From owner-freebsd-chat Sun Aug 10 16:02:27 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA21743 for chat-outgoing; Sun, 10 Aug 1997 16:02:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from andrsn.stanford.edu (root@andrsn.Stanford.EDU [36.33.0.163]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA21736; Sun, 10 Aug 1997 16:02:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (andrsn@localhost.stanford.edu [127.0.0.1]) by andrsn.stanford.edu (8.8.6/8.6.12) with SMTP id PAA01142; Sun, 10 Aug 1997 15:53:42 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 15:53:41 -0700 (PDT) From: Annelise Anderson To: Scott Blachowicz cc: ac199@hwcn.org, "Jonathan M. Bresler" , hoek@hwcn.org, softweyr@xmission.com, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FTC regulating use of registrations In-Reply-To: <199708102233.PAA00370@knife.statsci.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sun, 10 Aug 1997, Scott Blachowicz wrote: > Annelise Anderson wrote: > > > But it may improve the public schools. They'd have to compete for > > students. > > How do they compete if they have less money? Don't the vouchers imply less > money for the public schools, which in turn probably implies cutbacks and no > means to expand the curriculae? Most proposals involve new public funds, so the schools wouldn't get less money (or less money per student). Ultimately there's no reason why a voucher system should cost (overall) more than people are currently paying in taxes plus what they pay for private tuition. There's also no evidence that what students learn correlates with the amount spent per student. > > Are enough parents smart enough and concerned enough to > > pick a "good" school? (I think so.) Would the public schools be > > left with the difficult children--handicapped, disruptive, whatever? > > Well...if you think that some other school is better, doesn't that mean that > some school will be considered inferior? The inferior school will be left > with kids who couldn't get into the "better" schools or kids with parents who > aren't smart enough or concerned enough to move to the "better" school. > Either way, the "inferior" school probably doesn't see improvement. > > I don't really know about the voucher stuff, but it seems like it HAS to lead > to less money for the public system and it seems like that HAS to reduce the > public schools' quality. Doesn't it? Proponents of vouchers don't think so. They think the public schools will shape up. They will have to improve (in terms of both safety and student performance) to keep students. They (the teachers, the adminis- trators) will find it in their self interest to figure out what parents want (better management, as John Dyson says). At the present time they are a virtual monopoly.... Like Micro$loth.... Annelise