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In these proposals, how would the $$ amount of the tax credit be determined? Would it be based on property value, income (% of taxes paid) or a flat rate in which everybody receives the same amount? What about single parents? Blended families with joint or shared custody?
Would this be a city, county, or federal tax credit?
The amount would be per child based on the demographics for an area, similar to what is done today with private industry hiring in different parts of the country. A starting carpenter for Bechtel makes 28K in Amarillo, TX and 44K in NY,NY for instance (or did a few years ago).
I would imagine it would be a tax credit administered by states since that's where most current educational funding comes from, but it would work regardless of which level of government administered it.
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How would this program be managed/maintained? (think of the Katrina vouchers ) Someone has to distribute them to ensure that the right people receive them. Someone has to collect them. Who would the schools turn those credits in to?
If the existing taxes are no longer being paid in to the government, then where would those tax credits come from?
It would be managed in the same way that tax credits are now. Either a dollar for dollar reduction in taxes owed or (for really low income families) as the EIT credit works now.
The existing taxes are no longer paid to the government because they are instead paid to the schools. The origin and destination of the money remain the same, it's the middle part of the money trail that changes.
All the above are just the details of how the idea would work. Tax credits/distribution/demographic adjustments/etc are all done everyday. The mechanisms (the actual nuts and bolts) are nothing new, only the idea that they be used for public education. We're not talking about reinventing the wheel here, just putting wheels onto a wagon bed that's been stuck in the weeds.
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I agree that the federal government has too much involvement and I am all for less government but some of the stuff that they mandate has good basis. I don't want my kids' education being determined by only local agendas and prejudices.
Your kids education is being determined by other folks agendas and prejudices NOW. That's a major part of the problem with the current system. The difference is that you don't have any choice in the matter (unless you are wealthy enough to pay for public education AND private).
In a system where YOU decide where to send your kids, YOU decide whether your kids will include God in the Pledge of Allegiance, learn the details of sex at 5 and 6 years old, learn that homosexuality is to be revered, celebrate Christmas, etc, etc. In the current system THE GOVERNMENT DECIDES FOR YOU.
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Our free market economy would most likely drive the price of private education up. Many private schools are at capacity now. With more people wanting to put their tax credits in that direction, they could raise the prices and still turn folks away.
Competition (a free market) drives prices down and/or quality up...ALWAYS. It's one of the most basic tenets of economics. In this case the price wouldn't go down because there would be no competitive advantage for a school to lower prices. The price is set by the amount of the tax credit.
The way that schools would have to compete to be the parent's choice of school for their kids is with quality.
If there were schools that were so much better than the alternatives they had waiting lists, they might get away with raising prices temporarily, but someone else would quickly see the market opportunity and start another school of equal or better quality to take advantage of it. That's not speculation, it's the way free markets work...ALWAYS.
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I am not familiar with how much time and effort is wasted currently to comply with all the regs. It doesn't sound like less government to me, just a lot of government being shifted around. Mind you brother, I am not disagreeing with the idea, just the feasibility.
There would still be governmental involvement, that's unavoidable with anything that's tax funded whether through government payments or through tax credits. One fundamental difference though is that when schools have to compete for parental choice, the PARENTS become the customer instead of the government. Government would of necessity be involved in the allocation/distribution of funds, but they wouldn't be involved in the day to day operations of schools or in regulating them (more than regs that apply to everybody).
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I like the idea of schools in competition, but this assumes there is a large enough population base to support a competition.
For example, there were 13 kids in my graduating class. There was just not room enough for two schools; public, private or otherwise.
There will be places like that where there is essentially little choice, but even there it would be rare that there was NO choice. Where I lived in NM the graduating classes were from 15-24 students, but there WAS a Catholic school too. In any case even those communities would benefit from the lack of governmental interference, and in the end staying there and sending your kids to that school IS a choice. One of the reasons I moved from WY to NM was BECAUSE of the better quality (though tiny) school.