I'm always offended when I hear about "school vouchers". It's like pretending to sort of have a free market in education, but not really.
The way a "school voucher" works is that, if you send your child to a voucher-eligible school, the state pays some amount of the tuition. Suppose you get a $4k school voucher and the private school has a tuition of $8k. In that case, the state pays $4k and the parent pays $4k.
From the parent's naive point of view, this is a bargain. They saved $4k!
However, the amount of the school voucher is always less than the amount collected in taxes. If the school voucher is $4k, then the amount of tax collected per student is probably $6k-$8k or more. The difference is kept as a profit for the government.
Another flaw is that the school must be voucher-accredited. If I decide to home-school, do I receive a check for $4k from the government? Of course not. Certain alternate schools may not be eligible for the voucher. A school must meet certain arbitrary government standards in order to be eligible to receive vouchers. If I set up an agorist school, can I get the voucher? Of course not.
School vouchers are evil because they provide the illusion of free parent choice and a free market in education, even though they really don't. School vouchers are still ultimately funded by taxes, i.e. stealing. School vouchers can only be used in certain types of schools.
Taxation is still theft. Instead of a school voucher program, why not completely repeal all taxes for schools! Of course, such a law will never pass.
The correct solution, "Don't fund schools with money stolen via taxes", is never debated.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
The School Vouchers Scam
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
You explained the school voucher scam very well. I don't have much experience with private schools, so I guess the voucher issue just never crossed my mind.
FSK,
Compared to public education, don't you think the voucher system is at least, a step in the right direction? For example, if I said "what do you think of the FairTax?" You'd probably say (speculating here) - "It wrong and immoral cause its stealin" although I would agree with you, I think it's a step in the right direction because I think that shattering societys views of 'normal' and 'mainstream' need to be shattered. At least to shake things up and get people to think, that just maybe, other options should be considered. And that's what we are up against I think - the perception that no options of any kind are to be considered.
Post a Comment