From: mike@execu.execu.com (Mike McCants)
Newsgroups: alt.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: Chelsea's school ...
Date: 8 Jan 93 19:26:57 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Comshare, Inc. Austin Development Center

In article <nate.1039@psygate.psych.indiana.edu> nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle) writes:

>Under the situation 
>you've described it sounds like we're still paying for students even 
>after they've left the public schools, so the net savings to the taxpayer 
>is zero.

In the original post, I said: "If a public school student "costs"
$4000 per year and he is paid $2000 to go to a private school, then
why shouldn't the taxpayers pay less to the public schools."

[Have you heard about the threaded newsreaders?  Makes newslife much easier.]

>public ones, but I'm not sure that the claims would actually be based on 
>anything to do with the talent of the teachers.

No one I know of claims that the talent of the teachers has much to do
with anything!  (Not in general of course - too many untalented teachers.
But one talented teacher IS worth a whole bunch of untalented ones.)

>By the time those 
>non-motivated students have made it into school there isn't much that 
>anyone could do to turn them into Rhodes Scholars.

So let's talk about motivation.  Maybe we need special classes for
"special" students that lack "proper" motivation.  Maybe special
teachers for those special classes could make a difference.  I'm
not going to claim there's a solution to this problem and I'm not
going to claim that "school vouchers" would really affect it much.
Are you going to claim that "more money" would?

>Can I assume, however, that you still want to do the 
>experiment just to see how bad it could be?

What?  You are getting serious about getting specific about exactly
what is proposed and what would be the likely consequences of actually
doing something?  Sorry - I was only here to argue in generalities
and I am not qualified to get serious about real proposals.  That's
newslife.  Maybe someone who actually knows something about what
might be actually proposed as a course of action might actually have
read this thread this far and be willing to inject some actual
knowledge here.  (Oops - "actual" is very overworked in that paragraph.)

>    I agree that there are problems with public schools, and some of those 
>problems are things that cannot be fixed with any amount of money. However 
>we have a basic disagreement over what to do about the situation. My first 
>instinct is to do things to solve problems that exist with the system we 
>currently have in place. Bush's solution, on the other hand, seemed to be 
>that we should undermine the current system completely by plundering its 
>funding and removing all the remaining motivated students from public 
>schools. Thanks, but no thanks.

If I may be so dumb as to claim I am stating the "Republican position":
Some cities in some states should be allowed to "experiment" to see
what the effects are.   As it is, no court will even allow any
experimentation.  Obviously it would be counterproductive in the short
term to attempt to go too far too fast.  But forbidding experimentation
just because some money would go to religious schools is the real
point of contention here.

>It's just that I would prefer to 
>direct attention to the task of reversing the trend rather than 
>administering the system a death-blow before we know that whatever 
>we're replacing it with is going to do any better.

The Republican claim:  "The current trend cannot be reversed in the
current system because the current administrators have very little
real incentive to try to do so.  Competition provides them with
some incentive."  And: "We've tried "more money" for a number of
years now and it hasn't reversed the trend."

>    I've got news for you. The trend *is* really obvious. But the parents 
>still aren't finding that motivation. Try sacking their only educational 
>option and see if that helps. Somehow, I kind of doubt that it will.

Things have to get worse before they can get better?  Unfortunately(?)
I have no experience with "unmotivated parents", so I can only claim
that "competition to motivate administrators" is worth an experiment.

"Motivation makes the world go 'round." - Me

Democrat - Let's pass a law that makes it a crime to be "above average".

Republican - Let's encourage as much inequality as possible.

"Be the best you can be" IS encouraging inequality.
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