[opendais]

> Is this really necessary? Surely a substantial fraction of kids could walk, bike, and/or take a public transit bus to the nearest school like I did. Or if driving has to be involved (why?) they could organize/join an informal neighborhood carpool.

Did you do this when you were 5 and the nearest good school is 5+ miles away? No?

> Anyway yeah, I'd probably drop most of that. Or pay for it out of a very small fraction of the money saved.

At which point you aren't talking about school choice, but cutting the safety net for poor children.

Kay, well I'm dropping this since you seem to think "separate but equal" on a class basis is acceptable. We won't agree on anything.

Look, you can't say "Oh, private schools are cheaper because we can throw the poor kids under the bus by cutting their safety net". That isn't an acceptable solution.

[glenra]

The poor kids are the ones getting shafted by the status quo! They get "assigned" to schools that are terrible and don't even have the option to go somewhere better, even if it's just as convenient to get the kids there. School choice is a safety net for poor children.

Having more but smaller schools with more choice means shorter commutes and a better school experience for everyone, but most of all for the poor. (The rich can afford to either move to a better public school district or pay twice, once for a public school option they're not using and a second time for a private school option they are, so they're fine either way.)

So from my perspective you're the one throwing the poor kids under the bus. You're saying the poor kids assigned to terrible, unsafe schools should just suck it up and tolerate it (and hope that maybe the political system fixes it sometime far in the distant future) rather than just pick (or create!) a better option right now.

I agree that we're probably not going to agree. But to tie up one last loose end:

> Did you do this [travel alone] when you were 5 and the nearest good school is 5+ miles away? No?

When I was 5 I walked to a public grade school that was less than a mile away - one of 2 or 3 in the area that met that criteria. In middle school (grades 7-8) my morning bike commute was 4.5 miles - though another option was to walk or bike 1.5 miles a different direction and take a public bus the rest of the way.

[opendais]

> If you want vouchers, you need to fund every child equally...including the fact they may live in the wrong neighborhood. You don't get to say "Too bad, kid, you live in Compton. No one can get you to a good school on time unless we gave you more than every other kid."

I'm not sure if your didn't understand that bit or what the issue is. I'm fine with vouchers as long as they actually cover what is currently provided.

And you are assuming they all live in major cities [hint: 20% of the population is rural/small town america].

Look, your plan requires: 1) Preventing poor kids from eating lunch [because they have no money] 2) Preventing poor kids from having sufficient transportation to get to school in all areas of this country, not just major cities. 2b) You want kids to walk unescorted in terrible, unsafe [your words, not mine] neighborhoods to make it to "better schools".

In reality, my objection is the fact you won't pay for the above which you conveniently and consistently ignore. Instead, you claim you are trying to "help them" while simultaneously starving them and increasing the economic burden on their family to get all students to a good school.

The reality is you cannot magically cut spending and rely on the free market to fix things. If you want services to remain roughly the same, you have to spend roughly the same amount of money regardless of if it is the government spending it in the form of public education or vouchers.

Personally, I think vouchers that provide the same level of service as currently exists in an apples-to-apples way is perfectly fine. The problem is, people like you pretend these services are somehow a complete waste of money servicing an imaginary need. They aren't an imaginary need.

I know poor people who live in a rural area that literally have to cross a lake that is more than a mile across to get to a school that teaches K-12 because it is the only school in the area for about 50 miles in any direction. You pretend such people are imaginary and do not exist to come to your "solution".