Take this to heart!

I don’t doubt that the system can be improved on. The question is do you dump the whole system without having something better to replace it? There are examples of private schools that have done well by their students. There are also nightmare stories of private schools that have failed. For one thing what happens to a community when the private school that serves it go bankrupt? How about schools that loose their accreditation? In fact who will be responsible for taking care of that accreditation? Replacing the entire public school system on a national level is a huge undertaking and I disagree with those that say the present system it beyond repair.

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Who's to say the system would be taken over by large corporations anyway?



Who’s going to handle the job, a bunch of small businesses?
 
It doesn't require shutting down all public schools. Or even any of them.

It does require introducing actual competition into the schools. Right now, by & large they have a monopoly. You have no choice. Your kid will go to the school your house is zoned for & that's that. The only ways out are to sell your house & move -obviously expensive- or to pay the entire bill for a private school, while losing the use of the tax dollars already allocated to the system for your kid. Also expensive.

Or you can home school. Well, that's not cheap nor easy either & not everyone is suited to do that.

End tenure, period. Schools need to be able to fire lousy teachers as needed. The teachers unions do not exist to further the education of kids, they exist for themselves & the teachers. I don't even have a problem with them doing that, except that they protect teachers who need to not be teachers. That needs to end. Let them negotiate pay scales, benefits & such, fine. When it comes to the hiring & firing of teachers, unions should have no voice at all.

Either vouchers or tax credits could be used to put competition back into it. Better yet, lower our federal taxes & get the feds out of primary education completely. Put those schools back in the hands of state & local governments where they belong & use either vouchers or tax credits at that level to enable parents to make the choice of where that money is spent when it comes to their kids. Public schools would either do a better job or they'd see their students leave & go to competing schools that do better. Those schools could be either public or private, entirely up to the parent.

I've put 2 kids through these schools in multiple districts & counties in 3 states & every year it was worse & worse. It isn't getting any better for kids still in the system or facing it.
 
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Replacing the entire public school system on a national level is a huge undertaking and I disagree with those that say the present system it beyond repair.



As Stu said, you don't have to replace anything but the method of funding. To the extent that you accept that the current problems in the system are the result of big government involvement, then the present system under the current method of funding IS beyond repair. That's a LEGAL FACT.

The Supreme Court has ruled that when ANY funding for an activity comes from the government, the government has a legal obligation to oversee that activity to ensure that ALL it's regulations are adhered to (in this case whether they have anything to do with education or not).
 
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The Supreme Court has ruled that when ANY funding for an activity comes from the government, the government has a legal obligation to oversee that activity to ensure that ALL it's regulations are adhered to (in this case whether they have anything to do with education or not).


The ruling by the supreme court requires oversight it doesn’t stop changes to the system.
 
If you believe that the changes should be more control by local administrators, teachers, and parents, then the SCOTUS rulings most certainly DO stop the required changes.
 
Any way you care to slice it, our public schools have become shining monuments to mediocrity. If we as a nation want to advance, stay on top of the game & stay competitive in the world, this isn't the way. We're well on our way to dumbing ourselves down enough to get our asses handed to us in any number of ways.
 
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Any way you care to slice it, our public schools have become shining monuments to mediocrity. If we as a nation want to advance, stay on top of the game & stay competitive in the world, this isn't the way. We're well on our way to dumbing ourselves down enough to get our asses handed to us in any number of ways.



You are correct and it just baffles me that most teachers and parents appear not to care. Very sad state of affairs. Our children and grandchildren are going to inherit a terrible consequence. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif
 
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I don’t doubt that the system can be improved on. The question is do you dump the whole system without having something better to replace it? There are examples of private schools that have done well by their students. There are also nightmare stories of private schools that have failed. For one thing what happens to a community when the private school that serves it go bankrupt? How about schools that loose their accreditation? In fact who will be responsible for taking care of that accreditation? Replacing the entire public school system on a national level is a huge undertaking and I disagree with those that say the present system it beyond repair.

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Who's to say the system would be taken over by large corporations anyway?



Who’s going to handle the job, a bunch of small businesses?



When I responded to your first post I advocated state control not federal. Should it ever become privatized (and it won't, just like socialist security) why couldn't small business run a school? Some corporations may have oversight of multiple schools or districts, but the free market contains it's own accountibility. Again, who is the government accountable to? This is no longer a government for, by and of the people. It is now a top heavy, bloated, self propogating bag of arrogance and you and I are footing the bill.
 
I'm with most of you guys.

I've got two sons in pvt schools (1 religious and one special needs secular) and it costs a bundle, yet my kids can run circles around their public school counterparts. naturally I still get to support the government schools, too, with my property taxes.

I recently looked through my son's public school cousin's work--he's one year older than my oldest boy--and I couldn't believe how worthless it was. Low level english and math, but lots of worthless feel-good socal(ist) crap.

Yeah, the NEA is the heart and soul of the Democrat party. It is a bloody crime what these people put into kids heads.
 
Enlighten me please. Where would the money for these 'tax credits' come from? I would imagine that in the most populated areas, the bulk of the students' parents are renters and pay zero property taxes. That would mean the gubmint would be handing out the tax credits which would then be the same as vouchers, right? And where would that money come from? Right out of my pocket. Same as now.

'No child left behind'. Public education. Socialism no matter how you package it.
 
I think it's safe to say that we're long, long past the point of arguing whether taxes will be spent on primary education & whether that education will be mandatory up to a certain age.

That genie's out of the bottle & I don't think you're going to have any luck at all in generating support on any large scale in stuffing it back in.

IMO, an educated populace is a valuable asset & one worth investing in. As my dad used to say, if you think education is expensive just try ignorance for a while.

However, we're spending more than ever & getting less than ever for it. What we have simply is not working any more, if you define 'working' to mean 'educating'.

Much of europe, now freed from communism, is already ahead of us on this curve. It's becoming common there for the parents to have the freedom to take the tax money allocated for their kid & make their own choice on which school, public or private, to spend it at. If we insist on doing the same thing we've been doing while expecting a different result, we're going to get what that attitude always gets. the same result. And it's going to really cost us in the long run.
 
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That would mean the gubmint would be handing out the tax credits which would then be the same as vouchers, right? And where would that money come from? Right out of my pocket. Same as now.



Yes, the money would still be coming out of our pockets, that's the definition of "publicly funded".

Tax credits would be very similar to vouchers in practice. The difference is in the flow of money which becomes important because of the Supreme Court rulings.

With vouchers the government takes our tax money and then "gives" parents the choice of which school to send their kids to. After the parents decide, the government then pays the school they chose. Legally (according to SCOTUS) the government still has the obligation to enforce all regulations that pertain to government because the money came from them.

With tax credits the parents are paying the schools directly and being "credited" (or reimbursed) by the government. Because the funds flow from the parents to the schools instead of the government to the schools, the government would have no authority to impose regulations that pertain to it but not to the public in general.
 
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Yes, the money would still be coming out of our pockets, that's the definition of "publicly funded".

Tax credits would be very similar to vouchers in practice. The difference is in the flow of money which becomes important because of the Supreme Court rulings.

With vouchers the government takes our tax money and then "gives" parents the choice of which school to send their kids to. After the parents decide, the government then pays the school they chose. Legally (according to SCOTUS) the government still has the obligation to enforce all regulations that pertain to government because the money came from them.

With tax credits the parents are paying the schools directly and being "credited" (or reimbursed) by the government. Because the funds flow from the parents to the schools instead of the government to the schools, the government would have no authority to impose regulations that pertain to it but not to the public in general.



Therein lies the flaw in these ideas! We pay the gov't to give folks the 'vouchers' and then we will pay (and get tax credits) for what basically amounts to a private school.

Now if that school doesn't want to mess with the gov't (Hillsdale reference), then those that receive vouchers will be left with the schools that are still under gov't control. How is that different from what we have now? Now, we send our kids to private school and we are still getting taxed for the public schools.

Who will ultimately pay for any 'tax credit' that we receive? Us! The working middle class that pays the bulk of school taxes now. The only thing that I can see happening is that the public schools will be less crowded. The private sector will be able to lure the 'good' teachers away. I just feel that the working middle class will end up paying more cumulative dollars than we would if we just sent our kids to private schools.

Our kids deserve better. The system is broken into so many pieces, we may not be able to put Humpty back together again. Public education needs to be completely re-evaluated. There aren't going to be many jobs left in the USA for folks with the level of education that we will be turning out for the next several years. Something needs to be done soon. Sorry, I don't have the solution but I'm always listening for a good one to rally behind.
 
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Therein lies the flaw in these ideas! We pay the gov't to give folks the 'vouchers' and then we will pay (and get tax credits) for what basically amounts to a private school.




Kelbro-

Think of it this way. What makes Public Education "Public"? Is it public funding or government control? By changing the method of funding to a tax credit system ALL education would be "Public" in the sense that it would be payed for with tax dollars (no matter which school parents sent their kids to), but NO SCHOOL would be government controlled.

We pay for education NOW. The idea isn't to magically make education "free" (there's no such thing), it's to have the money we pay NOW go towards education instead of regulatory compliance.

The idea is to change the method of payment. We wouldn't have vouchers AND taxes AND tax credits, we'd have tax credits...period. That way the government wouldn't be involved in the day-to-day administration of ANY schools.

What are now government run schools (the "public school system") would no doubt be run by the same administrators only without big brother telling them what to teach, how to teach, how to run the school, etc, and without having to spend significant percentages of their budgets on government required reports and paperwork that has zip to do with educating children.

I imagine many (maybe most) parents would choose to spend their tax credits to keep their kids right where they are, as long as the freed-up administrators, teachers, etc did a good job (and I expect most would).

Some parents would choose to spend their tax credits to send their kids to parochial schools or other "private" schools but wouldn't have to pay twice for each of their kid's educations (as they do now). That would make that option viable for anybody, not just the wealthy.

New schools probably would be started from scratch, probably most of them in specialized areas such as teaching genius kids or troubled kids or with a focus on the arts or science, etc.

All schools would live or die on performance as measured by the parent's willingness to send their kids to that school (competition).


It wouldn't cost more, and should by rights cost less since it eliminates most of the "administrative costs" that the government sucks out of every dollar it gets it's hands on.

Even more than that, it eliminates the "cost of compliance". Some districts now spend 20% of their budgets generating reports and doing the paperwork proving to the government that they are in compliance with government regs (how many students from what race and sex, how many from each race and sex in what economic strata, test scores by race sex and economic status, compliance with integration mandates, title IX, SCHIP, NCLB, etc, etc, etc), little to none of which has anything to do with actually teaching kids but all of which is required by the SCOTUS rulings, only because of the WAY we fund public education.
 
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?

How would this program be managed/maintained? (think of the Katrina vouchers /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif ) 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?

I have heard this concept for several years but the 'pro' side explanations have always been over-simplified with regards to execution. There are a lot of costs associated with this idea and that leads to new agencies and bureacracies.
 
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Kelbro-

Think of it this way. What makes Public Education "Public"? Is it public funding or government control? By changing the method of funding to a tax credit system ALL education would be "Public" in the sense that it would be payed for with tax dollars (no matter which school parents sent their kids to), but NO SCHOOL would be government controlled.

We pay for education NOW. The idea isn't to magically make education "free" (there's no such thing), it's to have the money we pay NOW go towards education instead of regulatory compliance.

The idea is to change the method of payment. We wouldn't have vouchers AND taxes AND tax credits, we'd have tax credits...period. That way the government wouldn't be involved in the day-to-day administration of ANY schools.

What are now government run schools (the "public school system") would no doubt be run by the same administrators only without big brother telling them what to teach, how to teach, how to run the school, etc, and without having to spend significant percentages of their budgets on government required reports and paperwork that has zip to do with educating children.

I imagine many (maybe most) parents would choose to spend their tax credits to keep their kids right where they are, as long as the freed-up administrators, teachers, etc did a good job (and I expect most would).





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.

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Some parents would choose to spend their tax credits to send their kids to parochial schools or other "private" schools but wouldn't have to pay twice for each of their kid's educations (as they do now). That would make that option viable for anybody, not just the wealthy.





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.

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New schools probably would be started from scratch, probably most of them in specialized areas such as teaching genius kids or troubled kids or with a focus on the arts or science, etc.

All schools would live or die on performance as measured by the parent's willingness to send their kids to that school (competition).


It wouldn't cost more, and should by rights cost less since it eliminates most of the "administrative costs" that the government sucks out of every dollar it gets it's hands on.

Even more than that, it eliminates the "cost of compliance". Some districts now spend 20% of their budgets generating reports and doing the paperwork proving to the government that they are in compliance with government regs (how many students from what race and sex, how many from each race and sex in what economic strata, test scores by race sex and economic status, compliance with integration mandates, title IX, SCHIP, NCLB, etc, etc, etc), little to none of which has anything to do with actually teaching kids but all of which is required by the SCOTUS rulings, only because of the WAY we fund public education.



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.
 
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.
 
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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.
 
Thanks for the explanation Leon.

When I moved to AZ a couple of years ago, I noticed a lot of the Charter Schools around. From what I gather, these are sort of 'specialty' schools. Are these schools public schools? Seems like the idea is a step in the right direction. Does this idea seem to be 'working'?
 
"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)."

It's not always a matter of wealth Leon. Compared to a lot of folks, I'm not wealthy, yet my two boys are in private school (two girls are homeschooled) For me, it is a matter of PRIORITY. We've had to sacrifice to have two in private school and even the costs associated with homeschooling aren't cheap. That said, I would saw off my right arm if necessary to keep them out of any government school. It boils down to whether one truly wants to invest in their children's futures and quality of life or merely accept the lowest common denominator. But, I wholeheartedly agree with the rest of your take on the subject.
 
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