Louisiana Schools Mass Privatization

It seems that the good people of Louisiana have (finally) taken the SCOTUS up on its ruling which upheld the Constitutionality of school vouchers. Essentially, it allows parents to disenroll their children from public schools, receive a voucher for the amount of money which the public school had allocated for their education, and to re-apply it toward the tuition of private schooling.

Or, as Louisiana Gov. Jindal succinctly (and beautifully?) states it, ""We are letting parents decide what's best for their children, not government."

Go figure.

Reuters estimates that the move will shift, "tens of millions of dollars" in state funds to private schools, and away from public education coffers.

Who wants to wager $1 on the number of states that will follow suit within the next 2 years?

First, the unions in Wisconsin, and now the teachers in Louisiana. Perhaps the (wishfully naive) rumors of the GOP's demise have been (greatly) exaggerated, after all.

Link: Louisiana's bold bid to privatize schools | Reuters

 

My favorite part.

Don't blame LA for giving it a shot, though.

 

so one nutjob school is supposed to indicate from this article that private schools don't teach evolution? I went to the #2 rated high school in los angeles and it was catholic. and damn cheap too. lot's of catholic schools out there too.

 

I'm not a fan of school vouchers. I agree that it should be constitutional, but I wouldn't support the legislation.

 

Use the voucher to go to a secular private school. Problem solved.

 

i love the idea, the only problem is an awful lot of people that are currently paying for private school and not utilizing the public schools. handing those people an extra $8K a year or whatever could add up to a lot of money.

 

Where are we headed? No evolution means no genetics. No genetics means no more advancing the most promising medical field of research in history.

What are we doing, here?

 

we are literally talking about something like 1% (if that high) of all high schools that teach creationism. if we are going to get outraged by this we might as well ban homeschooling too.

 

Oh, BS. The percentage of parents that will select for non-evolution schools is at least ten times that. Possibly 40 times that, looking at national polls on the subject.

 

are there enough non evolution schools to meet such a demand?

 

You don't believe in the invisible hand of the market? I thought that was the point of school vouchers.

 

I think in places like TN, it would work to take even more money out of already underfunded public education and kids in rural areas with no access to private schools would get the shaft big time. I have a problem with that.

 

"How can we expect the kids to learn if they can't even fit inside the building?" -Derek Zoolander

 

It's called, "freedom", IP.

Or, as it's closest friends call it, "liberty".

 

If you put this post on a t-shirt, I will buy it.

Are you saying that as many as 40% of Americans would prefer that Creationism be taught in schools, IP?

Is that not their inalienable right to do so? Would you seek to abridge, hinder or infringe that right and to continue to require that they be forcibly subjected to that which they do not believe? Who are you to decide that, to force it upon them, and to take away their choice like that? For that matter, who is "science" or any number of persons or groups to do it?

It's a tricky thing, these liberties.

Now disagreeable, perhaps they're best abandoned?

 

Freedom from fact? Liberty from reality? I don't think tax payer money should go to schools that teach mythology in place of scientific method.

 

This is the issue of our time. If I don't "believe" a 3-sided polygon is a triangle, can I be exempted from geometry? If I don't "believe" the world is round, can I be exempted from geography?

This isn't about "belief."

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, IP, but aren't you just saying you think that tons of kids moving to schools that teach creationism and not evolution would simply be bad? You're not saying that the parents don't have the right to do it, correct?

 

That sounds simple enough - the public schools should strive to improve both their performance and the results it achieves in order to preclude their students, rural or otherwise, compulsion to seek a private education.

It's most likely that there are fewer private schools in rural areas because there simply hasn't been enough of a sustainable market (read: money) to justify their construction and maintenance. That all changes, now. If there was a stock that represented, "New School Construction" - I'd buy it (Dros, PM me with that name, if such exists).

Or, you could simply say that as more students do leave for private schools, public schools will see a sharp decline in the number of teachers which they are required to employ, and unfortunately, some will inevitably be laid off or let go. Of course, this only means that the overall average quality of teachers will rise, as the best teachers will be retained. Ultimately, your rural kid "getting the shaft" is now in a class of 20 instead of 35, and the quality of his teacher has increased significantly.

It's hard to predict, but I see many more favorable opportunities for the rural kid then, as s/he has now.

 

However, Tenny, here is a tough argument to overcome if you're a proponent of vouchers and freedom. Shouldn't the amount given in these vouchers reflect the amount of tax that the recipient paid in? If not, it looks more like you're spending my money for religious, wacko schools, rather than simply granting freedom.