Trump’s idea of giving kids choice in schools is a very good idea. Schools are failing in many places and many people have no choice but to send their kids there. It’s a law. Most agree the problem is the school unions have tons of power in the dem party. They need kids in place to get govt money. Many schools not must care about the kids education as we can tell by years of failure…
What do you call a system where people have no choices, and those who won’t give them choices make money off it?
I think choice is a great idea. We had no private schools in the rural area i raised my children in but when they went off to college i elected to send them to private Christian Universities.
But he is not doing that. The school voucher plan would allow parents to donate their money to a private school rather then paying school taxes. The first impact would be that there would be about a $5B hole in money that school districts would get. The second part of the deal is that these private schools would not be under federal direction when it comes to discrimination or segregation. And there would be no guarantee that your child would be accepted into a private school that you donated to.
Some states have tried school voucher programs and have had a lot of problems. I believe that the simplicity of the Trump/DeVos/Cruz plan has a lot of potential problems that need a close look.
I wonder how many private religious schools would advocate for school vouchers if it meant having to abide by the same rules as public schools. Take public money, follow public rules.
There’s only X limited seats in public schools. How are you going to have the freedom to choose? It’s not like this is shopping around for hamburgers. And what if there aren’t enough open slots in the school you pay high property taxes for?
No, I don’t think most people would agree. That would maybe be the issue in your lager inner city school systems…The teachers union in Chicago for example has long been run by fat cats who try to get as much money for their members, and then don’t hold them accountable for that money…Protect them from not teaching up to the standards.
Most local unions across America are not the same as the big city teacher unions. And the NEA is not the same as a local. My wife is a teacher and Union Rep for her building. IN her school corporation which is full of 4 star schools and is one of the top 5 school corporations is the state has less than 50% membership.
The unions cannot negotiate anything but PAY in their contracts…Collective Bargaining was taken away when Mitch Daniels was Governor and Mike Pence was in the State Senate (I think) Republicans have taken a lot of the UNION power away by doing this in a multitude of states across the country.
The Unions may have political clout in the Dem Party but it did nothing to stem the tide of Republicanism removing collective bargaining rights from union members. IN those states Unions have no power what so ever.
The problem with the concept of “school choice” as most people envision it is that public schools do not operate on a compelled tuition basis, but on a compelled public service basis.
As an individual, I do not pay property taxes in lieu of tuition to the public schools. Rather, I pay property taxes to maintain a public service that I may or may never use. The same as the fire department and police.
I have paid property taxes since I have owned a home, which is pretty much my entire adult life. Including the period before kids, the period with kids and the period after kids. I will pay such taxes until I kick over dead.
I choose to home school, but I did so at my own personal expense, never asking for government money and never receiving government money. During that time, I continued to pay property taxes, thus paying into the public school system.
Declining to use the public schools did not and does not relieve me of my obligation to pay for them, any more than my never having a fire relieves me of my obligation to pay for the fire department.
If public schools were funded on a pure tuition model, the school choice argument might make sense. But they are not. They are funded out of general tax revenues applicable to everybody.
I DO believe in school choice and EXERCISED that choice in favor of home schooling. However, it is the individuals pure burden to FULLY FUND their own choice.
Parents always have a choice as to whether to send their kids to a public school, a private school, or home school. But I agree that school choice is a good idea. Public schools should get the same CHOICE that private schools have as to who they will accept and/or keep.
This biggest problem I see in a child’s education, isn’t the school. It isn’t the books, the teacher or the classroom. The largest problem I’ve seen in a child’s education is the parents. If you don’t believe me, go hang out in some school in your area on parent/teacher conference day. The school becomes a morgue.
Well yes, parents have appointment times for their conferences, so they come and go at their assigned times, it’s not like parents descend en masse in the schools and hang around the school all day long.
That was not the case for our daughters schools and she’s only 4 years removed from K12. That, and my husband is a 27 year high school teacher and is not the case for him.
Wow. I was shocked when I asked for an appointment time and was told to come at anytime. There’d be plenty of room. When my wife and I got there for an unscheduled appointment…the halls were virtually empty. I’m glad to hear that’s not the case in your area. It sure is in mine and that’s shameful.
The issue with school choice is, you end up making the public school system - which of course in some areas have serious problems - even worse.
It also doesn’t really provide fair access to all citizens because it rarely covers the true full cost of sending your children to private schools. So it just becomes a subsidy for the wealthy, while pulling resources for teh school that educates the lower income level students.
I applaud any effort to improve public education, but school choice - as is usually proposed - is not a good answer.
