Letters to the Editor
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Obviously
What would 300 million do for the public school system, eh?
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Well, it depends
Doesn't it depend on where the money's coming from? The problem with vouchers is that they allow families to take their share of public school funding and apply it to private school tuition. If Bush is proposing that the Federal government is going to pay for private schools and leave the public school's budget alone, then what's the problem? It would essentially increase the public school's per-capita budget.
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schools
Put the money into the public school system. Improve that system so parents want to keep their kids there. Except of course for those who will always want the name brand appeal of some privates schools. But those parents should be on their own. Free market and all.
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Public School Equality Is Lacking
Public Schools (in California, at least) are in part locally funded so schools in well-to-do areas enjoy benefits like higher salaries, better sports programs, better teachers, better learning materials.
This perpetuates the problems in inner-city schools and schools in economically depressed areas and communities. These schools cannot provide the same benefits as the wealthier schools.
This diminishes our society and is grossly unfair to students in poor schools who want to learn but cannot, due to poor teaching, etc. and a constant threat of violence.
Until this situation is fixed, true public education is only a dream for many Americans.
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If it's like a Pell grant, you have nothing to fear
Since you have to be literally destitute to qualify for a Pell grant nowadays. In other words the population of people who are both homeless and wanting to attend private school is probably small, Hollywood feel good Pursuit of Happyness movies notwithstanding.
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Please!
How about we spend 300 million dollars on figuring out how to keep Bush and the GOP from spending more money that we do not have? My God, they toss around money like it is not theirs! Wait... it isn't.
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Private School vouchers
I was alarmed when NPR noted this particluar nugget from Bush's sotu adrress. I live in a town where the public schools have been decimated because the town won't fund them through property tax increases. A recent state audit showed that the teachers were good, the students motivated, but that if the town does not support the schools financially they will probably be taken over by the state. Because we are a town with a lot of low-income, transient, and immigrant students, the obstacles in the way of achieving the standards mandated (without funds) by "No Child Left Behind" are enormous. And the schools are facing this challenge with staff abd programs cut to the bone. I have put my own child in private school. What is happening in the public schools is that the poor children are all being left behind in schools that are failing because no one is willing to fund them. And Bush has the gall to blame the schools.
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Another kick in the teeth from the GOP
To the GOP, education is just another entitlement in need of a hatchet job. Their priorities are as crystal-clear as ever -- destroy the public, float the private (with public money). The Department of Education is as much of a villain to them as any other non-military agency. What Bush and the GOP have done to public schooling in this country is criminal, and is another part of their felonious mortgaging of America's future for the sake of their investors.
We're evolving into a weird condition that's not unlike what's gone on in Latin America, where education money rolls into colleges and universities, but the primary education system suffers and dies on the vine, so countries end up where their own people can't get into the higher education, because the foundations are a shambles, and there's a very real two-tiered education system, with a poorly-educated mass of people at the lower end and a highly-educated elite at the top, and no real bridge between the two that has historically been provided by solid primary education. But then, the GOP's attention to bridges (real or hypothetical) has been spotty over the decades, so why expect them to treat primary education as important. Far better to kick public education in the teeth with unfunded mandates and throw out voucher programs as life rafts. They're such dicks.
Part of whatever the Democrats pull together must be a new mission to revitalize public education at the primary and secondary levels, in a big way. Given the challenges of competing globally with countries that actually invest in their children, you'd think that would be some kind of national priority, but nooooo.
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Its not lack of funding.
If you look at the schools in Chicago, public schools cost substantially more to operate than the Catholic schools(on a per school basis). The teachers at the Catholic schools are paid about 20,000 a year, versus the 40,000 a year for the public teachers. The Catholic schools have something like a 90% graduations rate and a very high percent go on to college. An increasing number of these kids are not Catholic, but their parents do whatever they can to make tuition because they know the quality of the public schools. I don't what the reason for the failure is, but its not lack of funding.
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Yew Betcha....
Tax money for religious schools. The public coffers bent to the goals of evangelism. Period.
Just fix the schools. Now.
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"liberating" the kids
"...help liberate poor children trapped in failing public schools."
yes, let's liberate those poor kids, just like we "liberated" Iraqis. giving up on public schools is definitely the way to go.
ugh, how many days until we're done with this guy?
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@andrewbacon
So, say you are extremely poor, live in a bad inner-city neighborhood. You can either send your kid to the horrible public school down the street, or the government can give you some money so you can afford tuition at the local Catholic school, with 98% graduation 94% college rate. The only "downside" is that they will teach your kid Christian morals. What's your choice?
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The teachers at the Catholic schools are paid about 20,000 a year
How can anyone live on $20,000.00 a year in Chicago? What does it say about the value we place on education that anyone thinks $20,000.00 a year is a reasonable amount of money to pay a teacher? Those $20,000.00 a year teachers must all be Nuns who have taken a vow of poverty and tithe their salaries back to the Vatican.