Universal vouchers will be a hammer blow for modern liberalism.

I thought that the racist white middle class was going to block them ?

They have so far.

Sounds like the aftermath of the French revolution when they realised the Nuns were the only ones left who could teach at the primary levels.

Vouchers will only further enhance separation among race, class, religion, etc. We will become a far less unified society, with far less in common with each other than we already are. We really only have two places where we are forced to deal with others from different worlds on an equal playing field, the military and the public schools. The military is all-volunteer and if the public schools cease to exist in any serious way, which is the net result of a voucher system, then whatever tiny threads that tie us together will disappear.

We're all for vouchers when it's the Little Sisters of the Poor who get them. But what happens when Louis Farrakhan and Matthew Hale file for theirs. What First Amendment ground are we going to be able to use to deny them equal access to the taxpayers' money? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Catholic schools will be far more integrated than any city or suburban public schools.

i am guessing farakhan and hale will not be affecting more children that they already are, if they were to start a school up. school vouchers are about making the public schools compete, and in the process become better at teaching kids. if the public schools, in a given area, refuse to change then they will die off. online teaching will slaughter the large centralized districts, within 5 years.

The Nation ofIslam does exemplary social work and would likely run excellent schools--disciplined and moralist if nothing else.

Bart: What public schools did you attend that are so blessedly integrated and unified? When I went through public schools in Tampa the only time I saw black or hispanic kids was during p.e. They had been thoroughly segregated out of the a.p. courses and into remedial courses. And they made up more than 50% of the school population.

Additionally, people I know who have children enrolled in the I.B. program at St. Petersburg High say the only time their kids see minorities (other than Asian) is in the hallway.

My kids Catholic school is way more integrated than any public school I went to. Also, in the northern part of our county, where almost all the upper middle class live, there are no minorities since busing was ended.

Besides, the tiny threads you speak of don't matter, the big threads, like wanting your kid to have a good education or to be raised in a morally serious way are the ones that matter anyway.

And if the Nation of Islam wants to take on the poverty stricken, crack ridden, prostitute strolling devestation of the neighborhoods in S. St. Pete, then why should they be denied funds? Farrakhan would either have to put up or shut up once black moms and dads started clamoring for results.

oj,

Encouraging people to kill Whites is exemplary social work? But then you approve of Saudi sponsored madrassas where they teach terrorism. I guess so long as nobody darker than Arnold Schwarzenegger dares walk along the streets of Whitebread, New Hampshire all will be well.

Buttercup,

The only time I saw non-Asian Gentiles in my public school was during lunch or PE. But I was forced to acknowledge that at least they existed and in a voucher system even that minimal contact would disappear.

People don't know what makes schools good or bad. The fact that anyone believes that NCLB will have any positive impact is absolute proof of that. If kids can't pass the test, the authorities merely dumb down the test. I can show you about 40 years worth of NYS Math Regents exams that demonstrate the point. The recent FCAT results are just another example. The notion that kids learn anything is irrelevant to their parents. If parents want anything academic from the schools their kids go to, it is good grades. Whether the kids earn them doesn't matter. It is far more important for most parents that their kids have fun, keep out of their hair and off the streets than it is for them to have more than the most fleeting acquaintance with the English alphabet.

Bart: So, don't let kids an out of failing schools? Don't let private and religious schools compete with public schools for students? Don't test the kids? Do you have some connection or work for the public schools?

Why did the tests (like the regents) get dumbed down? They were pretty tough for many years beforehand, what happened? Even you say the tests went downhill over a period of 40 years. To my knowledge FCAT and NCLB didn't exist until just 5-6 years ago,so how are they to blame?

It really is a joke every time a teacher bemoans that he/she has to "teach to the test." Explain how learning how to read, write and solve math problems are not the basis of all other learning? Didn't Freidman have an editorial over the weekend complaining that teachers can't be free to just teach the joy of learning instead of nasty old boring basics? I don't know many people who have mastered the joy of learning without being able to read. Maybe that joy will somehow make it possible to absorb Shakespeare through osmosis.

And sitting on one end of the cafeteria for 30 minutes with only people from your socio economic background doesn't mean you acknowledged anything. How do you know what the voucher system will do? The kids that go to my kids' Catholic school are fully integrated. No remedial classes segregating out the blacks and hispanics. We are too small an operation to be able to even think about that. Plus the whole religious thing tends to expect us not to treat others that way.

I was acquainted with Catholic education from K-12 and I think it's anything but homogenous -- in fact, I suspect much of the opposition to it comes from people who don't want "those people" flooding into their classrooms. Middle-class and rich parents already self-segregate their kids from crappy schools and they'd be absolutely nuts not to. Hard to see why gifted children or even ordinary children born into hard-luck circumstances shouldn't be given that opportunity. Sentencing them to jailhouse-like schools because of their socieconomic background is perverse.

With the onset of the voucher experiment, I don't exactly think you're going to see D.C. schoolchildren experiencing a new breed of segregation or social stratification. It's at least worth waiting for the results to pour in before we pass judgment.

bart:

Yes, it was when they were doing so. Now they mostly preach self-help because the white man is just trying to keep blacks in poverty. They sound like Newt Gingrich.

Not at all.

The simplest way to create schools that have standards is to reimpose standards. The only thing that stops the reimposition of standards in American public education is parents. Parents don't want standards. They want a situation where every kid gets an A, whether they actually learn anything is ancillary. Test the kids. Give them real tests. Make them study. Make them perform. Assign them (gasp!) homework. When I taught Freshman Calc at Rutgers and at Southern Miss, I told kids on the first day of class that I expected them to have to study 2 hours per credit hour per week. They were in shock, being used to 15 minutes a night of homework if that.

The FCAT and NCLB are examples of the same reality that the Regents are a part of. The NY Regents were a Progressive-era innovation that worked. Success on the Regents tracked actual knowledge. In New York they got dumbed down so that the Christians could pass them too. It was and is all about politics. The schools are political entities, run by politicians, so they give the public what they want.

I agree with you about the idiots who complain about 'teaching to the test.' In this world, we are at some point expected to actually know something. Tests are supposed to be designed to test actual knowledge. There is a certain quantum of information that needs to be passed along at each grade level in each subject and we can test for that. People who complain about 'teaching to the test' are merely trying to escape responsibility. Parents, who complain far more about it than teachers do, are trying merely to avoid having any demands made of their little snotnoses.

In a voucher system, I'd have to go to a Solomon Schechter or some other Jewish religious school. Any time spent studying Torah or Talmud is time wasted that could be spent studying math and science. I'm familiar with Jewish parochial education, I have family involved in it and my cousin, Chana, is the business administrator for the most important organization for them in NYC. They give English short shrift as they do many secular subjects. Her kids, born here, have accents, which is simply unacceptable. It just doesn't do the job as well as quality public education. The distribution of the Jewish population across the US makes my freedom of movement in a voucher environment just about impossible.

Of course, you don't have 'remedial classes.' A private school can just boot out the non-performing or the disruptive. A public school cannot. The way to solve that problem is to create special schools for the disruptive and the non-performing, again like existed in NYC prior to the Lindsay Administration.

We have a successful model of public education. It is what was done in NYC for the first half of the 20th century and its impact on the US economy and intellectual life should be apparent to anyone. That system is similar to systems which work all over the globe from Singapore to Slovenia. Of course, this requires ignoring the whining of parents who want to excuse away the misdeeds and failures of their progeny.

bart:

Schools have the standards of those running them. That's why public schools are garbage and parochial quite good.

Most parochial schools around the country of whatever faith are crap, primarily because their faculties are made up of people who can't get the public school jobs, which in fact pay better.

In the US, your best chance is to go to a quality public school like Chappaqua or Great Neck or Tenafly not to a private or parochial one.

teachers don't matter.

My parochial school teachers were mostly fairly religious, active in the church types. I'm pretty sure a number had worked in public schools previously and chose to work at a Catholic school for the experience.

oj,

Once again, you show that education is one of the myriad of subjects about which you know absolutely nothing.

RC,

The difference in pay is not small, public school pay averages about 50% higher. This is not chump change, and unless people who enter the teaching profession are immune to the same financial pressures that affect everyone else in the labor force, quality tracks money.

1600 students five years into Bush II.

Ted Kennedy's still cashing big teacher union thank-you's.

Let's cut our "victories" and get something done here. Vouchers spell the end of liberalism, any conservatives tired of these educational "victories" need to push hard on this one, bind and gag McCain and Graham if necessary.

Orrin:

What do you mean: "teachers don't matter"? What does, the gym equipment?

Bart:

No, quality does not always track money. Teaching in the public school system is like being at the bottom of a huge bureaucracy that moves in response to all kinds of political/irrational forces. It can be very demoralizing, especially for good teachers and many of those choose the private system if they can afford it, just as lots of people prefer to work for themselves than be in a bureaucracy. It's a problem, for sure, but don't scorn the notion of vocation just because not everyone is moved by it.

Peter:

No, what's taught.

Religious schools are required to meet certain standards in most states, in New York it is a Board of Regents Test standard which was fairly rigorous at one time. If the Nation of Islam meets those standards (which would be difficult to do with their unique views on world history) they will produce well educated children. Parochial school teachers usually serve out of altruism or a spiritual drive producing situations like retired Phd's and highly educated spouses of ceo's teaching 5th graders. They do what they do because they want to. Parochial school kids, overall, tend to outperform their public school peers at about 1/3 the cost.

And parochial school students perform better on the tests.

Bart - Competition and choice have never failed yet to improve the quality of any product or service.

Money is a separate issue. If money follows the child, parochial schools will have as much money as public schools.

I know several public school teachers who send their kids to our parochial school. Why is that?

One of my friends is a special ed teacher. She desperately wants a job at my kids school. Its less money, but the job is a great deal more pleasant. People can be motivated by other factors besides money.

And, Bart, you say the best way to improve schools would be to come up with higher standards. But, if parents are happy with the children graduating with out being educated, what makes you think they will just choose higher standards imposed from on high? And if these parents are so happy with social promotion why is everyone complaining about schools to begin with?

Vouchers may not be perfect but they will put a lot more control in the parents hands, give them choices without having to move to outrageously priced neighborhoods (I mean, you seriously suggest we all move to one of three districts?) and also make the parents shoulder more responsibility. If the kid can't read but you can move him to a better school, than who's fault is it?

Tom,

The educational bureaucracy will do what it has always done, and that is to lower the standards. If not enough Black Muslims pass the test, it is obviously the fault of the people who drafted the test and the test is made far less rigorous. Most parochial school teachers I know are kids out of college who can't get a job in a public school and are trying to pad the resume. Sure they can do it at a lower cost, because they can boot out the disruptive and the non-performing. A public school cannot.

OJ and PJ,

Again, you fail to acknowledge that a private school can boot out the stupid and the violent while a place must be found for them in a public school. The competition as such is inherently unfair.

Buttercup,

Parochial schools offer different things from public schools. For example, one might, like my relatives who send their kids to religious schools, want his kids to get religious instruction on a regular basis. One also might be unable to afford to live in an area with decent public schools. Also, one can have reasonable concerns about physical safety of one's children. There are many public schools in the nation where that is a real issue. The answer is not to abandon the public schools but instead to remove the disruptive and the violent from them.

Individuals can be motivated by factors other than money but when one looks at large numbers money is the prime motivator.

Standards should be 'imposed from on high' whether parents like it or not. The vast majority of humanity has enough difficulty walking erect and the idea that they should be allowed to determine educational policy is as absurd as insisting that the public determine proper medical care or what constitutes proper architectural standards. Successful educational systems around the world don't give a damn what parents have to say for the most part. They are far more concerned with the needs of the economy and the ability of future generations to pay their tax burden. Do you seriously think anybody at the Japanese Ministry of Education cares what some peon has to say about what the standards to get into the University of Tokyo are going to be?

Americans aren't upset by social promotion until they see its results and then it's too late. I spend enough of my time screaming at kids who can't spell correctly, who use improper grammar, who can't organize a decent paragraph, let alone a halfway cogent argument, to believe that parents give a damn about educational quality. Parents want the sheepskin for their kids and they really don't care whether they have to work for it or whether it comes out of a Cracker Jack box.

Vouchers do nothing positive. They will result in the end of one of the few places where our diverse society is forced to integrate, with the concomitant result that Americans will increasingly 'group-identify' and will be even less individualistic than they are. The Belgian and Canadian examples is instructive here. It is essentially a 'bilingual education' program writ large, with all students being essentially ghettoized.

bart:

And yet parents pay through the nose to send their kids to parochial schools that are crap?

OJ:

Right -- parochial schools are much better by any measure. I had a number of very qualified teachers during my Catholic K-12 years, especially in high school, who could have made much more somewhere else but stayed because of the good environment and the values.

Good Lord, Bart, the yellow menace? Seriously? Are we still worried that the mighty Japanese bureaucracy is going to bury us?

The purpose of elementary school is assimilation and indoctrination. Kids learn (or should learn) to show up on time and looking presentable; to speak standard English; to be respectfull towards those higher in the hierarchy; to learn what the rules are and to follow them; and to understand that actions have consequences. If they also pick up a little reading and math along the way, that's fine and dandy.

bart:

They don't though. Parochial schools drawing on the same populations of troubled students outperform public schools.

Matt,

People also eat at McDonalds. Most people don't know good education from bad any more than they know good music from bad. There's lots more rap than Mozart out there.

I also stated that there are reasons for which a parent would choose a religious education. Further, my point is that parochial schools are better than crappy public ones but worse than the good public schools. Lots of families cannot afford to live in areas with good public schools and so are compelled to choose private or parochial.

David,

The same could be said of much of the First World, not just Japan. Or don't you care that most graduate students in the sciences at American universities are foreigners? American schools simply do not produce enough kids who care about academic matters. Japan, Taiwan, India, Singapore(my favorite), Slovenia, Austria, and many others do. At some point that will matter from an economic perspective.

The academic ability of American kids is along the same bell-shaped curve as any other country's. However, other nations expect their kids to know something whereas in America we let the little snotnoses glide through until they enter the workforce and give their superiors, like yours truly, apoplexy when they can't pay proper attention to detail, when such attention is essential.

That the Japanese economy is screwed up for political reasons does not mean that they do not produce armies of talented kids, far better trained than their American counterparts when they leave high school.

Maybe it took all of elementary school for you to learn to sit down, shut up and do as you're told, but some of us were doing Algebra and studying Latin. European kids regularly are doing foreign language study and what in America is high school level math and science by age 10.

OJ,

Parochial schools regularly boot out the troublemakers. That is a simple fact. That is what makes the alleged competition unfair. Parochial schools also use methods of discipline which the political class has decided, due to parental pressure, are inappropriate for public schools.

If you don't understand those differences, I can't help you. But then you think the invention of antibiotics is a minor matter so your basic grasp of reality is obviously extremely tenuous.

bart:

Yes, same students better discipline better education. It's not very complex.

True enough, but wouldn't it be cheaper and simpler to impose better discipline on the public schools than to take taxpayer money and throw it at schools whose educational merit is dubious?

I can't speak generally, but the parochial school around here are all considered superior to the public schools. Now, it may be because, as bart notes, the disruptive and uninterested kids get kicked out, but I suspect it's rather that those kids' parents never apply in the first place. I also find bart's fundamental logic inscrutible – even if his claim is true, so what? The solution is to trap all kids in dysfunctional educational systems? I think we'd all be better off, even the "bad" kids, if public schools became the repository of the uncaring and disruptive, as long as vouchers provided an escape route for kids or parents who wanted to do better.

bart:

Well, my Catholic high school (from which I graduated not all that long ago) tested the best in a five-state area, but that's a personal example and maybe not indicative of the national experience. But even assuming for a moment your point is correct, I don't see why impecunious parents in the ghetto shouldn't be able to send their kids to parochial or better-end public schools, either of which would be an improvement over their current circumstances. I think this plan could be combined with much of what you already suggest -- i.e., return to the pre-Lindsay policy of segregating the troublemakers in their own schools, enforce high standards, etc. I'll take some degree of competition over a sclerotic bureaucracy any day.

Also, you seem to agree with me that many parents will pay exorbitant amounts (once in taxes, once in more-expensive private schooling) to send their kids to religious schools for the values, but that not many qualified instructors will take a pay cut for the same reason. If my experience with Catholic education is typical, and it might not be, then plenty of very good teachers forsake a great deal of money to stick around in parochial schools.

bart:

No. It's cheaper, they get a better education, and they're better citizens if you send them to parochial school.

AOG:

It's like that in my area too -- the parochial schools are all considered much better than the alternatives. At my old high school, a rather lackadaisical and low-performing student (not that I'm in a position to condemn anyone for that!) left after our freshman year and got almost a 4.0 after transferring to one of the best public high schools in the area. The son of a family acquaintance got a 27 on his ACT -- which admittedly isn't bad at all -- and was getting something like a 4.5 GPA (don't ask me how that works) at another high-end public high school in our area. Believe me, that would never happen in an Omaha Catholic school.

Matt,

Vouchers certainly are a better answer than what kids in the inner city get now. But why not go back to what we did in the pre-Lindsay Administration days when poor New Yorkers could get quality educations at their local public schools? There is nothing stopping the imposition of real standards in even the worst of American public schools.

If it were up to me, I'd make it easier for parents of public school kids to get religious education while at the public school. When I was 14, I went to an Alsatian lycee(high school) and, due to some weird quirk in French law, Alsatian kids received religious instruction while in public school. Mine was from a travelling rabbinical student from Paris. It seemed perfectly reasonable for the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish kids to go to their secular classes together and for the religious classes to be held at a particular hour in the public school. There is no good reason why we couldn't do this in America. Under such circumstances, lots of parents who opt for religious education full-time would choose the public schools.

OJ,

I simply disagree with the idea that it is cheaper(make the ACLU pay the legal fees resulting from their attempts at disrupting the schools) and I fail to see how isolating people in educational ghettos based on religion, perhaps the most divisive force in human history, will make them better citizens. If anything it will serve to increase inter-group hostilities in America, to the point where the United States is no longer, in any serious way, united.

bart:

Disagreeing with facts is a sign of insanity.

bart:

Why not do both? I think lots of ghetto schools are crapholes largely because parents have no other options. It'll be easier to enforce standards if parents can ship their kids out. Parents may not always hold their kids to high academic standards, but most of them do want their kids to be able to read.

I wouldn't worry about the divisive religious effects -- many, probably most parochial schools take in students from other faiths and I've never seen any acrimony develop as a result. If most Americans indulge in that atavistic kind of thinking then I've really misjudged the American character.

I'm not sure what to think of your idea to allow some religious instruction in public schools, but pissing off Barry Lynn and the ACLU would be a huge plus in my book. ;-)

I assume, though, that we can all agree that tenure for public school teachers is nuts.

Bart: rich school districts already have vouchers by virtue of the fact that the parents can send their kids anywhere, public or private, because cost is not an obstacle; yet, most rich public schools are very good, this is the real voucher effect: improvement through competition

David,

If we eliminated tenure for public school teachers, we'd be returning to the bad old days when public sector employees had to kick back a percentage of their salaries to the political party that got them their jobs.

Matt,

Your point is a fair one. I would say that religious instruction is part of the entire educational experience and that there is no good reason to impose a foreign religion on an individual student. As I've said elsewhere, a familiarity with the New Testament should be an essential of a quality education.

bart:

Now we call that union dues

Orrin sends his kids to public school. Case closed.

We can't afford private. Give us vouchers and the kids will go to the local Christian school.

OJ,

Get a job.

And leave the kids in day care?

You can afford it.

If my father, who had much less money than you do, could, you can.

Or take out a loan. You're always saying how debt doesn't count because you're betting on the come.

You father faced the prospect of Southern schools.