Vouchers, Homeschooling, and markets, Oh My!

[Beavah]

You seem to be very sensitive about the whole voucher issue.

 

Actually, Im not particularly sensitive about school vouchers. I just automatically respond whenever it feels like Im hearin an argument based on prejudice rather than an understandin of the complexities of things. Doesnt matter if its school vouchers or someone makin a naive argument about tour permits .

 

Seems like this topic was worth a spin-off for those who were interested.

 

Curious, packsaddle, that you mention higher education. Our higher education system, where government vouchers are plentiful, is da envy of the world. We don''t seem to object to our tax dollars being used to help a kid attend Georgetown. Its hard to point to a higher education institution that is truly failing, while Lisabob does a good job of pointin to a number of K-12 districts that really are failing badly.

 

I agree with you, though, that rural areas dont provide enough population for an ordinary competitive response. Home schooling is the only alternative for most rural areas, or more recently distance learning at the secondary level. Small rural towns usually only have one grocery store, too. Still, an awfully high percentage of the population lives in suburban and urban areas where educational diversity and choice can be offered.

 

Beavah

 

[Gunny2862]

On vouchers,

I am not against vouchers, my issue is that until they are available this market won''t have any place to use them, and there won''t be any place to use them until they are available. I''m not sure I would use them, but I''d like to have the choice. And a viable option.

 

On homeschooling,

My experience and my experience only is that the majority of home schooled kids DO get a better academic education but at the expense of social skills relating, especially, to adults. I know of some VERY bright homeschooled children who are nearly incapable of evaluating and selecting appropriate ways of interacting with adults where they do not already know their social position and their relative position. And have a hard time interacting with non-home schooled kids.

Often I have seen a particular set of these children who are constantly reminded of how special they are to have been home schooled, talking down to any new adult they meet. As an aside - the ones I met who were the most level headed were the ones who were involved in Scouting - and this was before I got involved in Scouting.

 

My perceptions are probably colored by my experience and I do know that there are the exceptions - but these are usually trained educators who choose to school their own children and aren't trying to shield them but give them the best education they can find by providing it themselves.

 

Of course I also run into home schoolers who have no business, other than it is their children and their right, attempting to educate their children at home and doing an incredibly poor job. But the results for that won''t come in until their transcripts are evaluated for entering college or by an employer for their first job.

 

On Markets,

On the whole our local public education system appears to turn out the whole spectrum of students. Clearly not the best result, but the students intrinsic motivation is where it looks like the system needs the most help to me. Those who have a goal seem to find the path and associations they need and the paths' and associations to avoid.

 

Personally,

In my case I know that the poor kid is better off trudging to the school house than having myself and (the wonderful and much more educated than me, Mom) as his academic teachers. (No he doesn't really trudge - he''s actively engaging his instructors, has terminated the ADD meds., is doing well and enjoys school).(This message has been edited by Gunny2862)(This message has been edited by Gunny2862)

[packsaddle]

Beavah, if you read my mention of higher education carefully, you will see that I agree with what you wrote. My example was one in which the institution succeeded very well.

My point was that while some of us naively think vouchers are the key to school choice, they may actually have formed their arguments based on prejudice rather than an understandin of the complexities of things.

 

Fact is, we all have school choice even without vouchers. When my children were old enough we enrolled them in private school. No vouchers. It cost us about 30% of our gross income. But it was important enough that we made the sacrifice.

 

THAT is the marketplace working right now, without vouchers. It is, or used to be the, the American way...take personal responsibility and pay your own way... self-reliance rather than reliance on big government.

If we value our children enough, we will pay the price for the private alternative and not rely on some government handout. Or otherwise we can send them to public schools and support them in that manner. We did that too.

However, if a politician waves the possibility of a voucher in front of people who are critical of public education but too cheap to pay out of pocket for the alternative, some will sell their votes for the vouchers. And the politicians know this. The politicians can also count on those same people making naive arguments that a government subsidy somehow stimulates competition, thereby somehow qualifying as a conservative approach.

If they really want the marketplace to work, why wait? Why predicate it on government subsidies? Pay the full price for the better product if that is what is desired. Let the market grow on its own merits. Or whimper into well-deserved oblivion.

 

Vouchers, in this sense, can be viewed as just one more government handout for people who don''t want to pay the full freight, or who want something for nothing. In this sense, anyone who is critical of entitlement programs ought to also apply that ideology to vouchers. Otherwise they risk the hypocrisy of thinking entitlements are good... if THEY are the recipients.

Sorry, I guess I am sounding like another one of those liberals again.

[GernBlansten]

My view of home schooled kids is that there are two camps.

 

One camp is the highly involved, and educated, parent who wishes to provide the most intensive educational experience to their children and willing to put forward the time and effort necessary to raise a very accomplished student. These parents frequently seek scouting to broaden their children. We have a few in our troop.

 

The other camp are the parents who fear exposure of their children to the unwashed masses and retreat to a isolationist mindset of reducing their children''s scope of influence to a rather small and controlled subset. These parents rarely seek scouting as a venue for their children, unless that unit restricts membership to their church.

 

The stories of the highly skilled home schooled children come from the first camp. Even if those children were integrated into public schooling, they would excel purely because their parents would be highly involved in their public education. So in my mind, homeschooling really is not the factor, parental involvement is. Its just that homeschooling is the extreme of parental involvement.

[Lisabob]

Michigan is one state that has refused to allow vouchers. The issue was put to a referendum several years ago and it lost

 

But, Michigan is also one state with enormous disparities in the quality of the public schools, and the city of Detroit, in particular, comes in for its share of kicks with the lowest 4-year high school graduation rate in the COUNTRY last year, according to some reports (25%). Now I know several Detroit city school teachers and they are dedicated, hard working people. I teach a lot of young adults from Detroit city schools who were among the small minority who survived to graduation. So I''m not knocking them. But the system is beyond rotten, despite the efforts of those shining individuals.

 

To right these wrongs, Michigan tried two approaches that, while not "vouchers," bear some similarities. First, public school funding in MI is not based on property values and is instead distributed by the state gov''t with all kinds of rules about what kinds of things school districts can raise bonds for (basically, nothing to do with running a classroom or program). Money is provided on the basis of how many students a district has (the "foundation grants"), plus extra for certain other categories of need. This was supposed to even the playing field between wealthier and poorer districts. In fact most analysts in MI acknowledge that it hasn''t really done so, and instead has hamstrung many districts'' abilities to offer appropriate programs to their students, particularly fast-growing districts whose funding doesn''t keep up with their needs (the foundation grants don''t cover the cost of rapid expansion of services that are needed). Not to mention it makes that large pot of education money an attractive target for cuts by a government that is eager to plug budget holes elsewhere.

 

Second, and maybe more important in terms of the voucher argument - MI has a "school of choice" program where any student can transfer to almost any public school district, as long as that district has openings. If a student transfers, the home district LOSES the per-student allowance that it otherwise would have gotten from the state gov''t in its school funding program (above). ALL OF that money then goes to the new district that the student chose. The net result of this is that people are flocking away from the chronically screwed up inner city schools where ever they can, and enrolling their kids in the somewhat less screwed up inner ring suburban schools instead. City schools are then being closed due to declining enrollment and lack of state funding. Which means that any changes barely have time to get off the ground before they''re killed due to enrollment shifts, that there''s little point in trying anything much different because you might get shut down anyway next year, and that the school with the best PR campaign to draw more students (regardless of results) wins. Schools that are losing students have stretch fewer and fewer dollars to maintain their core programs, which means getting rid of extra programs, which in turn leads to more families "school of choicing" their kid out of the district.

 

The kids who remain behind are the hardest-luck cases whose parents either cannot get them out (one must provide transportation on one''s own to the new school, which is a burden for many parents), or whose parents don''t care enough to bother.

 

Now that is EXACTLY what opponents of vouchers often say is likely to happen. But, on the other hand, if my kid were trapped in such a system, I''d school of choice them too! So I can hardly blame the families. Instead what we have is a system of perverse incentives with lots of (perhaps) unintentional negative consequences for schools that are already weak. What we really need isn''t vouchers or school of choice - both treat symptoms and not the disease. What we really need is a total overhaul of our mediocre public education system which was designed for reasons far different from today''s demands. But I''d be pipe dreaming to say that THAT had any real chance of occurring.

[John-in-KC]

I have to wonder if anyone has actually measured how much of out tax dollars, State by State, go into the buildings where our kids go to school (Principal, teachers, and support services)...

 

How much goes into District level overhead ... and what the value added of each bit of overhead really is...

 

and how much goes into State and Federal bureaucracies (sp?) overseeing education, and what (if any) the added value of each bit of THAT overhead really is.

 

 

[scottteng]

Home schooler here but all I do is provide a venue. I home school both of my kids all computer based along with reading assignments. I have a purchased program that my younger child follows, it loads on her laptop she can do school anywhere she is 10. My son does the Florida virtual school online he has teachers all over the state. The state provides the curriculum at no cost to Florida residents. He is the reason I started home schooling. He was in second grade and his teachers kept writing me notes trying to make me get him to do his seat work in school. In other words the busy work they gave him to do while helping the slow kids. So I said to the teacher well he is failing your class then she said oh no he gets A''s on his exams he just refuses to do his seat work. I said well give him harder work to do. She replied no that would be rewarding him for not doing his work. I was being held responsible for his in school laziness I had a hard enough time making him do the homework she sent home. I had a flashback to my tenth grade Geometry teacher who came to me and said "I am tired of you sleeping in my class your snoring is disturbing the other students if you show up for tests and maintain your A average go somewhere else to sleep"

You are right my son tends to talk down to adults but only the ones who seem to be pissing and moaning all the time. He is quick to let them know that they and they alone are responsible for their life. The person who said there are two sides of the home school equation is also right some people want to protect their kids out of everything. I disagree on the socialization benefits of schools unless we really need more teenage gangbangers. We are highly involved in both boy scouts and girl scouts but were involved before I went into home schooling. Scouts is their socialization activity along with sports, trips, and camps. I would love to see vouchers even if only for extra''s. The museum''s, concerts, music lessons, sports, plays, and camps tend to take a bite out of the budget.

I am really a believer that computer based education will be the wave of the future. Maybe with neighborhood minding centers where the kids could go if the babysitting aspect is needed. This would provide useful work and pay to older responsible teens. The best teachers would teach every level and subject online with TA''s to do the grading. Look how many colleges already work this way.

[SR540Beaver]

I have nothing against homeschooling. We have a number of homeschooled boys in our troop. Like Gern, we have kids from both camps. We have two brothers who are very accomplished students. A couple of other brothers, not so much. I look at it this way. When I need a doctor for surgery, I don''t ask my wife to start boiling her kitchen knives. When I need legal advice, I don''t act like the fools who represent themselves in a criminal case. If I want my son to get a good quality education, I send him to trained professionals just like my doctor and my lawyer. I have a lot of projects I''ve done that I''m proud of, but sometimes, you get what you pay for. My wife and I are fairly intelligent people and we are smart enough to know that we are not teachers.

[Beavah]

Now that is EXACTLY what opponents of vouchers often say is likely to happen.

 

Yah, dat''s also what the proponents of vouchers say should happen, eh? Schools and school districts that aren''t serving kids close down. Others take their place. The disruption is painful in the short term only because the failing system was propped up for so long. Of course in Detroit, it seems from Lisa''bob that things are set up in such a way that new schools can''t be opened near kids. Just seems silly to me, eh?

 

THAT is the marketplace working right now, without vouchers. It is, or used to be the, the American way...take personal responsibility and pay your own way... self-reliance rather than reliance on big government.

 

No problem with that, but it means ending free government education. That kind of artificial subsidy is very market distorting, eh? Cut all school taxes to near zero, and just provide scholarships to kids in need the way we do for college. Bet we''d see a lot more parent involvement in their kids'' education if they were payin'', eh?

 

That also gives those kids trapped by economics and race in failing districts like Detroit scholarship options that they don''t have in our "liberal" system. Of course most of our public school advocates prefer that "those people" are stuck in their failing "public" districts, eh? Best not to have them choosin'' our nice private academies.

 

Beavah

[Hunt]

"I disagree on the socialization benefits of schools unless we really need more teenage gangbangers."

 

I find this idea troubling, unless you''re talking about taking your kid out of a troubled inner-city school. In the vast majority of public schools, most kids are not being turned into teenage gangbangers--rather, they are learning to get along with people of different races, sexes, and income levels. In my hometown, there were two high schools--the public school, and the private school where you sent your kids to get away from the black kids.

 

As far as vouchers, I think part of the problem may be what happens when you gradually introduce choice--it seems to me that you gradually choke the worst schools, and hurt the neediest children with the least parental support the most.

[Gunny2862]

In order to provide a diverse and higher level program we are actually shuttling our child TO the inner city school which is the only one that has IB and MYP programs running at the middle school level. Yes, there are MORE children there that I would normally not choose for him to associate with, but he knows what he wants(has had a stated goal to attend Annapolis since he was ten) and knows the kinds of choices(people, activities) he has to make to get there. In the mean time he is learning to interact with people of other races who attend the downtown school - an opportunity he would not have had in our otherwise largely homogeneous Anglo community.

 

Scott, I am sorry if my remarks offended you. Never did I in any way indict all home schoolers. The computer curriculum system you mention sounds interesting, and I can seriously relate personally and on behalf of my son on the bored in school argument. Our biggest problem currently isn''t doing the homework it''s just getting it turned in. If it''s on time its typically 95% or better, it''s the late point deductions that drop his grades right now - and the work has been completed on time.

 

Lisa makes a great point, we DO need an overhaul of our Prussian designed citizen molding model based on antiquated models of citizenship.

 

 

[Beavah]

it seems to me that you gradually choke the worst schools, and hurt the neediest children with the least parental support the most.

 

As opposed to what we''re doin'' now, which is hurtin'' all kids who live in economically poor areas the worst, and giving them and their parents no way out.

 

I always love da argument, though... that "those people" aren''t smart enough/involved enough/caring enough about their children to be entrusted with choice. Only wealthy folk can handle that.

 

Beavah

 

[OldGreyEagle]

I dont know if all Voucher systems are the same, so I will have to assume (never good) all voucher systems are set up the way the one I am familiar with.

 

It seems to me that comming up with a voucher system is a way of ignoring the obvious. That the regular public school system pretty well sucks the big one. So, instead of holding the local school board''s feet to the fire, or the local teacher''s union accountable, we will issue vouchers to allow students to attend schools that "work". So, does that mean we just abandon the schools that dont?

[Beavah]

Yah, dat''s the idea, OGE.

 

Just like the pizza parlor that serves lousy pizza. Rather than tryin'' to lobby the board and the CEO and the pizza makers union, you just let people go to a different pizza shop.

 

I don''t know whether I agree with it in the end, really. But yeh have to admit, most of those districts that "suck" have sucked for decades. They''ve been the subject of school reform after school reform and takeovers and changes in law and many, many school board elections and teachers'' union contracts. Seems like that avenue of internal reform has been tried, eh?

 

Beavah

 

[packsaddle]

OGE, I wrote something similar to that in another thread a while back. I agree. Parents in this area demanded good schools and we got what we demanded. We also paid for it willingly because that is what we wanted for our children.

 

"No problem with that, but it means ending free government education....etc."

Beavah, For one thing, as others have noted, no education is free. All of us pay for public education in a variety of ways. If we don''t participate to effectively demand a superior product, we risk getting an inferior product. It works that way for private schools too. Also the market exists now, along side public schools. Therefore it is obviously not necessary to end public schools to have the marketplace. The people who want government handouts might not want to pay the price in the marketplace. If having to pay for a good product causes them to mess in their panties I have no sympathy for them, but the market is there for them if they change their minds. But regarding your assertion that it would be good to end public schools and let everyone fend for themselves, up to a point I''d be OK with that.

 

However, as a society we recognize that for the good of everyone, economically and almost every other way, we benefit from public literacy and public education and therefore we offer it. In my ideal world I would support reductions in taxes, thus allowing those with the means to pursue alternatives to public schools more easily. However, we would still need to have public schools as an entitlement for those who do not have those means. Kind of like Medicaid, I suppose. This would be necessary, vouchers or not.

At the same time I would, however, require a means test for anyone who wanted to enroll their children in those public schools as part of the entitlement program. If they have the means they should pay, whether for public or for private. THAT would support the marketplace more directly than vouchers, in case that is what you want.

Vouchers would not be necessary. The market would be robust. And everyone whose lives revolve around lower taxes should be satisfied. And we''d get the best education we could afford, each and every one of us. Kind of like the way it is now.

 

Look, all I am saying is something I''ve said before (as I mentioned to OGE). If we are paying customers and don''t demand the best product for our money, then we risk not getting the best product. We have to take personal responsibility for this. If we rely on others and just sit back and wet the bed when things aren''t as good as we would like then we''re engaging in a self-deception. The test of this is to go ahead and leave the public sector and pay for the superior private alternative. Find out how much better it is. Put your money where your wet mattress is.

We did this for our children until we found a public alternative that provided the superior product. Then we switched. Now we''re paying for private college. As it should be. If we didn''t have the means, there''s always the public alternative. Again, sorry for my liberal leanings.