Reply #75: No, but I support [View All]

choice among public schools. Minnesota is quite good in this regard. When one of my brothers moved across district lines when his oldest daughter had just one year left in elementary school, he was able to keep her in her old school at no charge.

I wish they'd had that when I was younger. I absolutely hated my high school, which was devoted more to sports and social display than to academics, and if there had been school choice in my day, I would have gone to one of the schools that had a better academic reputation.

One thing that voucher advocates forget is that religious schools can charge such low tuition because 1) their church bodies subsidize them, and 2) they pay their teachers almost nothing.

The secular private schools are usually expensive, charging far more per student than public schools receive from the state per student. About ten years ago, the two best private schools in Portland charged $10,000 for elementary school. I don't know of many public schools that spend that amount per student even today.

Conservatives have the gall to claim that the public schools demand too much money and that class size doesn't matter, and then they send their own children to schools that charge as much as a college and that boast class sizes of no more than 15.

They send their own children to fancy-shmancy pre-schools but balk at spending money to provide poor children with the proven benefits of early enrichment.

I have no use for a system, like vouchers, that "saves" only a small percentage of students. If we had the national will, every child could have equal educational opportunity. After all,
schools in the U.S. are locally controlled. If parents are not satisfied with the schools in their area, they can and should hound the school board and even run for school board themselves.