Using that logic, where does it stop? Most states require drivers to have insurance on their vehicle, should we have tax-sponsored government car insurance? OSHA requires certain safety apparatus be used by employees in certain fields, is it the government's responsibility to provide them? Our current, federally controlled public school system is worthless. It is accomplishing exactly what it set out to accomplish: it's churned out generations of individuals who are brainwashed into liberal thinking, who begat sons and daughters who were taught the same. The ultimate goal is uniform conformity to the liberal idealogy. Once you get enough generations of parents indoctrinated, their children will be indoctrinated by the school system, and it will be affirmed at home by their parents as well. We shouldn't be paying taxes to support something that we get no say in ("taxation without representation" is one of the fundamental reasons why America was founded). The people who are paying the salaries of school superintendants and teachers don't get to decide who gets hired. They don't get to decide what ideas get imposed upon their children. And when the system is ineffectual and inadequate, they don't get to decide any changes in policy or replacing of school officials. It's a great situation for lazy parents who don't really care what their kids are learning when they're at school 7 hours a day, but not so great if you don't happen to be a maniacal, extreme leftist and want your children to be educated and not brainwashed. Vouchers are a better solution than you think. What a voucher does is gives the money that a parent would ordinarily contribute to the broken down public school system, back to the parent to spend where he pleases to educate his child. This takes money away from the public schools, yes, but it also removes that student, and the subsequent financial burden of the student, from the public school as well. What it does is gives parents a choice as to where the money they give the federal government for the education of their childen, is spent. Charter schools are a lesser evil than the current system, but what really needs to happen is we need to abandon our current system and start from scratch. Schools should be funded by the states, not the central government, and should be subject to the wishes of the parents whose children have to be there.

I know someone who helped initiate a lawsuit on behalf of a student who graduated from Hempstead schools who just plainly couldn't read. Hempstead schools collect higher per student than the median for Long Island so funding wasn't an issue. Apparently it's the parents' fault.

Money just isn't cutting it. Teachers with tenure cannot be fired and the system is resolute in not holding anyone accountable for results.

It seems to me that defending the system as it is now is just insanity. Let the parents put their kids in the best schools they believe they can find with the money that's already being collected. What the anti-voucher people won't tell you is that most of the school tax money is collected from property owners who don't have kids so that large amount of money will continue to remain in control of the public schools.

If I was tenured on Long Island as a school teacher, retiring with an incredible package, earning more than $100,000 per year working 180 days per year (yes, that's 16 weeks off), I'd be inclined to be defensive as well!

If you look at costs from the 1950s and compare them to today, every expense is in line except for one. The cost of owning a home, car ownership, food, even college expenses are in line. The monster child in the budget is texes. I believe one could make the case that taxes are the reason why most families need two incomes to survive, unlike in the 1950s.

It's bad enough – come on, let parents take their money and pick the best schools for their kids.

When I made a decision in my middle-aged years to become a teacher, I had no awareness – and still don't – that, while sending my kids to a private school, I was being a hypocrite. I believed that I could go in and make a difference in kids' lives, which, I'm thankful to say, I have in some ways. And we'r talking about kids who don't have the advantages mine have had. Furthermore, when I look at other teachers around me who are settling for a pay scale far less than what other professions could offer and who give of themselves in untold ways year after year, I know that there is still a great hope for the children whose parents can't afford private school education. But, of course, those wonderful teachers, of which there are many, seldom get much attention in the public arena.

Are there "mediocre" teachers who've simply given up, and are there some pretty deplorable public schools to send one's kids to these days? Unfortunately, yes, there are. Are there dedicated, smart, self-giving teachers and public schools with administrations that are turning things around against all odds? You bet there are. The unfortunate thing is that people tend to look at only one side of a situation and perhaps listen to the media a bit too much, a media that will forever focus on the bad and seldom the good in society. Or maybe they've suffered some hurt personally through an inferior school, which is a very unfortunate thing.

How sad it is that people come to a point of just giving up, not that I don't understand, to some degree. When you look at some of the bad things going on in some school settings, it is hard not to get discouraged. Therefore, choose instead to look at the great things going on, or better yet, get involved in some way to make that bad situation better. One person can make a difference, and one person can get something good started that grows. A person doesn't have to become a teacher as I did; he or she can just volunteer one afternoon a week, as my in-laws have done, to go tutor some kids in reading at a local school. The other possibilites are endless.

In response to Honker's assertions, I'll make these responses;
1. The more money we spend the worse our education system has become. This is both true and untrue. Some money does get misappropriated to things that end up failing or that somebody just plain squanders. But then I've seen what great things can happen when funding finally comes through for new computers in a school, and many other things too numerous to mention.
2. The next generation of teachers and administrators being better is highly unlikely. Maybe, maybe not. I'm seeing great ones come along all the time, ones who care about kids and want to change their lives. And it's a fine thing to see.
3. Caring parents are the [only] ones who look to private schools. Yes and no. I've seen some very dedicated parents at the public school where I teach, though yes, I wish there were more. And where the parents don't care, all the more reason a caring teacher needs to be there for those kids. Many teachers, God bless them, sometimes nurture and act as a sort of surrogate parent to kids from bad homes, and what would those kids do without such teachers?

But we could argue the virtues versus the weaknesses of our public schools forever. I'd prefer to return to the point I was mainly making in my posting: that vouchers are not the answer, and therefore, trust me, they never will come about on a national level. The money simply won't be there to furnish every school-age kid in America a voucher, even by shutting down the public school system. And even if someone found a way to assure the creation of millions of new private schools instantaneously in order to accommodate the kids, private schools are just that: private, and they take who they want; there's no guarantee for anyone.

If you dispense with public schools, you'd almost have to dispense with compulsory education laws for kids. If you're going to require people to see that their kids are educated (which we as a nation must continue doing, like any other civilized nation), you must provide the schools for them to attend. Thus, imperfect as they are, public schools are here to stay. For better or worse, it's the way things are. And if you provide vouchers to any families that wish to make an alternative choice for a private school, you must make vouchers equally available to all Americans, and that's creating a no-win, impossible situation. Why? There can't possibly be enough schools to go around, tuition alone wouldn't keep them running anyway, and the money would have to be taken from public schools which are already suffering.

Since we must accept that public schools are here to stay, there is one very viable prospect that caring parents and teachers can explore, that being charter schools. I won't go into all the details of how charter schools work technically, but they're working very successfully in many places. In a charter school situation, you get the government funds because you are a public school, but it is run the way the people who chartered it decide it is to be run. What such schools require are a lot of dedicated parents and educators who are willing to do the work to get them up and going.

"Red Cocaine," Joseph Douglass, Ph.D., a careerist in U.S. intelligence, testified before Congress on what he documented in this book (and also in "Betrayed"): torture-by-experimentation upon U.S. POWs by Soviet and other Communist nations, beginning in the 1950s. The documented plans of the Kremlin leadership, put into action, included development of Latin American drug cartels, in order to target and weaken U.S. youth culture, military, and inner city residents. This information was never publically noted by the MSM of the time, as detente was the ambiance of the time. However, it is fascinating history.

If you were to offer vouchers to any American parent, in a democratic society you'd have to make them equally available to ALL parents, and where the heck is the money going to come from for that? Even if you cut funding to public schools (cheating many kids) to divert that money toward vouchers, and even if the private schools existed to accommodate all those wanting to attend one, you'd still have no solution because tuition in virtually all private schools covers but a portion of the cost to keep those schools running.

Furthermore, the new bureaucracy that would be required to put into existence a nationwide school voucher program would cost millions, and who's going to pay for that?

True, our public education system needs a lot of tweaking, but vouchers can never be the answer. More money toward education can help, but I think even more we need committed teachers, committed administrators, and definitely committed parents. When you have those elements, I think what eventually follows are committed and higher achieving students.

Dan

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm

Dewey gets considerable attention in this book (which is availible in its entirety online) as well.