Legislatures not driven to desperation by the problems of public education may be able to see the threat in vouchers negotiable in sectarian schools.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If you're going to have a public subsidy to education, vouchers are clearly a better way of delivering it. They should result in some loosening up and privatization of the government school system.
Another example of the educational inequality is the current debate over publicly financed school vouchers which will provide educational opportunities to a privileged handful, but deprive public schools of desperately needed resources.
Many of those who argue for vouchers say that they simply want to use competition to improve public education. I don't think it works that way, and I've been watching this for a longtime.
School reform is not enough. The notion of schooling itself must be challenged.
Education should be one of our top funding priorities; talking about it does not help the teachers and students who desperately need promises fulfilled.
We have seen that, in another unfunded mandate, the so-called No Child Left Behind Act, which created tougher standards, and we all support that, but Congress did not provide the money to attract and hire the best teachers.
Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands, and perpetuate its institutions.
If the government is going to mandate levels and punish schools for failing, they should send that money to the school system.
As the son of a union activist and a lifelong Democrat, I've always thought that privatizing our public schools is not the answer. We must strengthen public schools.
While the public school rewards failure by throwing more government money at failing school systems, the voucher system does the opposite.