Parents with spawn in Louisiana schools that will be force fed religion? A suit by anyone else will be tossed for lack of “standing”. A challenge to the God thing in the pledge was tossed because the father who filed suit did not have custody of his daughter, so lacked “standing” the court said.
Advocates of the law say teaching kids not to lie, or steal, or boink, are good things, conveniently ignore the first four. #1, #3, and #4, are entirely about an invisible man in the sky. #2 is violated by everything from the Shroud of Turin, to statues of Robert E Lee, and every Catholic church. I went to a Baptist lodge. Those Baptists took that graven images thing serously. The place was entirely void of paintings, statues, or any representation of a human or animal.
…and the ten sayings (a far more accurate translation than commandments) are broken into different ten sections by different groups. However, the Jews who have a certain strong connection over time, have long and with some significance broken it up differently with quite different resulting emphasis.
As a practicing Christian I absolutely see this move as state endorsed idolatry. Detestable.
The problem is that there isn’t one solution. There are fifty states and thousands of school districts. In some districts (even states), education is clearly badly underfunded. In others, such as your SF example, funding isn’t the issue; rather it is wise use of the existing funding and the political will to make tough decisions to perhaps consolidate schools when needed. And then there are layers of other problems, including longstanding socio-economic inequality and undervaluing of education. Funding is just one, albeit substantial, piece of the puzzle.
I would say that the numbers upthread indicate funding isn’t a substantial piece of the puzzle. Spending at some of the best schools in the state of Illinois is slightly less than with the Chicago Public Schools.
Chicago was chosen because it is near me, and I had experience with the suburban school district illustrated. The point I was making is that shoveling money doesn’t move the results needle. Providing vouchers at least allows some of those trapped to escape.
That’s the rationale. But vouchers are really meant as a means of diverting my tax dollars into religious schools where the kids can REALLY get indoctrinated. No thanks.
Not necessarily religious schools, but less racially and economically diverse, where they can be indoctrinated in how slaves benefited from being slaves, for instance, and how all the good things in the world were done by white people.
I do not argue about the possibility of escape, and I agree that is a good thing for the escapees.
But as public policy that way is catastrophe for a democratic republic. As was ascribed to Franklin after the social pact called the Declaration of Independence was signed, “We must all hang together, or … we shall all hang separately.” Obviously, that is not the case for all human activities, but for the rearing of the young in preparation to be contributing citizens it is crucial.
From Plato down through today, a fundamental tenant is the primacy of solid universal education for a decent polity.
The desire to “opt out of public education” in our Republic has deep roots in three sectors:
1 the Religious to guarantee purity
2 the Wealthy to guarantee status and power
3 Fearful RACISM mixed a little with 1 and 2
The pretense is that vouchers allow a healthy market competition that evolves better solutions in education. Well, for any entire society over a generation, do you want to show me where this has happened?
Vouchers are only useful when they can be used to obtain the education the parents/students desire. If there is no mandatory acceptance of all applicants requirement, vouchers are useless.
Well, if we move earlier in the process parents have choices with Head Start and Early Head Start, some programs run by school districts, others by not-for-profits, others by community groups.
Moving later in the education process, there is healthy competition between colleges/universities, some private and some state run. You can get scholarships and loans for both categories.
Sending your spawn to “head start” is a matter of choice. Some parents can’t be bothered. Others don’t have the means. Sending your spawn to elementary school is, in most places, a matter of law.
A parent or other person in parental relation to the child who is convicted of truancy is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine between $5.00 and $50.00 or up to 90 days in jail, or both. MCL 380.1599. Prior to March 2021, truancy used to have a minimum punishment of 2 days in jail, but that has since been repealed. Parents should also be aware that a referral will often be made to Child Protective Services at this point and may face the possibility that the state will attempt to remove the children from their care due to “educational neglect”.
Arizona’s community colleges, too, are seeing their budgets cut by $54mil.
Community colleges are where most middle-class working families send their kids out of high school. The school voucher program goes to families whose kids already attend private school, and wealthy families are overwhelmingly the recipients of school voucher tax credits because even with school tax credit they still often pay thousands of dollars to have their kids in the most expensive education in the country. Most working families can’t afford to pay $12,000 per child.
As Arizona cuts Community College education to the bone while giving wealthy private schools millions, working class kids have to struggle to find open classes in community colleges while the weather families are allowed to save their money to better afford the best private universities.
It’s just another example of how the wage earning families have been escorted to vote for agendas (religious) that work against their own interests.
Michigan is home base for the “school choice” push, headed by luminaries like Betsey DeVos, who never went to a public school, and married in to the Amway fortune.
Studies have shown that, on average, charter school students do no better than public school students, in spite of the kids in charters having the advantage of parents who are engaged in their education. I have posted before about my aunt, a career teacher, saying the most important thing in a kid’s learning was the kid’s parents being engaged and supporting what the school was trying to do. Kids in charters, by the fact their parents are engaged enough to get them into a charter, should do better than those whose parents don’t care, and are left behind in the public schools, but they don’t. In Michigan, charters and public schools are funded at the same level.
Before public schools in Michigan were integrated, the differences between schools in middle class neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods, was stark. In a middle class neighborhood, the buildings were newer, well maintained, and well supplied. None of that was true of the ghetto schools. I went to the ghetto high school, and visited some ghetto elementary schools. My mom was tickled that I would be going to the same high school she went to (class of 38). When she came back from the first parents night, she said “wow, that building is really run down”.
Reasoning that the school boards would send the money wherever there were white kids, Michigan schools were integrated, around 1971 or 72. There was an immediate drumbeat for “parochiaid”, ie government funding for church run schools, which were exempt from the public school integration plan, and overwhelmingly white, so the private schools would be “affordable” for lower income whites.
This current push for government subsidies for parents sending their spawn to private schools, is a return to the “parochiaid” debate of 50 years ago, with the same objective, restoration of the segregated school systems of the past, where the spawn of the better off are offered a good education, and the spawn of the poor get “bantu education”.
One of the speakers last night spoke eloquently about how his mother and grandmother sacrificed to be able to pay for private school for him. That was great for him, but what of the kids with parents who didn’t care, and were left behind in the public school system?
