Harming Poor Kids
Peg on Feb 02 2008 at 2:08 pm | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Education, Libertarianism, Peg's Page
(Cross Posted at Whatif?)
The next time one of your liberal associates begins to rail about how conservatives are selfish and don’t care about the less fortunate among us - you show them this.
Sphere: Related ContentChicago is gearing up for another round of tumult from the closing of possibly more than a half dozen failing schools. Whatever the Chicago Public Schools administration does to solve this problem, the parents of students have no choice but to cope.
Middle-class families exercise school choice by loading up a moving van and relocating to a suburb with good schools. The rich can afford private schools. Only the poor — often minorities in inner cities with under-performing schools — are stuck with little or no choice.
President Bush tossed out an idea Monday to open up choice for poor kids but, as usual, it was rejected out of hand by Democrats and teacher unions. The $300 million Pell Grants for Kids proposed by the president in his State of the Union message is modeled on the popular Pell Grant program that helps poor kids go to college. Basically, the Bush plan would turn over tax dollars to parents to send their children to private schools.
In other words, vouchers.
Bush’s proposal was shouted down by Democratic lawmakers and unions with the usual complaint that vouchers pull resources away from urban schools.
2 Responses to “Harming Poor Kids”
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The children still need to go to school and the vouchers will be spent on education. Teachers will have jobs.
But they may have lower paying jobs and non-union jobs.
Vouchers will promote a multitude of small schools, secular and parochial, that may have only a handful of children in any particular grade.
Concerns about special education programs (which children require more resources) are valid enough. But what will really go is the mega-district. And without a mega-district there is no need for a Education PhD who makes 100k to be superintendent.
very bad and poor