What Libertarians Do

[MrJonno]

It would benefit the middle classes/rich who care about their kids education at a cost of some of the poor who don't.

The parents I know who are poor care about their kids just as much as rich parents do. Just because they don't have as much money to spend on their kids doesn't mean they don't care about their kids.

I did say some poor, there are plenty of toddlers around where I live who are so badly brought up that even by the time they are 2 year olds their ownly future is permanent unemployment/jail. Seen the little brats run around the bus kicking passengers while they parent(s) either ignores them or they shoult something along the lines of come here become I fucking kill you

[MrJonno]

The ultimate responsibilty for children lies with the state however in anything other than extreme circumstances its delegated to the parent but no parent ever has any rights whatsoever over children they merely responsibities.

I see it as exactly the reverse. The ultimate responsibility for children lie with their parents. In extreme circumstances it is delegated to the state.

Parents can't take kids from the state , the state can take them from parents therefore they are the ultimate authority

[laklak]

It would benefit the middle classes/rich who care about their kids education at a cost of some of the poor who don't. As the rich get a decent education there isnt really much of a justification for that

So? If it benefits the middle class (and the poor with enough gumption to take advantage of it) then that's better than warehousing middle class (and "deserving poor") kids in schools that cater to the lowest common denominator. The ones with the metal detectors at the front door and gang sign spray painted all over them. Why should someone who is middle class, or someone who is poor but gives a shit, be forced to send their kids to a school that at best will warehouse them in a prison-like atmosphere till they're 18 and then send them into the world with a 4th grade reading level and an inability to do simple arithmetic? What's fair about that? Why should the people who work hard and care about their children (regardless of their socio-economic standing) be penalized because there are other people too stupid, drug-addled, self-centered and lazy to take a few hours out of their useless lives to find a good school for their kids?

I'm told all the time that we need "equality". OK, here's equality. Each of you gets a voucher, you can determine which school to send your kid to. Just show up at the principal's office, present your voucher and BINGO, your kid gets in. What could be more "equal" than that? If you can't be bothered to use it then you're a useless piece of shit, a drain on society and you deserve nothing but contempt. You certainly do not deserve even MORE of society's money, billions of which have already been flushed down the toilet of "equality" to no purpose at all. Dumbing down the entire educational system to cater for the stupidest members isn't "equality", it's idiocy.

[MrJonno]

Middle class parents already get decent education for their children (well they do in the UK anyway), they either send their kids to private school, buy a house near a good tax payer funded school or pretend to collect stamps/be a christian so they can go to faith/stamp collecting school.

I doubt very much if this is any different in the US either

[MiM]

Over here (Finland) 99% of the schools are public, which means virtually everybody's kids attends the same schools. And if you look at the PISA results http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_ ... .80.932006 the result isn't really that bad. Quite the contrary actually.
(I didn't even bother to scroll down the table to look for the USA).

[laklak]

Over here (Finland) 99% of the schools are public, which means virtually everybody's kids attends the same schools. And if you look at the PISA results http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_ ... .80.932006 the result isn't really that bad. Quite the contrary actually.
(I didn't even bother to scroll down the table to look for the USA).

The USA ranks so far down precisely BECAUSE of the idiocy promulgated and perpetuated by the gummint. There were minority groups that weren't doing well on standardized achievement tests, so what did the government, in it's infinite wisdom, do? Did they fire useless teachers, change management structures, change the curriculum to help those kids? No. They changed the tests, dumbed them down so that a moron could pass them. They spent billions upon billions, and came up with fuck-all. So now, right wing tea partiers looking at the utter disaster that is our public school system, have said "well fuck that, you aren't getting any more of MY money". Government listened, after a fashion.

So what, in their infinite wisdom, did they do? They cut budgets. That's it, that's all, just cut the budget. Don't address the problems, just spend less money, that will fix it. So now there's a perfect storm brewing - less money, crumbling over-crowded schools, burnt-out teachers. No one wins. And anyone who tries a different tack, who looks at the success of private schools, parochial schools and charter schools and suggests we implement a voucher system that would bring those benefits to ANY parent that wanted them, well, they're derided as anti-social, poor-hating, union-busting Libertarian nutjobs.

I've got at least 7 or 8 cousins and a couple of aunts and uncles that are or were career teachers and school administrators, so I'm certainly NOT anti-teacher. I am, however, anti-stupidity and anti-politically-correct-nonsense-solutions.

To be honest I don't really care. My kids are grown and educated, I'm retired and my money is offshore where they can't get it. If it gets bad enough we'll hop on the boat and cruise the islands till the pirates get us.

[laklak]

Sorry y'all, I'm on a bit of a rant here, but it's a topic close to my heart.

The voucher systems I'm talking about are NOT directed at the middle class or the rich. The rich don't need it, their kids get an education already. The middle class can, as MrJonno suggested, just move to a better neighborhood. Well, some of them could, prior to the total meltdown of the property market. It isn't an option for anyone I know who has kids at this point in time. The voucher system would most benefit the poor, by allowing them to send their kids to schools in predominately middle-class or even upper class areas. Or to parochial schools, which are often located in the poorest sections of town but in general provide a good education (if you can keep the priests outta the altar boys, that is).

What we see happening now is middle-class parents are gaming the system. They lie about their address. Find a relative or good friend in a good area and pretend to live with them. Some go so far as to have all their mail delivered there and change the addresses on all their bank and credit card accounts. All to get their kids out of a shitty school and into a good one.

I know of one poorer family doing exactly the same thing, because they're using my neighbor's as their address. So the idea that school vouchers are just a tricky way to undermine the teacher's unions or do away with public education is a strawman. They are actually a method of insuring that anyone, regardless of their financial situation, can send their children to a good school.

I honestly do no see what is wrong with that.

[amused]

There are only so many students that a given school can handle. The middle class schools are already filled with middle class kids, and those parents would rig it so they get first dibs on any vouchers. There might be a few open slots but most schools were located to serve the neighborhood that surrounds them. Middle class parents do take a very active role in their schools, and most of the schools are good.

Poorer parents will be stuck taking their vouchers to the schools located nearest their homes because of the logistics of daily transportation, and because there aren't many slots open in the middle class neighborhoods. So we're back to where we are now.

[hadespussercats]

Sorry y'all, I'm on a bit of a rant here, but it's a topic close to my heart.

The voucher systems I'm talking about are NOT directed at the middle class or the rich. The rich don't need it, their kids get an education already. The middle class can, as MrJonno suggested, just move to a better neighborhood. Well, some of them could, prior to the total meltdown of the property market. It isn't an option for anyone I know who has kids at this point in time. The voucher system would most benefit the poor, by allowing them to send their kids to schools in predominately middle-class or even upper class areas. Or to parochial schools, which are often located in the poorest sections of town but in general provide a good education (if you can keep the priests outta the altar boys, that is).

What we see happening now is middle-class parents are gaming the system. They lie about their address. Find a relative or good friend in a good area and pretend to live with them. Some go so far as to have all their mail delivered there and change the addresses on all their bank and credit card accounts. All to get their kids out of a shitty school and into a good one.

I know of one poorer family doing exactly the same thing, because they're using my neighbor's as their address. So the idea that school vouchers are just a tricky way to undermine the teacher's unions or do away with public education is a strawman. They are actually a method of insuring that anyone, regardless of their financial situation, can send their children to a good school.

I honestly do no see what is wrong with that.

I see the appeal of the image you're painting. But--
The rich who "don't need" vouchers and won't get them (?) still pay taxes towards other kids' vouchers? Everyone's cool with that? Rich families with kids pay twice-- once for their kids and once for everyone else's?

I don't necessarily have a problem with that, but I can easily imagine there are those who do.

Also-- who or what decides/determines how much a voucher is worth? As it stands, public school per-student budget it determined by property taxes (in the US, anyway)-- part of why generally the areas with good public schools are more expensive to live in.

Even without considering that particular "savage inequality"-- chances are slim that all public schools are paying per-student an amount equivalent to a private school tuition. There will be a gap between what the voucher covers and what the costs are. For the families that can't afford to pay this gap themselves, what are their other options, beyond remaining in a devastated public school even more bereft of funding (since most took their public-school voucher money and fled) with all the other poor kids who couldn't afford to leave?

[Seth]

One cannot dispute that 2+2=4, or that learning to read and write one's native language is non-controversial, but when it comes to a conflict between science and religion, or between conflicting political beliefs, the right of the parent to raise their child in their chosen faith or belief must prevail for liberty to mean anything.

That completely depends on whose liberty you put the first. The liberty of the parent to oppress a child at will or the liberty of the child to be free from parental oppression. I believe there are enough stories already here on Razz about parents who have lacked the ability to put the interest of the children first, to show that this point is far from moot.

Depends on what you mean by "oppress" and who gets to decide what "oppress a child at will" means. While it is certainly possible to "oppress" a child, with such a vague definition and power left in the hands of the state to determine when "oppression" is occurring, it becomes, again, a political weapon the state can used to oppress the parents and indoctrinate or even remove the child from the parents.

Marxists and Maoists would decide that failing to indoctrinate a child in proper Marxist/Maoist rhetoric and propaganda is to "oppress" the child and therefore justification to both sanction the parents (to death perhaps) and remove the child and make it a ward of the state.

This is why in the US, the line is most often drawn at actual physical abuse or neglect, or demonstrable medically-determined psychological harm, so as to prevent the state from improperly intruding on the rights of the parents to raise their children as they otherwise see fit.

[Seth]

Sorry y'all, I'm on a bit of a rant here, but it's a topic close to my heart.

The voucher systems I'm talking about are NOT directed at the middle class or the rich. The rich don't need it, their kids get an education already. The middle class can, as MrJonno suggested, just move to a better neighborhood. Well, some of them could, prior to the total meltdown of the property market. It isn't an option for anyone I know who has kids at this point in time. The voucher system would most benefit the poor, by allowing them to send their kids to schools in predominately middle-class or even upper class areas. Or to parochial schools, which are often located in the poorest sections of town but in general provide a good education (if you can keep the priests outta the altar boys, that is).

What we see happening now is middle-class parents are gaming the system. They lie about their address. Find a relative or good friend in a good area and pretend to live with them. Some go so far as to have all their mail delivered there and change the addresses on all their bank and credit card accounts. All to get their kids out of a shitty school and into a good one.

I know of one poorer family doing exactly the same thing, because they're using my neighbor's as their address. So the idea that school vouchers are just a tricky way to undermine the teacher's unions or do away with public education is a strawman. They are actually a method of insuring that anyone, regardless of their financial situation, can send their children to a good school.

I honestly do no see what is wrong with that.

The teacher's unions do, which is why in many states lying about where you live in order to get your child into a better school is a felony crime. I just read a month or so ago about a woman in, I believe, Illinois, who did so and when the school district sent out a private detective to discover where she lived, she was not only arrested and charged with fraud, she was forced to pay back more than $30,000 to the school that her child SHOULD have gone to based on her actual residence.
It's a felony because the teacher's unions have persuaded the legislature to make it a crime to lie about where you live to get your child into a better school because this allegedly deprives the shitty school you're trying to get your kid out of (that he would otherwise be forced to attend) of the state money that's paid to each school on a per-student basis. This is exactly why teachers unions oppose vouchers, because it allows parents to take money away from incompetent educators and poorly-run schools, which makes it all the harder to educate the poor saps who are still forced to go there. If vouchers were universal, such shitty schools would quickly cease to exist and the incompetent unionized teachers who infest them would be fired, and of course the unions cannot abide having any teacher fired, no matter how incompetent they are, because the whole purpose of a teacher's union is to protect the employment of all teachers so that the union bosses can extract money from them to feather their own nests and waste money on political activism. So even the most incompetent or corrupt or criminal of teachers will be defended by the unions so that their dues keep flowing into union coffers, and fuck the kids they are supposed to be teaching...and I mean that quite literally...as public school teachers fuck their students orders of magnitude more often than Catholic priests ever have...as many as five million times every year by some estimates.

[Warren Dew]

Even without considering that particular "savage inequality"-- chances are slim that all public schools are paying per-student an amount equivalent to a private school tuition. There will be a gap between what the voucher covers and what the costs are. For the families that can't afford to pay this gap themselves, what are their other options, beyond remaining in a devastated public school even more bereft of funding (since most took their public-school voucher money and fled) with all the other poor kids who couldn't afford to leave?

According to all the figures I can find, public schools are costing much more on a per student basis than public schools, on average - typically 50%-100% more. Here's the Google search I did and a recent hit. If you don't like the Cato institute, go to the google search page and pick another hit:

https://www.google.com/search?client=ub ... 8&oe=utf-8
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-real ... c-schools/

There are a few very expensive private schools, but they are very much the exceptions; the average private school costs less than public schools do.

I think the right way to implement vouchers would be to require that any school that accepts them accept them as full tuition for the student. If a school wanted to charge more than that in tuition, the parents would have to pay full freight. All students would be allowed to use the vouchers, whether from rich or poor families, but only on the schools that accepted them as full tuition.

States would probably have to do something to make sure that all vouchers were worth the same amount.

[Seth]

For the families that can't afford to pay this gap themselves, what are their other options, beyond remaining in a devastated public school even more bereft of funding (since most took their public-school voucher money and fled) with all the other poor kids who couldn't afford to leave?

So, evidently the answer is to subject all children to shitty schools by force, so that there will be "equality" of crappy education?

The idea is to not force any student to attend a crappy school by giving them the same amount that's given to every other student, which is currently how money is allocated to schools, and let them pick which school they want to go to. In a free market atmosphere, shitty schools will soon lose all their students and be forced to close, and the demand for quality education and the lure of money going with the child will induce other schools to improve their academic quality so as to attract more students and more of their money.

No child will be trapped in a shitty school because they can walk away and take their tuition money with them somewhere else any time they like.

[hadespussercats]

For the families that can't afford to pay this gap themselves, what are their other options, beyond remaining in a devastated public school even more bereft of funding (since most took their public-school voucher money and fled) with all the other poor kids who couldn't afford to leave?

So, evidently the answer is to subject all children to shitty schools by force, so that there will be "equality" of crappy education?

No, that's your answer. I never said any such thing.

Here's a question-- don't private schools maintain their chosen standards in part by controlling who gets to attend? Will any school have to accept all comers? If not, what happens to the students no school wants?

Also- @Warren-- do you know... when there is a per-student tuition breakdown given for public schools, are special needs kids, whose expenses for education may be higher, included in that average?

[Seth]

For the families that can't afford to pay this gap themselves, what are their other options, beyond remaining in a devastated public school even more bereft of funding (since most took their public-school voucher money and fled) with all the other poor kids who couldn't afford to leave?

So, evidently the answer is to subject all children to shitty schools by force, so that there will be "equality" of crappy education?

No, that's your answer. I never said any such thing.

You certainly implied it.

Here's a question-- don't private schools maintain their chosen standards in part by controlling who gets to attend? Will any school have to accept all comers? If not, what happens to the students no school wants?

If they have $6000 or more attached to them, somebody's going to want that money and will be willing to serve them.

Why should extraordinary students be held back and obstructed in their educational pursuits by legions of below-average to mediocre students who require far more than their "fair share" of teacher time? Why shouldn't schools pick and choose based on academic performance and charge more for advanced curricula for advanced students? All that does is induce children to work harder and achieve academically rather than drifting along in the least-common-denominator classrooms of the Frankfurt School Marxist schools.

Also- @Warren-- do you know... when there is a per-student tuition breakdown given for public schools, are special needs kids, whose expenses for education may be higher, included in that average?

There's a kid up in Fort Collins I believe it is whose parents went to court to get the school district to pay for the kid to go to a private school for autistic kids back east that costs more than $150,000 per year because they claimed the school district wasn't properly educating their severely mentally-defective child. And they won. Which means that this one kid gets the state resources of a full class of 25 kids all to himself, all so he can learn to wipe his own ass at public expense. That's a lot of money wasted on one child who will never even be able to live on his own and will require custodial care his whole life.

He should get a voucher for $6000 like every other kid and his parents should figure out how to best use that money, and/or their own money, to do what they think their child needs.