NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/tx/politics/7500

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-18 | 3.0 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!tcsi.com!iat.holonet.net!news.dell.com!texsun!digi!gpalo
From: [e-mail] (Gerry Palo)
Newsgroups: tx.politics
Subject: Re: CHOICE: DEBATE BASED ON COMPETING PHILOSOPHIES
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 18 Nov 92 15:02:47 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Distribution: tx
Organization: DSC Communications Corp, Plano, TX
Lines: 45

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John Iacoletti/100000) writes:
>Gerry Palo ([e-mail]) wrote:
>: A choice system would go far to free the public schools of all those Federal
>: and State rules that cost them so much, also of the top-heavy administrative
>: structure that is required to enforce them and which tends to perpetuate
>: and grow its own existence over time.
>
>I think just the opposite would happen.  You may have noticed that the
>government doesn't give us our money back without a LOT of strings attached.
>This voucher money would be contigent on the schools following a bunch of
>federal regulations which would make them a lot like the public schools are
>today.  Anytime you start to commit public money, you're going to have
>bureaucracy.  On the other hand, we're starting to see a lot of really fine
>school-choice systems being set up in the private sector, which I think will
>be very successful.
>
>--
>John Iacoletti       IBM AWS Austin       Internet: [e-mail]
>        My opinions do not reflect the views of the IBM Corporation
>    "Egad, a base tone denotes a bad age" -- TMBG   "I Palindrome I"

Good point.  Also, it could make life difficult for religious schools
if those strings included a ban on religious activity in the name of
"separation of church and state".  The idea of choice is that it
really must be choice, that is not the maternalistic, protective
state but the real parents must take the responsibility for choosing.
Even a partial movement in that direction would improve things, and
even a little relief for the private schools would reveal how well
the system would work.  Maybe tax credits for people who send their
kids to private schools would be better.  The primary burden is that
you now have to pay twice to send your children to a private school.
This tends to favor the wealthy.  But it is surprising how many parents
of really modest means will sacrifice to send their kids to anything
but a public school.

There are many children in the church schools whose parents send them
there not because they belong to the religion but because they prefer
virtually anything to the state schools. We would have sent our kids
to a (non-church) Waldorf school if there were one in Dallas.  We looked
at a nearby Catholic school as an alternative, though we are not
Catholics, and found that fully half the students there are non-Catholic.
We finally settled on a Lutheran school for reasons not connected to
religion.

Gerry Palo ([e-mail])