Do you support educational vouchers in schools?

In article et,
Don wrote:
"Herman Rubin" wrote
Let me make it clear again that I have no brief for schools
based on religion. What are needed are means of teaching
academics, through schools or, as I believe, otherwise.

What do you mean by *otherwise*?

Remote classes and independent study. Remote classes are
within budgetary reach; one problem with doing things in
schools is that there may not be enough local children
for a class. We do not know nearly enough to dispense
with the use of teachers, and I doubt we ever will, as
computers do not have the reasoning power of people; they
are super-fast sub-imbeciles.

Do not ask me to produce a fully designed educational
process; it cannot be done that quickly. It will have
to be done by those who do not follow lesson plans; they
will have to improvise as they go. But these people are
not the ones who can teach the same course over and over,
so they will have to provide instructions for the ones
who can learn concepts, but who are not too creative
to do the same thing over and over.


--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 02:39:02 GMT, "Don"
wrote:

"toto" wrote
Gee, you want us to pay taxes for a fire department that will fight
fires at your house, I see,

No, Dorothy, you don't see.
Where did I ever say I wanted you to pay for thing's I want?

So you will privately fund the fire and police services for yourself
and self-insure.

but not to educate the children of your
neighbors who don't have the money for private school tuition?

Are you saying that YOU want to pay for the education of the children in my
neighborhood?
Its a yes or no question.
You're not in Kansas anymore Dorothy.

I was never in Kansas, but nevermind.

I believe that we should have a federal education system as Germany,
Switzerland and other first world countries do and I believe that we
ought to fund this system through federal taxes. We should NOT fund
church schools in any way as the separation of church and state is
part of what made the United States unique and keeps us strong.
It's not popular to say this, but states' rights keeps us from having
the education we need all over the country. The standard should be
quite high, imo, but it should also allow for several paths. We
should not necessarily insist that every student has to go to college,
but that option should be open to them for a longer time. Thus a
student who drops out of high school academics may need to have
vocational options open, but be allowed to return to the academic
track when and if s/he decides that s/he needs it and will work for
it. We should not depend on property taxes to fund our schools either
since this causes the disparity between the schools in wealthy areas
and schools in poor areas. We need to bring the funding for poor
schools up to the standard where it needs to be. My ds and dd went
to a great public school in the suburbs of Chicago. The property
taxes for that school were quite high. I taught in an inner city
school where the funding was inadequate. The students there were
*not* the problem, but the fact is that we had fewer resources to
enable them to go on to college and they needed *more* not less.

We should also standardize our curriculum so that if a student
in New Hampshire takes Algebra I and moves to a school in Florida
or Mississippi or California, the course he has taken is the same
course in all those schools and he doesn't have to start over because
the Algebra I course in Mississippi covered quadratics, but his course
did not. Call a course by a name that makes sense and cover the same
topics in that course all over the country.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 02:41:15 GMT, "Don"
wrote:

Is the purpose education or indoctrination? The parent with a voucher
can
choose, the parent without cannot.

Finally a free thinker.
I was wondering if such a thing existed anymore.
They sure are scarce in this group.

Tell me you don't want students indoctrinated into thinking that the
capitalist system of economics as it exists in the US is the *best*
system that can be devised. I don't believe that you want *free
thinkers* if they oppose your own ideas.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 02:53:34 GMT, "Don"
wrote:


wrote
A $2,000 voucher at a school with $8,000 tuition is useless to a
family living in poverty but it is a free vacation to a wealthier
family that was otherwise going to pay the full $8,000.

What family pays $8k for a public school education?

The Evanston Public Schools tuition for out of district students
is $10,000.

That is the approximate amount of the per pupil spending in the
school district. And it buys a quality education for those who take
advantage of it.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 02:58:43 GMT, "Don"
wrote:

The only thing you know about the public schools is what you have been shown
on the TEEVEE.

When you have actually taught in a public school, then your knowledge
may come up to standard in terms of what is happening, but even then
it would be limited because you have not seen the bigger picture nor
have you looked at both good and bad schools and *why* they are the
way they are.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

In article ,
(Herman Rubin) wrote:

This is obvious in that the US always fares well at the top
levels of competition in physics, for example. If our best kids were
woefully outclassed internationally, then I'd agree with you
unreservedly, but that simply isn't the case. To devote MORE to them
would shortchange the very weakest group, where we struggle just to
get them to reach the MINIMUM level of competency. The public will
not accept shortchanging the lowest group to benefit the highest
group.

My son took his first mathematics competition at age nine,
as a member of the Palo Alto Junior High School team. His
score was about 50%, most of what was not done was due to
unfamiliarity with some tricks. I was very surprised to
learn that this put him in the top 10%; junior high schools
and high schools in the county presumably included their
best students on the teams, and they presumably prepared
for the exams.

This information, by itself, means nothing.

Some tests are designed with a high end that, say 10% of the best
students will get 100%. Others are designed so that only the top .01%
will get 100%, and in order to do that, even the top 10% may fall out at
50%.

Plus, if the test itself were designed for ALL Junior and Senior High
students, you would expect the junior high kids to "drop off" at lower
percentiles.

Without knowing how the test was designed, knowing that a 50% puts him
in the top 10% is meaningless -- hardly an indictment of his education,
or of the education of others.
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

(Herman Rubin) wrote:
As for the "public" deciding, there are many places in the
country where the voters would push for athletics, and let
academics go down.

And the voters have the right to do so, and they also have the right
to require that your kids attend those schools.

Don't like it? Move somewhere else, or talk the voters into changing
their minds. Or use the religious freedom exception to gain choice by
means of that free exercise, but they6 can't get government money to
pay for that choice. (You can start the Church of the Holy Concept,
Herman. I could attest that you have a religious belief in the power
of "concepts", which you appear to believe are all-powerful, and which
are invisible to the observation of anyone else but you.)

Also, we have to question VERY seriously if there should be
publicly controlled education.

There is, because "we the people" have said that there should be.
That is the only excuse needed.

lojbab
--
lojbab
Bob LeChevalier, Founder, The Logical Language Group
(Opinions are my own; I do not speak for the organization.)
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org

In article ,
Bob LeChevalier wrote:
(Herman Rubin) wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 14:00:56 -0400, "George" george@least wrote:

Is the purpose education or indoctrination? The parent with a voucher can
choose, the parent without cannot.

The "purpose" of what? Vouchers? The purpose of school vouchers is
to get the "public" to pay for your personal choices. Seems like a
bad idea to me, and fortunately, to most other people as well.

Do you mean that the people in power should have the right
to say what school a child should go to, and make it the
same regardless of the child's ability to learn?

The people who pay the money (the taxpayers in the case of public
funded education) have that right, indeed.

Do you
mean that those in power should be able to compel a child
without the financial resources to be placed in classrooms
with others of vastly different ability?

They should, because the alternatives are worse (removing taxpayer
control of expenditures).

As Jefferson wrote,

If Washington told us when to sow and when
to reap, we would soon want for bread.

Do you think that
people in power should be able to force those who cannot
afford otherwise to have their children taught by those who
would not pass the scrutiny of a subject-matter scholar as
to knowing anything other than memorization and routine?

They should, because the alternatives are worse (removing taxpayer
control of expenditures).

You are like the ones who would assess an annual tax of
around $5000 on everyone and provide "free" to competent
drivers a Yugo in poor condition.

Or like those who would not have allowed automobiles on
paved streets.

The public did not sign
on to let particular parents "have it their way", nor as some kind of
guarantee that everyone who wants to can become the next Einstein.

No, they want a guarantee that someone who can add to our
knowledge does not get a chance to do so.

They want no such guarantee.

They want a guarantee that nobody can take a stronger program
than their Johnny or Jane. This was not the case before the
Depression, when the educationists promised that all would
learn more if they were socialized rather than taught.

It has now
provided us with a collection of college students who
"did well" in high school but can no longer understand
anything except "plug and chug". These are useful for
clerks, assembly line workers, and auto mechanics, but
not for anything else, including teachers.

A large number of such college students seem to find gainful
employment doing "anything else". If the marketplace is willing to
pay them (especially at America labor rates), they must be useful.

We have to import foreign students to get good degrees,
or to handle the "high-tech" jobs in computing. Graduate
schools often have to give American students two years to
catch up with what could be expected 30 years ago. The
situation is getting worse.

The only reason our graduate schools are still doing fairly
well is that we do not have the government regimentation of
the foreign countries which could match us, although the
federal effective control of research and other aspects,
mostly by selective funding, seems to be changing that.

It
provides the flexibility to allow parents to "have it their way" only
if they have the ability to foot the resulting bill. Complicating the
issue is, of course, the requirement of separation of church and
state.

I have never shown any brief for religious schools.

But any voucher plan will primarily benefit religious schools,

In the short run, yes.

and
there is NO evidence that it will cause the formation of "academic
schools". The lack of such grade-free intensively-academic schools as
you envision among the charter schools that in many locales have the
power to do precisely what you describe, shows that there is no market
for them.

The charter schools are far more restricted than you think.
They are even regulated as to the height of chairs in the
various grades. Our congregation has been renting out
facilities to one, whose probably quite reasonable facilities
before were very likely quite adequate, and many changes had
to be made to meet state requirements with no relevance to
learning capabilities. Also, the state certification requirements
for teachers make it almost impossible to get good ones; people
in real academic subjects do not accept the qualifications of
the teachers, and Gresham's Law keeps them from doing anything
about it.

A few of the charter schools are administrative devices for
home schoolers; those are the ones which do academics.

--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

On 29 Apr 2005 12:07:25 -0500, (Herman
Rubin) wrote:


They want no such guarantee.

They want a guarantee that nobody can take a stronger program
than their Johnny or Jane. This was not the case before the
Depression, when the educationists promised that all would
learn more if they were socialized rather than taught.

Absol,utely ridiculous reasoning, Herman.

No one has any particular reason to say that other kids cannot
have a stronger or different program and most parents do *NOT*
concern themselves with what courses other children have or do
not have nor do most teachers care whether or not different children
take different and more difficult classes.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

(Herman Rubin) wrote:
In article ,
Bob LeChevalier wrote:
(Herman Rubin) wrote:

Do you
mean that those in power should be able to compel a child
without the financial resources to be placed in classrooms
with others of vastly different ability?

They should, because the alternatives are worse (removing taxpayer
control of expenditures).

As Jefferson wrote,
If Washington told us when to sow and when
to reap, we would soon want for bread.

Not relevant, since the primary taxpayer control on expenditures is at
the School Board level, with some broad policy issues at the state
level.

Do you think that
people in power should be able to force those who cannot
afford otherwise to have their children taught by those who
would not pass the scrutiny of a subject-matter scholar as
to knowing anything other than memorization and routine?

They should, because the alternatives are worse (removing taxpayer
control of expenditures).

You are like the ones who would assess an annual tax of
around $5000 on everyone and provide "free" to competent
drivers a Yugo in poor condition.

Since I would not do so, I am not like such.

If however, our society were to collect $5000 from everyone to support
a universal free mass transit system, then I would not support giving
people the option to take their $5000 from that system to buy either a
Yugo or a Mercedes or an Oldsmobile.

Or like those who would not have allowed automobiles on
paved streets.

No. That would correspond not allowing people to opt out of the
system using their own funding. The analogy to the current system is
not requiring the government to buy automobiles for those who don't
want to use public transit on the paved roads.

The public did not sign
on to let particular parents "have it their way", nor as some kind of
guarantee that everyone who wants to can become the next Einstein.

No, they want a guarantee that someone who can add to our
knowledge does not get a chance to do so.

They want no such guarantee.

They want a guarantee that nobody can take a stronger program
than their Johnny or Jane.

No. They want a guarantee that we don't spend resources on giving a
stronger program to Poindexter, while there remains so much
disatisfaction with the generic program made available to Johnny and
Jane.

This was not the case before the
Depression, when the educationists promised that all would
learn more if they were socialized rather than taught.

I doubt that you will find any "educationists" that made such a
"promise". Any such "promise" (which was only implied, since no one
can in fact legitimately promise any result of education) was rather
that all would learn more than some minimum standard (without raising
costs too much). I don't think anyone would claim that an Einstein
would learn more in any classroom for the masses than he would in
private tutoring.

It has now
provided us with a collection of college students who
"did well" in high school but can no longer understand
anything except "plug and chug". These are useful for
clerks, assembly line workers, and auto mechanics, but
not for anything else, including teachers.

A large number of such college students seem to find gainful
employment doing "anything else". If the marketplace is willing to
pay them (especially at America labor rates), they must be useful.

We have to import foreign students to get good degrees,
or to handle the "high-tech" jobs in computing.

No we don't. If we wanted to fire the professors, we could stop
offering the degrees and save money. Importing foreign students is
just a jobs program for tenured professors.

Very few high-tech jobs in computing need more than a bachelors
degree.

We could eliminate most of the foreign students, shut down the
corresponding programs, and do perfectly fine. If we did not find
some other way to pay for the professors' research needs, research
might suffer. They might have to pay market rates for good help
rather than have the foreign grad students as research slaves, but you
free market advocates don't want to pay market rates when it would be
your goose that gets cooked.

Graduate
schools often have to give American students two years to
catch up with what could be expected 30 years ago.

Nonsense, since some high school students know as much about computers
as college graduates (even in computer science) did 30 years ago.

The situation is getting worse.

No. The standards are changing, and getting higher more rapidly, than
our system can change to support it.

I have never shown any brief for religious schools.

But any voucher plan will primarily benefit religious schools,

In the short run, yes.

There is no reason to believe that the long run would be different.
Charter schools can accomplish anything that voucher schools can,
except for the religious training.

and
there is NO evidence that it will cause the formation of "academic
schools". The lack of such grade-free intensively-academic schools as
you envision among the charter schools that in many locales have the
power to do precisely what you describe, shows that there is no market
for them.

The charter schools are far more restricted than you think.

Not the programs I've seen. The kinds of weird crap that passes for
education in the charter schools in DC for example, belie any claim of
"restriction".

They are even regulated as to the height of chairs in the
various grades. Our congregation has been renting out
facilities to one, whose probably quite reasonable facilities
before were very likely quite adequate, and many changes had
to be made to meet state requirements with no relevance to
learning capabilities.

Maybe Indiana has such restrictions - or maybe you are finding that
there exist health and safety restrictions that would equally apply to
fully private schools. Even churches have to obey the building codes
and fire safety codes.

A few of the charter schools are administrative devices for
home schoolers; those are the ones which do academics.

Then academics CAN be done under the charter system. But what
percentage of charter applicants opt for such programs. Probably no
more than a couple of percent. And if more wanted to, they could set
up more such "administrative devices". You'll find that those
charters don't have to have credentialed teachers (or they have a
credentialed teacher rubber-stamp what the parents are doing), and
that suggests that other programs could similarly avoid use of
credentialed teachers if indeed the market wanted it - which I doubt.

lojbab
--
lojbab
Bob LeChevalier, Founder, The Logical Language Group
(Opinions are my own; I do not speak for the organization.)
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org