Re: Vouchers lost in court, deserve no new chance

malcolmkirkpatrick@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
>Bob LeChevalier wrote:
>Pubkeybreaker wrote:
>> >> That is, private schools truly are Lake Woebegon, where all children
are
>> >> above average.Voucherswill do one of two things. Either it will
accelerate
>> >> this affect, because if private schools are allowed to keep their
admissions
>> >> criteria, they'll  then be able to just take the top, say, 20%
instead of
>> >> the top 40%, or they'll lose many of the reasons parents want to
send them
>> >> there.
>Flat false. Some independent schools today specialize in the care of
>severe sp-ed students.

And operate primarily as government contractors to collect the
government funding, so they aren't really "independent schools".

>Why not suppose that schools would specialize
>in various dimensions (curriculum, theory of learning, religion, etc)?

Because the existing private school marketplace doesn't.

>Likely, unless regulations impose uniformity, you'll see increasing
>product differentation.

Reality proves you wrong. 

No regulations compelled all 50 states to end up with school systems
having 12 grades and kindergarten, more or less similar curricula.  No
regulations compelled the Catholic schools to adopt curricula that are
quite similar to those of the public schools.

>Why suppose that schools will turn away poor performers?

It isn't as lucrative and it is harder to achieve "success" which is a
significant marketing trait.

>Some schools would specialize in enhancing these.

Reality says that very few do so.

>Most grocery stores allow incompetent cooks to buy steak to take home and
>burn.

Very few grocery stores specialize in teaching incompetent cooks how
to cook a steak properly.

>(Bob): "Ever heard of the 14th amendment "equal protection under the
>law"?
>
>"Equal protection" considerations currently do not bar selective
>government schools (Stuyvesant High, Bronx Science), so it's unlikely
>that they'd apply to independent schools in a voucher regime.

Reality (as implemented in Milwaukee) says that you are wrong.  

>(Bob): "All they have to do is say that a school must meet certain
>conditions to be eligible for vouchers.  One of those conditions could
>be non-restrictive admissions."
>
>That's one way to kill a voucher program.

Milwaukee seems to be surviving.

>(Bob): "There are school qualifications in the Milwaukee voucher
>program."
>
>Which make the results of the Milwaukee program only marginally
>applicable to estimates of a competitive market in education
>services.

The Milwaukee program is likely to be a model (maybe the primary
model) if any other place set up vouchers.  The fact that it doesn't
match your "competitive market" theology is irrelevant; that is the
sort of program that results in reality.  

lojbab
Bob LeChevalier - artificial linguist; genealogist
lojbab@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   Lojban language www.lojban.org