Friday Evening Discussion: What Are Your Thoughts On The D.C. School Voucher Program?
Submitted by nelsonwinters on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 18:40I've haven't heard much about this, but this should be a big topic. Basically, there's a school voucher program in D.C. where parents can choose to get $7,500 per child from the government to send their children to a private school rather than send their children to public schools where the government pays $14,000 per child. Many parents are loving the voucher program and many public school unions are resenting having their funding diminished.
Well, it looks like Obama is shutting down the program. He's made some recent concessions to allow current students in the program to continue to receiving the vouchers, but will not allow any new students to enroll into the program.
Here's a video of a recent rally that was held by parents in favor of the voucher program:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V34kYMm82oo
Here's coverage on reason.tv:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7FS5B-CynM
From what I understand, some of the private schools are inferior to the public school. I would think that parents of those schools would clue in and either return their kids to the public school or find a different private school and the non-performing school would close down.
I know that many here would be against a voucher program on the basis that it's just an income redistribution scheme. However, I would like to focus on a voucher program versus the state run public school system.
Hypocrisy
Obama doesn't trust public schooling to educate his children but wishes to force it on everyone else. You see Obama's children are special and deserve a good quality education. Of course, the serfs can just stay with their crappy schools. It is so funny how successful this voucher program was being that it only offered nearly half of the cost spent on public schools! This is another example of the effectiveness of private enterprise.
"Greater than the force of mighty armies is the power of an idea whose time has come"
- Victor Hugo
Voucher is Free Market
It is counter intuitive but the DC Voucher program is the free market working by giving parents a choice instead of being forced by the government to go to the badly run school in your own area.
Because the NEA (a union and voting bloc dependent on government spending) does not want free choice, because if given a choice people will go to better run schools.
I went to school with Obama and it was a private school and now he sends his own kids to private school, he is a product of free choice in education. The irony is great.
Yes but, at the expense of the taxpayer...
I don't see that as free market...I see that as abuse of power. Charity and allocating "the peoples money" for pet projects are different....BTW, is his real name Barrack Hussien Obama born in the U.S.A? (I'm not being funny).
Close the department of education!
The constitution does not give everyone a right to education....it should be up to the communities how and what they want to do, with homeschooling as a guaranteed position...let the crappy communities fail if they fail. There are many kids today who don't want to go to school and who bring down the students who do.....Force never works...........for long.
I agree that the Dept of
I agree that the Dept of Education should be closed. However, that position is irrelevant in the current battle going on in D.C. In the battle going on there, there's two options keep the program going or end it. Which would you prefer to see happen?
End it and move out of that sh** hole...
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Let's solve the problem the free market way....
Eliminate the Department of Education (and other excessive departments), then let the free market decide which schools succeed and fail. (BTW Bet Mr. Obama's girls are attending private school!)
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Libera me, let the truth break, what my fears make..
Libera me......from this dark dream, to the life-stream! --Leslie Phillips
What's next after End the Fed? Repeal the XVI and XVII Amendments!
But that man should play the tyrant over God, and find Him a better man than himself, is astonishing drama indeed!~~D. Sayers
There is no difference between an authoritarian government from the right or the left...F. A.Schaeffer