5 - My position on vouchers - David Miller
“The virtual monopoly of our public schools in the arena of primary education is not beneficial to our society. ”
4 - Voucher Accountability: The Best Auditor (Referendum 1)
“… if the private school fails to satisfy the parents, what will happen? Tough accountability - the money and child shift to another school (public or private). The school will know they failed when they see the “pay cut” and poor performing private schools will, ultimately, go belly up.”
3 - Parents Know Their Children Best (Vouchers)(Referendum 1)
“Bottom line: I trust parents to know and meet their children’s educational interests better than I do and better than government bureaucrats do.”
2 - The Moral Case for Vouchers
“Voucher opponents consist primarily of members of a major labor union (teachers) and a corps of professional school administrators, both with a vested interest in the outcome. They fear a loss of power.”
1 - Weighing in on the Utah Voucher Program
“Whatever the government funds, it regulates. There is no public money given without legislative oversight. By accepting voucher money, private schools will have to meet government requirements”
4 comments ↓
The interesting piece of this argument is that it boils down to whether you believe that the focus of education is “for me/my kids” or “for all of the kids.” Both sides cannot agree because they have a fundamentally different viewpoint.
While I notice that you have a very pro-voucher stance, I don’t think the economics of the voucher program will do any good for the poor schoolchildren or schoolchildren with uninvolved parents.
Schools are mostly a fixed cost enterprise. Papers, pencils, school lunches and other variable costs are a fraction of what the school spends. Schools are planned to service a certain number of expected students in the community.
So if you have a few students trickle out, the school has to find budget for the same amount of fixed costs as before. If enough trickle out (like 9 students @ $3,000 loss each = $27,000 = new teacher salary), the school has to fire a teacher. So now 15 students (assuming a 24 student classroom) get distributed and further overload the other classrooms. IE the class sizes get bigger. As the class-sizes get bigger, teaching becomes more ineffective and more parents pull their kids.
This cascade-effect will kill most schools. What’s worse is that the effect is not immediate, but will take some time to suface. Once it does surface, it will likely be difficult to mitigate.
At sometime, even a good school will go belly-up. What do you do with the remaining kids? Is it their fault that they have poor performing parents or a lack of resources?
I don’t think the voucher program is well enough thought out. I think we need to go back to the drawing board.
Here is great response to the oreo ad: The REAL oreo voucher ad
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8Kt-i4pmV0)
I understand the point that schools have fixed costs. But most of the costs that public schools have are in teacher costs and administrative overhead union dues etc.
Vouchers would offer an innovative way to get rid of a lot of the wasteful overhead and they would work to offer students attending the worst schools an alternative. Granted 3k will not fund a kid entirely but 4-5 k would. Even Utah’s poorest families could swing 1-2k if it means not sending their kid to a horrible public school.
[...] Utah’s Referendum 1: 5 articles you don’t want to miss reading [...]
Leave a Comment