From: mike@execu.execu.com (Mike McCants)
Newsgroups: alt.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: Chelsea's school ...
Date: 12 Jan 93 01:12:15 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Comshare, Inc. Austin Development Center

In article Nathan Engle writes:
>    Actually in Indiana there's a program that's just started which will 
>allow parents to choose to send their kids to a "magnet" school.

Yes, magnet schools are a very small form of competition.  But they
are restricted to students that are much more intelligent than
average.  They are "elite" and subject to attack.  Even "honors"
classes in the regular schools are now subject to attack.  Why
should the smart students be allowed a class of their own where
they can get even smarter?

Riding a bus an extra hour a day to get to the other side of
town to a school that would otherwise be all black is one "cost"
of such a school.  But without this possibility, even more of
the intelligent sudents would go to private schools.  Very few
of the high school students in the math/science magnet school
are minorities.  Only 50% survive 4 years.

Numerous, convenient private schools would be much stronger competition
to the public schools.  And if 1/2 the tuition were available as a
"scholarship", ...

>    The reason I think that it would be a bad idea is that our public 
>schools are a "safety" net into which most of our "disadvantaged" students 
>are placed.

For whose benefit?  Are they really learning?  Disadvantaged in money
or disadvantaged in motivation?  If half the students went to private
schools at half the (public) cost, there would be twice as much money to try
to teach these disadvantaged students.

>    Back during the Gulf War there were a lot of peacenik types going 
>around talking about stopping the war by withholding funding.

Congress almost did.  A democracy gets the government it deserves.
An individual fails to pay taxes at his peril.

>what the reaction would have been 
>if the peaceniks had tried to argue for the idea of "Defense Vouchers" 
>which they could elect to spend on whatever form of national defense they 
>thought was the most effective?

If a law is passed and signed that says that, then that's a really
stupid law (IMO).  You lobby your Congressman and I'll forget about
trying to lobby mine.  (Jake Pickle - he may be a Democrat, but I'm
sure he's not that stupid.)

>a double standard to hand money to the Pentagon with the insistence that 
>Pentagon experts determine how the money should be spent,

Wow, no Congressional oversight allowed?  I'll vote for that!
Then they could close the bases they feel they need to close without
Congress messing things up.  Then they could stop building that
very expensive boat in Conn.  Will Congress still control the amount
of the defense budget?

>but when we hand 
>money to educators all the sudden we want everybody to have individual 
>control.

Somehow I feel that how my local property taxes are spent by my local
school board to pay local administrators while local students do not get
a good education is a lot more local a problem than the national defense.

Where was I reading that some Democrat advocates spending Federal money
for school vouchers in the Washington, D. C., area?  I'll keep my
finger's crossed.  [Hope springs eternal.]