'Intelligent-design' school board ousted in Penn

Vouchers add money to public schools because they are generally less per student than what the public school system is spending per student and so the public school system saves money with voucher programs.You have to realize there are political and financial reasons for the democrats and NEA to oppose vouchers. It's politics over education. Don't believe the propaganda.

So what this really boils down to is you don't want parents deciding what education is best for their kids. You want people like yourself to indoctrinate them into your belief system and want to use the public's tax money to do that, even if the public would choose something else.

Where does the money for the vouchers come from? Space aliens?It comes from the education funds that used to go to the public school for the student, less an administrative fee. Net value to the student: less than before. Net value to the public school: less than before. Including yours.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

If you have less students by spending less to educate them elsewhere via vouchers, then you have more money per student to educate the remaining students.Why is that so hard for you to understand?

Spending less to educate them cuz they went elsewhere using a voucher? Is that what you're saying here? Randman, the school receives money on a per student basis. You remove the student and you remove the money as well. The school then gets less money, but the expenses are basically the same. Teachers still get their salary, the lights still need to be turned on, the support staff still needs to be paid, etc.Therefore, the remaining students actually get less money. Vouchers suck. They are simply another way to further erode our public school systems so Conservatives can bitch about how poorly the public school systems do their job.

Bwwwhaaahahahhaha, I always love reading crap like that...thanks Randman. It's a completely pathetic right-wing bull shit response that is always spouted when public education, vouchers, and evolution are brought up. But to answer your question...in some cases...fuckin-a-right parents should not decide. Religion does not belong in our public school systems Randman...why is that such a terrible thing?

Your unstated assumption is that all expenses can be calculated on a per-student basis.Books, papers, even educators--those are per-student costs. But things like TVs, shared electronics, facilities like gynamsiums--those are absolute costs; the less money you have, the less money you have to spend on them.So neither you nor RAZD is right; you may have more or less money for the community funds, and that's what's important, because those are shared--the costs aren't per student, it's absolute. No matter how many kids use a gym, the gym costs the same, and no matter how many kids in a class, a TV or DVD player costs the same.The formula depends on what % of budget goes to per-student costs, and what % of budget goes to shared community resurces. It also depends on what % of per-student funds are allocated to a voucher. And it depends on the total number of students as well... lots of factors.

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Here's a couple of scenarios, just to show you how things might vary. In the voucher scenario, you have more money per student, but less money total. Let's see what that does to the shared, community budget: Pretty close. Only 5% less shared resources. What is we increase the amount of per-student costs from $750 / quarter to $900 per quarter (i.e. from 75% of funds to 90% of funds)? 15% less shared facilities for the remaining students. Sucks. You have $12,250 less money to buy computers, TVs, put on a show, etc.Lots of ways to vary the funds... helpful if we get some real numbers. But just throwing around opinions without actually investigating is ... well... either pointless or irresponsible.And I apologize in advance if I've chosen really strange numbers or if my math is messed up. Anyway, vouchers is an interesting idea to me, as long as vouchers are only a PARTIAL refund of money paid for public education.

randman,What's the point of education in school, as opposed to the (sometimes informal, sometimes formal) education that happens within every home?I thought public education was for skills and useful facts. A secondary purpose is to prepare people for existence in a diversified country and global social environment by exposing them to a diverse set of world views. A third purpose is to teach a history of ideas and western culture, so we can know our roots and (by knowing history) avoid past failures.What about for you?Ben

THe local and state government pay the bills, right? So if they save money on the vouchers, they are free to pass the saved money back to the schools and thus increase the amount of money paid per student per the public schools. If they don't pass the saved money back, that's just a political issue, and nothing to do with vouchers. The state and local governments do save money and thus can spend more per student in public schools.Plus, in many areas, this can alleviate overcrowding and the need to pay for more public school buildings. It can also lower class sizes without costing any more money.Additionally, expenses are not the same. Let's say a crowded public school loses 25% of it's students to vouchers. Chances are you can lower the number of teachers, employees servicing the school, costs for free lunches for poorer students, books, etc,...I don't know where you live, but all the public schools in the places I have lived had overcrowding issues. Vouchers can alleviate that and help maintain a better quality of education at the public school threatened to be over-run, save money on capitital expenditures for new schools, lower class room size, and give schools more money per student than they had before.

Private education does all those same things and more. Letting parents decide which school and which type of educational approach best fits their child is better than one size fits all.What happens with vouchers is they encourage innovation, and often encourage programs like the arts, or more rigorous classical studies, that get left out of some public school programs.

Ben, good points; you can make the numbers work by adjusting the voucher amount spent. Moreover, after awhile some fixed costs are lowered once the building is paid off, and one of the more expensive outlays is for new buildings which a good voucher program can alleviate.

flies, basically you admit I stated the truth, at least in some cases, and yet blast me for it.I think it's pretty clear what the agenda is. One side wants better education, and thinks vouchers can encourage educational innovation and more different types of schools. Another side wants educational control.I think putting kids' education first is more important than maintaining educational control for liberals and so the democratic party can get big campaign donations and volunteer aid from the NEA. It boils down to money. The NEA and the Dems oppose vouchers because they would lose money, simple as that.

You did not answer the question: where does the money for the vouchers come from? Presumably space aliens at this point. Voodoo economics at work again?Personally I have no problem with having {kids\parents} choosing non-science courses all the way through high-school if they have such a desire, as that would leave the science classes to those students that did want to learn the facts.We could easily have high school courses in various trades to allow the kids an opportunity to move directly into the work force from high school. We could also have arts and crafts and culture classes to prepare students for the life of an {artist\poet\musician\etc} after high school.We don't need a voucher system to accomplish this.Of course the {kids\parents} would also be choosing a course of study that would preclude any higher education in any scientific field, but that is part of what making choices entails. No, I don't want YOU deciding what is taught as science.How many average parents do you know that are actually qualified to teach biology? If they are not qualified to teach a subject then how do they know enough about the subject to talk meaningfully about how it is taught?Parents can decide which schools their children go to, choosing the program that best fits their desired level and kind of education for their kids.As the kids move into high school parents can advise their kids which courses to take too, but to meet your narrow criteria they would also be deciding every single course the child takes - whether the child wants to or not.Deciding what education is best for their kids (where to send them, what courses to enroll them in) and being able to intelligently decide what actually goes into that education process are two different things.Parents do NOT get to decide what history is (let's eliminate the holocast from the text), or what math is (let's make pi = 3.0, just for the kids). Parents do NOT get to decide what chemistry is, what physics is or what biology is, or what the definition of science is.These are established fields of study based on the knowledge accumulated in each field. Teaching anything less is not teaching those fields but a cheap taudry immitation.Parents do NOT get to decide what is true.This argument is a strawman and invokes the fallacy of prejudicial language because it is false from the start and has no real legs to stand on.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

And while there may be economies of scale (larger schools better able to bear the cost of the facilities), there certainly is a point of diminishing return when a school can no longer afford the facilities at all. My points are that the vouchers don't necessarily solve anything - throwing money at the problem in not necessarily the answer.The only thing that vouchers provide is a means to finance the development of more schools.If the problem is that there are too few schools, then build more schools.If the problem is NOT that there are too few schools, then building more schools will not solve the problem.To properly address the question of the value of vouchers you have to know the costs of the system as a whole, and any failure to address the whole picture is cherry-picking the elements to show a benefit for a position and ignoring the other consequences. This is what randman is doing.Any system that divides the school population into two financially distinct groups and proceeds to give more advantages to one group than another is discriminatory.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Well yes and no...where does that money come from? My taxes. So I am paying the bills. If my school needs more money (because their funding has been cut as a result of fewer students due to vouchers...my taxes go up. How do they save money on vouchers? Ok, so over crowded schools would be less crowded and then we can eliminate teachers...but of course then again we'd be back to the same terrible teacher/student ratio...isn't that nice. Actually, results are mixed on this issue.Let me ask you this randman. Are you in favor of using vouchers to allow public school kids to get into private, religious schools?