From: elg@elgamy.sccsi.com (Eric Lee Green)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,misc.education
Subject: Re: Elections and school choice (was: RE: Liberal v. Conservative)
Date: 21 Aug 92 03:45:49 GMT
Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home

From article <16849C97C.JHARTLEY@cmsa.gmr.com>, by JHARTLEY@cmsa.gmr.com:
> In article <00714263485@elgamy.sccsi.com>
> elg@elgamy.sccsi.com (Eric Lee Green) writes:
>>I might point out that Al Shanker and the AFT *DOES* advocate school
>>choice. It's part of the AFT's proposal to decentralize school systems and
>>empower teachers to actually run schools, rather than having school
>>systems being managed by bureaucrats.
>>It is Bush's specific proposal, rather than the concept of school choice as
>>a whole, that gets Shanker's ire. And I agree with him. Bush's proposal is
>>a tax break for yuppies. It won't help anybody who REALLY needs help.
>>Just thought I'd clear up that misunderstanding.
>> -- Eric Lee Green (AFT member, and proud of it).
>
> Well, Mr. Green, I'd like to see the evidence.  I am skeptical, and the
> NEA is certainly against any choices by parents.

The NEA is *FAR* different from the AFT. The NEA, in my opinion, is a bunch
of fat hogs who're more interested in protecting the pork than in educating
kids. Read the NEA magazine, and you get the impression that they're more
interested in protecting the party line than in imparting information.

I must admit that the AFT gets a bit too confrontational at times, but at
least the AFT has endorsed several reform initiatives that the NEA says "no
way!" to. If you want to read about Al Shanker's ideas and the AFT's reform
policies, it's either the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times that Al
takes a 3/4 page ad out in once a week to talk about some educational issue
or another.


 In a Wall Street Journal
> August 11, 1992 editorial, I found these excerpts:
> The Democratic platform declared that private school choice "would bankrupt
> the public school system."

Democratic platforms pander to whoever promises to deliver votes. I haven't
seen one platform in the past thirty years where the president actually
read the stupid thing, much less acted on it.

> It is my understanding that Bush's proposal is that low and middle
> income parents - your idea of yuppies, I guess - receive vouchers worth
> $1000 per child to send their kids to public, private, or religious
> schools.  Of course, I'd like to see a more aggressive competition for
> our abyssmally poor public schools, but this plan is a start and is
> much better than Clinton's "choose among the public schools" crap.

If Bush was proposing that all parents recieve a $4,300 voucher (which is
less than the national average, but sufficient for educating kids), I'd
believe him when he says he wants to "educate all kids." $1,000 won't buy
diddly. The parents who really need a good education for their kids, the
working poor who work two or three jobs just to get to the poverty line,
can't afford to buy an education for their kids with a measly $1,000
voucher. It's only the people who have $3,300 to spare in their yearly
income who would be able to take advantage of the vouchers -- and many of
the parents that I see don't have $10/month to spare, much less $330/month.

I repeat: the Bush proposal, as it stands, is pork barrel to buy middle
class votes. It is not an educational reform method. To do that, Bush will
need to take away every dollar currently being gathered by public school
systems, and hand it back out in the form of vouchers which must be
accepted by all schools who accept vouchers as full payment of at least 50%
of their student tuition. (so that vouchers aren't driven down through the
floor by anti-tax anti-educate-the-poor Republicans).

I'd love it if Bush could do that. Fat chance, though. "Read My Lips"
Bush-boy doesn't have the gumption.

Given that, "choose among the public schools" is really the only viable
solution. Either we take their tax money away at the federal level, or we
leave it at the local level. Given the national lack of will at the federal
level, it's unlikely that real national choice will occur anytime soon.

> I'd have to say that if your self serving claims about the AFT are
> representative of your approach to teaching, we need choice immediately.
> Healthy competition is good for everyone eventually.  Only those who
> have an inferior product need to fear it.
>
> Standard disclaimer: I think for myself.

Really? Looks to me like you let the Wall Street Journal do your thinking
for you.

As for "self-serving claims", all you need to do is read. It's in the AFT's
releases insofar as what they support.

By the way, the main reason I joined the HFT (the local branch of the AFT)
is because they passed a law in Austin saying that the local schools are
required to give me a 30-minute lunch break, and only paperwork that's on a
certain limited list. Before then, it wasn't unusual for teachers to have
only 10 minutes for lunch (due to lunchroom duty) and have to spend 30
minutes every morning just filling out stupid forms. It's a $%#$% shame
that it took the state legislature to reduce the paperwork to the point of
reasonableness... you'd think that local school systems would be smarter
than to bring this sort of thing down upon themselves but, apparently, they
aren't. Local school systems see their teachers as cheap labor to be used
at will (since they have a monopoly on the local teacher employment
market). It will take true choice, and local control of schools, for the
free market to really work insofar as supply, demand, and teaching
conditions. This is one reason why I am a firm advocate of school choice,
and why I believe that a true voucher system -- AT THE STATE LEVEL (since
almost all school funding is done at the state level) -- would be the ideal
way to do it. Unfortunately, such vouchers have rarely been proposed.
Instead, we get Bush-like pork barrel subsidies for the middle class.
Typical.

--
 Eric Lee Green  elg@elgamy.sccsi.com         Dodson Elementary
 (713) 437-6908  uunet!nuchat!elgamy!elg      Houston, TX
                "Kids are kids, no matter what"
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