The funding of public schools in the ghetto is not much different than funding for schools in rich neighborhoods; that was the case before, but over the past several years, funding has started to correct for that. Not to say that funding is now on par, but the (small) differences can no longer explain the vast differences in performance.

As far as the professors broad brush of public schools, I still think that his point is valid. He was not saying that there are no good public schools, only that as long as competition is not a primary factor, they will never be the best they can be. Take the post office as an example, when the post office had a government monopoly, it would perform well in certain areas and really bad in other areas, its performance varied from area to area. Allowing for competition changed all that and made the post office, and the mail carrying system overall, much better than it previously was. Certainly some residential areas didn’t see much of a change, but there were other areas that saw a great change. All in all, privatizing the postal system by allowing competition strengthened both, the USPS and mail carrying overall. The draining of ‘valuable funding’ to the USPS did not cause its extinction, but instead made it a much stronger more efficient public service. I strongly believe the same would be the case if public schools were opened to competition.

As far as parent involvement goes, I completely agree. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that greater parental involvement has a larger potential for improving the education of children in the ghetto than vouchers does, but how exactly do you encourage greater parental involvement? How could the government do that? There really is no way to do that aside from ground work in the streets. In addition, vouchers, by giving parents a larger role in their childrens education, also has the potential to increase parental involvement in a childs education, because parents will know that their involvement has real live immediate consequences.

My point is taht the failings of education lies in parents as much as the schools. Parents must get involved in education.

Inner city schools are terribly underfunded and siphoning money away from them to private schools is not going to improve them. There should be more equity in aid. High performing wealthy districts should receive less federal and state aide because the parents can afford it.

It is no coincidence that the worse performing public schools (schools in the ghetto) are the ones where there is the least amount of competition. Parents in middle and upper class neighborhoods have the financial resources to send their kids to a private school if the public school underperforms, but parents in poor neighbhorhoods have no such luxery. Hence the underperforming of public schools in the ghetto.

Competition in public schools is directly correlated with the performance of public schools, and those of us who support vouchers, want to also extend that competition to the ghettos of the United States.

#1 - Government K-12 schools, as now run everywhere in the U.S., will never excel at educating students.

The PUBLIC SCHOOL (”government schools” are the latest buzzword created by right wingers to use semantics to shape debate like calling an estate tax a death tax)that I went to and the ones in the district where I live in now is excellent. Over 95% of the students go onto college, high AP passing rate, high SAT scores etc. I’ll stack it up against any private school out there.

#2 - “The reason is that each school gets its students and its budget without having to compete for them.”

Of course public shools compete for students. Anybody who knows anything about the residential real estate business will tell you that the first question almost evey perspective buyer asks is “how are the schools” If the answer is good, the house is much more valuable. If it is poor it is less valuable. In my town there are two school districts one is top rated, one not so highly rated. Identical homes in the better district sell for $100’s of thousands of dollars more. Parents pressure adminsitrators, teachers, school board members to contantly improve the schools for the benefits of the kids and the economic benefits they see in increased home sales prices.

As far as the budget, in NY state, every year in every school district, the svhool budget must be approved by a public vote. If the budget is out of line or the school is underperforming, the budget fails.

#3 - We will be warned that only by paying higher taxes will we have any possibility of getting better supermarkets.

In my communty the parents really hold the administrators and teachers feet to the fire. The have a large say in shaping the ciriculum and put pressure on the school board to hire effective administrators before taxes are raised.

and the excuses offered by the government-employed managers of the supermarkets will remain that they need yet more funding.

#4 - and the excuses offered by the government-employed managers of the supermarkets will remain that they need yet more funding.

It is the fact that the school districts with the highest funding per student have the highest achieving schools.