jim rozen wrote:...
Malcolm Kirkpatrick says:...

MK. Discussion deleted....

I think what I was getting at is the idea that the vouchers are
not going to cover the full freight at most private schools,
so the parents are going to have to handle the remainder. It
would be nice if the state simply handed over an 'equal slice'
payment (which probably *would* cover most of the tuition
in a private school, at least until the exodus from public
schools drove up the price...) but for a variety of reasons
that's probably never going to happen.

MK. Robert FitzRoy learned Greek, Latin, shiphandling, gunnery,
fencing, trigonometry, and calculus, between age 12 and 14, at which
point he went to sea (see: __Evolution's Captain__). The physicist
Joseph Henry left school at age 13, and was apprenticed. At 16 he read
a book on science and prepped for college. Ben Franklin attended
school for two years, between 10 and 12. The per-pupil budget in the
US has tripled, in inflation-adjusted terms, between 1950 and today.
Education is potentially cheap. It's --school-- that's expensive.
Giving to the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel an exclusive position in receipt
of the taxpayers' K-12 education subsidy is a formula for high costs
and low performance. Likely, school vouchers would lower the cost of
school, over the long haul.

So the question is, once a kid takes a voucher, but the
parents can no longer contribute their sha

Do You Require the Public School to Take the Kid Back?

MK. Which school voucher plan are we discussing? My ideal? My ideal is
parent performance contracting, not a voucher. In a school voucher
system, yes, public schools would still have to accept students
according to their usual criteria. I'd suggest that they be budgeted
in the same way as independent, voucher-accepting schools, monthly,
based on enrollment. The only differences between the NEA/AFT/AFSCME
cartel's schools (the "public" schools") and voucher-accepting schools
would be 1) that the taxpayers' per-pupil support of the cartel's
schools would be 100%, while the school voucher would be 0 X%
100%. 2) that he cartel's schools operate on government-owned land, 3)
That the cartel's schools get free legal help from the State.

And, how do you handle the entanglement that vouchers are going
to cause between state funding and religious schools?

MK. I don't worry much about them.

That's like saying, "I don't care about a teeny little
tornado!"

MK. Hardly. The USSC has said that so long as parents decide which
institution the child attends, there is no "establishment" violation.
I agree. The way to teach tolerance of diversity is to tolerate
diversity, seems to me.

Sure *you* don't care but that little thing like the bill
of rights *does* care! What are the private schools going to
do when the state starts demanding that catholic schools
recognize jewish holidays, or that they ban religious displays?

State money being funnelled into parochial schools is the
first step towards a huge first amendment collision.
That collision *will* happen in the courts when vouchers are
first tried. It is also one of the biggest reasons why
vouchers will be avoided for quite some time to come.

MK. The greatest barrier to school vouchers is determined lobbying by
the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel.