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Honeycombe8

(37,648 posts)
4. I'm not intimately familiar with the system...but my understanding
Sun Jan 27, 2013, 10:23 AM
Jan 2013

is that some kids (I guess, according to the video in your post, mainly minority children) can choose to go to a private school outside of their geographic area. Since the money goes with the kid, that takes money from the public school that is left behind, and thereby affects the education of the children left in the public school that now has less money to fund the school.

This is good in the short term for the select few children who get to "choose," seems to me, but sounds unfair to the kids left behind. So the long term effect is to harm the education of the many in order to help the education of the few.

Sounds to me like the minority children are emphasized at this stage, in order to get the program accepted. But I don't believe that the state of Louisiana really has the best interests of minority kids in mind. I think in the long run this will hurt all low income kids, so that the middle class kids (mainly white) can eventually start choosing their schools. And the companies that own those schools no doubt are paying someone somewhere for this push.

This plan does not mean that black kids are not treated well in the public school system. But the way it used to be in La., and I assume it still is, is that a school is in a certain geographic area, and the school taxes for that area fund that school. So a poor area will have a less funded school than a wealthy area. The voucher system lets the poor kids opt to go to a wealthy school across town. The problem is...it's for a select few, and takes money from the already financially troubled school, and its students, left behind.

More practical, it seems to me, would be to stop the local funding of schools, and make all the public schools equally funded. That's called the Robin Hood plan, and wealthy people don't like it, of course. Because part of their money will go into a pool to fund all schools, rather than just their local school.

That's my understanding, anyway. On the face of things, the voucher system is a blatant payoff to a select few, in order to get low income people to want it, for the CHANCE that their kid might be lucky enough to draw the straw to get a voucher. And on the face of things, the voucher system so harms the public system and its kids, that I can't believe anyone would be in favor of it, even if THEIR kid would get a voucher.

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