From: sulkanen@xanth.msfc.nasa.gov (Martin Sulkanen - NRC/ES65)
Subject: Re: Private School Re: Public Education
Organization: NASA/MSFC
Distribution: usa
Date: 16 Oct 92 14:02:09 GMT

lazarus@ocf.berkeley.edu (Andrew J. Lazarus) writes:

>In article <BvqH1r.9KA@agora.rain.com> robart@agora.rain.com (Robert Barton) writes:
>>>lazarus@ocf.berkeley.edu (Andrew J. Lazarus) writes:

>>>>Hmmm. Last I saw, a Bush voucher was worth about $1000. But private
>>>>school tuition (secular) runs at least $6000. I don't see the poor
>>>>scraping up the other 7K. Sure, a few people on the margin will be able

>>   6000-1000 is 5000, not 7000.  And the vouchers would be a lot
>>more than $1000, since no state in the country spends that little
>>per student, not even Arkansas.

>On the other hand, you seem to be completely misinformed about the
>status of Bush's voucher program, and for that matter any other I have
>seen. They do NOT propose vouchers in the full amount of per-pupil
>spending in the public schools. Really. They don't. Bush's proposal has
>a dollar amount which I believe is $1K. Some of the proposals
>are also means-tested. I believe Bush has waffled on that.

>As with all of his recent promises, Bush has never indicated how he will
>make up the revenue loss, although a dollar-for-dollar reduction from
>public school budgets seems the best guess. How are you planning to
>finance your much more expensive plan? Will it be dollar for dollar
>reductions? Don't forget to replace average cost with marginal cost when
>you do that. Not to mention, don't forget to kiss public schools
>(followed by the rest of the United States) good bye.

I think the voucher program is will cover about $2500. Also, this will
not be done by taking federal money currently allocated to public 
schools. I'm also not sure whether $6000 is an accurate figure for 
private school tuition; the new private schools currently under development 
may have somewhat lower tuition, and scholarship programs offered by the 
schools themselves may be expanded to supplement the vouchers. In any case 
I don't think that one can make the arguement that a negligible number of 
poor & (lower) middle class families would take advantage of the voucher 
program. This is an idea that really needs to be tried. The real issue here 
is power: public school educrats do not want *real* competition in providing 
K-12 education in this country. The fear tactics that have been employed to 
attack vouchers, specifically that they are a subsidy for religious 
organizations, are particularly misleading and pernicious. Many religious 
schools provide a superb education, and vouchers will help lower income 
families go to those schools, but also nonreligious schools. Public school 
funding has increased more than ten fold in thirty years, and every year 
the public school educats cry that they need still more money...their 
appetite seems to be insatiable. Yet many public schools consistently fail
to deliver their product: a basic education in mathematics, literature, 
history, geography, science, and reading and writing competency. If they 
were companies, the conclusion that one would draw is that many public 
school systems are horribly mismanaged. However, public education powers 
will not tolerate discussing competition to improve product quality. I 
believe that the most chronic cases of bad schools will need the threat 
of closure to make them improve.

Martin Sulkanen
Newsgroups: alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.elections,alt.rush-limbaugh