By Aaron Blumer
Jan
24
2017
"In honor of the seventh annual National School Choice Week, here are some facts you should know about school choice in America."
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Hmmm....
First, a side note; good to see Joe Carter doing well at Acton. There are two quibbles I have with "school choice". First, it ignores the fact that the best predictors of school success are "are Mom and Dad married?" and "do Mom and Dad read?". Many blessed exceptions to that rule, but it's a rule nonetheless.
Second, many forms of school choice, especially charters and vouchers, bring up the reality that "he who pays the piper calls the tune." In other words, if the money flows through the government, government will get an extensive say in how kids are educated even though it's technically only returning our own money to us. There is a degree to which this is unavoidable and even sometimes beneficial--limiting freedom to do wrong as it were--but we ought to treat this reality as the "fire" that it is; a useful servant but a dangerous master.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Bert Perry wrote:
This is very true; but from an educational policy perspective, it's hard to say what can be done about this factor.
Accountability to government...
This is why I'm actually opposed to "vouchers" per se, and would prefer a tax-credit up to some amount on money spent to pay for education in the school of choice. When I see district spending of 8000-12000 per student, I think it could actually be a win for the schools and students if some of these funds were rebated to parents not using the system. Let's say the parents sending students elsewhere would get half in a tax credit, and the school gets half that they can now spend on the students still attending the school. The schools get more money per student, and the parents can now put the money toward school choice This isn't going to get those students opting out of public education all the way to elite private school tuition, but that's not going to happen anyway.
Probably wouldn't completely solve the problem of the piper's money, but the government wouldn't be directly paying the schools.
Dave Barnhart
Bingo!
Bingo. That wholeheartedly agreed and conceded, it's worth noting that there are a fair number of things in the law which favor having children without getting married over marriage. Fix that, and let schools teach Walter Williams "How not to be poor", and slowly we'll see change. This has a lot to do with what Joel Schaffer is mentioning on the other thread regarding John Piper's "How to live under an unqualified President".
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Milton Friedman, Father of School Choice
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2012/07/milton_friedman_father_o...
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Jim's Doctrinal Statement
Check out how school choice
Check out how school choice worked in New Orleans. (tl;dr: it worked very well)
http://educationnext.org/good-news-new-orleans-evidence-reform-student-a...