How is that different from the status quo? It seems likely that more students will end up going to private schools because of this subsidy, and some public schools will have to shrink, but why is that bad?
The status quo is that 10% of k-12 students to go private school. Most private school have a religious affiliation. That may or may not matter to you. It does matter to me.
What we see in higher education are two types of private schools. One type are nonprofit and one type are profit. The for profit schools tend to be predatory have much worse outcomes than the public schools or nonprofit ones. The nonprofit ones tend to fall into two categories. The ones with nice endowments are exclusive and very good. We will see this happen with k-12 with vouchers.
From a school’s perspective a voucher is exactly as if a student got a student loan in that amount. Those who think federally backed loans are a problem in higher education ought to be opposed to vouchers for k-12.
> - There are many non-religious private schools like magnets and charters.
Magnet schools are public schools in the US that draw from multiple schools and usually have a particular focus (arts & languages, STEM, etc.). The main limiter on magnet school attendance is their capacity. I ended up in one in HS with a capacity of 1500 students, for a city with over 1 million people at the time (not sure the number of HS aged people). It cost nothing extra to attend, you had to apply and interview to get in and the public school bus system took care of getting everyone to the school no matter where they lived in the county.
EDIT: And I had to double check because I've only recently lived in an area with charter schools and have no kids yet so didn't really care much, but they're also technically public schools in the US. They are publicly funded and have no tuition costs to attend.
Most private k-12 schools are religiously affiliated.
Do you have this much concern for the poor when it comes to funding public transportation, healthcare, childcare, pre-school, school lunch, and dental care?
- Mississippi is richer than Germany and France without progressive social policies. Since you are questioning my motives, do you have a concern for the poor yourself?
Mississippi is not richer than Germany in the ways that truly matter. It is hard for Americans to comprehend but money is not the end all be all of being human. Life expectancy is greater in Germany. Worker conditions are better in Germany. Germans have far more vacation time. The infrastructure and way the cities are built are such that one doesn’t need a car. That expense is not taken into account when looking at income statistics. German healthcare doesn’t leave one bankrupt if you get a major illness or disease. Higher education is cheaper. Life is better in Germany than in Mississippi.
Having a few more dollars doesn’t make up for these discrepancies.
> Mississippi is richer than Germany and France without progressive social policies.
By what measure? Using GDP Mississippi appears to have a GDP of around $100 billion. France and Germany both have GDPs in the trillions. Normalized by population, both are still larger than Mississippi.
Mississippi: $105 billion / 2.95 million = $34.90k/person
France : $2.958 trillion / 67.75 million = $43.66k
Germany : $4.26 trillion / 83.2 million = $52.2k
Because it’s funneling public funds into private hands. Funds that would previously have gone to the public schools. Now the public schools are worse and the private schools are elites only but also subsidized.
The price of keeping public schools the way they are is trashing the future of many bright but poor kids who have no choice but to waste their time in what seems to be a mix of a kindergarten and a corrections facility.
The price of failing the not bright kids is we end up with a mob of undereducated people who are unable to function as contributing healthy adults in today's modern society.
It's a hard problem, but I can't fault people who believe public schools should focus on not failing the bottom section rather than accelerating the top achievers.
>The price of failing the not bright kids is we end up with a mob of undereducated people who are unable to function as contributing healthy adults in today's modern society.
This is already the case though. I grew up in a “low income” area and whenever I visit my parents I see people I went to Highschool with walking around in the streets.
Something’s got to change but unfortunately I do not have the answer. Hopefully AI will save us all.
I wish people would think as much about the poor when it came time to fund job programs, healthcare, childcare, food stamps, universal pre-school, raising the minimum wage, increasing public transportation, and improving working conditions.
What bothers me about this right here is that at one time or another one of these was heralded as THE solution that would alleviate poverty. Why is it always food stamps, minimum wage, and ubi? I thought minimum wage would have solved/alleviated the food problem. It seems to me that there is a general failure to acknowledge the big picture. Being impoverished means lack of resources. I say pick one general solution, either ubi or negative income tax, and let the poor choose what they need. It does a real disservice to the poor to always be for every policy that is notionally meant to help them. It seems disingenuous and not very well thought out. As Eminem famously said,”these goddamn foodstamps won’t buy diapers”.
The people most in favor of school vouchers in the U.S. are mostly conservatives who oppose programs for poor people in almost all other contexts. When it comes to school vouchers though they act, disingenuously in my opinion, as if concern for the poor is what really matters to them in this issue. School vouchers, ultimately, are a way for religious conservatives to have the public pay for the religious indoctrination of their kids.
My comment was an attempt to point out this hypocrisy.
What we see in higher education are two types of private schools. One type are nonprofit and one type are profit. The for profit schools tend to be predatory have much worse outcomes than the public schools or nonprofit ones. The nonprofit ones tend to fall into two categories. The ones with nice endowments are exclusive and very good. We will see this happen with k-12 with vouchers.
From a school’s perspective a voucher is exactly as if a student got a student loan in that amount. Those who think federally backed loans are a problem in higher education ought to be opposed to vouchers for k-12.