Btw, that does not mean that I support ’socialized medicine, transportation and housing’, quite the opposite, if you provide vouchers for the poor, instead of having the government provide the service itself, it leads to a more free-market approach to each of these services. Just like vouchers in education would tend to de-centralize our public education system and break the government monopoly that it currently has, so would vouchers in health care and housing.

a few voucher dollars thrown at the poor that would pay for no more than substandard private schools in the ghetto while at the same time allowing those middle-class families the edge they want to put their children in private schools out of the neighborhood and away from the hoi polloi.

Who is arguing for middle class vouchers? Look at all of the voucher posts I have posted on this blog, and you will see that about 100% of them have been in regards to vouchers for the poor. Others argue that vouchers should be universal, and I have no problem with that, but my main concern is vouchers for the poor. As soon as that is achieved, vouchers would stop being a hot issue for me.

And this is really how its been implemented. If you look at vouchers in Florida, for example, vouchers only go to the children in failing schools. They are not given to children in good schools, and they are not given universally, they are only given to children that attend failing schools, and even then, only after the schools have been warned for several years.

So here we have a system that directly rebuts your concerns and shows improvements, especially for the poor minority students previously doomed to a failing school. Proponents of vouchers want to give this same thing to other children stuck in failing schools.

What do opponents of vouchers want to give them? You summarize it well when you say, Maybe a better option would simply be adequately funding and overseeing the public options.

In other words, nothing. What you are basically saying is that we should continue to do what we’ve been trying to do for the past 30+ years, and every new minority generation that is robbed of the American dream should simply be patient ‘with the system’…

Frankly, I think it’s time for our patience to run out.

Interesting concept - rich and poor should have the same options. Why don’t we extend this to health care and housing. We could give each poor family vouchers to enable them to be treated by the same doctors as the Bushes, perhaps. Perhaps transportation vouchers as well, so they could receive the same elective surgeries that may be outlawed in some states.

Then there would be housing vouchers to allow the poor to live in apartments and houses next to the rest of us - with nice yards, outstanding neighborhood parks, police who come when you call, potholes that are filled immediately and streetlights that are always lit at night. The most elite pre-schools would be free of charge so that poor children would be rubbing shoulders with your children and the Bushes’ children from the time they are in the crib.

Why not car and gasoline vouchers as well so that the poor could also be part of the ecological problem?

HP is supporting socialized medicine, transportation and housing?

Or did you mean “separate and unequal” - a few voucher dollars thrown at the poor that would pay for no more than substandard private schools in the ghetto while at the same time allowing those middle-class families the edge they want to put their children in private schools out of the neighborhood and away from the hoi polloi.

Maybe a better option would simply be adequately funding and overseeing the public options.

Either way, my focus is not primarily on how public schools in general do, but what competition is doing to public schools, and on that point Jeb Bush leaves no confusion in his claim, he writes:

Researchers from the Manhattan Institute, Harvard and Cornell have independently studied Florida’s private school choice programs. All three studies concluded that the threat of vouchers actually creates the greatest improvement in struggling schools. Given the choice between losing students and raising the quality of education, schools rise to the challenge and make tremendous gains.

I don’t claim that all public schools are bad, or even that all charter schools or private schools are good. Certainly there are really good public schools and certainly there are really bad private and charter schools. My point here is that parents, when faced with a failing public school, should simply get the same options that rich people have: the ability to send their kid to a different school. Rich white families have this option all the time, shouldn’t poor minority families also have the same option? If the public school in their neighborhood is good, than certainly, the parents should leave their children in that public school. But what happens if the public school in their neighborhood is extremely bad, what do you propose parents do? Should they be forced to just sit back and watch the public school rob their next generation of the American dream? Or should they be given the resources to do something about it?

That is the difference between the voucher proponents and the voucher opponents: the voucher proponents give these parents options, the voucher opponents give them nothing.

I didn’t need an elite private school education (a la Bush) to notice the slippery language the governor used here. (In 1998, only 51% of 4th graders could read at grade level, now 71% can pick up a book and read it independently”) What book? At what grade level? Do we need to compare apples and oranges to sell a lemon?

Anecdotally, I know that students in my town are getting a far more thorough education now than when I was in school. Further, that my latino, first generation high school graduates-to-be are taking many more challenging courses - the maths, sciences - and are challenged to a far greater standard of analytical and writing skills than even 10 years ago. Still further, that many students who were home schooled or attended Christian schools are opting for the public high school due to the superior education. Their parents frequently opt them out of certain works of literature, but they still recognize the level of preparation available in the public high school. Private Christian schools are available, but no competition.

“Cutting Edge Education News.” How misleading that is to me, an educator. One might read that and think that there might be some new info on early literacy or math instruction, etc. But no!

I don’t remember seeing anyone of those names in my ed classes or any of the ed journals that I currently read.

Is this really an education blog or is it an “I want to bitch about my current displeasure about the state of education blog?”

Hmmm…