Obama deprive Washington DC kids of education his girls have? (racism, how much)
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Because everyone benefits from universal public education, everyone pays for it. Doesn't matter whether you ever have kids, or if you do, whether any of them ever attends. It's not really so much different from country club dues. Membership has its priveleges. It also has its costs. These go hand in hand...
I don't want my taxes paying for private (exclusive) schools when education should be inclusive.
Empirical studies don't support your concern.
"Contrary to widespread claims, the empirical research finds no substantial difference between segregation levels in public and private schools. Quite the opposite is true; at the classroom level, a preferable level of analysis, the research indicates that private schools actually are less segregated than public schools. The daily classroom experience of students in private schools exposes them to better racial mixing than the experience of students in public schools. Even at the school level, the research finds no substantial difference between public and private schools. Also contrary to widespread claims, school vouchers do not put students into more segregated schools. In fact, all the available empirical research finds that vouchers in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Washington D.C. are moving students into private schools that are substantially less segregated than the local public schools."
Are you saying that Obama made a campaign promise that he had no way of keeping? Didn't Obama promise parents that they would have the same educational choices that he and Michelle have for their children?
Go dig up the quote and see for yourself if you can't remember it...
Go dig up the quote and see for yourself if you can't remember it...
Tried to. He's been all over the board with the issue. And it's a tough one.
Best as I can tell, his official stance *today* is that he supports charter schools but he does not support school vouchers for low income kids. Which means that the kids currently on vouchers at Sidwell (and there are some) will probably need to find a new school soon.
Guess I answered my own question. Sorry to trouble you.
I don't care why some parents choose to send their kids to private schools. It's their choice, although the ones that do so in order to keep their children from being exposed to dangerous ideas like evolution are no doubt doing a disservice to society as a whole.
Well, this objection falls flat as soon as you realize that not all private schools teach only creationism.
Quote:
Private schools and the vouchers to send childen there are not a panacea.
I see. You're one of the 'we can't save them all, so we won't save any' crowd.
Pell Grants and CCDBG funding, etc. used at private institutions are okay, but school vouchers aren't. That's hypocritical.
Maybe the kids in the Washington D.C. area aren't interested in a great education? Sometimes, no matter what you throw at an educational system, kids will p iss it away if their parents don't care. I think our educational system needs to be revamped on many levels... but more importantly, parents need to stop being so freakin' lazy when it comes to education for their kids - they need to play an active role and not just drop their kids off so the school can babysit.
Maybe the kids in the Washington D.C. area aren't interested in a great education? Sometimes, no matter what you throw at an educational system, kids will p iss it away if their parents don't care if they are educated or not. I think our educational system needs to be revamped on many levels... but more importantly, parents need to stop being so freakin' lazy when it comes to education for their kids - they need to play an active role and not just drop their kids off so the school can babysit.
I honestly think that's part of the problem. But there ARE kids who DO want to pursue a rigorous education, and they cut across all racial and socio-economic lines. The problem is that those students are mixed in with the ones who couldn't care less like you mention above, and it holds the ones who want to learn back. I haven't seen one suggestion from the anti-voucher crowd on how we can prevent that from happening.
We also need suggestions from the anti-voucher crowd on how they plan to address highly capable students who learn little to nothing in their public school classrooms because their achievement level is already beyond that year's curriculum. Or do they just plan on continuing to waste that potential?
"The anti-voucher crowd clicks its church-state angst on and off like a flashlight. Federal vouchers for church-based educational services? "We want more!" for preschoolers. However, they're "pure evil" for kids in kindergarten through high school. But "give us more!" for college students." - Deroy Murdock
"Contrary to widespread claims, the empirical research finds no substantial difference between segregation levels in public and private schools. Quite the opposite is true; at the classroom level, a preferable level of analysis, the research indicates that private schools actually are less segregated than public schools. The daily classroom experience of students in private schools exposes them to better racial mixing than the experience of students in public schools. Even at the school level, the research finds no substantial difference between public and private schools.Also contrary to widespread claims, school vouchers do not put students into more segregated schools. In fact, all the available empirical research finds that vouchers in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Washington D.C. are moving students into private schools that are substantially less segregated than the local public schools."
The Friedman Foundation is so noted for its biases that this report must begin with a plea to the reader to ignore the fact that they are biased, and instead take the report on faith unless the reader himself can identify some source of methodological error. As if the public at large were sufficiently well trained in statistical analysis to identify such errors, had access to all of the original data sources, and was willing to invest the time necessary to replicate the study, which is itself an analysis of seven other studies. My, what big teeth you have, Grandma!
From then reviewing the actual study on Washington DC that this report analyzes, it is immediately evident that the "better racial mixing" that the quote above claims arises universally from there being more white kids in the participating private school classrooms. Many more in fact. Without the voucher students themselves, there would actually be well fewer than half the number of minority students in these private schools as are found in the city's public schools. So, I suppose it's fair to say that if you are a minority student coming from a public school that was 70% minority and ending up in a private school that is 70% white, you have moved to a "less segregated" environment, but wouldn't it have been a little more direct simply to have said that the particpating private schools are much more heavily white than are the public schools from which voucher students transfer?
And I notice you didn't include with your quote this part...
The studies reviewed below, while they use valid empirical methods, do not answer all questions relevant to vouchers and segregation. In particular, the available evidence is only descriptive.
Descriptive? This is a code word for admitting that there is no causality to be found here, only correlation. It would be "descriptive" to note that 60% of participating private schools that are located on streets running north-south are on the east side of those streets. Interesting enough, but there is no way to associate that tilt toward eastsided-ness in any way with the DC voucher program, so what's the point of bringing it up at all???
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