"Hawke" wrote in message
...

Sure we do. We're just not going to pay for it. People like me with no
kids already pay for yours. I'll be darned if I'm going to pay for your
private religious schools too. You ask for too much from the government.


Hawke

I pretty much agree with you on separating church and state. I
certainly do not want the government paying for anything religious.
But have a different slant on vouchers for schools. My thoughts are
that the government ought to encourage anything that creates a
educated citizen and also try to get the most education for the money
spent.

So if vouchers encourage people to take their children out of public
schools and thereby reduce the amount that the government has to spend
to educate children, then they are a good thing. So a voucher of say
1/3 to 2/3rds of the cost of public school would be a good thing. It
would reduce the cost of public education and presumably do as well or
better in educating the kids.

So that would agree with your small government ideas and would provide
some competition to the public school. Without competition the
public school will not try to be efficient.

Dan

Vouchers sound good until you look into them carefully and find the faults
with them. First off, it weakens public school for everyone else. If
people could leave and find better educations somewhere else who would
stay in public schools? Only those who couldn't get out.
Second, the amount of money you would get in a voucher would never be
enough to pay for a good private school. You would have to supplement it
to get into a private school, which eliminates poor people. Then the
private schools, which are for profit businesses, would raise prices to
make maximum profit and they would not allow anyone in that might be a
disciplinary problem. Then there are the special needs kids. No private
school would want them unless you paid a ton of money to them. All of
these things leave the public schools with less money and with the worst
students. Last, what teacher would want to stay in a public system? All
the good ones would go to the private schools that would pay better. One
last thing is there will never be enough private schools available. So
when you really examine the idea you find that the idea of vouchers stinks
actually.

Hawke

There's other possibilities that you may not have considered. There are
some fixed expenses involved, if a teacher has 5 students they might work a
little cheaper than they would with 25 students but the cost per child would
be lower, I don't see why a public school can run cheaper than a private
school. It seems like the picket signs I've seen saying union labor is
cheaper but if that's true then why are they picketing a jobsite where
non-union labor won the bid? Also, if pushed I wouldn't be surprised if
public schools would be more competitive, they would either be competitive
or shut down. Kind of like as ethanol plants were coming, the price of gas
suddenly dropped. Why would a parent choose to send their kids to a private
school if they can go to another school for less money?

RogerN