From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Newsgroups: tx.politics
Subject: Re: CHOICE: DEBATE BASED ON COMPETING PHILOSOPHIES
Date: 18 Nov 92 14:11:53 GMT
Distribution: tx
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc

In <1992Nov16.173643.20872@digi.lonestar.org> gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo) writes:

>In article <1992Nov15.222048.27816@mksol.dseg.ti.com> mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
>>
>>This is actually a worse solution than the idea of giving full
>>vouchers to people to send their kids to religious schools.  What is
>>someone who can't afford to pay the rest of the tuition to a private
>>schools supposed to do with a PARTIAL VOUCHER?  Sounds like a great
>>way to encourage middle-income flight from the public schools.
>>
>>All the 'good examples' everyone quotes to 'prove' how effective
>>'choice' would be are examples of PUBLIC SCHOOL choice?  So why don't
>>people push for that (which they can probably even get) since it seems
>>to work so well, instead of insisting that they want to send their
>>kids to Jo Smo's Acadamy of Charismatic Intolerance on tax money?
>>

>The idea of a partial voucher is to give the actual parents a
>little bigger material stake in their kids' education.  You
>could easily make it a sliding scale, based on income, with
>a poverty floor below which one would be exempt from the
>partial payment.

Even a 'full' voucher has a certain amount of problems; anyway, have
any of the 'partial voucher' systems you've seen proposed had such a
sliding scale incorporated in them?  If so, you've seen some that I've
never heard of.  Every partial voucher plan I've ever heard of cuts
the quite wealthy off the top (by income limits, requiring
qualification for school lunch program, or whatever) and the lower
class off the bottom by requiring them to have all this money to put
up.  It's just another case of middle-class welfare.

>People do push for choice.  The established parties are very
>much against it (except for a large number of conservative
>republicans -- this should be an anomoly, as liberals should
>also see the benefit).

You should probably rephrase that.  SOME people push for 'choice'.
Quite a few others thing that private school 'choice' is a bad idea;
simply a 'gimmick' to allow the ultra-right to get government
subsidies to send their kids to private schools.  This probably
explains the 'political support' you've seen for it, as well.  Perhaps
liberals (and most others) look at it and see the detriments as well
as the benefits, and are of the opinion that on balance it is a bad
idea? 

>One reason why all the choice programs have been public school
>choice programs is that private school programs have not been
>allowed yet.  The few attempts to establish them have been fought
>ferociously by the education establishment.  But the success of
>the public school choice programs does demonstrate the effective-
>ness of the principle.

Well, no.  What they demonstrate is that PUBLIC school choice and more
local control are good ideas.  We knew that already.

>As for your fear of millions of kids getting their brains beat
>down by Jo Smo's Acadamay [sic] of Charismatic Intolerance, I
>offer the following:

>"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
> in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden

>Your paternalistic educational state has the creation of a perfectly
>safe (and utterly grey) world as one of its primary objectives.

Congratulations, that last bit qualifies you for fool of the month.
Not only do you not understand my position (not surprising, since it
differs from your own), but you don't understand the quote.  Gee,
let's all walk off a cliff, since we think that "perfect safety is for
people who don't have the balls to live in the real world".  Not the
thrust of the quote AT ALL, Gerry.

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
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Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.