"There may not be anything you want to vote for, but there will surely be something you will want to vote against."
(or words to that effect.)
It's nearly election time. Instead of the standard telemarketer, I've been getting calls from people who want to tell me how to use my vote. The other day, I got a call from a gentleman who wanted me to vote in favor of school vouchers.
Now, if you haven't thought about it, vouchers might seem like a good idea. They would let the parents decide how their education taxes should be spent, whether it is on private schools or public. But in reality, it is a very different situation.
Vouchers are really just a way for the rich to get the government (aka the taxpayers) to help pay for their children's private schooling. They're paying, in some cases, ten thousand dollars per year, or more, per child for the fancy-schmancy private schools. And they are probably worth it. But, nobody likes spending any more than they have to, and these people want to get the government to pay some of that tuition.
Now certainly, anyone should be allowed to send their kids to school where ever they want, if they're willing to pay for it. If they don't want to pay, the government offers free, quality education for everyone. So go for the basics for free, or pay a little more for potentially better, or (as in the case of religious schools) specialized schools. The problem is, the rich want the government to pay for their private schools.
Proponents of school vouchers claim that they want everyone to have access to the same sort of quality education their children are getting, but this isn't what would happen, if vouchers were used. Remember, those $10K/year schools would still cost $6K/year, per child after the proposed $4000 voucher was applied.
Furthermore, those fancy-schmancy private schools are not required to accept just anyone. They are allowed to pick and choose which kids they admit based on religion, financial background, or pretty much anything else they can think of. Which means that all those "ordinary" kids simply won't be accepted.
So where do the rest of us spend our $4000 on education? Well, we could send 'em to the same public schools they've been going to, but what would be the fun in that? So we need more private schools! Well, that means that every two-bit scammer in the state is going to open up their very own private "school". And your kids will end up in a room with 40 or 50 other kids, with an uncredentialed "teacher", watching Disney videos all year.
Ah, but surely parents will not allow their kids to waste their time in such an environment! Many will after these so-called schools start offering a $1000 cash rebate. You see, a lot of parents really don't care about their kids, they just want them out of their hair during the day. And that $4000 voucher doesn't do them any good, because you can't buy beer with it. But if the school offers a cash rebate, they can use that to buy beer. So there would be a very strong incentive for some people to send their kids to a crappy school.
You might ask why you should care about whether or not someone else's kid gets a good education, and I'll tell you that that should be obvious. Kids without education grow up to be adults who can't get a good job, which means they either live on welfare or turn to crime. So yes, you do care whether other people's children are well educated.
So we have the rich people getting the general public to help pay for their kids expensive schools, and the poor people sending their kids to crappy schools where they won't learn anything. (Even if these schools wanted to teach their students, $4000 is not enough to give a kid a quality education.) Meanwhile, no one is going to the public schools anymore.
With attendance plummetting at the public schools, and their budget slashed to nothing (where did you think that $4000 was coming from, eh?), the public schools will simply wither and die. So for those parents who do
So, to sum up, school vouchers will:
So, to get back to my original story, this guy calls me to tell me to vote in favor of school vouchers. So I ask him if he knows what vouchers are all about. He says no, he's in Florida, and they don't have school vouchers there.
"Well," I says, verbally rubbing my hands together in anticipation, "let me explain them to you." So I start in, explaining vouchers, why some people want them, and what they will do.
By the time I'm finished, he's saying things like "I'm glad this is only a temporary job" and "I don't think I like this job anymore." I'm not sure, but I think he was ready to quit as soon as I hung up.
I got off the phone and Rachel gave me a high five. I'd done my good deed for the day.