From Terry Hastings, via email:
Florida courts rule against vouchers on the grounds that the vouchers violate uniformity standards for our school system.
the Florida Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the voucher program violated the “uniformity clause” of the state constitution guaranteeing a high-quality system of public schools. Because the performance of the voucher kids was superior to those in public schools, the court ruled that education was not uniform—or in this case not uniformly miserable. As they used to say in the Soviet Union, everyone gets to share their poverty equally.
Fight on brave progressives, fight on.
I recently read that on an inflation adjusted basis per student spending has roughly doubled over the past 30 years. The teacher’s union obviously would like to see more money and better working conditions come their way, but I suspect that the root cause problems go much deeper than that […].
It is certainly easy to wish that throwing more money at our school system is going to solve the problem, but I see little reason to believe that will be the case.
I agree, Terry—in fact, if I’m remembering correctly, at one point recently the DC school system spent the most per capita on students, and was one of the worst performing systems in the nation.
But let’s face it: politically, this is the easiest way to show one’sconcern. And the appearance of concern, in a bumper sticker culture, draws votes, which in turn translate into power.
So we have a cycle of ignorance at work here: the less educated we, as a country, become, (and I speak in terms of substance, not duration), the more likely we are to believe that throwing more money at the problem will certainly solve it—without concerning ourselves with the underlying causes of the failures, which are systemic and philosophical far moreso than economic.
It’s an older book, but if you haven’t already done so, I recommend America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible, by Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom (Stephan, a history professor at Harvard, Abigail, a Harvard PhD, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a vice-chair of the US Commission on Civil Rights.)
Somehow when the writers of the Florida constitution were working on it, I doubt they were thinking “uniformly bad.”
I have had my kids in public and private schools. I have spoken to many many teachers about this. (I was even PTA President at my older kid’s school) and basically what they say is this. The public school system is broken and cannot be repaired.
It’s not just the academics. Because at many public schools if you work hard at getting your kids in all the AP classes and push and push and call the teachers constantly so that the teacher will even know who they are.. ect. Then your child will get a good eduation. But even then, you have to contend with an immoral atmosphere that is countered by…well…nothing.
How DARE somebody outperform somebody else! It must be stopped. Must, I tell you!
I think I shall suggest that for our brigade. No compnay in our brigade shall be allowed to do better on their COMET inspections, or have a higher “C” rating than any other company.
Shouldn’t the FLSCT found that the other schools were not following the FL Constiutional stricture to have a uniform “high-quality” public school system?
This is probably the most important issue we face today, along with the GWOT. Education is the answer to all of the social ills that we have today, including crime, racism, economic opportunity, work ethic, etc. That we are wasting time and money on a broken, unfixable system is really disheartening.
The KCMO school district has invested (via Federal fiat) over $1 billion in the last ten years in facilities and teachers and it still lacks full state accredition. What a waste.
School vouchers is an issue that both parties should get behind. Yet the Left wants to expand a system that has failed miserably.
Vouchers would make schools and teachers accountable for the product they produce and end up rewarding competent, quality teachers economically. If we could combine a voucher program with the return of Vocational Education we could keep more young people in school learning something that interests them, and maybe provide the footing for continuing education or a viable vocation.
Vouchers foster competition between schools, which provides a better product for the students. What is so difficult to understand about Competition + accountability = quality?
You can accomplish the same thing without bothering with vouchers too. One thing we could do is start demanding our cities copy San Francisco’s school choice program.
But isn’t this the program that produces San Francisco adults?
Voucher proponents brought this upon themselves long ago when they capitulated to the public education establishment and scaled vouchers back from a UNIVERSAL system. A universal system, by definition, doesn’t discriminate against anyone and has no direct bearing on the government’s decision to run a school system or not.
Besides, there’s something better than vouchers anyway.
Correcting the existing situation is a long, slow process that is going to hurt during the transition. We are basically going to have to support both the old, inefficient system at the same time that we put in place the new, improved educational system.
I don’t think it can be successful without introducing Vocational Education back into the system. If you take the total HS graduates and add in the “drop outs” then subtract the grads that go on to University, you’ll find that the vast majority of students come out of HS without any preparation for the job market and limited prospects for a vocation.
By introducing Vocational programs like HVAC, carpentry, Computer Tech, Plumbing, Electrical and various other trades we can prepare (and interest) young people that have no intention of continuing an academic education for the job market or an Associate Degree.
Not only would we retain these students in school, we would be able to free up resources (teachers and classrooms) for those on an academic track. Teachers would be able to better challenge these students and accelerate studies.
Heh. It’s a pretty new program and it’s the best option in my opinion. Basically, SF has a single school district and students are free to enroll in any school in the city, first come, first serve. The SF school district then uses a weighted formula to determine funding for schools on a per-student basis so if students leave schools so does funding. It provides competition for funds and it’s really improved performance in SF. It also takes most of the arguments against vouchers off the table.
The best thing about it is that people can just do it locally and not have to win a national fight to get better performing schools.
One wonders if any of those 5 judges even considered that wheat they were saying is “the law says you’re not allowed to do better than average, so you have to stop.
Heck, they could turn around and shut down successful public schools with the same reasoning.
Obviously the legislature needs to remove that error in the law.
Welcome to Harrison Bergeron Public High.
Show me the money. Show me evidence that a SF libs designed shool system is producing above the norm. Talk is cheap.
Have we looked at the education problems as they relate to single and low-income households?
Really, it seems, IMHO, that the strongest factor in a good education is a set of strongly involved parents who start teaching their children from a young age.
Now this isn’t to say that single parents or poor parents can’t be those strong actors, but it is just that much harder for them to do this and get sufficient income coming into the house.
So, if our schools are busy spending valuable time and resources trying to bring kids up to basic morality and motivation then what time is left to actually teach?
(Also the other thing that would help is to actually let schools throw out the real trouble makers.)
TW: enough. As in there’s not enough money to replace the effect of a strong loving family.
The person who emailed and the WSJ really have the Florida Supreme Court ruling wrong. The Court ruled:
1. The Legislature could ONLY provide a single uniform system of public education.
2. Voucher schools were not subject to the same standards as the public schools and hence violated the uniformity requirement.
Now, I am very much in favor of vouchers, but nowhere did the court rule or indicate voucher schools were superior to public schools.
The error the majority of the court made was by adding the word ONLY to the constitution. The word is not there.
The actual ruling, and more importantly, the dissent are pretty straight forward reading and can be found at the Florida Supreme Court web site.
Rick
Heck, they could turn around and shut down successful public schools with the same reasoning.
Exactly, but remember, these are the guys that decided to ignore the constitution and demand recounts and put off the election in 2000. They even admitted there was no legal precedent or principle involved and were forced by the Supreme Court to vacate these decisions.
Now, I am very much in favor of vouchers, but nowhere did the court rule or indicate voucher schools were superior to public schools.
I think that’s sort of assumed, if people are taking their kids out of lousy schools and using vouchers to get them to better ones.
My problem with the San Francisco syste (such as it is) is that they’re all public schools in San Francisco, which can’t be the zenith of quality education. Indoctrination, yes. But education?
They copied a system designed in Edmonton, Canada 30 years ago. Edmonton’s no more liberal than Denver or Des Moines. As for evidence, this is from the Reason article I linked earlier (my bold):
All of that improvement has been in just the past few years.
Joan Jacobs has done a lot of work on the success (and hamstringing) of the Charter Schools movement in CA.
She has a blog that is definitely worth checking out for those interested in the topic.
Me, I’m for anything that increases choice and allows kids to get out of bad situations. I’m also more into the idea of all boys schools than I used to be. Social engineering has driven much of the “competition” out of pubic schooling, and boys are disproportionately hurt by that.
And though I don’t think there’s a direct causal link, it’s interesting to note the trend in curricula development compared to trends in college enrollment numbers for young men and young women.
True, but one of the biggest political hurdles with vouchers (or SOTAs) is that most people aren’t comfortable with public school districts losing funds when students move from public to private schools. Personally, I’m libertarian enough to support closing public schools completely and letting parents use vouchers for private schools, but that’s just not politically possible.
My support for SF’s system is because it works, it can be done at the local level, and I think it’s something that would be politically palatable to most people. I’d rather have something providing results than another generation or two of arguing over vouchers.
Vouchers defeated in Florida?
Now that’s good news. Really good news.
We defeated ‘em here in California too.
Conservatives just never stop trying to destroy public education.
So glad I read it in Protein.
What would we progressives and welfare-state liberals do without Proteinwisdom?
I ask ya.
Conservatives just never stop trying to destroy public education.
From what I can see, it is doing a pretty good job of destroying itself. I don’t know if it needs any help.
The San Francisco system seems very much like what we have here in socialist Quebec although we have multiple boards which also compete for students. I’m always amazed that the heart of socialism in North America has a more competive educational system than the US. Is it perfect? – no I would prefer a voucher system but it does seem to work a lot better than the American model.
BECAUSE OF THE NEA!!!
After 30 years of liberal failure, Carl W. Goss has the lunacy to make this statement?
YGTBSM.
Who is Carl W. Goss, and why is he breathing air I may need some day?
Carl W. Goss is living proof that there is no parody like self-parody.
You tellin’ me conservatives are out to support public education?
***
Wondering if the internet may make home education a more practical alternative to those who dislike public schools and can’t afford the tuition for top end (or even middle-of-the-road)private day schools.
With state-supervised testing and so forth.
Christ, tuition at top end high schools in the NY City area is $25,000/year.
Yeah, we conservatives DO support publc education. Have you seen a copy of your property tax bill lately? I seem to support it to the tune of about $10,000 per year–and my daughter still attends private school.
Not a very good return on investment…
Joanne Jacobs blog is good, I highly recommend that blog as well.
Conservatives aren’t for or against public education. We’re against poor education and waste of money. We’re for quality education.
That makes sense, doesn’t it?
Dude, you’re talking sense. To Carl W. Goss. What are you thinking!?
Great, send your kids to Spence or the like, but don’t expect taxpayer support in the form of vouchers to do it.
You sure as hell arn’t getting it California, or New York for that matter….
<small>test</small>
<sub>test</sub>