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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Merritt who wrote (35217)	11/4/1998 1:34:00 AM
From: Skeeter Bug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

merritt, you have explained the marketing arm of the voucher program. the reality will be much different. i always laugh when politicians say how a reduced flat tax will benefit poor people. let's see, the wealthy will reduce their bill by x amount and so the non wealthy will have their taxes reduced too? i'm not that dumb. the marketing and the reality are two different things. this program was not, is not and never has been about helping the poor. this program is designed to 1. reduce the cost of private school for wealthy people and 2. reduce the cost of education for middle class peoiple and screw the rest. i'm not with that. poor people still won't be able to afford private school. if no other money is required then EVERYONE will go to private school and then they become public schools. so, why not just buckle down and work with the public schools? because rich and middle class people don't wan their kids around poor kids.

To: Merritt who wrote (35217)	11/4/1998 10:53:00 AM
From: HB	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

One interesting possibility would be to have vouchers worth approximately the cost of a public education, but not allow voucher-accepting schools to charge anything but what they get from the voucher. That way we wouldn't be subsidizing those who want and can afford a much more expensive education, but would allow for the possibility that private schools could provide a better education at the same cost. I'm not sure where I stand on this issue, though. I know, fairly directly, of a case in which a kid was having nightmares because of the stuff he was being told in a Christian preschool (burning in hell, etc..); when the parents took him out of that school because of that and other concerns about the quality of the education, the school sicced the child-abuse authorities on the parents. (Not saying this is typical of Christian schools, of course.) I could imagine that a rapid proliferation of private schools could increase the incidence of such stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if some kids have to suffer in pretty low-grade schools either because their parents just don't care, or because they put some hardcore version of religion ahead of a decent education. Probably not too prevalent, but I'd guess it would happen. There would be standards, of course, but they could be hard to enforce.