From: nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle)
Subject: Re: Chelsea's school ...
Organization: Psych Department, Indiana University
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 16:08:33 GMT

mike@execu.execu.com (Mike McCants) writes:
>Nathan Engle writes:
>>    Excuse me for mentioning this, but aren't you now suggesting that 
>>there would be some relationship between school choice dollars and 
>>taxes? I thought that about 4 paragraphs ago you were saying that 
>>nobody was claiming that such a relationship should exist.

>I said that a voucher to the parents of a student should not be
>considered a tax refund since it will bear no relation (or an inverse
>relation?) to the amount of taxes they pay and that fewer students in
>the public schools should mean lower taxes for all taxpayers.

    If vouchers are going to be issued out of tax dollars earmarked for 
education then what difference does it make where the students go (at 
least as far as the taxes everyone has to pay). 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.

>>    If they're not interested in taking advantage of the opportunity in 
>>public schools, why is it going to be any different when they transfer 
>>over to private schools?

>Because the voucher isn't the whole cost and the parents will have
>to make up the rest.  It's also usually more inconvenient to
>attend a private school.  So, only motivated parents are going to
>actually take advantage of the opportunity.

    So motivated parents (who are also the most likely to have instilled 
the values of motivation to their kids) will benefit, but it seems to me 
that unmotivated kids are still not going to be helped, and they're going 
to be about the only ones left in public schools. I can see how that would 
help to justify further claims that private schools do a better job than 
public ones, but I'm not sure that the claims would actually be based on 
anything to do with the talent of the teachers.

>>The public schools have their problems, but I 
>>don't think that lack of motivation or placing a low value on education 
>>is one of them.

>You're entitled to your opinion.  My opinion is that most middle
>school and high school students have low motivation.

    I would agree with that statement, however I don't think that the 
lack of motivation is the fault of the schools but rather of home 
environments in which children are not instilled with the values which 
help them understand why education is important. 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.

>>The values school children carry into the classroom have 
>>a definite tendency to reflect the values that the parents display at 
>>home,

>No argument there.

>>and I'm not convinced that unmotivated kids are going to be any 
>>better students in private classrooms than they are now in public ones.

>The unmovivated kids/parents aren't going to bother to switch unless/
>until conditions in their deteriorating school become obviously
>intolerable.

>>    I'm sure it would go a long way. I would imagine that the gap between 
>>public and private schools would become even more pronounced, and with the 
>>departure from public schools of the last students who really care I would 
>>imagine that the peer group values in public schools would become even 
>>worse than they are now.

>Can't get much worse in a lot of inner-city schools!?

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

    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.

>>I certainly can't argue with the fact that it 
>>would result in change, but I'm not sure that I would call it progress.

>It would likely be an acceleration of the current trend.  Don't tell me
>that which public school their children will attend doesn't play a
>large role in where a lot of people choose to live.  Don't tell me
>there's not already a tremendous gap between some public schools and
>other public schools and private schools.

    I don't deny any of those things, not even that it would simply be 
an acceleration of an existing trend. 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.

>If this trend became really obvious, maybe the unmotivated parents of
>the deteriorating schools might find some motivation!?

    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.

--
Nathan Engle                        Software Juggler
Psychology Department               Indiana University
nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu      nengle@copper.ucs.indiana.edu
Newsgroups: alt.rush-limbaugh