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Downsize what? You can't magically downsize a building, maintenance costs...you still are going to need X amount of staff to work and teach.
Yes, you can. Happens all the time. Conversely, when new schools are built, they are frequently built larger than the current need based on population projection studies, and only the currently required facilities are used until expansion into the unused space and hiring more staff and admin is necessary.
Bad analogy. School systems close down underused schools, or even wings of schools, and consolidate all the time. Households who have a child go off to college, don't.
Chicago Public Schools closed 54 just a few years ago.
I don't necessarily think it's a bad analogy because parents downsize all the time when the kids go off to college. Some choose not to. But the "choose" is the operative word.
The big difference is that in one case, the people paying the bills are choosing whether or not to downsize accordingly, while in the other case, someone else is choosing for them.
School systems are by and large managed at the local level. If a county wants to allow its residents to send their children to the public school of their choice ("school choice"), it can do so. Some counties allow this, most counties don't, but the Federal Government is not involved.
As others have noted, vouchers overwhelming redistribute taxpayer funds to the upper middle class and wealthy. Why? Because in most cases, vouchers don't cover full tuition costs. Instead, they typically cover a fixed amount. The typical voucher is about $12,000/year toward a private school. A private school might cost $25,000/year. In my area, private schools cost $30,000-45,000/year.
Under the voucher system, if you can't afford to pay the difference to send your kids to private school (most charter schools are private schools), then your kids remain in a public school that must make up the funding shortfall (typically with larger class sizes), and you get zero benefit from the voucher.
School systems are by and large managed at the local level. If a county wants to allow its residents to send their children to the public school of their choice ("school choice"), it can do so. Some counties allow this, most counties don't, but the Federal Government is not involved.
As others have noted, vouchers tend to redistribute taxpayer funds to the upper middle class and wealthy. Why? Because in most cases, vouchers don't cover full tuition costs. Instead, they typically cover a fixed amount. The typical voucher is about $12,000/year toward a private school. A private school might cost $20,000/year. In my area, all of the better private schools cost $30,000-45,000/year.
Under the voucher system, if you can't afford to pay the difference to send your kids to private school (most charter schools are private schools), then your kids remain in a public school that will have to make up the funding shortfall (most commonly with larger class sizes), and you get zero benefit from the voucher.
School systems are by and large managed at the local level. If a county wants to allow its residents to send their children to the public school of their choice ("school choice"), it can do so. Some counties allow this, most counties don't, but the Federal Government is not involved.
As others have noted, vouchers tend to redistribute taxpayer funds to the upper middle class and wealthy. Why? Because in most cases, vouchers don't cover full tuition costs. Instead, they typically cover a fixed amount. The typical voucher is about $12,000/year toward a private school. A private school might cost $20,000/year. In my area, all of the better private schools cost $30,000-45,000/year.
Under the voucher system, if you can't afford to pay the difference to send your kids to private school (most charter schools are private schools), then your kids remain in a public school that will have to make up the funding shortfall (most commonly with larger class sizes), and you get zero benefit from the voucher.
Well said.
The other reality is that private schools are not held to the same standards as public schools. What ends up happening is that public schools get stuck with the bad apples and "special needs" students, that are tougher and more expensive to educate. Conservatives tend to be totally fine with all of this.
It depends on where the vouchers can be used. If they're only for public charter schools, the same problems are present that exist in the public school system. If they can be used at private schools, both Time Magazine and the Washington DC voucher program have found better educational results among the voucher students. On my phone now, but I'll post links in a bit.
The links I promised...
Quote:
"The study suggests vouchers for private schools are unnecessary because — once you control for socioeconomic status — students at private schools aren't performing any better than those at public schools. The study says that it is "the kinds of economic and resource advantages their parents can give [students]" — as well as the level of parental involvement in their kids' education —that determines success or failure in high school. That's a message the teachers' unions and Democrats in general love: The problem isn't in the schools; it's with social inequality.
Except that's not exactly what the data shows. It's true that controlling for socioeconomic status (SES) eliminates most of the public-school/private-school differences in achievement-test scores in math, reading, science and history. But even after you control for SES, Catholic schools run by holy orders (not those overseen by the local bishop) turned out to perform better than other schools studied."
The positive impact of the DC voucher program (they call them "scholarships") had significantly better results with students who were more highly achieving from the start. A FULL 25% percentage point higher high school graduation rate for higher achieving students who used vouchers to attend a private school.
Quote:
"Those who entered the Program with relatively higher levels of academic performance had a positive impact of 14 percentage points from the offer of a scholarship and 25 percentage points from the use of a scholarship."
Democrats receive more votes. In the House. In the Senate. For President. Due to congressional gerrymandering, gerrymandering at state level districting, the electoral college, and voter suppression, we are the majority, but we are terribly underrepresented.
Most people in America support public education, civil rights, and progressive policies. The alt-right is NOT the majority.
Last edited by TheWatchmen; 11-25-2016 at 08:03 AM..
I don't necessarily think it's a bad analogy because parents downsize all the time when the kids go off to college. Some choose not to. But the "choose" is the operative word.
The big difference is that in one case, the people paying the bills are choosing whether or not to downsize accordingly, while in the other case, someone else is choosing for them.
That's true. The point is that when downsizing is needed, costs can be and are reduced by closing/consolidating.
Except the flaw in your argument and the funding formulas, is that if that student leaves the school, the school's expenses don't magically go down by the same amount.
I honestly don't care, if we have to go through an expensive process for a decade or two that has long term benefits for both quality of education and lower costs I'm all for it. As it stands now we are throwing money at a problem that is not improving, the single biggest issue as I see it is no accountability to the parents because they have no choice. If you hand them a voucher you get accountability.
Under Corbett there was a very good proposal. The pilot program would have given the students in the lowest performing schools a voucher, that voucher was good for use at a public or private school.
One very important hing needs to be pointed out here, here in PA about half the budget for the school is local funding. Schools that would have lost students to other schools were only losing the state funding for that student. While the total funds would have dropped the funding per student would have increased in those poorly performing schools. The unions fought this tooth and nail....
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