I found this article, School Voucher Law Unconstitutional, Colorado Judge Decides and I worry about this.
“I see no way to interpret the voucher program statute in a way that does not run afoul of the principle of local control,” he wrote.
Of course it will run afoul, that’s the purpose of vouchers in the first place. To shake up the status quo.
Public education is a massive public bureaucracy. I know because one job I had was working as a Memphis City Schools contractor. The amount of people in non-teaching positions makes bloated look anorexic. They had so many administrative positions they used several former schools as offices.
Any business without meaningful competition becomes stagnant. That is what the public education system is, stagnant. The inner-city schools where the drop-out and illiteracy rates are sky-high are the worst. There are other reasons behind these rates besides ineffective school systems, but this is one we can work on.
In Memphis, those who can afford it send their kids to private schools. Those who can’t are stuck with the public system and that is just wrong.
Before the liberalization of the public school system, schools were authorized to use corporal punishment when necessary. I myself was “cracked” on several occasions. Students who were incorrigible were separated from the regular students and sent to disciplinary schools in the system. They did not sacrifice the future of 29 students to avoid wounding the self-esteem of one student.
Nowadays, feelings are more important than facts. This must stop. Get your kids out of such an environment NOW.
The best way to reform the public school system is through market forces. That means competition. If the public school system wants to attract students, it must clean up the campuses and the curriculum.
The bad news is the public school system will only get worse. The students who don’t want to learn, the ones who are on drugs or part of gangs will soon be the only students at public schools. They will be left to the public schools because the private schools will not put up with things like that.
Unless the public system shapes up. If the public system wants to attract the good students, they must do several things. Have a curriculum worth teaching. Make the campuses safe. Warehouse the ones who don’t want to learn in their own schools. You need to separate the wheat from the chaff and be damned about self-esteem. That comes when the kid successfully completes a project or passes a hard test.
You can never eliminate the bell curve, but you can do things like move the curve to the left.
Vouchers will be fought tooth-and-nail by the public school system because they know how bad they are doing. If vouchers were to take hold, you would see student performance skyrocket.
Fight for this if your kids are in bad public schools. You owe it to them.