In article , Gunner says...

... How does a voucher plan ensure
that the left-behinds will still get a decent education?

Its obvious. The public schools will finally have to get off their
overstuffed dead asses and be competative with the private schools.
When they see their tax dollars dribbling away..they will indeed
institute improvements. Standardized testing will make sure everyone
is working on a level playing field.

Umm, not so obvious. You can have standardized testing like
Texas has, where everyone simply passes, even those who
don't *have* the skills. Or like in NY, where many kids
fail. Just *having* testing does not mean that the schools
work.

Those that cannot teach worth a
**** will be dumped in favor of those who can actually teach.

Still not obvious here. If Fitch were around, he would (did)
ask the biggie question: WHERE are you going to get those
teachers who can actually teach? All the teachers are already
employed. So how are you going to staff the extra, or larger,
private schools once vouchers permit portability?

Administration costs will fall, as they remove the deadwood and
streamline. With fewer kids in the public schools, wear and tear on
the infrastructure will be reduced and for those children who tear up
the place, are "unteachable" etc..they will be finally handled the way
they should be. With the proper punishment and expulsion as needed.

I guess you weren't listening, but public schools can't expell
kids. They simply go into a more expensive version of public
school that the taxpayer still has to fund. So in your scheme,
the public schools become dumping grounds for the problem (read,
'expensive') kids with one twist - they have less money than
before to educate them.

Im sure there will be Boot Camp type schools that will spring up for
problem children that will accept vouchers. It will really suck to be
an asshole child who wants to disrupt things.

I think those already exist. They keep having news stories about
them, where the kids are incarcerated in prison, outside of the
US.

The best of these that I've ever seen is NY state's "Challenge"
program. They run the kids through what looks like a version of
basic training up at Camp Smith. What happens when something
around here actually works? Yep, you got it. State funding
for that program got cut off.

Jim

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