School vouchers

(He challenged me specifically, I didn't just pick it out).

Why waste my time doing a meaningful debate with someone who obviously doesn't know what they're doing?

Neither of you are very good.

Here is the problem with school vouchers. They would create a system of education where schools would be even more tilted in favour of the well off that they are already are. Many kids are already in private schools. If you gave a school voucher to these children's parents they would spend a hundred percent of that voucher in addition to what they are already paying. The voucher is in effect a huge subsidy for the already well off.

A poor person however, wouldn't have anything to add to the voucher. To make matters worse the vouchers given to the middle class parents would cause inflation in the education market. The poor students would be getting much worse schools than the wealthy which would just exasperate the already growing class system in the states.

The most likely outcome would be that the poorest students and those with disabilities and discipline problems would be left in virtually unfunded schools that would be virtual hells on earth.

Some things just don't work in a market system. Imagine if the military gave vouchers for gear. The rich people would be riding in tanks and the poor people would be wearing paper hats for helmets.

Similarly we want students tor receive funds according to their needs not according to their parent's income level.

than your POSTS*...ugh I need sleep, sorry.

rofl wait tars

sorry your comment seemed a lot more informed at least than your comment so i didn't realize it was the same person

We have poor scores in some public schools because of failed reforms to decrease dropout rates. It has nothing to do with a lack of competition. Were that the case, no public school would ever stand a chance to perform well. That, of course, is not the case. Haven't you ever wondered why some public schools succeed while others fail? Or have you simply accepted the totally false idea that all public schools fail? If you've accepted the latter, then I'm sorry, but you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I am a product of public schools and am doing just fine.

It is impossible to instill true competition in education because that entails accurately judging each school and student while on even ground. Standardized tests are imperfect at best, and judging an inner-city school against a wealthy suburban school is just stupid. Would you judge the quality of a dentist based on the number of cavities that his clientele have, regardless of the education level surrounding his practice and their ability to maintain good oral hygiene? I would certainly hope not. What voucher supporters tend to do is hand public schools a fixed deck and then wonder why they can't win. They get underfunded while surrounded by violent and poor neighborhoods, then you claim they are hopeless and inferior to private schools and therefore take even more money from them in the form of vouchers.
When the proper reforms are implemented, such as reinvesting in talented and motivated teachers and administrators and renovating the schools so they don't look like prisons, in addition to a more rigorous curriculum, public schools perform on par or better than private schools, largely because public schools are held to higher standards than private schools. To claim that private schools are better is largely just a guess since private schools don't have to take the same tests as public schools. Without this knowledge, how are parents suppose to make informed decisions?

Too bad you weren't debating me tars, your friend here didn't make much of a case.

Chavis's charter school is an example of how a little innovation can create a school that can change kids' lives. You don't get innovation without competition.

To give you an idea of how competitive American schools are and how U.S. students performed compared with their European counterparts, we gave parts of an international test to some high school students in Belgium and in New Jersey.

Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks, and called them "stupid."

We didn't pick smart kids to test in Europe and dumb kids in the United States. The American students attend an above-average school in New Jersey, and New Jersey's kids have test scores that are above average for America.

Lov Patel, the boy who got the highest score among the American students, told me, "I'm shocked, because it just shows how advanced they are compared to us."

The Belgian students didn't perform better because they're smarter than American students. They performed better because their schools are better. At age 10, American students take an international test and score well above the international average. But by age 15, when students from 40 countries are tested, the Americans place 25th.

American schools don't teach as well as schools in other countries because they are government monopolies, and monopolies don't have much incentive to compete. In Belgium, by contrast, the money is attached to the kids -- it's a kind of voucher system. Government funds education -- at many different kinds of schools -- but if a school can't attract students, it goes out of business.

Belgian school principal Kaat Vandensavel told us she works hard to impress parents.

She told us, "If we don't offer them what they want for their child, they won't come to our school." She constantly improves the teaching, saying, "You can't afford 10 teachers out of 160 that don't do their work, because the clients will know, and won't come to you again."

"That's normal in Western Europe,"

Vouchers don't reward "good" students, they only allow parents who are already more involved in their childrens' education the ability to take money out of the public system and give it to private, mostly religious schools. Even this sounds well enough, but no reputable study has shown that these students improve at all. In fact, in a couple private schools in Ohio, they performed worse than their public school counterparts. Milwaukee was the first school district to implement vouchers back in 1990. The state legislature hired a team of researchers to evaluate the program. After five years of showing extremely poor oversight on how the money was spent and no improvement by the students from before they received vouchers to after, the state legislature discontinued the evaluation, not the program. That's because voucher programs are more a method of private school operators and churches to get their hands on public money. Ohio's state legislature also hired researchers to evaluate their voucher program. These researchers found the same corruption and lack of results as the ones in Wisconsin. The Government Accountability Office even conducted their own study for a voucher supporting Senator, yet found them to be ineffective and a waste of public money. Florida's voucher program was opted out of by over 90% of eligible private schools because they feared whatever strings might be attached to government money. I fail to see what kind of choice that offers students. Florida's program was also ruled unconstitutional by the state supreme court in 2006 because it both violated the separation of church and state and disenfranchised public school. These three programs have cost public schools 10s, and in some cases 100s of millions of dollars, all for no results and private schools choosing the students, not vice versa. I know the debate still has two rounds to go, but I just couldn't contain myself. Sorry. Keep fighting the good fight arrivaltime! :)