Is it time for private school vouchers in Montgomery County?
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Anonymous
No. That’s what the recent MCAP scores show. It’s what data on the MCPS website itself shows. |
Anonymous
Dp who homeschools. I could do so much with that $$. |
Anonymous
| The issue is that MCPS does not spent $16K on each kid. They spend significantly more on certain kids and much less on others. |
Anonymous
There are a handful of private schools in the area that are specifically for students with special needs and everybody who attends to school has an IEP but there is not the economy of scale to accommodate thousands of children |
Anonymous
How about this just give us a list of secular schools that have a tuition that is less than or equal to $16,000. Most private schools in the area are super expensive if they're not being subsidized by the Catholic church |
Anonymous
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Until I read these posts I never realized how many private schools that cost 15k are poised to offer space and services for so many kids with ieps? How do they do it, you ask?
Magic, one assumes. |
Anonymous
Again there are almost no private secular schools in the area that would be affordable with a voucher alone. We are talking about tuition in the neighborhood of 20,000 to $40,000 so even if you were able to get a $10,000 to $15,000 voucher you would still have to pay the extra. Maybe you should look into scholarships if you cannot afford private school |
Anonymous
Go lurk on the DCPS board and tell me if more choice is creating better outcomes. I lived and worked in DC and I did not see a lot of positive outcomes from charters /school lottery unless you got a really good number or sibling preference. There was also a lot of situations where parents would be hopping from one school to the other or school is playing Hot potato to try and get rid of students |
Anonymous
Supposedly the almighty invisible hand of the market is just poised to create these schools. One point that people don't also realize is that $15,000 per student is going to have to cover not just teacher salaries and supplies but rent or mortgage on a building. In DC most of the charters do not operate out of a traditional School building but out of a church or office building. If they have their own building they often did so because they fundraised like crazy to get that building |
Anonymous
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No. I don't think that private schools are better than MCPS.
However, if there are private magnet schools under the supervision of MCPS and state education department, and if they can take MCPS kids who are magnet material but are rejected because they have a cohort in their home school, and MCPS can demonstrate quantitatively that they are top students - I am all for the voucher for these students. Also, if there is a private special ed school that is extremely good and under MCPS supervision and state education department, and MCPS can objectively demonstrate that some MCPS student will be well served in such a school - I am all for the voucher for these students too. In the case of both kinds of students - there has to be also a high income threshold of perhaps 300K. And a voucher of not more than 10K. Each year, MCPS and MD dept of educatuon, must evaluate the student as well as the school to give out the voucher. |
Anonymous
So you want schools that both don't exist and would never have enough revenue to exist. |
Anonymous
Which is why people like me will strenuously vote against using tax dollars to support private schools for the wealthy. |
Anonymous
It’s a rich get richer scheme, essentially. |
Anonymous
Yep! |
Anonymous
This describes our entire experience with DCPS. I don't blame the families seeking the best outcomes for their kids, but every year my child was in school there, their friends left for better lottery picks. Every single year. And of the half of their class that remained in their charter school? Half again mysteriously vanished mid-year. I remember one kid, I used to volunteer and he and I were friends. He was really smart but he wasn't doing well academically and he had some behavior stuff--nothing worse than my own ASD kid, really. (Who at the time was undxed) But he was less blonde and his parents were less rich. One day he came up to me. He looked like he'd been crying. "I wanted to say good-bye," he said. I didn't really get it. The principal (who would be fired herself n six months) was hovering behind him and so were his parents. I smiled and said bye. I think I knew, but I wanted to be wrong. That was his last day. I never found out why. I think of him and the other kids that left that school mid-year a lot, actually. I also think of my daughter's classmates who graduated with her. We moved to MD. They all ended up at T3 charter middle schools. A few of those schools were closed in the next few years, meaning they'd change again. One girl did lottery into Latin. She got the golden ticket. |