StiffMittens wrote:captain.crazy wrote:Timminz wrote:If you take all the kids out of public schools, and then give them money towards private schools, the private schools become the public schools. Great solution.
Now you're catching on... only, there is no federal mandate... no federal intervention... the schools are free to implement their own philosophies. Diversity is key, the homogenized approach to education fails because one style of education pressed by the government obviously doesn't work.
Yeah, when that style is No Child Left Behind.
The real point is that I think you're fooling yourself if you think that moving all the students out of public schools and into private ones is going to result in better schooling (certainly not overnight). I mean we're talking about 80,000 students in the DC area alone. How are the private schools going to handle that massive influx of students? You'll just have the exact same problems: Too many students per class, not enough teachers, not enough money to pay for the teachers you do have, not enough funding for classroom supplies, etc. What are you going to do? Hire all the public school teachers to handle the extra load? How will you pay for them government subsidies? You're talking about creating a public school system. We already have one. It needs some work. Fix it.
Now that the Wanda thread has worked its way over to something I finally know something about let me add this. Any type of vouchers for private schools, schools of choice, or anything else that allows the movement of students to whatever type of school, in my opinion, is no more than a class and economic segregation. Families that can afford to transport their children can and will take advantage of this choice to what they perceive as "better" schools. The families that cannot will be left at their neighborhood school. Good or bad. Any private school that accepts federal, state or local monies (read vouchers) is a public school and provide public education in my opinion.
People who support vouchers are in reality are supporting a return to segregated schools. Civil rights activists like King, Parks, Marshall, and Evers fought for years and sacrificed their lives to level educational opportunities for all people, of all races, of all socio-economic classes. The Brown v. Board of Education case summed it all up. On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the decision of the unanimous Court:
"We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does...We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment."
Substitute class for race and you get my drift.
I don't know the answer, but I sure know a bad idea when I see it.
