Do you want Texas's school voucher program in DC or DMV?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NO. It is much better for all of society if we invest in PUBLIC schools, not send our tax dollars to private schools. Private schools have zero obligation to actually teach facts or teach everyone, including the difficult children.

Private school vouchers are just modern day segregation with new vocabulary.

No- we can't just keep throwing money at failing programs. Clearly public schools aren't working currently. Our test scores are declining, kids are disruptive, and teachers are leaving. Fix what's wrong. If you look at the actual dollars, schools have enough. Are they spending them effectively? Being forced to litigate nonstop special ed violations is a big budget killer.

FCPS spends nearly $20K/yr educating each student versus a US national average of $16K. Germany spends $15k/yr, so it’s not about throwing more money at the problem. We need to fix the issues in the schools and remove wastes. Despite their lower pays relative to other professions, public school teachers have higher salaries and benefits than private school teachers. If public teachers want higher pay, remove the layers of bureaucracy and administrators, and allocate those funds to teachers salary. However, hold the teachers accountable for their students’ performance. Fire chronic under-performing teachers and administrators. That’s what privates do.

We’re in private and would love to send our child back to public. We don’t want to see the limited public funds diverted to privates but if the public school boards won’t solve the problems, they should live with the consequences of a death spiral that vouchers will bring.

This is why vouchers are necessary. Either the patient is cured or dies. Otherwise just throwing good tax dollars after bad on failed public school systems.

WTF - no, we aren't going to "let the patient die". That would be devastating to our community.

Here in the DC area, the community values good education. We aren't going to trash our public schools just because Republicans want to subsidize their kids' private school education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NO. It is much better for all of society if we invest in PUBLIC schools, not send our tax dollars to private schools. Private schools have zero obligation to actually teach facts or teach everyone, including the difficult children.

Private school vouchers are just modern day segregation with new vocabulary.

No- we can't just keep throwing money at failing programs. Clearly public schools aren't working currently. Our test scores are declining, kids are disruptive, and teachers are leaving. Fix what's wrong. If you look at the actual dollars, schools have enough. Are they spending them effectively? Being forced to litigate nonstop special ed violations is a big budget killer.

Who says they are failing? Many public school systems are thriving. Follow their models. Usually it starts with paying teachers a living wage and making sure they have medical insurance.

Which models are these?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NO. It is much better for all of society if we invest in PUBLIC schools, not send our tax dollars to private schools. Private schools have zero obligation to actually teach facts or teach everyone, including the difficult children.

Private school vouchers are just modern day segregation with new vocabulary.

No- we can't just keep throwing money at failing programs. Clearly public schools aren't working currently. Our test scores are declining, kids are disruptive, and teachers are leaving. Fix what's wrong. If you look at the actual dollars, schools have enough. Are they spending them effectively? Being forced to litigate nonstop special ed violations is a big budget killer.

Interesting you single out that item. What are you suggesting?

I'm singling it out because it's a huge budget item that doesn't need to be there.

Agree it shouldn’t be there because schools should be providing special education services without parents needing to sue the system to get an appropriate education for their children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in Florida and I know of several people who pulled their kids out of publics to put them in privates or homeschool them since the vouchers were offered. They didn’t have the option financially before that. I also know of schools that accept JUST the voucher as payment for tuition. And at least one of those schools is known as quite a good school that I am looking into for my own kids.

People complain about the vouchers and there are now people getting paid as consultants to try to get people back who left the publics but they aren’t addressing the problems with publics that made them leave. We need to get disruptive students out of the classrooms, as a start. Until that happens, more and more families will leave. Mostly the good ones.

Where are the disruptive kids supposed to go?

Out of public schools. Right now they are completely ruining public schooling across the country, and it’s going to be extremely hard to get back the families who left, once things get so bad that even the politicians start to pay attention.

That’s not an answer. Where should they go?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NO. It is much better for all of society if we invest in PUBLIC schools, not send our tax dollars to private schools. Private schools have zero obligation to actually teach facts or teach everyone, including the difficult children.

Private school vouchers are just modern day segregation with new vocabulary.

No- we can't just keep throwing money at failing programs. Clearly public schools aren't working currently. Our test scores are declining, kids are disruptive, and teachers are leaving. Fix what's wrong. If you look at the actual dollars, schools have enough. Are they spending them effectively? Being forced to litigate nonstop special ed violations is a big budget killer.

FCPS spends nearly $20K/yr educating each student versus a US national average of $16K. Germany spends $15k/yr, so it’s not about throwing more money at the problem. We need to fix the issues in the schools and remove wastes. Despite their lower pays relative to other professions, public school teachers have higher salaries and benefits than private school teachers. If public teachers want higher pay, remove the layers of bureaucracy and administrators, and allocate those funds to teachers salary. However, hold the teachers accountable for their students’ performance. Fire chronic under-performing teachers and administrators. That’s what privates do.

We’re in private and would love to send our child back to public. We don’t want to see the limited public funds diverted to privates but if the public school boards won’t solve the problems, they should live with the consequences of a death spiral that vouchers will bring.

This is why vouchers are necessary. Either the patient is cured or dies. Otherwise just throwing good tax dollars after bad on failed public school systems.

WTF - no, we aren't going to "let the patient die". That would be devastating to our community.

Here in the DC area, the community values good education. We aren't going to trash our public schools just because Republicans want to subsidize their kids' private school education.

We bought our house in a good public school system (both DH and I got amazing educations in public schools, including ones that many folks would probably consider “bad” school - ie, high poverty neighborhoods) with the intent to send our kids to our neighborhood school.

The neighborhood school was not a good fit for our oldest, and there was little communication or support from the teacher when DC didn’t learn to read in K, despite me asking and trying to figure out what was going on.

We moved them to an independent school where we have found the teachers and administration to be a good partner for their education. DC now a great student in middle school. But we pay tuition for 3 kids to go to independent school, in excess of $150K per year.

Why should only rich families like ours get to have an option when their local school doesn’t work for their child? We have friends who send th eir kids to the school my child no longer attends and they are doing well, so I recognize that it can be a great school for some kids, but it wasn’t for my child.

There is little incentive for public school districts to be innovative or meet the needs of their students if they have a monopoly on free education. I think it’s a positive thing at independent schools that the contract is year by year so families which are unhappy can go elsewhere - it means that schools are paying attention to what the families are asking for and what the kids need. I think families and kids would benefit from more choices.

It’s complicated for kids with special needs, because I do understand that these charter schools might not serve their children — especially if they need significant supports. There is already a lack of needed supports in the current system. Would school choice necessarily make things worse for these students? Sincere question - I understand it wouldn’t make things better, but are there studies showing things are worse?

I am a moderate democrat, have never voted for a republican, and my kids attend a secular school, so I don’t have any sort of agenda other than wishing that parents could have options if they don’t find their local school to be a good fit for their child, like we did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can a non-religious voucher student opt out of religion classes/worship in a religious private or charter school?

No. Can't opt out if you're full pay at a religious private, either. That's kind of the whole point. My child attends an Episcopal school (not in DC, so no, it's not a Cathedral school), and Faith Studies is part of the core classes in every grade(K-8 school). I'm sure if I asked if my kid could skip Faith Studies they'd tell me no and if I feel that strongly about it, this probably isn't the right school for us.

But we aren’t talking about a private religious school paid for by families. We are talking about a public school or a publicly-funded education.

[Anonymous]

Yes! It's a great idea for the 4th highest ranked state in education to copy the policies of the state ranked 29th! 29 is a bigger number than 4, after all.

[Anonymous]

The OP asks about vouchers in DC or the DMV. Would there be enough vouchers and spaces in private schools for all 50k kids in DCPS? Or the other 47k in DCPCS? Shouldn’t all the families have a choice?

[Anonymous]

It would hold the public schools accountable

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The OP asks about vouchers in DC or the DMV. Would there be enough vouchers and spaces in private schools for all 50k kids in DCPS? Or the other 47k in DCPCS? Shouldn’t all the families have a choice?

DC is reducing their charter school staffing by a large percentage. Their budget got cut bigly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in Florida and I know of several people who pulled their kids out of publics to put them in privates or homeschool them since the vouchers were offered. They didn’t have the option financially before that. I also know of schools that accept JUST the voucher as payment for tuition. And at least one of those schools is known as quite a good school that I am looking into for my own kids.

People complain about the vouchers and there are now people getting paid as consultants to try to get people back who left the publics but they aren’t addressing the problems with publics that made them leave. We need to get disruptive students out of the classrooms, as a start. Until that happens, more and more families will leave. Mostly the good ones.

Where are the disruptive kids supposed to go?

Home of they don’t stop being disruptive. Suspension and/or expulsion should be the consequences. Maybe if families have to deal with this, they will discipline their kids instead of relying on the schools to do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NO. It is much better for all of society if we invest in PUBLIC schools, not send our tax dollars to private schools. Private schools have zero obligation to actually teach facts or teach everyone, including the difficult children.

Private school vouchers are just modern day segregation with new vocabulary.

No- we can't just keep throwing money at failing programs. Clearly public schools aren't working currently. Our test scores are declining, kids are disruptive, and teachers are leaving. Fix what's wrong. If you look at the actual dollars, schools have enough. Are they spending them effectively? Being forced to litigate nonstop special ed violations is a big budget killer.

FCPS spends nearly $20K/yr educating each student versus a US national average of $16K. Germany spends $15k/yr, so it’s not about throwing more money at the problem. We need to fix the issues in the schools and remove wastes. Despite their lower pays relative to other professions, public school teachers have higher salaries and benefits than private school teachers. If public teachers want higher pay, remove the layers of bureaucracy and administrators, and allocate those funds to teachers salary. However, hold the teachers accountable for their students’ performance. Fire chronic under-performing teachers and administrators. That’s what privates do.

We’re in private and would love to send our child back to public. We don’t want to see the limited public funds diverted to privates but if the public school boards won’t solve the problems, they should live with the consequences of a death spiral that vouchers will bring.

This is why vouchers are necessary. Either the patient is cured or dies. Otherwise just throwing good tax dollars after bad on failed public school systems.

WTF - no, we aren't going to "let the patient die". That would be devastating to our community.

Here in the DC area, the community values good education. We aren't going to trash our public schools just because Republicans want to subsidize their kids' private school education.

We bought our house in a good public school system (both DH and I got amazing educations in public schools, including ones that many folks would probably consider “bad” school - ie, high poverty neighborhoods) with the intent to send our kids to our neighborhood school.

The neighborhood school was not a good fit for our oldest, and there was little communication or support from the teacher when DC didn’t learn to read in K, despite me asking and trying to figure out what was going on.

We moved them to an independent school where we have found the teachers and administration to be a good partner for their education. DC now a great student in middle school. But we pay tuition for 3 kids to go to independent school, in excess of $150K per year.

Why should only rich families like ours get to have an option when their local school doesn’t work for their child? We have friends who send th eir kids to the school my child no longer attends and they are doing well, so I recognize that it can be a great school for some kids, but it wasn’t for my child.

There is little incentive for public school districts to be innovative or meet the needs of their students if they have a monopoly on free education. I think it’s a positive thing at independent schools that the contract is year by year so families which are unhappy can go elsewhere - it means that schools are paying attention to what the families are asking for and what the kids need. I think families and kids would benefit from more choices.

It’s complicated for kids with special needs, because I do understand that these charter schools might not serve their children — especially if they need significant supports. There is already a lack of needed supports in the current system. Would school choice necessarily make things worse for these students? Sincere question - I understand it wouldn’t make things better, but are there studies showing things are worse?

I am a moderate democrat, have never voted for a republican, and my kids attend a secular school, so I don’t have any sort of agenda other than wishing that parents could have options if they don’t find their local school to be a good fit for their child, like we did.

"Incentive"?

No, defunding public schools doesn't provide any "incentive" for schools. It just makes them LESS capable of serving the kids in the community.

Your kid's school needed more reading specialists, not fewer.

There are multiple studies/case studies already shared on this thread demonstrating that vouchers do make things worse in a variety of ways.

Our schools need help - the solution is increased funding to reduce class size, give more planning/grading time, and bring in more specialists (reading, math, SPED). Defunding our public schools is not the solution -- it's the opposite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The OP asks about vouchers in DC or the DMV. Would there be enough vouchers and spaces in private schools for all 50k kids in DCPS? Or the other 47k in DCPCS? Shouldn’t all the families have a choice?

No. The private schools can already fill their classes many times over. Vouchers won't help kids get seats in private schools. They would subsidize the tuition for families who already send their kids to private school. Or know how to get their kids in (private testing, etc.).

This isn't a solution.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes! It's a great idea for the 4th highest ranked state in education to copy the policies of the state ranked 29th! 29 is a bigger number than 4, after all.

MAGA sucks at math

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NO. It is much better for all of society if we invest in PUBLIC schools, not send our tax dollars to private schools. Private schools have zero obligation to actually teach facts or teach everyone, including the difficult children.

Private school vouchers are just modern day segregation with new vocabulary.

No- we can't just keep throwing money at failing programs. Clearly public schools aren't working currently. Our test scores are declining, kids are disruptive, and teachers are leaving. Fix what's wrong. If you look at the actual dollars, schools have enough. Are they spending them effectively? Being forced to litigate nonstop special ed violations is a big budget killer.

FCPS spends nearly $20K/yr educating each student versus a US national average of $16K. Germany spends $15k/yr, so it’s not about throwing more money at the problem. We need to fix the issues in the schools and remove wastes. Despite their lower pays relative to other professions, public school teachers have higher salaries and benefits than private school teachers. If public teachers want higher pay, remove the layers of bureaucracy and administrators, and allocate those funds to teachers salary. However, hold the teachers accountable for their students’ performance. Fire chronic under-performing teachers and administrators. That’s what privates do.

We’re in private and would love to send our child back to public. We don’t want to see the limited public funds diverted to privates but if the public school boards won’t solve the problems, they should live with the consequences of a death spiral that vouchers will bring.

They will all be working with students that have matching home lives, background knowledge, self-motivation, etc. Is that correct?