Is it time for private school vouchers in Montgomery County?
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Anonymous
DP.. but I think the ^PP is saying that they could make up the difference, not that they had the $ to finance private school now without the voucher. Even so, if more and more kids go to private school, they will be huge. You won't get the small class sizes and individualized attention. They may hire more staff, but then have to raise tuition. Your SN kid would get lost in the shuffle. Or, they would limit the number of acceptances, and so your kid wouldn't get in. You would essentially end up in the same boat as in MCPS, expect at least in public schools are accountable, FOIA, teachers are credentialed. etc.. Private schools don't have any of that. |
Anonymous
Kenny here. Listen you fail to realize the innovation that would happen when MCPS teachers could leave, start her own school and actually follow science-based curricula. They could do a lot better than your average MCPS school on Curriculum 2.0 drivel. So Netherlands subsidizes schools? So what? Can’t be to the tune of 3 billion a year and 1.6 operating. The US taxes nearly as much as Western Europe for a lot less benefits….if I’m Kenny then you are Dr. Monifa McNight leading a ship (Titanic) that’s hit an iceberg (COVID). |
Anonymous
I know what they're saying. You're right... Sort of, but you're wrong about what will happen.i think. Private schools will not magically expand to fill the niche needs of all the students who need services. Tell me, has sidwell opened new branches to admit thousands of qualified students? Bad example? Okay. Has Lab? Are they waiting on vouchers to do so? The thing about a free market is it doesn't have to meet a need it doesn't want to meet, or it is free to meet the need in a half-assed shoddy way that will collapse when its parking garage floods, because repairs were too expensive. It also doesn't meet it overnight. I'm not against charters. I did send my kid to one for a while and it wasn't terrible. But here's what I saw: Waves and waves of churn. It's like real estate speculation, or venture capitalism. Small schools with one plan or another will open up with cheerful names like "the Hope School of Justice and Nice Unicorns." Some benevolent foundation will lend them money to build or refit a building. They will have brochures and slide shows and mailings. Success Academy used to blanket Brooklyn with mailings. Maybe that's illegal in DC, but I've seen the bus ads. The school will hire staff with less security and fewer qualifications than public schools so. And a lot of those people will be wonderful and dedicated and wanting to make a change. The school will be popular and succeed or it won't be. But there will be ten of them for every large public. All with their own spin. Some profit and some non-profit. Some with ideologies that favor one social class or another. In many places this will boil down to progressive schools for Larla and strict schools for Leroy. Some people will note that it's easier to make money off Leroy. And they will do so. Some kids will change schools like you change shoes. Some schools will close in a year or two leaving their families to struggle. Some schools will, as I said, be great places. And some of those might even do the right thing and expand. Some will make it. Some will not. There will be fragmented continuity. Records of kids will be lost. (Ours was going from DCCPS to Moco. And no one ever told me until the year my kid graduated.) It will be more expensive. You think kids with problems are bounced from school to school now? It will happen without a central office doing oversight. |
Anonymous
Dear Kenny, I actually know some public school teachers who left and started their own private school. Twas all rainbows and sunshine for the first four years or so, for the 90 kids they had enrolled (I think that was the max.) Then their lack of an endowment or financing caught up with them and they had to close the school because they couldn't pay the rent. I wasn't privy to how or why they went broke, but I know they did. Obviously, as you suggest, the thing to do is for the government to pay their expenses, they collect their 16,000 per kid, and suddenly, like magic, that is apparently a "private school." And not a government one. Even if... Oh, please. Just give up. You can't win. |
Anonymous
| Econ 101: Give $10K vouchers to lots of people, privates will raise tuition since there's so much more money floating around. |
Anonymous
What will also be interesting will be what happens with the kids who have IEPs. Kids are guaranteed an appropriate public education that meets their needs. Only a few kids will be able to get spots at places like the Lab school. Do private schools have any legal requirement at all to fulfill IDEA services? I’m guessing that they don’t. So parents of special needs kids, including many who were mainstreamed with special services like speech and language or academic support or behavioral support, will all be fighting over a small number of slots, since many private schools will not have the resources— and may not want to have the resources — to accommodate all of these kids. |
Anonymous
Law 101: The $16,000 estimated for each kid's public education DOES NOT belong to the parents. It belongs to the taxpayers - if the schools are closing, I want my money back. You can pay for your own private school. |
Anonymous
It’s interesting to read this and to skim through some of the comments in the thread about the Whittle School. I wonder how many parents will expect that the public schools will always be available as safety net options for their kids if their plans for subsidized private schools don’t work out well. |
Anonymous
| Most privates are full these days so vouchers wouldn't matter anyway. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
This is not how this works in reality because there is not necessarily large scale change equal numbers of places all at once it happens over time. Say for instance five students leave next year. Well nothing about a public elementary school would change cost wise. There “might” be some smaller class sizes if all the students were in the same grade, but more than likely they’ll be across grades so you still need the same number of classes, the same building, same number of teachers, etc. In fact the only change is the school lost funding for 5 students. The second year, 10 students leave. Now you’ve lost funding for 15 students, and maybe can eliminate one or two teacher’s somewhere to save cost, but doing so will also mean class sizes are bigger. And the teacher’s gone doesn’t cover the lost of funding 15 students. Year three this continues, with the principal eliminating things and trying new strategies to allocate personnel and students, while improving academics and extracurriculars and dealing with losing funds. |
Anonymous
Exactly. The grass looks greener at private schools because it’s a specially selected small population, that can always be counseled out to another school or back to public. People also OVERestimate how much of a voice private school parents actually have in decisions made about the school. They also generally have a board, and not just anyone serves on it. |
Anonymous
And if it's a parochial school, it's the priest with the final say. |
Anonymous
I think it would be the opposite it would be most likely that the highest needs students will be the ones who don't get school choice because only a few select schools cater to students with IEPs and there aren't a lot of private schools with esol programs |
Anonymous
So what makes you think that firing a lot of people and closing a lot of buildings is going to "maintain the proportionate amount of funding" if you want to talk about facile arguments tell me how that's going to work |