8 ms·

What exactly is wrong with school choice and religious schooling? I went to a private religious school for K-12… no violence, no teenage pregnancies, and I ende

• nathanaldensr 4y ago
  What's wrong is that you're immediately labeled and assumptions are made, just like the parent poster did. No effort to get to know you, your situation, or the context. Also, they explicitly want to control and indoctrinate your kids. If you fight that, you are gaslighted.
• gruez 4y ago
  >Why shouldn’t parents be allowed to take their child’s portion of the property taxes we all pay to go to the school of their choice? AFAIK the concern is that the charter schools will have their pick of "good" students, and all the "bad" students would be forced to languish in whatever shitty schools that are responsible for the remaining students. The "bad" students also tend to cost more per pupil (eg. because they have special needs and therefore need more qualified teachers), so slicing the student population this way will benefit the "good" students to the detriment of "bad" students.
  • epicureanideal 4y ago
    Hmm, I wonder, is there a way to permit vouchers while also somehow compensating for this effect? Would vouchers be acceptable to you if so?
  • lxm 4y ago
    But aren’t smaller classes linked to better academic progress?
  • turtledragonfly 4y ago
    Exactly. Just to spell it out some more for any other readers: this is the same reason you want (for example) a large health insurance pool, including young healthy people who don't need that insurance. The idea is to have the healthy/privileged/lucky/etc help the less fortunate ones, at any given moment, to the benefit of everyone in the longer term. There's a necessary tension between individual choices/freedoms and a system like that, though. "Good of the one vs. good of the many," and soforth.
    • imgabe 4y ago
      How much do the “good” students help the “bad” students compared to the bad students harming the good students by disrupting classes, bringing violence to the school, or otherwise slowing down learning? People who can afford to do so will already put their kids in private school or select good school districts. All that’s left in the others are poor kids who want to learn but are at the mercy of kids who don’t.
      • smugma 4y ago
        There are many parents who can afford private school but send their kids to public schools for the heterogeneity. I do this and do question whether or not it’s the right choice (financially it’s saving me a few million, but that’s just money).
      • supertrope 4y ago
        This is an intensely personal choice. I know people who automatically reject public schools because they consider them all low quality. I remember I saw a rude store customer say "They must have went to public school." after an employee made a math error. The devout choose Catholic schools because of values education sometimes even if they have to pay tuition. Some have to enroll their kids in public school because they feel going to a school with a normal cross section of the community is preparation for real life (and especially not a gender segregated school). Some want their kids to attend a racially and economically diverse school even if quality suffers, because their think a good student can achieve in even a mediocre school. Or vice versa they value diversity but not as much as the best schools and those are typically with above average household income and usually <15% or even <10% racial minorities.
• kasey_junk 4y ago
  Why shouldn’t I be able to take my share of the taxes I pay for bombers and pay for Bundt cakes? The answer is in the interests but also in the execution.
• oivey 4y ago
  > Why shouldn’t parents be allowed to take their child’s portion of the property taxes we all pay to go to the school of their choice? The same reason you can’t opt out of paying for roads on streets you don’t use. The obvious and immediate result would be that poor communities would have shittier roads than wealthy ones, beyond the point of which that is already the case.
  • supertrope 4y ago
    That's the core issue. Are schools public goods or private goods? Considering property taxes as user fees or de facto tuition definitely falls on the private goods side.
  • haberman 4y ago
    But some charter school networks, such as Success Academy in NYC, are overwhelmingly attended by low-income students.
    • RhysU 4y ago
      Anecdatum: I have talked with a parent of fraternal twins who went to Success Academy. One twin did well academically. One twin struggled. The latter was managed out by Success Academy.
  • lxm 4y ago
    When an area of a larger city is annexed to form a smaller town with its own tax structure, isn’t it effectively opting out?
  • s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Thants not an accurate description of how vouchers work. Tax revenue still gets redistributed and split on a per student basis just like it would otherwise. The real difference is the level of parental engagement and support. School districts want to retain good students & parents for the exact same reasons those people want to leave. Rich students are dragged down poor students & parents, but poor students are dragged up good students and parents. There is clearly a winner and loser to the arrangement, but it isn't because the school gets less tax revenue per student.
• BMc2020 4y ago
  • omginternets 4y ago
    Please don’t do that. There are plenty of good reasons to speak anonymously.
• themitigating 4y ago
  Tax dollars shouldn't be used to fund religious education.
  • epicureanideal 4y ago
    They are anyway, just woke religion instead of some other one.
    • JaimeThompson 4y ago
      How are you using "woke" in this context?
  • mc32 4y ago
    All schools impart ideology of one kind or another. Now, I agree I don't want fundamentalist/cultist schools, but let's not pretend that [secular] schools only impart academics --it's not your little house on the prairie one-room school. In every country, state, city and town schools impart the prevailing ideology whatever that may be in the particular locale.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • themitigating 4y ago
      Prevailing ideology is vague. I'm referring to religin which violates the separation of church and state
• fragmede 4y ago
  I'll put this bluntly. Society is trying to limit the number of kids who grow up taught fringe beliefs like evolution is a myth, white people shouldn't marry black people, and there was no holocaust. Vouchers... don't solve for that.
  • cxzCxzczxfdsa 4y ago
    What private school teaches that? Be specific.
• ryandrake 4y ago
  I have no doubt that out of the thousands of religious schools out there, there are some that provide an objectively great, fact-based education. Just like I have no doubt that out of the millions of parents who want to send their kids to religious schools, there are some that want to do it for strictly secular, "education-quality" reasons. And when the miracle happens and these two combine, you're going to see a great outcome like yours. These are outliers. The majority of parents who advocate against public schooling [edit: in America] are objecting to their public schools on ideological or religious grounds, not on the quality of the education it provides. And the majority of schools these parents run to with voucher money are going to teach their kids exactly the ideology they want. Educationally stunted young-earth creationists growing up to make sure their kids are educationally stunted young-earth creationists, too. That's not a good end result for society, and not one that a constitutionally-limited government should be funding or promoting. Working in tech, I'm exposed the occasional parent who talks about sending their kids to private school, in order to give the kids an advantage towards getting into Stanford, or as prep for future pre-med degrees. These few are not the parents I'm talking about.
  • gruez 4y ago
    >The majority of parents who advocate against public schooling [edit: in America] are objecting to their public schools on ideological or religious grounds, not on the quality of the education it provides. And the majority of schools these parents run to with voucher money are going to teach their kids exactly the ideology they want. Educationally stunted young-earth creationists growing up to make sure their kids are educationally stunted young-earth creationists, too. That's not a good end result for society, and not one that a constitutionally-limited government should be funding or promoting. It's easy to make the argument against charter schools when the "majority" of people supposedly using them are using it for "bad" reasons, but what if the situation were reversed? Would you be pro charter schools in a jurisdiction where the public school system is shoving young-earth creationism down student's throats or refusing to teach sex-ed? Does your support for charter schools hinge on whether they're being used to teach "bad" things to kids, or do you believe whoever has political control over the school system should be able to dictate what kids are taught and parents cannot opt out?
• lokar 4y ago
  Sure, if you require every private school to accept all students for the amount of the voucher and no more.
• notatoad 4y ago
  educating children is a collective good for society, not a service provided only to deserving children with rich parents. taxes pay for collective things that we need as a society, like roads, health care, sanitation, and educating the next generation. if you want to send your kid to a private school, that's okay, you should have that choice. but you should not get to choose to stop paying taxes just because you've made that choice. deciding to opt out of paying taxes is not an option you get in any other aspect of society.
• vegetablepotpie 4y ago
  If I do not have children, does that mean that I would not contribute to anyone’s education? It would be great for us childless people. There are a lot of things in our society that we just do not have a choice on. - many can’t choose who’s roads they drive on - many can’t choose who provides their electricity - many can’t choose who provides their Internet If we’re advocating for school choice based on the fact that we can choose some things, or we should be able to choose, it would stand to reason that we should also advocate for choice in all the things we consume. We have the assumption that privatization would improve circumstances. In a lot of cases privatizing produces worse outcomes. America’s multi-payer multi-provider healthcare system has produced the worst health outcomes at the highest cost in the industrialized world. We need to recognize privatization and competition as a social tool, and know when to use it. There are issues with the school system. Perhaps unions and bureaucrats have too much power. I’m not convinced that radically changing our education system is the right choice for everyone.
• 1letterunixname 4y ago
  Only in your utopia do things work "as they should". Private, for-profit schools and religious nuts teaching Noah's Ark as "history" ruin the fundamental tenants of public schooling: that everyone, regardless of socioeconomic background gets what everyone else gets. Without maintaining that premise and spending equally per pupil, then it's the haves vs. the havenots. Public school teachers get paid peanuts. My step sister is involved with special ed and is on food stamps. I'm sorry, but your opinion is worse than invalid, it's dangerously ignorant.
• hakfoo 4y ago
  It's not about the kids, it's about the parents. In any public school, there's a segment of parents who were highly involved. They ran the fundraisers, volunteered on campus, and would probably raise hell if there were scandal or underperforming teachers. Conversely, you've got other contingents that could care less what happens in the classroom as long as Junior makes the sportsball team, or solely see it as state-funded daycare. They're not contributing, they're barely even keeping tabs on the school. If you offer a "better" school (private, charter, or even public-magnet), that's a huge lure for the "involved" parents. The default public school loses its unofficial support, causing a death spiral, as performance becomes poor enough that even indifferent parents take notice and flee. What does that mean for the kids who are there, typically for reasons beyond their control. Even with vouchers, you can't force people to make good choices. Many people will choose the 'default' local school because they don't know how to shop for it, or it's the only choice which fits into their transport and economic constraints. I also suspect from a social perspective, "school choice" is counterproductive. Some parents explicitly use the option to "protect their kids from dangerous ideas", and it's not usually because they're providing a higher-quality alternative outside the campus. "Selective" schools are also a great way to ensure the kids don't get exposed to kids of diverse backgrounds and social classes.