I can see the attempt for this to be implemented but later on finding out that the voucher I recieved isn’t enough for the school I’d like my son to go to

Yes but, remember, even the school your son currently goes to will be better under vouchers. Because of competitive pressure, the floor level should pick up.

In addition, even if vouchers helps some students and not all…that is still a better situation than helping none. And lastly, your argument is not against vouchers per se, its an argument for more voucher money.

I personally would like to see all schools no matter what the location (inner city or suburb)no matter what ethnic background have the SAME educational opportunity. A voucher won’t solve that.

If this is your goal, then you are right, vouchers will never accomplish this. But you know what, nothing will. No matter what education system you design, families with more money, or more political connections, or more power will always be able to provide superior education for their children.

Your criteria reminds me of the famous quote from Churchill who said, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

I will be happy when even the worst school teaches its students proficiently in english and math…even if the kids up the street can do Calculus III.

Lastly, its important to remember that Vouchers have already been implemented and they do work. In fact, whether its vouchers or charter schools, the trend towards greater autonomy and less dependence on state and union entanglements have shown to be a boom to students - especially students in poor, minority areas.

You know it would serve the American people well if they didn’t have these soo called Liberals & Republicans!! What is up with all these labels. It was created to keep people divided. I agree on some issues with liberals and republicans.

Dude, I don’t think everybody is looking for the government to fix all the problems. What’s interesting though is that the freakin elected officials within the government have created these darn problems and the irony to that is that you don’t want them to fix the problems they have created! America was built on GREED, RACISIM, SEXISM & CLASSISM.

School choice means many things to different people. But what I call school choice, and what I believe to be the heart of school choice, is accountability. The key to the success of Capitalism is not the companies it creates, but the inefficient companies it eliminates. And the reason it does that so well is because of competition. Competition has repeatedly shown to be the greatest cause of efficiency than anything else. Under the current school system, if you lived in Compton, California, like I did, you would be forced to send your kid to that cities school system. What if that school system was wrought with gangs, failing teachers, and failing methods of teaching? There is nothing you could do, you would still be forced to send your kid to that school. Too bad for you.

Under vouchers/school choice, all of that changes. Before I get more into vouchers, let me give some background info. Currently in California, the government spends an average of $7,000 a year per student. In some other states, that number could approach 11K/year per student.

If a voucher plan was implemented, what would happen is all public schools would immediately go on a grading system. Those schools that fail for one consecutive year (or whatever time deemed by the Voucher designer), would be given a warning to improve and given a certain amount of time to do it. If that school does not improve in that period of time, vouchers would come into play, being phased in little by little to give the market time to catch up. The government would give the parents the $3,000, or some other fraction of the original amount of money that they had originally sent to that childs public school for that childs behalf. It’s important to note a few things here. One, that money is not coming out of anybodies taxes, it is coming out of money that was already being allocated for that child. Another point, the remaining ($4,000, in this example) goes back into the public schools that are passing to help encourage their success.

Now, what does that parent get to do with that 3k? This where the name voucher comes from, that voucher must be used for some other alternative means of education for that child, of the parents choosing. If the parent wants to send that child to some other school, in some other city, that is ok; if that parent wants to send that child to a private school fine. Shoot, if that parent wants to leave that child in the current school, that is fine too. In other words, the parent gets options that he/she never had before.

It’s important when discussing school choice not to get bogged down into the details of how school choice is implemented. Some voucher programs only allow the parent to send their kid to other public schools, some allow private schools. Some voucher programs give more money to the parents, some give less. Some have tougher grading scales on schools; some have more lenient grading scales. Some allow home schooling as an alternative to public schools, others don’t. Some don’t take the money given to the parents away from the school that fails, others do. The point here is not to get bogged down in the details but to see the overall picture. Vouchers, unlike any plan the liberals suggest, adds accountability to a school system that has never seen it before. A school system that has been a monopoly for most of its existence. And competition, just like its track record in economics, does wonders to create efficiency.

As far as #2, its important to remember that government cannot fix the problem - it is the problem. The fundamental problem of public schools are that they are a monopoly, a government monopoly. Which is the worse kind. Vouchers changes all of that.

This is my take on this:

#1 - We (United States) currently have a voucher system for housing and another system for Magnet Schools. In my opinion some people are reaping the benefits of both of these system. BUT, what about those whose number hasn’t come up to receive these vouchers? What happens to them and their children? Who is taking these children to these schools miles away when you have some single moms who don’t have vehicles or are working 2-3 jobs to support their family.

#2 - Why do our children (blacks, hispanics & lower class whites) have to go out of our communities to receive a so called better education. Why can’t the government invest monies into rebuilding better institutions and equip the teachers witht he necessary tools to teach our students? Why uproot a community of children to a school that could be replicated within their own community?

Each year I get to celebrate Independence Day twice. On June 30, I celebrate my independence day and on July 4, I celebrate America’s. This year is special because it marks the 40th anniversary of my independence.

On June 30, 1968, I escaped Communist Cuba, and a few months later I was in the United States to stay. That I happened to arrive in Richmond on Thanksgiving Day is just part of the story, but I digress.

I’ve thought a lot about the anniversary this year. The election-year rhetoric has made me think a lot about my native Cuba and what transpired there. In the late 1950’s, most Cubans thought Cuba needed a change, and they were
right. So when a young leader came along talking about change, every Cuban was at least very receptive.

When the young leader spoke eloquently and passionately and denounced the old system, the press in Cuba and even the USA fell in love with him. They never questioned who
his friends were or what he really believed in. When he said he would help the farmers and the poor and bring free medical care and education to all, everyone believed. When he said he would bring justice and equality to all, everyone said ‘Praise the Lord’ finally. And when the young charismatic leader said, ‘I will be for change and I will be the arbiter of that change, everyone yelled, ‘Viva Fidel!’

But everyone was so excited about the change, nobody bothered to ask about the details of the change. Well, by the time the executioner’s guns fell silent and the people’s own guns had been taken away. By the time everyone was equal, they were equally poor, hungry, and oppressed. By the
time everyone received their free education it was worth nothing. By the time the press noticed, it was too late, because they were now working for him. By the time the change was finally implemented Cuba had been knocked
down a couple of notches to Third-World status. By the time the change was done way more than a million people had taken to boats, rafts, and inner tubes, risking sharks or drowning to escape the change. You can call those who made it ashore with us to Florida or anywhere else in the world, the most fortunate Cubans. And now I am getting a very familiar feeling that goes back to the beginning of my story.

But, we would never fall for that in America. We wouldn’t put a young leader in charge of this great country who promised
change without asking: What change? How will you carry it out?
What will it cost America? Would we?

Manuel Alvarez, Jr.

Sounds like Castro and Obama were cut from the same cloth.

The voucher argument has been around for a while, as you pointed out. I am a big supporter of Friedman’s foundation promoting them, but as a political issue, vouchers are only a few presidential cycles deep. Vouchers in the south was not a quality issue, it was a race issue. Different issue.

I could care less about Giuliani. I’m glad I don’t live in New York. I’ll defer to you on that.

I actually came across the Heritage article two nights ago, and while I read the article and charts, I kind of dismissed it because it focused on new recruits and not the total number of soldiers in the Army.

As for where I got my data from, I got them from the U.S. Army. Why go to secondary sources? Don’t get me wrong, Heritage, who also admitted that African-Americans were overrepresented in terms of recruits to general population, did a great analysis of the data. But I preferred to obtain the data from the source itself. Download the briefing file (it;s in PowerPoint format) titled “Blacks in the U.S. Army-Then and Now.”

http://www.armyg1.army.mil/hr/demographics.asp

It includes the following black officials: Active Duty, Reserves, Army Civilians and Army National Guard. It compares the population of black soldiers to the U.S. population of blacks ages 18-55. Perhaps that’s why Heritage and other right-wing organizations spin the stats by using the U.S. Black population of all ages. Maybe next time you should go straight to the source as opposed to quoting spin doctors.

The Army data reads that Blacks ages 18-55 make up 12% of the U.S. population whereas Blacks make up 20% of the U.S. Army. That doesn’t sound like much, but in an army of 1 million soldiers, that’s at least several thousand soldiers.

I’ll admit that minorities in fact do not make the lion share of soldiers in the U.S. military. But even Heritage admits that Blacks are overrepresented among all soldiers.

As for school vouchers, I’m not sure what your definition of recent is. Private school vouchers first appeared in the South in the late 1960s by Democrat politicians to allow white children to attend all-white schools. When Rudy Ghouliani ran for Mayor of New York City in 1993, he was originally in favor of school vouchers, but for some reason gave in to the Teachers’ Unions a year later and said he opposed private school vouchers. Milton Friedman has been a huge supporter of school vouchers since the 1950s. I have no idea how old you are, Stephen, so I have no clear picture of what “recent” means to you. I was born in 1978, so I consider anything from the 1950s and 60s to be old.

I never said I gave a pass to the teachers’ unions on the voucher argument. I strongly oppose teachers’ unions because they do not reward good teachers or punish bad ones and also because they oppose school vouchers. But regardless of how poor the quality of education has become because of teachers’ unions, they cannot be blamed for an unsafe learning environment. Teachers are supposed to teach, not provide security services.

Ghouliani did not create the mess that was the NYC public school system. He inherited it from David Dinkins, who inherited it from Ed Koch. But like the two Mayors before him, he did absolutely nothing about the corruption from both the UFT and the Board of Ed.

I can see why Ghouliani did not do well among conservatives in the Republican Primary. A New York Times article from 1997 quoted him as saying “Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it.” In other words, we are free to do as we’re told. Sounds like communism to me.

As a New Yorker who endured his Mayoralty, I would have to say that making New York safer was the only thing Ghouliani did right. He is great at law enforcement and would make a great Attorney General or perhaps a head warden at some detention center, but in terms of general leadership, Ghouliani is a horrible leader. Some non-New Yorkers would say that he did a great job on 9/11, but don’t say that to a New York City firefighter, as 300+ firemen perished because their radios, which were purchased under Giuliani’s reign and were of inferior quality to the police radios, failed to receive the call to evacuate the Twin Towers. Also, the decision to have the City’s Office of Emergency Management based solely in a building that had been attacked by a terrorist bombing in 1993 wasn’t that great an idea, either.

Police brutality and harassment was at an all-time high when Ghouliani was Mayor. Even his African-American Deputy Mayor Rudy Washington filed a complaint that police officers had harassed him. Then there’s the case of Abner Louima, who was arrested in Brooklyn, taken back to the precinct where the arresting officers shoved a plunger into his rectum several times. Then there’s the case of Amadou Diallo, who was shot dead (the police fired 41 times at him) by 19 bullets when he pulled out his wallet, which police thought was a firearm. How many bullets would it take to immobilize you? Apparently, this was an impromptu execution, and because the NYPD was Ghouliani’s favorite agency, they felt they could do anything they wanted and get away with it. Studies have shown that that the reduction in the crime rate in New York City during the late 90s probably had more to do with the improvement of the national economy during the Clinton Administration and federal funding for 7,000 additional NYPD recruits in 1992 than anything Ghouliani did.

So am I biased about my hatred for Rudy Giuliani? I guess so, since I actually had to live in New York City and watch him control the Big Apple with an iron fist. I won’t compare him to Hitler although I do feel Giuliani is a narcissist whose only idea of maintaining order comes from watching over the shoulder of every citizen at all times. I’m surprised my family’s mail didn’t already come opened while Giuliani was Mayor.

As for my failure to make logical and reasoned opinions about a candidate, I cannot support a candidate who is endorsed by an idiot (Bush) who will spend this country into the Third World and who wants to keep troops in Iraq for the next hundred years. I cannot support someone who wants to build a wall to keep out illegal aliens along the Mexican border but fails to build a barrier along the much longer Canadian border, especially when studies have shown that most illegal aliens enter this country legally and then violate the terms of their green cards or student visas. That’s interesting considering McCain claims to be against pork barrel spending and pledges to reduce government spending overall.

McCain’s Senate record is impressive, and I definitely would’ve voted for him in 2000 if he hadn’t been defeated by George W. Bush. But the John McCain running for President seems to be very different from John McCain, Senator and former POW.

Like I said, McCain figures he cannot argue to the Urban League about his support for a war that so many Americans, especially minorities, are skeptic about so he pulls out the school voucher argument. Public schools may be dangerous, but it’s not teachers’ unions that have led to the deaths of over 4,000 Americans.

There are indeed parents that don’t care about their kids, but you are more likely to get parents who care about their kids than union bosses who care about someone else kids. Vouchers aren’t perfect, but they are definitely better.

you know as well as i obama has at least a nuanced position on vouchers. http://www.nysun.com/national/obama-open-to-private-school-vouchers/71403/ at worst, obama is pandering to the democratic base which both candidates are guilty of one way or another. mccain’s “obama is a kid and i know everything” tone is getting old.

for a third viewpoint, see http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-applebee1-2008aug01,0,6288101.story

her inherent point basically suggests that neither solution will solve the problem due to families who don’t care — its at least a reasonable argument.

cfe

(sorry to get back to the point of the post ;))