Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Libertarian Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim S who wrote (4399)	11/2/2000 11:57:12 AM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 13056

Nuts, Christopher. Here we are just getting to the good part of this discussion, and I have to leave in a few minutes for a several day long trip. So, you prefer business (or is it pleasure?) to a good discussion? CANCEL the trip so we can keep this up! All the teachers displaced by vouchers wouldn't be going to the private school system. I'd venture to guess that only a small percentage would, and they'd be the better ones. A better argument for your side would be that only the worst teachers would stay in the public schools, and they'd have either tenure or longevity. I think only a small percentage is low. If half the students went into private/charter schools, those schools would need tens or hundreds of thousands of teachers. And lots of public school teachers would be out of work. Where would the schools get their teachers from--particularly given that private/charter schools tend to pay less than public schools, what qualified people are they going to be able to recruit, realistically? As to which teachers would stay, most schools RIF on a pure seniority basis. So the older teachers would have the choice of staying or going. Sometimes they're the best teachers, sometimes they're deadwood. Please clarify your thoughts on the per capita budget for the students who remain in a public school -- if half the students take the vouchers and leave, and the vouchers represent 1/2 of the tax money available per student, the school gets a 50% increase(*)in their per student budget. So they effectively have more money available to educate the high cost students, and perhaps more importantly, they can provide more individualized attention than they can under the current system. In our state, the state pays the public schools so many dollars per FTE. Half the students equals half the money. That's what I based it on. Other states may be different. But I can guarantee you that no state will keep the current amount of funding for its public schools and still pay out millions to charter/private schools. No state I know of has that kind of budget surplus. No, the public schools would lose a lot of their budgets -- but would still have the same buildings to maintain, bus routes to run. And I guarantee that if school funding were cut in half the amount spent on administration would NOT be cut in half. Maybe 10%. But maybe it would go up because they need more administrators to figure out how to deal with the funding shortfall -- that's the mentality of school administrators.