Has there been any definitive studies on school vouchers?

Fountain79

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Sun Aug-06-06 10:46 AM
Original message

Has there been any definitive studies on school vouchers?

Has there been research to suggest that vouchers improve education through competition? Personally I don't think the free market can work in education, but perhaps I'm wrong.

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MrBenchley

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Sun Aug-06-06 10:49 AM
Response to Original message

1. They don't improve education one bit

http://www.aft.org/topics/vouchers/index.htm

They've been offered to voters at leasst ten times through referendum and each time voters have rejected them by ever-increasing margins. That's why the GOP keeps inventing new names for the plan.

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rzemanfl

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Sun Aug-06-06 10:54 AM
Response to Original message

2. They are a back door tax cut for rich or religious people who

already send their kids to private schools, that's all.

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jaxx

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Sun Aug-06-06 10:56 AM
Response to Original message

3. They undermine public education and take $$$ from the many.

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sam sarrha

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Sun Aug-06-06 10:57 AM
Response to Original message

4. yea, the poor cant afford to pay the rest of the bill.. its segregation of

Edited on Sun Aug-06-06 11:03 AM by sam sarrha

the poor. it is apartheid of the social classes, subsidized by the victims of the injustice..

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mrfrapp

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:22 AM
Response to Reply #4

18. Yup

It's a subsidy for the rich. In a system without vouchers parents sending children to a private school must foot the whole bill. With the voucher scheme however, the Government helps out.

Meanwhile, under either system, the poor families have no option but to continue sending their kids to the perhaps not-so-desirable local school. If you can't afford to pay the difference between the value of the voucher and the fees of your chosen school then you don't have any more choice than you did before.

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Heewack

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Sun Aug-06-06 10:58 AM
Response to Original message

5. They seem to work well in England.

Every student has X amount of pounds tied to them and they can take it to whichever school they want with all of the schools being privately run. If the parent doesn't like the school for whatever reason they simply move the child to another school.

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Fountain79

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:01 AM
Response to Reply #5

7. Now can it go to any privately run school, or does it

not allow money to go to religous schools. Personally if I was a parent in a bad neighborhood and didn't think my child could get an education at the publicly run school, I would definitely desire to send them to a privately run school.

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Heewack

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:09 AM
Response to Reply #7

10. All of the schools are private...

... so it can be religious, but most of them are run by businesses that operate schools around the country.

If we had their system here every student not just poor students would be allowed a choice of school. They would take whatever the average is spent per student on the national and state level, say around $10,000 a year to whichever school they choose.

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Davis_X_Machina

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:10 AM
Response to Reply #7

11. British private and religious schools...

...that take Ministry of Education money agree in return to a level of government oversight and influence far, far greater than that found in any American voucher proposal, including a national curriuculum and exam program that would make the GOP have an embolism.

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Fountain79

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:12 AM
Response to Reply #11

12. Perhaps that would be the compromise if vouchers ever

came to pass. You can have school choice but the school must follow this curriculum and take these tests. Wouldn't want my money going to a school that doesn't teach evolution.

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Davis_X_Machina

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:16 AM
Response to Reply #12

13. It's pretty clear...

....that in the case of confessional schools -- unless there are major changes in case law -- any voucher program that works wouldn't be constititutional and any voucher program that is constitutional wouldn't work, and anything that could get through Congress would't be either.

UK apples, American oranges.

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sam sarrha

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:16 AM
Response to Reply #7

14. but what it the voucher left you $10,000 short 4 the year?and the the Mean

Edited on Sun Aug-06-06 11:17 AM by sam sarrha

income of El Paso TX is $14,000 annual income with double digit unemployment.. with a population of 550,000, with over 30,000 illegal Mexican students in the school system.

i worked there at Boeing Space and Communications as an electronics rework technician, working on the F22 and Delta rocket.. the minuteman missile, c17, F15.16.17 osprey, sea launch rocket... for $8.30 after 3 years.. that is $17,000 before taxes.. and boeing sent me work to fix that no one else in the company could do, from seatle and california..

things are not like they used to be.. nafta took over 28,000,000 jobs, china has taken many many more,

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Heewack

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:25 AM
Response to Reply #14

20. I'm not sure I understand the question.

The money would be the same it just follows the student to their school of choice.

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sam sarrha

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Sun Aug-06-06 12:50 PM
Response to Reply #20

23. the voucher will not pay all the expence of a private school, the public

schools are a failed system.. they do not prepare students for life nor educate them.. in many places they are very dangerious.

nearly every teacher i know has quit .. or is thinking about it

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Davis_X_Machina

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:01 AM
Response to Original message

6. 2001 GAO study

sez "No".

link (PDF)

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Heewack

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:06 AM
Response to Reply #6

8. I like this statement.

"None of the findings can be considered definitive because the researchers obtained different results when they used different methods to compensate for weakenesses in the data."

Then why spend the dang money on the research if the results are useless?????

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Davis_X_Machina

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:08 AM
Response to Reply #8

9. The study was mandated by Gregg's Senate committee...

...and they're going to have to keep doing it over and over again until they find the methodology that gives the right answers.

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Heewack

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:20 AM
Response to Reply #9

17. It will take a long time no doubt.

Following the progress of a student isn't something that can be done over a period of months or even a year or two.

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DoYouEverWonder

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:17 AM
Response to Original message

15. I have a voucher

for my son who is a gifted dyslexic.

The public schools were more then happy not to have him in their system bringing down their precious FCAT scores.

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Fountain79

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:20 AM
Response to Reply #15

16. I dated a girl who came from a similar situation..

If it makes you feel better she graduated from college with a 3.74.

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jerry611

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:22 AM
Response to Original message

19. There has been studies but nothing definitive

It basically depends a lot of the state and the city in question. In some places it shows some evidence of success. In other places it just doesn't work.

Either way, it doesn't show that the public schools system works. Our public schools are among the worst in the civilized world. Teenagers in India score higher in math and science than teens in America. And the Indians spend about 1/3rd of the cost per student that we do.

There is something else very wrong with our system. Vouchers and more money will not be a solution.

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Davis_X_Machina

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Sun Aug-06-06 11:41 AM
Response to Reply #19

21. Public schools...

...are the schools the public wants. We have democratically controlled, locally run schools. They weren't imposed by an occupying power. That's why they're called 'public'.

Our public schools may be 'among the worst in the civilized world'. But we've decided collectively and democratically, that that's the kind of school system we want.

Perhaps that's the problem.

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China_cat

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Sun Aug-06-06 12:20 PM
Response to Original message

22. Just because you have a voucher (and the money to pay the

rest of the fees) doesn't mean you can get your kid into the school of your choice. The school can turn you down if the child doesn't meet its demographic. So if your child is an overachiever in the mischief department, you could miss out on the school of your choice.

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