Vouchers, Positive & Negative Rights, Corporate/Religious Welfare
To: John Tierney
Re: A Chance to Escape
I'd love to see government-supported, rather than government-run, primary and secondary education, but:
1) You might clarify for your readers whether you support public funding for education in the long run, or, like a respectable libertarian, only see vouchers as a first step to phasing it out entirely.
2) The reason the student-teacher ratio improved dramatically presumably has something to do with the fact that public school teachers are so darn hard to lay off. It's hypocritical to claim this as a success for your approach. If you succeed in breaking the teachers unions, this will no longer hold.
3) The reason religious schools are willing to accept the relatively small vouchers is that they are essentially charitable organizations. To ask a variant of 1): do you see education as a right, or do you want to force poor children to rely on charity?
4) Job security is an important component of the current compensation package for teachers. Are you willing to pay the additional money required to attract talented people to teaching in the absence of job security? If so, why no mention of the need for competitive (with what better-off parents are willing to pay) vouchers?
5) Isn't the Republican seeking to establish a religious wing to the corporate welfare structure? Whatever the merits of a particular program, isn't this worth addressing? Was the voucher amount chosen as ideal for funneling taxpayer money to religious organizations? Or were the best interests of the children uppermost? Or is there no difference (the religious-right position)?
Re: A Chance to Escape
I'd love to see government-supported, rather than government-run, primary and secondary education, but:
1) You might clarify for your readers whether you support public funding for education in the long run, or, like a respectable libertarian, only see vouchers as a first step to phasing it out entirely.
2) The reason the student-teacher ratio improved dramatically presumably has something to do with the fact that public school teachers are so darn hard to lay off. It's hypocritical to claim this as a success for your approach. If you succeed in breaking the teachers unions, this will no longer hold.
3) The reason religious schools are willing to accept the relatively small vouchers is that they are essentially charitable organizations. To ask a variant of 1): do you see education as a right, or do you want to force poor children to rely on charity?
4) Job security is an important component of the current compensation package for teachers. Are you willing to pay the additional money required to attract talented people to teaching in the absence of job security? If so, why no mention of the need for competitive (with what better-off parents are willing to pay) vouchers?
5) Isn't the Republican seeking to establish a religious wing to the corporate welfare structure? Whatever the merits of a particular program, isn't this worth addressing? Was the voucher amount chosen as ideal for funneling taxpayer money to religious organizations? Or were the best interests of the children uppermost? Or is there no difference (the religious-right position)?
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