If there was ever any doubt that the Republican-led Missouri General Assembly is marching headlong toward taxpayer financing of education, including vouchers, it comes from the very words used by the people in charge.
Take for instance the special committee appointed over the summer by Speaker of the House Rod Jetton to examine education issues. It wasn't called the Special Committee on Educational Problems or the Special Committee on the Crisis in Education; it was the Special Committee on School Choice.
Ironically, many of the legislators who support educational vouchers are anti-abortion, yet they use the same language to push their idea. With abortion, it's not pro-abortion, it's pro-choice, a phrase designed to make the idea more palatable. Educational vouchers also seem much more palatable if you call them school choice.
Today's Springfield News-Leader features an article by Cory DeVera on Springfield Superintendent Norm Ridder's opposition to what has been termed "tax credits" for scholarships for students in St. Louis and Kansas City. A voucher by any other name is still a voucher.
The proponents on these thinly-disguised voucher proposals use other key words, like "competition." What they aren't doing is anything that remotely addresses the problems in education.
Private schools are not equipped to handle the types of students who attend classes in Missouri public schools every day, ranging from the educable mentally handicapped to the kinds of delinquents who make teachers steer clear of inner-city schools. My guess is that even if a voucher system were to be put in place, the private schools would still never see any of those students. They will get the students they want, brag about their high test scores and live high on the hog at the taxpayers' expense. This has nothing to do with competition; it's a welfare program for the elite.
If our legislature truly wanted to address the problems in education, it might look at addressing the societal problems that have children in homes where things take place that most of us do not want to think about. Many of the problems come from broken homes, homes where the parents are abusing drugs and alcohol, or where the children are physically or sexually abused. Please tell me how private schools will be equipped to handle the kinds of problems that public school officials (and not just in the inner cities) have to deal with daily.
And now federal and state programs that once offered funding to deal with some of these problems, such as the financing which once paid for an alternative school for troubled students in the Joplin R-8 School District, have been slashed to the bone or no longer exist.
Our legislators are pushing a bill to keep students in school to age 18. On the face of it, it sounds like a wonderful idea, but many of these same students who would be affected are the ones who create disturbances in classrooms and have little regard for anyone but themselves. Keeping them in school is a laudable goal, but while these children are crying out for an alternative-type school environment, we are instead forced to put them back in situations where they most likely will not succeed- and will do their level best to keep others from succeeding.
When and if educational vouchers are approved by our legislature, you are not going to see these troublemakers in private schools. They're not the kinds of students private schools will ever accept.
Vouchers are a flawed and dangerous public policy.
10 comments:
Randy, please move your child or how about your six kids as we have, today to a low-performing school and wait for it to get better. No, you don't want to risk that? Why do you doom other kids to that fate. Why do you protect status quo....because it is not affecting you.
When you try to mass produce kids you cause them to go into the gang mentality. Hence our current situation with low income families in failing schools = GANGS, not education.
vouchers or school choice the word is not important, please don't waste your words.
If private schools received the same public funding that public schools receive to teach kids, they could do the job, learning disabled, handicapped or not.
anon 6:29 said: "If private schools received the same public funding that public schools receive to teach kids, they could do the job, learning disabled, handicapped or not."
Easy statement to make. Back it up, please. Your argument is that if we simply shift the funding from public to private schools education would improve across the board. Would that not make private schools public? What is the magic contained within a private school that would prevent GANGS?
You seem to be arguing that, with more money, private schools could better educate all children. Do you also then argue that, with more money, public schools could better educate all children? What is the magic of the private school?
The magic of private school is they keep all the riff-raff out. And the kids do better on tests, have higher tendencies to attend college. Private schools are simply better. Like so much else in life, you get what you pay for.
Leave the government schools to the "Gangs" and riff-raff and give the achievers the opportunity to achieve in the private sector (private schools). Is there ever an area where government or government control is more efficient or more successful than the private sector? Certainly not education!
Randy: I wonder who this unnamed employer is?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, November 17, 2006
Contact: Brian Hauswirth, 573-751-0290
Blunt Plugs Unemployment Tax Loophole; State Collects $869,411
JEFFERSON CITY–Gov. Matt Blunt today announced that Missouri’s unemployment insurance program recovered $869,411.37 in unpaid taxes from an employer who failed to report its full share of state unemployment taxes.
State Unemployment Tax Act (SUTA) dumping allows some employers to lower their unemployment taxes by shifting their payrolls to a new corporation or by buying a different firm and using that company’s lower tax rate. The accrued charges in the old accounts are left behind and are not picked up by the new accounts. These unpaid charges are not paid by the employer who incurred the charges, but instead are spread among all employers.
Last year Gov. Blunt signed legislation closing loopholes which allowed employers to dodge some of their unemployment insurance taxes. The legislation was in response to the federal “SUTA Dumping Prevention Act of 2004” which was signed by President Bush a year earlier.
“This announcement illustrates that by closing loopholes we were able to bring balance back to our unemployment insurance system,” Blunt said. “This legislation will continue to help the Division of Employment Security to administer the system in a manner that is fair to employers and their employees.”
The Missouri Division of Employment Security has been investigating this employer, whose identity is to remain anonymous, for Missouri unemployment tax fraud for years 2002 through 2004. The employer has used more than one Missouri unemployment tax account at the same time to report its Missouri employees and has appeared to move its employees from one account to another account to deprive the state of Missouri of unemployment taxes.
“It appears this employer engaged in the practice of SUTA dumping to avoid paying some of their unemployment taxes,” said Rod Chapel, director of the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations (DOLIR). “SUTA dumping harms all employers by dumping the unemployment costs of such employers on the shoulders of others. Those who SUTA dump threaten the integrity of the state’s Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund.”
Under state statute, the Division of Employment Security is responsible for ensuring all employers comply with the law. By bolstering the program’s integrity, the division can help to maintain solvency within the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund, which assists those who need and are entitled to unemployment benefits.
For more information contact Tammy Cavender at DOLIR at (573) 751-7500.
If the schools are failing (I don't entirely agree) its because the adults value their bank account more than they value their children's futures.
Personally I think the real way to succeed at educating children is to have much smaller classrooms and more teachers. In my opinion, today's classrooms tend to have too many students to allow teachers to adequately keep track of when a student starts having problems that signal a need for extra attention or to do anything to help.
These smaller classrooms still need the books and technology to compete. Unfortunately there are too many people who routinely vote against all proposals by the school system they live in. These are usually the people who don't oversee to make sure their children are learning. Rather than point the finger at themselves, they simply avoid all responsibility by announcing that "the public school system is a failure because the government runs it and by the way, where's my next tax cut?" More reminiscent of the IQ involved in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures than anything else.
Okay this is going to tick some people off but I don't care right now. Stop having so many kids that the state in any way has to help pay for them, get off your tail and go to college yourself, get a good job and you might be able to afford that private school IF you want to.
Exhibit #1, see above.
What I think some of you are missing is: That all children diserve the same chance at a good education. What about the children that could excel in the private schools if the had the means to go? Why doesn't the children who come from not so nice homes and enviroments deserve the same chances in life as the one's who have so much money they don't know what to do with. Just because maybe you could afford private school or have some other financial means to get your child through school by yourself, doesn't mean your any better than the little girl or boy who lives in low income housing and mom has to work 3 jobs just to put food on the table. Let's just think about all of the children across the board.
I do think all the children should be thought of "across the board". I also think you shouldn't have more children than you can take care of in the way you would desire. So if that means not having one child or 6 as a previous writer stated then don't. IF you can't afford them quit popping them out!
I am not in any way for the voucher system with the government behind it, it is doomed to be abused and misused and will fail miserably. Just look at our government for a moment if you don't believe me.
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