide into syllables and mark diacritically
the words "profuse, retrieve, rigidity, defiance, priority,
remittance, and propagate."
Find the interest on an 8 percent note for $900 running two years,
two months, and six days.
Compare and contrast the various
writings of Thomas Jefferson.
"Indicate the pronuciation and
give meanings of the following words: zenith, deviated,
Colosseum, panegyric, Spartan, talisman, triton, and crypt."
"Name two countries producing large
quantities of wheat, two of cotton, two of coal, two of tea"
"Name three important rivers of the United States, three of
Europe, three of Asia, three of South America, and three of
Africa."
"Name the principal political questions [of the past 35
years] and the party which advocated each."
Zepp
On Tue, 07 Oct 1997 08:45:29 -0400, Gack <ga...@geech.goof> wrote:
>Not a Republican wrote:
>>
>> Zepp Weasel wrote in article <343948c1...@news.snowcrest.net>...
>>
>> >On Mon, 06 Oct 1997 09:23:04 -0400, Gack <ga...@geech.goof> wrote:
>> >
>> >>Funny, everybody in the world is in favor of better schools.
>> >>But the government schools are worse now than they were 30 years
>> >>ago, although 4 times as expensive, and worse than they
>> >>were 100 years ago.
>> >
>> >They are far better than they were 100 years ago, when the country was
>> >still struggling toward a 70% literacy rate and only one on twenty
>> >Americans graduated from high school.
>
>
>I don't doubt the nationwide literacy rate was lower 100 years ago
>than today. Literacy has improved with wealth and inclination.
>Literacy rapidly rose in the period before government schooling.
>The best available evidence indicates literacy
>reached levels close to 100% in the northeast by 1850,
>and close to 100% in England before the advent of free government
>schools there in 1892.
And this "best available evidence would be...? I'll point out that
the first wave of Irish immigrants had arrived by 1850, and Irish
farmers, under English rule, could be hung for learning to read.
Further, the underground railroad was going full speed by then, and
few slaves were literate. Both groups settled in the Northeast.
English public schools started sixty years earlier than you claim, in
1832.
>In the southern US, women became educated later
>and slaves were of course uneducated-- in fact the government
>had passed laws against teaching slaves to read. Your 70% figure
>is fiction, however. The most pessimistic report I've seen put
>nationwide literacy at 80% in 1870, including 20% literacy of
>blacks (many of whom had been slaves as children). Folding
>in the 16% of the population who were immigrants even this figure
>of 80% is consistent with a literacy rate in the middle 90's
>for Americans born here and free in 1870. By 1900, literacy
>was higher still.
>
Buddy, your example just PROVED my figure of 70%. Do the math
yourself if you can. The ONLY segment of the population that had an
80% literacy rate was white, male, and urban. And in those days,
there were a lot more non-urban than there are today.
You've also put yourself in the position of arguing that literacy
dropped from "close to 100%" in 1850 to 70% just twenty years
later--both, presumably in the Northeast, which I agree did have the
highest rate of literacy in those days.
>The rate at which literacy rates were rising, and the fact that
>in the northeast and England they attained heights at least
>comparable to today, before government schools gives
>every reason to believe the government
>schools added little if anything to the process in the 19th century.
>
But you just showed that they dropped! (Granted, the "drop" is based
on your totally absurd 1850 figure). At any rate, you yourself have
trashed your own claim that private schools managed a higher literacy
rate among the general population than public schools have this
century.
>But it is evident they have detracted in the 20th century.
>I said above that "the government schools are ...worse now than they
>were 100 years ago". It is true that there are more of them, graduating
>more people.
No, they have more problems, and more responsibilities. But they are
far better.
>However it is a fact that individually the schools
>are worse. They are unsafe.
Wouldn't want to compare the number of kids killed or hurt at school
with the number killer or hurt by their own parents, would you?
>The curriculum has been dumbed down.
>I will append below a test taken by 8th graders in 1900 for comparison.
>The students who graduate from 8th grade today are no comparison
>to those who graduated from 8th grade in 1897, which included the
>great majority of the children in most parts of the country.
>This is a tragedy. In almost every endeavor of humans--
>medicine, agriculture, athletics, management, retailing, etc. etc.,
>except schools, we have made enormous strides. Grade school today
>is backward from where it was 100 years ago, although it should
>have advanced mightily, if it were not captive to a government
>monopoly.
The claim that education has moved backwards remains pure bullshit.
Most kids didn't get to the eighth grade prior to public schools, and
only a tiny minority got to college. Plus, education consisted of a
lot of stuff that really isn't of any use--Latin and Greek, for
example, or the ancient "classics"--non relevent to life as we know
it, and for kids, basically unreadable. Kids hated school and for
good reason--it was mostly rote memorization combined with stuff that
might be of interest to scholars, but is of mind-numbing irrelevance
to kids growing up to be blacksmiths.
>
>It is true that there are more high school graduates today.
>It is not clear that they have learned more than 8th graders 100 years
>ago. I expect that in an educational free market a good fraction
>of the kids would choose to apprentice themselves or go to specialized
>schools instead of high school. That was the norm at the time
>of De Tocqueville (the 1830's) when almost all kids went to
>school through 8th grade, and then specialized. It is not clear
>it would be bad today.
Nope--white urban kids got to the eighth grade.
>
>---------------------------------------------------
>
>I claimed that 8th graders in 1900 were more literate
>than 17yr olds today. Here are some
>test questions from an 8th grade exam in Rural Kansas in 1900.
>The kids who took this test didn't have electricity or indoor
>plumbing, and I expect some of them had dirt floors.
Was that a PUBLIC school in Kansas? My, my.
>An "orthography" section asked students to spell 20
>words, including "elucidation, abbreviated, assassination, and
>animosity" , and to divide into syllables and mark diacritically
>the words "profuse, retrieve, rigidity, defiance, priority,
>remittance, and propagate."
>
>Find the interest on an 8 percent note for $900 running two years,
>two months, and six days.
>
>Compare and contrast the various
>writings of Thomas Jefferson.
>
>"Indicate the pronuciation and
>give meanings of the following words: zenith, deviated,
>Colosseum, panegyric, Spartan, talisman, triton, and crypt."
>
>"Name two countries producing large
>quantities of wheat, two of cotton, two of coal, two of tea"
>
>"Name three important rivers of the United States, three of
>Europe, three of Asia, three of South America, and three of
>Africa."
>
>"Name the principal political questions [of the past 35
>years] and the party which advocated each."
Diacritical dissemination has died out--no loss, believe me--but I
don't see anything here that couldn't appear on an eighth grade test
today. I think you seriously underestimate today's kids, and the
education they receive.
Andrew Rogers
In article <343A2E...@geech.goof> Gack <ga...@geech.goof> writes:
>Grade school today
>is backward from where it was 100 years ago, although it should
>have advanced mightily, if it were not captive to a government
>monopoly.
So give your 1897 test to a group of 8th-graders at a private school and see
how they do.
>It is not clear that they have learned more than 8th graders 100 years
>ago.
You mean like learning how to program computers instead of memorizing trivia
about rivers and crops?
>I claimed that 8th graders in 1900 were more literate
>than 17yr olds today. Here are some
>test questions from an 8th grade exam in Rural Kansas in 1900.
A public school, I presume?
Andrew
Gack
Van wrote:
>Gack <ga...@geech.goof> banged out:
Banged out did I? What, you programmed your newsreader
to use ad hominem in its include function?
>>The people opposing vouchers are opposing them out of
>>fear they *would* work.
>Bull manure. The people pushing vouchers are being good little >toadies and frantically trying to find ways to pay off the christian >coalition. In Pat Robertson's own words -
More non sequitor and ad hominem. I have no doubt some voucher
proponents care only about political gain, namely most of
the politicians. And some Christians are more worried about
religion/morality in the schools than education.
But
(a) what does Pat Robertson gain from a voucher experiment
in the DC schools if it fails? If the experiment fails, no vouchers
for his kids to get christian educations in the rest of the
country. If Pat is in favor, its because he expects it to
improve the DC schools, whatever he hopes to gain later.
(b) what do the diverse motives of the people supporting vouchers
have to do with my statement?
Do you think Ted Kennedy is rising to filibuster against a 6 million
dollar voucher program because he thinks it won't improve the
DC schools, or because he fears it will?
Fact is, people are supporting or opposed to vouchers for various
reasons, but most of the people on both sides think (even if they
don't say so) that vouchers would improve the DC schools.
Heck, I'm *opposed* to vouchers, and I'm confident the DC public
schools couldn't get much worse, and that education in DC would improve
dramatically if vouchers were enacted.
Ron McDermott
> parent's education. My great grandparents paid for my grandparent's
> enducation and so on down the generational line. What's your point here?
My point is that it is all a matter of point of
view.. YOU prefer to think that you're paying for
THIS generation of kids, but I prefer to think
that I'M paying back for MY education.. The money
paid by MY parents was for THEIR education, and
so on.. Point of view..
This is aside from the argument that this isn't
about paying for something and expectly something
back DIRECTLY... We pay for a lot of things that
benefit us INDIRECTLY, but don't benefit us
DIRECTLY.. We pay, jointly, to support roads, and
some of us don't drive. We pay, jointly, for
fire personel, but we (hopeful) don't all use
their services. There are TONS of examples of
this principle - WHY should paying for the
sevices of schools, even if we don't USE them, be
any different?
Jim Richardson
In article <343948c1...@news.snowcrest.net>, zeppN...@snowcrest.net
(Zepp Weasel) wrote:
> On Mon, 06 Oct 1997 09:23:04 -0400, Gack <ga...@geech.goof> wrote:
>
> >Joe Myers wrote:
> >> So, improve conditions at your "government-run stores"
> >
> >Funny, everybody in the world is in favor of better schools.
> >But the government schools are worse now than they were 30 years
> >ago, although 4 times as expensive, and worse than they
> >were 100 years ago.
>
> They are far better than they were 100 years ago, when the country was
> still struggling toward a 70% literacy rate and only one on twenty
> Americans graduated from high school. That they are more expensive is
> a function of the failure of capitalism to provide for those
> kids--meals and dealing with the problems generated when you create an
> underclass are expensive. It would be nice if all schools had to do
> was teach.
> >
70%, 20%, pick a number Zepp, and sources maybe?
>ze...@snowcrest.net (Zepp) wrote:
>On Mon, 06 Oct 1997 06:31:28 GMT, msi...@tefbbs.com wrote:
>
>>You ought to read "Dumbing Us Down" by John Gotto - New York State
>>(Public School) Teacher of the year.
>>
>>He claims that literacy rates have been dropping since public schools
>>took over education.
>
>He must be a complete whack, then. When public schools were founded,
>the literacy rate was about 20%.
>[snip]
> >
> >> The reason private, and for that matter home schooling, succeeds is
> >> because parents are actively involed in their children's educations.
> >> The single most powerful argument for public education is that it is
> >> society that says every child has a right to a good education. The
> >> tragedy of the 20th Century is that there are people who don't give a
> >> rat's ass about the quality of their children's education.
> >
> >Funny, in the 19th century, before there was free public education,
> >literacy in England was approaching 100%.
>
> England had public schools beginning in 1832. Prior to that,
> measurements of literacy didn't exist, but it was almost certainly
> under 50%. Just because YOU weren't taught history doesn't mean the
> rest of us weren't.
>
again, you fling numbers with abandon, yet offer no sources.
Are you saying that in 1832 the public school system in England sprang
into being, full formed and whole? or was it begun in 1832 (to use your
date) in only a few locations with only a few teachers and students to
grow?
Even less after Stalin starved the kulaks and others in the '20s.
> You also forgot to mention that by the time of the Beria purges in
> 1937, western Intelligensia had totally abandoned dialectic
> materialism as a realistic course of action.
>
This was of course _after_ Time magazine et al had said that there was no
starvation in the Ukraine, and that Stalin was an all around 'nice guy'.
> Not that I'm trying to defend the Soviet state or 1920s'
> intellectuals, but you left some salient facts out--mostly, I suspect,
> because you are unaware of them. As you say, a little knowledge is a
> dangerous thing.
> =====================================================================
>
Larry Sanger
Reuel Nash <re...@sgi.com> wrote:
> Jim Richardson wrote:
>
> > Interesting that you failed to mention, that the school system in question
> > poured money and work into the system to stop the fleeing of the students
> > (and the money the state paid the school to warehouse them) So the students
> > who _didn't_ leave benefitted from the vouchers.
> >
> Perhaps the students at that particular school did, but all the
> other students at all the other schools in that system lost
> benefits.
They did? How do you know? (I mean, are you guessing?) How was
their education worse?
Thanks for posting the statistics, BTW.
C. Smith
In article <sanger.3-061...@ts43-5.homenet.ohio-state.edu>,
sang...@NOSPAMosu.edu (Larry Sanger) wrote:
: In article <3438e34...@news.megsinet.net>, msi...@tefbbs.com wrote:
:
: > What is your source for the 20% figure?
: >
: > Gotto says it was greater than 95%.
:
: He also says it was "still struggling toward a 70% literacy rate" in
: the 19th century. Who knows what he believes or where he gets his
: figures from.
:
: I would like to see some references on *any* literacy figures from
: the 19th century, though. Where did Gotto get his "greater than
: 95%" figure?
Your wish is my command. The following is from a report avaialable at the
National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), US Dept. of Education.
Illiteracy
Illiteracy statistics also give an important indication of the
education level of the adult population. Today, illiteracy is a
different issue than in earlier years. The more recent focus on
illiteracy has centered on functional literacy, which addresses
the issue of whether a person's reading and writing levels are
sufficient to function in a modern society. The earlier surveys
of illiteracy examined a very fundamental level of reading and
writing. (See Methodology for additional detail.) The percent of
illiteracy, according to earlier measurement methods, was less
than 1 percent of persons 14 years old and over in 1979 (table
6). Modern measurements have suggested somewhat higher levels of
functional illiteracy.
For the major part of this century, the illiteracy rates have
been relatively low, registering only about 4 percent as early as
1930. However, in the late 19th century and early 20th century,
illiteracy was very common. In 1870, 20 percent of the entire
adult population was illiterate, and 80 percent of the black
population was illiterate. By 1900, the situation had improved
somewhat, but still 44 percent of blacks remained illiterate. The
statistical data show significant improvements for black and
other races in the early portion of the 20th century, as the
former slaves who had no educational opportunities in their youth
were replaced by younger individuals who grew up in the
post-Civil War period and often had some chance to obtain a basic
education. The gap in illiteracy between white and black adults
continued to narrow through the 20th century, and in 1979 the
rates were about the same.
Clearly Mr. Gotto's claim is wonderfully false.
C. Smith
C. Smith
In article <3437449B.5E52@spam_me_not.com>, V@spam_me_not.com wrote:
: ri...@praline.no.neosoft.com (RHA) wrote:
: >Caliban <cal...@navajo.gate.net> wrote:
: >>
: >>What confuses me is the attitude of those who care more
: >>about preserving government schools than about the quality
:
: > What confuses me is rightwing BS that liberals want
: > government schools rather than quality schools. That
: > is simply a lie. First off, if private schools have
: > this as their goal, why don't they just offer it, why
: > did take **public** schools before every child was
: > expected to get an education?
:
: The crux of universal education is *financing* it. And the current
: method of financing public schooling is a historical consequence of the
: partisan politics of 150 years ago.
:
: When New York City was establishing the nation's first major, and
: largest, public school system in the 1840s, two methods of financing it
: were proposed -- what would today be called a "voucher" system was
: proposed by Governor Seward to provide government financing to all
: children attending *any* school, while the New York City political
: establishment put up a rival plan in which only schools it owned and
: managed would obtain government financing.
: It was a classic upstate/downstate, Whig/Democrat, bitter partisan
: fight for political gain. The final legislative vote was 13-12 for the
: Whig plan, April 8, 1841. One Democratic opponent of the bill was absent
: due to illness. His vote would have blocked it.
: That's where "government schools" as we know them today came from.
: Public education was *very* close to being something *very* different.
:
: Does that answer your question?
No, but it does a pretty good job of evading the question.
You claim that one particular vote in the New York legislature determined
the course of public education in America. What this odd notion lacks in
accuracy and understanding, it certainly makes up for in audaciousness.
Thousands of different schools and schools systems were established in the
United States, all wonderfully unaffected by the dealings of the New York
legislature.
: It is curious that "liberals" have become so ideologically wedded to the
: notion of government-run schools when the great founders of Liberalism
: and first champions of universal education were so *opposed* to
: government-run schools.
Actually, I would be more curious to know how you ever thought this
opinion was related to, much less supported by, your earlier novel view of
history.
C. Smith
Matthew Alexander
On Fri, 03 Oct 1997 19:56:25 GMT, 7Aj...@usa.net (Van) wrote:
>Gack <ga...@geech.goof> banged out:
>
>>Joe Myers wrote:
>>>
>>> Once again, the pipedreams of right-wing ideology are faced with
>>> reality.
>>>
>>> Vouchers May Open Few Doors
>>>
>>> D.C. Students Would Find Costs High and Openings Scarce
>>>
>>> By Cindy Loose and Valerie Strauss
>>> Washington Post Staff Writers
>
>>This is an obvious crock.
>
>>The people opposing vouchers are opposing them out of
>>fear they *would* work.
>
>Bull manure. The people pushing vouchers are being good little toadies and
>frantically trying to find ways to pay off the christian coalition. In Pat
>Robertson's own words -
>
>"We've had a major presence in one of the major parties. We still haven't
>gotten the influence I think we ought to have inside the Republican Party --
>we're still not totally like we should be."
Of course, that quote could almost be used in _defense_ of the RP...
None of this stuff about Roberson has anything to do with education.
Granted, social conservatives are obviously going to be in favor of a
voucher system because they're paranoid about sex ed and science and
almost everything else, but if you let that alone turn you against the
idea, then you're not using any more brain cells than they are.
In my view, there are two real problems with a voucher program. One is
that tax-payer dollars will go into church basement type schools where
superstition will take precidence over any real education. Another is
that it will likely broaden the gap between schools for the rich and
poor, as a voucher could be used by the privilaged to go to an even
more exclusive school, leaving the inner cities stuck with whatever
"McElementary" corporation can make a quick buck off of base voucher
value.
Still, given the problems that already exist with our school system,
school choice may allow for positive innovations and better
management. Only if progressives stop bitching about it and contribute
solutions of their own, however.
-><- Matt Alexander
"Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water!
And East is East and West is West and if you take cranberries and stew
them like applesauce they taste more like prunes than a rhubarb does.
Now, uh.. Now you tell me what you know." -Marx*
LQuest
Ron McDermott <rom...@ibm.net> wrote:
>LQuest wrote:
>>
>> Ron McDermott <rom...@ibm.net> wrote:
>>
>> >LQuest wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Of course, in their infinite greed and avarice, government arrogantly expects
>> >> me to continue paying school taxes even though MY child is not costing the
>> >> public school system one dime of expense! For better or worse, dear fellow,
>> >> THAT is why the voucher system is an idea that is gaining steam in the
>> >> population as a whole.
>> >
>> >Perhaps you should just consider that you're paying
>> >back for your own education?
>>
>> Great idea! Except for tens of thousands of dollars confiscated from my
>> parents to pay for my education.
>
>Or was it for THEIR education? ;-)
Perhaps I don't understand your question. My grandparents paid for my
parent's education. My great grandparents paid for my grandparent's
enducation and so on down the generational line. What's your point here?
--Mike
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment
of physical force from human relationships: basically,
rights can be violated only by means of force. In a
capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use
of physical force against others. The only function of
the gov't, in such a society, is the task of protecting
man's rights, i.e. the task of protecting him from physical
force; the gov't acts as the agent of man's right of
self-defense, & may use force only in retaliation & only
against those who initiate its use; thus the gov't is
the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under
objective control." --- Ayn Rand 1966 "What Is Capitalism?"
_Capitalism_ pg 19 (quoted in Harry Binswanger 1986
_The Ayn Rand Lexicon_ pg 57)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
some...@infi.net
"Not a Republican" <pro...@erols.com> wrote:
>:|In 1850, prior to the advent of forced mass education in Massachusetts, the
>:|literacy rate was between 95 and 97%.
What ever happened to the mandatory public education in Mass that was begun
in the mid to late 1600's?
Jim
**********************************************
jal...@infi.net
Co-contributor to
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE HOME PAGE
http://www.louisville.edu/~tnpete01/church/index.htm
**********************************************
Beth Clarkson
Reuel Nash wrote:
>
> Larry Sanger wrote:
> >
> > Reuel Nash <re...@sgi.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Jim Richardson wrote:
> > >
> > > > Interesting that you failed to mention, that the school system in question
> > > > poured money and work into the system to stop the fleeing of the students
> > > > (and the money the state paid the school to warehouse them) So the students
> > > > who _didn't_ leave benefitted from the vouchers.
> > > >
> > > Perhaps the students at that particular school did, but all the
> > > other students at all the other schools in that system lost
> > > benefits.
> >
> > They did? How do you know? (I mean, are you guessing?) How was
> > their education worse?
> >
>
> at the other schools in the district that didn't benefit from the
> money taken away from their school to be spent on this particular
> school. I know, people argue that money spent has nothing to do
> with educational benefit, but I don't buy that argument.
>
> Permit me a contrived example to explain myself:
>
> District in question has, say, 10 schools and a total budget
> of, say, $10 million. School G is "attacked" by this wealthy woman,
> so the district decides to spend $1.9 million at school G and
> $.9 million at all the other schools. Seems to me that students at
> schools A, B, C, D, E, F, H, I, J just lost $100K that could
> have been used to hire extra teachers for reducing class size,
> which has been shown to be directly beneficial (see
> http://reality.sgi.com/csp/pathways21/ for references).
>
> Since the district can move funds around to "protect" a single
> school, it will. But in the case of generally available vouchers,
> no single school can be "protected" since all the schools are
> subject to it.
>
> My point it that the situation with a single school given this
> opportunity DOES NOT EXTEND to the case of generally available
> vouchers.
>
You're making an assumption here that an improvement in quality will
cost more money. While this may be the case, and I don't know the
particular facts here, it is not necessarily true. In fact,
improvements in quality often lead to a reduction in costs. Money that
was previously being spent on non-value-added tasks can be cut. The
school may have made changes and improvements in the way their system
educated children that did not require additional funds to be allocated
from other schools in the district. Without knowing exactly how they
responded, any assumption about funding is potentially in error. Thus
your argument may not be valid even for this case, much less extending
it to the general case. The point that the school responded to
competition by increasing the quality of education for their school
remains a valid argument for vouchers.
I also find it interesting that you would term a women who donates money
to fund scholarships for poor children as 'attacking' the school.
--
Beth Clarkson
"The search for truth is more precious than its possession" - Albert
Einstein
LQuest
cla...@bogus.ccnet.com (C. Smith) wrote:
>In article <343AF2...@nospam.wanted>, soc...@send.no.spam wrote:
>
>: LQuest wrote:
>: >
>: > The state
>: > of Texas, for example spends an average of $5,800 annually per public school
>: > student in the lower grades (1-12). My wife and I worked our iddle class
>: > butts off to keep our daughter in a private elementry school for grades
>: > 1 - 6. The average cost for those years was $3,990 per year.
>
>Errrrr! For what must be the millionth time, you can't compare total
>expense ($5,800 cost per pupil) with partial income ($3,990 tuition).
>Please, please can we at least get the accounting right?!
Hey dude, it's a private business. Why should I care what their actual cost
is unless I have reason to fear the school might go bankrupt in the middle of
a school year?
>
>: This is not to mention the fact that public school budgets do not
>: account for the cost of real estate and existing buildings, so the value
>: of the school building and the land it sits on - and the associated cost
>: - are not counted in the $5800 figure.
>
>Now this is almost worse, as these costs are fully incorporated into the
>per pupil expenditure figure. Per pupil expenditure includes all
>expenditures, including debt service or capital improvements, divided by
>the number of students.
>
>Voucher proponents should be worried that their argument appears to rest
>so heavily on 2+2=5...
Now this is an interesting assertion! Would you please indulge my ignorance
and explain exactly how you arrived at it? Thanks.
Reuel Nash
Beth Clarkson wrote:
> I also find it interesting that you would term a women who donates money
> to fund scholarships for poor children as 'attacking' the school.
I couldn't think of a better word on-the-spot and it does
represent the view of at least *some* people. I wanted to
make the attack/defend part clear.
--
Reuel Nash
re...@sgi.com
Jim Richardson
> Jim Richardson wrote:
>
> > Interesting that you failed to mention, that the school system in question
> > poured money and work into the system to stop the fleeing of the students
> > (and the money the state paid the school to warehouse them) So the students
> > who _didn't_ leave benefitted from the vouchers.
> >
>
> Perhaps the students at that particular school did, but all the
> other students at all the other schools in that system lost
> benefits. Extrapolate to what would happen with a generally available
> voucher system where there's no other public schools to take anything
> from. All the children remaining in all the public schools lose.
>
>
Explain how giving money to one school ipso facto removes benefits from
another, It is possible that the 'extra' money was extracted from a
different school's budget, it is hardly self evident however. Or do you
have evidence that public officials shortchanged one school district to the
benefit of another?
As for children in the public schools loosing, they are loosing now, every
year they spend in those statist worker production facilities (don't think,
don't question, just do.) they are loosing the chance of a year of better
education. Vouchers return some of the choice back to the children and
their parents.
I don't like vouchers, but they are an acceptable step to removing the
choking fist of the state from the education of the future. (how's that for
negative index:)
Jim Richardson
\In article <343AC3...@sgi.com>, Reuel Nash <re...@sgi.com> wrote:
> Larry Sanger wrote:
> >
> > Reuel Nash <re...@sgi.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Jim Richardson wrote:
> > >
> > > > Interesting that you failed to mention, that the school system in
question
> > > > poured money and work into the system to stop the fleeing of the
students
> > > > (and the money the state paid the school to warehouse them) So the
students
> > > > who _didn't_ leave benefitted from the vouchers.
> > > >
> > > Perhaps the students at that particular school did, but all the
> > > other students at all the other schools in that system lost
> > > benefits.
> >
> > They did? How do you know? (I mean, are you guessing?) How was
> > their education worse?
> >
>
>
> Well, yes I am assuming that there was something lost by the students
> at the other schools in the district that didn't benefit from the
> money taken away from their school to be spent on this particular
> school. I know, people argue that money spent has nothing to do
> with educational benefit, but I don't buy that argument.
>
Why not? if we track the $ per student in US schools, with test scores, do
we find any correlation at all? are the most costly schools producing the
best students?
> Permit me a contrived example to explain myself:
>
> District in question has, say, 10 schools and a total budget
> of, say, $10 million. School G is "attacked" by this wealthy woman,
> so the district decides to spend $1.9 million at school G and
> $.9 million at all the other schools. Seems to me that students at
> schools A, B, C, D, E, F, H, I, J just lost $100K that could
> have been used to hire extra teachers for reducing class size,
> which has been shown to be directly beneficial (see
> http://reality.sgi.com/csp/pathways21/ for references).
>
Since according to the NY state itself, less than 50% of the people paid by
the schools are actually teaching, they could easily have cut that money
from non-teaching related monies. Again, do you have any evidence that the
other schools "suffered" as a result of this womans generousity?
After all, as the result of her gracious gift, the students who left the
state run schools are going to better schools, or at least schools which
their parents believe are better, and since those parents are there, and
know the situation better than you or I, who are not, I at least am
inclined to think they know what they are doing for their children.
> Since the district can move funds around to "protect" a single
> school, it will. But in the case of generally available vouchers,
> no single school can be "protected" since all the schools are
> subject to it.
>
Good, make the state schools compete for students, make 'em more efficient.
> My point it that the situation with a single school given this
> opportunity DOES NOT EXTEND to the case of generally available
> vouchers.
>
>
This is true, the case can be assumed, but not proven on the basis of one
incident, so lets try these ideas all over the several states and see what
happens. So far, the results are favourable in all the cases I am familiar
with. Are there failures of voucher schools? elucidate me. I for one want a
well educated populace, and while I am opposed to state schools on moral
and philosophical grounds. If it could be shown that they worked better
than the private systems, I would consider accepting them. So how do they
compare? any failures out there?
C. Smith
In article <616v7h$1j...@dakota.gate.net>, Caliban
<cal...@dakota.gate.net> wrote:
: In talk.politics.libertarian RHA <ri...@praline.no.neosoft.com> wrote:
: : In article <6168ql$1a...@navajo.gate.net>,
: : Caliban <cal...@navajo.gate.net> wrote:
: : >In talk.politics.libertarian Michael Zarlenga
<zarl...@conan.ids.net> wrote:
: : >
: : >As a libertarian (and as a compassionate human being),
: : >_my_ attitude is, "I got a good education, and I want
: : >everybody else to be able to get the best that they can,
: : >and I don't care whether it's public or private."
: : >
: : >What confuses me is the attitude of those who care more
: : >about preserving government schools than about the quality
:
: : What confuses me is rightwing BS that liberals want
: : government schools rather than quality schools. That
: : is simply a lie. First off, if private schools have
: : this as their goal, why don't they just offer it, why
: : did take **public** schools before every child was
: : expected to get an education? Second, liberals want
: : public schools to be properly **and fairly** run, no
: : more robbing of inner-city schools to fund schools
: : on the outer periphery. Third, raise teachers salaries
: : to reflect the value of teaching children (would you
: : accept a teacher's salary). We have more bad teachers
: : today because qualified people can earn more doing less
: : inportant work in business.
:
: First, I didn't say that _liberals_ want government rather
: than quality. I left ideologies out of it. (My beef is
: with the late Albert Shanker and his successors at the NEA,
: rather than with all members of some ideological group.)
Warning: Nitpick ahead! Albert Shanker was president of the American
Federation of Teachers (AFT), not the National Education Association
(NEA). End nitpick...
: Second, it sounds like you are saying that no private school
: is interested in providing quality education -- "why don't
: they just offer it" -- and I don't know if I'm understanding
: you correctly.
I took his meaning to be that reason we have public schools is that
private schools weren't doing the job in the first place. That is, there
was either not enough of them or they didn't do a good enough job to the
extent that community after community across the country formed a public
school system.
If private schools would have been up to the job 150 or so years ago,
there never would have been public schools or at least far fewer than
there are today.
: Third, why do you think that it took government schools to
: provide universal education? AFAIK, universal literacy for
: non-slaves occurred before compulsory public education.
Sorry, but universal litteracy (which didn't exist anyway) is most
definitely not universal education.
: Fourth, I generally agree with equalizing school funding.
: However, as I understand it, the reason suburban schools get
: more money than inner-city schools is that they have a higher
: tax base, so the inner-city schools aren't being "robbed,"
: they're just not being subsidized.
Huh? Subsidized?? In any case, urban districts have a much larger tax
base than suburban districts. They also tend to have a higher cost
structure.
: Fifth, I don't agree that raising teachers' salaries, without
: making any procedural or organizational changes, would help.
I don't think the writer was necessarily saying this.
: As far as I can tell, you're saying that teacher quality has
: declined because teacher pay has declined.
The primary concern has tended to be the attraction and retention of
quality teachers in the sciences and math. They tend to have more
attractive alternatives elsewhere.
: However, AFAIK,
: teacher salaries have _not_ declined relative to average pay,
: even adjusting for inflation. (Of course, I could be mistaken
: about this.) And I personally don't think that teacher quality
: has declined, either. Instead, I believe that teachers simply
: can't teach because there is too much paperwork, inadequate
: facilities, and a breakdown in academic standards for students.
: If you take the world's best surgeon and give him a rusty knife
: and dirty bandages, he won't do as well as an average surgeon
: with sterile instruments and a state-of-the-art operating room.
:
: If you really think that teacher quality has declined, I won't
: argue with you -- although Albert Shanker would, and I'm sure
: that the current NEA leadership still will disagree with you.
: But to solve this we would need to have some sort of standards
: for teacher quality, rather than just raising their pay.
There are already existing standards for teachers, though whether they are
they "right" standards is something folks could have a long and honest
debate about...
: On the other hand, if we merely offer higher pay, we will get
: more teachers, but not necessarily better ones; and the ones
: we get will be more interested in money than in teaching.
As suggested above, more money would tend to attract science and math
majors that would otherwise make money elsewhere. To the degree that you
would have more teachers that are highly qualified in these fields, your
suggestion is incorrect.
(snip)
: : >of those schools. If Albert Shanker or his successors had
: : >explained why they thought that government schools were
: : >better -- or at least as good -- as private schools, then
:
: : Because no one is turned away.
:
: I understand that, and most private schools don't turn
: anyone away who can afford to attend, and who will abide
: by the school's disciplinary rules in class.
This is false on a number of levels:
One, private schools only accept those that they believe will be
"successful" at their school while the public school takes anyone and
everyone, period.
Two, though you use it as a qualifier, the criteria of those "who can
afford to attend" is a very large one. I think we would agree that the
ratio of paying students to scholarship attendees is very high at the more
expensive private schools. Cost of attendence is indeed a very
significant barrier to entry.
Three, a large number of private school were established in direct
response to Brown v. Board of Education. These schools were expressly
created to keep large classes of people out.
Four, the disciplinary rules at private schools can be much stricter than
those at public school since they don't have to abide by the same level of
Constitutional protection of individual rights.
C. Smith
(snip)
C. Smith
In article <343c3ff0...@news.telmarcorp.com>,
nos...@nowayyougonna.hah (The Mechanic) wrote:
: On Mon, 06 Oct 1997 01:23:33 -0700, cla...@bogus.ccnet.com
: (C. Smith) wrote:
:
: >In article <34388526...@news.megsinet.net>, msi...@tefbbs.com wrote:
: >
: >: You ought to read "Dumbing Us Down" by John Gotto - New York State
: >: (Public School) Teacher of the year.
: >:
: >: He claims that literacy rates have been dropping since public schools
: >: took over education.
: >:
: >: Simon
: >
: ><sigh> Yes, this is something that has been utterly and completely
: >disproven in these threads over and over and over again...
:
: I can prove it every time I read a liberal's post. No
: grammar, spelling, or logic. Worst of all, NO REASONING,
: EVER!
<double sigh> Please excuse the repost as evidently "The Mechanic" is
incapable of reading...
Illiteracy
Source: National Center for Education Statistics, US Dept. of Education
In the future I would suggest that "The Mechanic" more fully utilize what
small amount of grey matter he has presently available to him. In so
doing he might make less of a fool of himself.
C. Smith
C. Smith
In article
<C5B5202ED355A926.30B42364...@library-proxy.airnews.net>,
//lib...@airmail.net// (LQuest) wrote:
: evrw...@powergrid.electriciti.com (Ed Redondo) wrote:
:
: >In article <6168ql$1a...@navajo.gate.net>, Caliban
<cal...@navajo.gate.net> wrote:
: >>What confuses me is the attitude of those who care more
: >>about preserving government schools than about the quality
: >>of those schools. If Albert Shanker or his successors had
: >>explained why they thought that government schools were
: >>better -- or at least as good -- as private schools, then
: >>I would have respected them, even if I thought they were
: >>mistaken. But when someone complains that school choice
: >>"will destroy the public school system" and they oppose
: >>it even when it will improve every student's education,
: >>then I can only see their prejudice. It's the equivalent
: >>of the Archbishop of Canterbury complaining that allowing
: >>religious freedom "will destroy the Church of England,"
: >>without justifying why such a church is worth saving. :-(
: >
: >
: >The fly in the ointment in the voucher system is that all proposals I have
: >read do not provide the cash that the good private schools are charging
: >today. Yes, private education is reported to give better results, but look
: >at what they actually charge.
: >
:
: Uhh, excuse me for barging in here but your facts are incorrect.
The irony here is acute, as elsewhere and here in this thread I've
demonstrated that LQuest's "facts" fall very short of the mark.
: The state
: of Texas, for example spends an average of $5,800 annually per public school
: student in the lower grades (1-12). My wife and I worked our iddle class
: butts off to keep our daughter in a private elementry school for grades 1 - 6.
: The average caost for those years was $3,990 per year.
As explained elsewhere, Lquest has just equated total expense with partial
income. This, to put it mildly, is a mathematical/acounting no-no...
: Just by comparing the
: subject matter she worked on in various grades with the subject matter being
: studied by her peers in public schools I KNOW she is at leaset a grade ahead
: of her public school peers.
Comparing one private school to one public school is meaningless in terms
of drawing any larger conclusions.
: The average scores on standardized testing at my
: daughter's school was several points higher than the average in public
: schools.
Are you saying that your daughter's private school adminsters the same
standardized test as used in the public schools?
: What's more, the private schools, being CUSTOMER oriented instead of
: POLITICS oriented, were MUCH more responsive to our parental wishes and
: preferences. They knew all too well that we had high quality options from
: their competion -- other private schools in the area. The headmistress of ny
: daughter's school told me she would just about kill to get the kind of annual
: per student funding that the public schools squander on needless
: administrative overhead and government meddling through regulation that has
: NOTHING to do with the quality of education and EVERYTHING to do with the
: POLITICS of education. Disgusting!
While adminstrative overhead can always stand a reduction in any public or
private endeavor, district, county and state administrative costs are
only 6% of total K-12 spending in California (Source: EdSource, Menlo
Park, CA). The facts hardly support the picture you paint.
: Of course, in their infinite greed and avarice, government arrogantly expects
: me to continue paying school taxes even though MY child is not costing the
: public school system one dime of expense! For better or worse, dear fellow,
: THAT is why the voucher system is an idea that is gaining steam in the
: population as a whole.
This last paragraph especially is nothing but opinion. Prehaps the
regarding of opinion as fact by some voucher proponents is why their ideas
have been consistently rejected by the voters.
C. Smith
C. Smith
In article
<27A8CB21D239B22F.CA3622E0...@library-proxy.airnews.net>,
//lib...@airmail.net// (LQuest) wrote:
: cla...@bogus.ccnet.com (C. Smith) wrote:
:
: >In article <343AF2...@nospam.wanted>, soc...@send.no.spam wrote:
: >
: >: LQuest wrote:
: >: >
: >: > The state of Texas, for example spends an average of
: >: > $5,800 annually per public school
: >: > student in the lower grades (1-12). My wife and I worked our iddle class
: >: > butts off to keep our daughter in a private elementry school for grades
: >: > 1 - 6. The average cost for those years was $3,990 per year.
: >
: >Errrrr! For what must be the millionth time, you can't compare total
: >expense ($5,800 cost per pupil) with partial income ($3,990 tuition).
: >Please, please can we at least get the accounting right?!
:
: Hey dude, it's a private business. Why should I care what their actual cost
: is unless I have reason to fear the school might go bankrupt in the middle of
: a school year?
Because "dude" you are engaging in mathematical/accounting incompetence.
In no relm of endeavor can you (competently) equate total expense with
partial income. Your previous statement did exactly that.
If you want to compare total amount of taxes you paid that went to public
schools to the amount of tuition at your private school, then at least
your making mathematical/accounting sense.
: >: This is not to mention the fact that public school budgets do not
: >: account for the cost of real estate and existing buildings, so the value
: >: of the school building and the land it sits on - and the associated cost
: >: - are not counted in the $5800 figure.
: >
: >Now this is almost worse, as these costs are fully incorporated into the
: >per pupil expenditure figure. Per pupil expenditure includes all
: >expenditures, including debt service or capital improvements, divided by
: >the number of students.
: >
: >Voucher proponents should be worried that their argument appears to rest
: >so heavily on 2+2=5...
:
: Now this is an interesting assertion! Would you please indulge my ignorance
: and explain exactly how you arrived at it? Thanks.
Arrived at what? That public school budgets fully reflect the cost of
land and improvements? Or that contending the opposite is
mathematical/accounting incompetence?
C. Smith
C. Smith
: In talk.politics.libertarian Michael Zarlenga <zarl...@conan.ids.net> wrote:
: : Zepp Weasel (zeppN...@snowcrest.net) wrote:
: : : Ah. There you have it, folks: He got HIS public education, has no
: : : further need for it, so fuck all the rest of us.
:
: As a libertarian (and as a compassionate human being),
: _my_ attitude is, "I got a good education, and I want
: everybody else to be able to get the best that they can,
: and I don't care whether it's public or private."
:
: : Is that any worse than the attitude of NEA and AFT teachers : "I got
: : my raise and paycheck, who the fuck cares if the kids learn anything?
: : Screw 'em, I get paid regardless."
:
: What confuses me is the attitude of those who care more
: about preserving government schools than about the quality
: of those schools.
There's your first strawman. And more than a bit of a false choice.
Would you grant at least the _possibility_ that preserving those schools
can have a positive correlation with concern for the quality of those
schools?
: If Albert Shanker or his successors had
: explained why they thought that government schools were
: better -- or at least as good -- as private schools, then
: I would have respected them, even if I thought they were
: mistaken. But when someone complains that school choice
: "will destroy the public school system" and they oppose
: it even when it will improve every student's education,
: then I can only see their prejudice.
But this last sentence is an even "better" strawman.
The only prejudice I see here is at your end. For you it is a given that
vouchers "will improve every student's education..." This appears to be
yet another case of where opinion is so strongly held it has become fact
to the holder.
Would you prehaps grant that those who oppose vouchers _might_ have
honestly come to the conclusion that the outcome would hurt most or all
students? That there's the _possibility_ of a honest difference of
opinion here?
: It's the equivalent
: of the Archbishop of Canterbury complaining that allowing
: religious freedom "will destroy the Church of England,"
: without justifying why such a church is worth saving. :-(
Complete non-sequetors are not a very useful rhetorical device...
C. Smith
alizar...@usa.net
On Mon, 06 Oct 1997 03:17:42 GMT, //lib...@airmail.net// (LQuest) wrote:
> Ron McDermott <rom...@ibm.net> wrote:
>
> >LQuest wrote:
> it work by allowing ALL parents to spend the annual education cost of state
> schools on the free market school of their choice.
I certainly agree to that.
> The ONLY qualification for
> a school that can use the vouchers should be basic safety rules and basic
> academic standards (reading, writing, math.)
It's a bit more complicated than that. Somehow, a situation
where the existing private schools simply add the voucher
amounts to their existing tuition doesn't impress me as solving
the public education problem. That's why I advocate prohibiting
charging parents at any school that accepts vouchers any amount
over and above the voucher payment for books and tuition.
I also advocate requiring the voucher school to provide
basic information in a standard format about ownership,
budget, facilities, and other things a parent needs to know
to make an intelligent choice between schools.
And how does one guarantee that acceptable academic standards
are being met by the end users? Monitoring mechanisms and
people to enforce them have to be built into that initiative.
I.E., a state bureaucracy to replace the multitude of school
district bureaucracies. The good news about this is that
the state bureaucracy can be explicitly limited in purpose, it
need not and should not decide on acceptable dress codes at
every single voucher-funded school.
A.Lizard
==============================================================
alizard(at)usa.net
For info on a draft voucher initiative, check
www.ecis.com/~alizard/voucher.html
> Free market competition and
> civil liability will assure the remaining quality issues.
That I agree about.
Gack
Zepp Weasel wrote:
>
> On Mon, 06 Oct 1997 09:23:04 -0400, Gack <ga...@geech.goof> wrote:
> >Funny, in the 19th century, before there was free public education,
> >literacy in England was approaching 100%.
>
> England had public schools beginning in 1832. Prior to that,
> measurements of literacy didn't exist, but it was almost certainly
> under 50%. Just because YOU weren't taught history doesn't mean the
> rest of us weren't.
If you read what I wrote above as implying that literacy was approaching
100% thoughout the 19th century, I appologize for the ambiguity.
Literacy was approaching 100% by the end of the 19th century.
England had government schools from early on, but they were not free,
and only a small fraction of the kids attended them until they
became free. A far greater
number of kids attended private and church schools.
The first free government schools in England were in 1892, and
after that time the government schools became increasingly dominant.
By that time, however, literacy was close to 100%,
arguably as high or higher than today.
>
> >Likewise in the US
> >northeast, literacy was approaching 100%.
>
> In the 19th century? Surely you jest.
By 1835, de Tocqueville wrote in "Democracy in America"
"Primary instruction is within reach of everybody".
West quotes the superintendent of common schools in
NY in 1836 ``under any
view of the subject it is reasonable to believe, that in the common
schools, private schools, and academies, the number of children
actually receiving instruction is equal to the whole number between
five and sixteen years of age'' in ``The Political
Economy of American Public School Legislation", J. of Law and Economics,
V 10 (Oct 1967) pp101-128. (Quote from p 106). You couldn't possibly
make this claim now-- on any given day some 20% of Chicago public school
students are truant, and I imagine a similar figure holds in NYC.
By 1850 a wide variety of sources seem to agree literacy
in the northeast was in the upper 90's.
Last year C. Smith (an anti-voucher, pro public school advocate)
posted on this newsgroup a government study clearly slanted
in its language toward arguing that government schools had
contributed to literacy. And yet, when you brushed away the slanted
presentation, the statistics this study presented were also
entirely consistent with this picture. The government study
claimed adult literacy in 1870 of 80%-- but further broke out black
literacy of 20%. You can hardly blame market schools for black
illiteracy in 1870-- most of the blacks had been slaves as children,
and the government had made it illegal to teach them to read.
If you calculate back from the figures in this government article,
you find 90% of the whites were literate. But this was a period
of heavy immigration, with 16% of the population immigrants,
and the immigrants, most of whom
of course came over as adults, were largely illiterate.
If you postulate that half the immigrants were illiterate,
you arive at a figure of around 98% literacy for the population of
those who grew up free and in America.
> Collectivism hadn't taken place in the USSR
> yet--that came under Stalin--and the biggest problem the USSR had was
> that when the Bolsheviks defeated the Mensheviks (who in turn defeated
> the Whites), there was no economy left--not that there was much of one
> in the wake of the war, anyway.
...
> but you left some salient facts out--mostly, I suspect,
> because you are unaware of them. As you say, a little knowledge is a
> dangerous thing.
This is off topic. I gave a source, go look at it.
Modern Times, by Paul Johnson. Very copious footnotes, btw.
By 1920, Lenin through attempts to fix prices on grain and grab it from
farmers, had succeeded in causing a major famine, resulting, as I
said, in the cities emptying as half the population left for the
country in hopes of avoiding starvation, and as the factories
emptying, production grinding to a halt.
Craig Shields
Erik C. Hjerpe wrote:
> I am now a freshman at college and have gone through public education,
> and
> see many who have gone through private Ed. It is all what you make of
> it.
> I am very happy with my public education, and it got me into a good
> school
> and won me much merit based aid. I see kids from private education
> who
> learned less than me, and don't have the skills to succeed. It comes
> down
> to how hard you try and are forced to try in school. Primarily by
> self-motivation and by parents. You can't blame the schools for the
> uneducated masses.
>
> Erik
Erik-
True, not all public schools are bad. The north suburbs of Chicago have
some public schools which are much better than the private ones. Alas,
that's the exception more than the rule. If I had gone to public
schools in Chicago - rather than up in the 'burbs - I don't think I'd be
where I am today.
--
Cheers...Craig
--------
"But, Masters, remember that I am an ass."
-Much Ado About Nothing (William Shakespeare)
--------
tubm...@gte.net
In article <61hhc4$47h$1...@orthanc.reference.com>,
alizard/spam/@usa.net wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, 06 Oct 1997 03:17:42 GMT, //lib...@airmail.net// (LQuest) wrote:
> > Ron McDermott <rom...@ibm.net> wrote:
> >
> > >LQuest wrote:
>
> > The free market works well when allowed to. Let
> > it work by allowing ALL parents to spend the annual education cost of state
> > schools on the free market school of their choice.
>
> I certainly agree to that.
>
> > The ONLY qualification for
> It's a bit more complicated than that. ...
>
> I also advocate ...
>
> And how does one guarantee ...
> A.Lizard
> > Free market competition and
> > civil liability will assure the remaining quality issues.
>
> That I agree about.
>
It doesn't seem so, although your list of restrictions is shorter than
some I've seen. Your point about monitoring is apt. The State can't pay
for education without a definition of "education". Today's definition
involves warming a chair seat in an accredited institution for X years.
One virtue of any legislative attention to any voucher proposal would be
the examination of this question. What are we trying to buy? If we can
agree on reading vocabulary, reading comprehension, mathematical and
scientific literacy, we have enough agreement to move on. People discuss
vouchers as though the State must fund some type of institution. Why?
Once we have a definition of educaiton, and age-level expectations
(defined in terms of performance on commercially available standardized
tests), it would far less restrictive to pay students or their legal
representatives (parents) directly. Of course, there is potential for
fraud, but we have a lot of that in the current system. IMHO, of course.
Malcolm Kirkpatrick
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
alizar...@usa.net
On Mon, 06 Oct 1997 14:15:01 GMT, pn...@capital.net (Phil Nicholls) wrote:
> alizard/spam/@usa.net wrote:
>
> >
> >On 2 Oct 1997 19:30:02 -0700, boo...@primenet.com (Joe Myers) wrote:
> >> zarl...@conan.ids.net (Michael Zarlenga) wrote:
> >1. Require that all funds currently being spent on public
> >school students be translated into voucher funds, and make ALL
> >of this money available on a per pupil basis attached to each
> >voucher.
> >
> >2. Require that all schools accepting vouchers accept them as
> >100% of tuition / textbook cost.
>
> I'm a public school teacher and I am not opposed in principle to
> vouchers. However, the two requirements above do not go far
> enough.
My goal here, other than fairness isn't quite the same as yours.
I'mnot trying to create privatized clones of the public school,
I want to create an educational space where DIFFERENT things
can be tried.
> Add these:
>
> 3. All schools accepting vouchers may not discriminate on the
> basis of race, ethnicity
Agreed.
>or religion.
I'm not sure. I designed my own initiative to allow the creation
of specialized schools, e.g. schools to cater to those with an
interest in art, music, etc. for kids with special aptitudes
in the areas the schools specialize in. Perhaps religion should
be one of these areas.
> 4. All schools accepting vouchers may not use an admissions test
> (i.e., no "cherry picking" by private schools).
See above.
> In the case of
> more students applying than seats available, a lottery should be
> used.
Interesting ideea.
> 5. All schools accepting vouchers must accept students with
> special needs and abide by state and federal laws that require
> students to be placed in the "least restrictive" educational
> environment.
I'd put a lower size limit on this provision. E.g. a handful of
parents with under a dozen kids who've hired a teacher and are
working out of one of their garages probably should NOT be
required to rebuild their homes to accomodate wheelchair ramps.
The limit should be similar to the one used on the ADA (Americans
with Disabilities Act) Above the size limit, this should indeed
apply.
> (Designated special education students should get
> a larger voucher).
Obviously.
> 6. Vouchers may be used in religious schools but students in
> such schools should not be required to take classes in religion.
>
> These conditions would place non-public schools on an equal
> footing with public schools.
Reasonable.
A.Lizard
alizard(at)usa.net
To see my draft voucher initiative, go to
http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/voucher.html
alizar...@usa.net
On Thu, 09 Oct 1997 13:37:25 -0600, tubm...@gte.net wrote:
> In article <61hhc4$47h$1...@orthanc.reference.com>,
> alizard/spam/@usa.net wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Mon, 06 Oct 1997 03:17:42 GMT, //lib...@airmail.net// (LQuest) wrote:
> > > Ron McDermott <rom...@ibm.net> wrote:
> > > Free market competition and
> > > civil liability will assure the remaining quality issues.
> >
> > That I agree about.
> >
> It doesn't seem so, although your list of restrictions is shorter than
> some I've seen. Your point about monitoring is apt.
administering the voucher guidelines, the parents, and the general
public to know just what the hell is going on at these voucher-
funded schools may be the most critical part of making a workable
initiative.
>The State can't pay
> for education without a definition of "education". Today's definition
> involves warming a chair seat in an accredited institution for X years.
definition I'm using is passing grade-level subject examinations.
I wanted to make it explicitly possible to have "attendance"
requirements met in such a way to make virtual and for that
matter, correspondence schooling possible.
I'm not entirely satisfied with this, but I think it's a reasonable
starting point.
> One virtue of any legislative attention to any voucher proposal would be
> the examination of this question. What are we trying to buy? If we can
> agree on reading vocabulary, reading comprehension, mathematical and
> scientific literacy, we have enough agreement to move on.
> People discuss
> vouchers as though the State must fund some type of institution. Why?
through the political process.
> Once we have a definition of educaiton, and age-level expectations
> (defined in terms of performance on commercially available standardized
> tests), it would far less restrictive to pay students or their legal
> representatives (parents) directly.
paid directly when they show evidence of learning...
> fraud, but we have a lot of that in the current system. IMHO, of course.
A.Lizard
***********************************************************
check www.ecis.com/~alizard/voucher.html