The Constitution says nothing about this. The very first amendment to the Constitution clearly states:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"

When you take my tax dollars, and spend it on the religious education of a child, then what you are telling me is that the government is promoting that religion.

Furthermore, how will you feel if Christianity becomes a minority religion in this country? How will you feel when your tax dollars are going to an Islamic school, or a Hindu school?

You are happy to play games while in the majority, but you aren't looking at what might happen if you suddenly become the minority.

This isn't true in my area but it certainly could be different elsewhere.

Don't you see? _THAT_ is what made those schools better than an inner city school. Not because they were private, but because the parents who sent their kids to those schools cared enough to send them there.

That is all I am saying. None of the plans that have been thrown around have been even remotely well though out. There are so many potential issues that have not been addressed.

This is a possibility but would also require us to provide tax breaks to those people who have no children at all. I don't have a public opinion on this one way or the other, but it would certainly introduce further funding problems into the system.

It also begs the question: Should people with 6 kids pay more in school taxes than a family with one child. Again I have no public opinion on this, but it would certainly screw up funding and family budgets.

A-men!

-Don

 

You say this in the majority but I worry that you would feel differently in the minority.

What about all of the folks without kids who are paying school taxes? By your logic they should also not be required to pay school taxes. Only if you do that, then school funding in this country falls apart.

I have long been a proponent that any money spent on education should at least be tax deductible. No one should be penalized for the betterment of themselves or their children. College would be a lot easier for people if it were tax deductible.

-Don

 

You need to bring a lawsuit to have this thrown out as has been done in a number of districts already. These laws have done nothing to help with race relations or education. They have only made parents even more apathetic about their children's education.

Maybe at first, but in the long run you will make the system better.

As a country we want everything fixed fast: our food, fad diets, and now school vouchers. The wholesale abandonment of the public education system in this country would give rise to such turmoil and so many problems that it is just a worse idea than fixing the existing system.

Better how though? I got a far better education in my public high school than any of the other people I know who went to private or Catholic schools.

They pay their teachers less. This might work when there are two wage earners in a family, but it would also keep a lot of people out of teaching who might otherwise become great teachers. If we tried to lower every teachers salary then you would find already bad teacher shortages made far worse.

Private schools in NYC are not required to employ teachers with at least a masters degree but the public school system is.

NYC has been going into every school year recently missing about 2000 teachers. These positions end up being filled at the last possible second by potentially under qualified teachers. Why? Because it costs so much to live in NYC and the salaries don't work out well for someone with a masters degree. This is compared to a city in NY like Warwick where the teachers make up to 50% more than in NYC.

The problem is two-fold. First, school vouchers would affect the NorthEast and no one has addressed this issue in any of their plans.

Second, unionization spreads quickly. If the conditions are right, then when one business adopts a union, often many others do as well.

They give people choices but you have addressed none of the concerns that those people who are against school vouchers have.

This country also has plenty of monopolies. Do you have a real choice of who to buy your power from? Do you have a choice of who to use for water and sewer? Do you have a choice of who to buy natural gas from (when the city supplies gas that is)?

And what happens when all the kids in that public school want to go to the private school but that school is full. Now the public school has far less money, the kids stuck at the public school get a worse education, and everyone bitches more.

Yes but these rules would not apply if schools were privatized.

Sanitation workers in NYC have a starting salary of $30k which increases to $50k over 5 years. They also earn overtime and other differential pay. Then again, would you want to drive around at three AM picking up everyone else's waste and coming home every day smelling like garbage?

For the record, I own my own company and it has been my experience that if you want to be successful, you can't just fire anybody for any reason. If you try that you destroy company morale and people jump ship.

I do not remember your suggestion and I apologize.

The problem I have is with measuring teacher progress. What metric do you use? If students do poorly in a great teachers class, is that perhaps because the sudents just aren't as bright, or because the teacher taught poorly.

Moreover, how do you actually measure the progress? Do you use a standardized test? The problem there is that you end up teaching students how to take a particular test, instead of educating them.

I went to a high school that wasn't required by the NYS Board of Regents to administer standardized tests in a number of subjects. We could do this because on average our students had always done far better than the rest of the state. The real benefit, though, was being able to learn instead of being taught how to take a test.

-Don

 

What is it with me? I keep writing tomes instead of the simple responses I intend to write.

My apologies.

-Don

 

True, which is why tax dollars aren't going to religious schools and should continue that way. Personally I'm Christian, but I still support that.

If it did however, how you feel about your money going towards religious schools would be how other people currently feel paying for schools that are not of their religion or of no religion. Basically they are being penalized for having a religion and participating in it.
Not sure where you are going with that comment.

Thats exactly why I posted it, to back up your statement to how important parental involvement is.

That was on thing I was getting at.

But back to the question about those that send their kids to private schools and those that have no kids but still have to pay for public schools. Definately unfair to them, and if we are both in agreement that parental involvement is a huge fact, how do both of the groups then help out in public schools? Never thought about that question before now.


With all that said, I'm out of this one. Being limited to friends internet access over the weekend sucks.

Oh, and were not writing *that much* in replies, it's just the quote makes it take up more screen space

 

What about those folks without kids who have to pay school taxes?

I simply meant that I do not believe that a lot of people who currently support school vouchers would continue to do so if the majority of their tax dollars went to fund other religious schools. The "you" in that case was the royal you and not you specifically

Benjamin Franklin supported public education because he felt that it would benefit him in the end if everyone in society were better educated. I don't have an answer to these questions but I do think they need to be asked.

Yeah that's the ticket! The quotes are at fault

Enjoy your weekend.

-Don

 

Well, your wrong, please read the first amendment again. It says that Congress can NOT establish a particular religion over another and then force that on the citizens, be it Catholic or Christian or any other religion.

There is nothing that stops the federal government from allowing vouchers to be used ANY WAY a particular citizens choices to use it, be it private school or religious. Just because a parent may use their voucher for a religious school does NOT in ANY WAY mean that the federal government is ”establishing a religion” This is where many people get confused because they try to hard to read things into something that never existed to begin with.

On the flip side it would be illegal according to the Constitution for Congress to pass a law that told parents they could NOT use school vouchers for a religious school ”Congress shall make NO LAW… or prohibition the FREE EXERCISE thereof”

As you can see your argument holds no water, there is absolutely nothing stopping the federal government from giving school vouchers to parents to use in any manner they wish to do so.

 

Just wanted to clear something up with my last post,

I do not in any way think the federal government should in any way fund any or all religious schools or activities. Some may take my last post that way and that is not what I intended it to mean.

It is meant to mean that the first amendment does nothing more then tell the federal government that they, the government body, can NOT favor one religion over another in any way in which laws may reflect.

It also tells the federal government that what a citizen may do in their own life in regards to religion is none of the business of the federal government.

So here is the thing, so long as the federal government does not put ANY limits on what a parent may do with a school voucher, be it private or religious school then the federal government is completely within the law and the Constitution.

When the federal government starts telling people they can NOT use a school voucher for a religious school then they are not within the law and are going against the first amendment, and thus acting in an un-Constitutional manner…

 

Burt, agreed.

I think as long as the voucher program remains equivalent in dollar amount to what a public school would alot per student it's a fair program.

However, I do not believe in totally abandoning public schools. I personally am going to give it a try with my son that starts kindergarten next year. Fortunately the schools in this area are somewhat better than some other Orlando area schools. I am not totally against enrolling him in a private school if it doesn't work out. It will be on my own dime however. Vouchers should be reserved for those that would have a hard time supporting private education. I do agree there are public schools in the US that need to be totally revamped. I don't know the answer to it all, but I think in the end, programs designed to hold the schools acountable will work, ie. vouchers and funding restrictions. Between the teachers unions and the beurocracy it's become very hard to hold individual teachers responsable. We need to focus on protecting the system not so much the teachers.

 

For what it is worth, I wanted to see why some people think that the term "neo conservative" is an insult when I think it is the sign of a thinking person with deeply held values (there are others as well, I am not saying that only Neo Conservatives think and have deeply held values! ), and I am not sure I got an answer.

We have traded a lot of words back and forth, and it is probably true that few have changed their positions because of it, which I suppose is to be expected. For my part I have tried to avoid broad generalizations of other positions, or to espouse unsupportable allegations. I believe that other posters have tried to do that as well. However, it does appear that for many of the issues we have discussed, we have each brought an underlying world view to the table that guides our thinking, and that may be either difficult or impossible to explain to someone committed to a clashing world view.

In some of the issues we have brought up, what are the things we agree on? What is the real point of departure?

TS

 

For the record my daughter attends a public school and a very fine one indeed. I have no problems with public schools in general just have issues with keeping bad teachers (very few) and all the bureaucracy that sucks up all the money.

I do not think public schools should be shut down nor done a way with. I believe it is time for a major overhaul. Get rid of the teachers union or make it much easier to get rid of teachers that can’t make the grade.

Get rid of the huge bureaucracy and set it up more like a business. In my opinion the highest paid position in a public school system should be the teacher, those in the bureaucracy should not be making a ton of cash, or even more then $40k - $50 if that for only the highest of positions like superintendent.

School vouchers should be allowed especially in the inner cities, why do the children in the inner city continue to get the worse education? Yes if a public school in particular areas can not measure up then close the doors and start over and allow vouchers.

If you want an educated country then it has to be as equal as possible in all areas of the country, from the rich areas to the poor areas, it shouldn’t matter where someone puts their child in school the education opportunity should be the same…

Schools should be viewed like any other business with stock holders. When the stock holders are not happy with management they, the stock holders get rid of the management and replace them with new people with new ideas and directions.

The parents should be the stock holders and if the school board, administrators and/or teachers are not making the profit (educated students) then the parents should be able to get rid of the school board members, schools administrators and/or teachers and replace them with someone that can make the profit and make the company grow…

 

Yep, and yet you STILL are making errors, like this statement below:

It was NOT a stealth aircraft, and never was intended to be. It was a high speed recon plane. The first plane to be designed soley for stealth intentions was the F-117 which made it's maiden voyage in 1981.

I wonder how I could have thought you were mocking them, maybe it was this statement from you..

 

01, you make some good solid points. Parental involvement means your parental input has been reduced to just getting involved with your child's activities.

School administrators are the only group in society who have made a career out of blaming others for their own problems. At this point they have lost control of the school, that's evident by the fact that most schools have a dedicated police officer in a buidling that was once the thrid safest place in town.

 

Fordby4--the SR-71 was the basis for the F-117. The manufacturer had to get permission from the CIA to use the technology from the SR-71 in the F-117. That is why from conception to first filght it only took something like 5 or 6 years.

 

It was a stealth aircraft and if you don't believe that then you need to read a bit more about the plane and about the Skunk Works.

Stealth technology is not about being invisible to radar. None of the B2, F-117, JSF or YF-22 are invisible to radar. They simply have very small radar cross sections. The SR-71 had a very small cross section and it was specifically designed to be that way. That makes it a stealth aircraft.

The B2, F-117 and so on have further stealth advances such as baffled intakes (not strictly necessary on a ram jet engine), exhaust gas cooling (not practical on the SR-71), and radar absorbent material which was in it's infancy when the SR-71 was designed.

Again if you took my comments in context you would have understood exactly what I was saying. You were portraying the Mig-29 and Su-27 as amazing 21st century aircraft that required the development of the F-22. I said that the JSF was more than a match for those aircraft and the extraordinary price tag of the F-22 was not warranted. Seeing as you don't want to agree with me we might as well drop it.

-Don