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Say hello to the East India Teaching Company !
Say hello to the East India Teaching Company !
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==Jun 24, 2011 — New School Voucher Laws Face Backlash==
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HUPO -- New School Voucher Laws Face Backlash
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New School Voucher Laws Face Backlash (June 24, 2011)
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/24/new-school-voucher-laws-backlash_n_883939.html
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Comment 1
Anyone with a working long-term memory knows where this agenda to “Starve Public Schools Out Of Existence” came from.
Good thing there's web search for the rest of us —
Richard DeVos Advocates “Stealth” Strategy Against Public Education
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-fTAhc4QC4
Blackwater In-Law DeVos Outlines “Stealth” Plot Against Public Education
• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/04/972949/-Blackwater-In-Law-DeVos-outlines-stealth-plot-against-Public-Education
Strategy for Privatizing Public Schools Spelled Out by Dick DeVos in 2002 Heritage Foundation Speech
• http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/5/3/12515/58655/Front_Page/Strategy_for_Privatizing_Public_Schools_Spelled_out_by_Dick_D
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Comment 2
People who have supported public education all their lives, whether they had school-age children or not, whether they had children of their own or not, simply because it was a vital community interest and essential to the health of democracy to have equal opportunity education for all — I can tell you that more and more of those public-spirited souls are just about ready to let the “My Kids Are More Equal Than Anyone Else's” Gang have their wish, to wit, or not, private education for their children, but it will be paid in full out of their pockets, not ours.
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Comment 3
Michigan Populist • “Snyder’s Plan for Public Schools Defies Voters Wishes”
• http://www.michiganpopulist.org/?p=40
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In November of 2000 Michiganders went to the polls like they do every November to exercise their democratic right to vote. Most will remember that election as the one where Al Gore got more votes in Michigan, and throughout the United States, but didn’t become president. George Bush won the election because he received more electoral votes after the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a hand count of some unusual votes in Florida could not be done fast enough.
What some may not remember is that same night voters denied a DeVos backed ballot initiative to allow students to receive vouchers in order to take their public school money to private schools. Michigan voters soundly defeated the initiative despite some 10 million dollars being spent on the campaign.
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Michigan Populist • “Snyder’s Plan for Public Schools Defies Voters Wishes”
• http://www.michiganpopulist.org/?p=40
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Maybe Mr. Snyder doesn’t remember the details of the 2000 election. After all, he was busy serving on the board of Gateway while the company shipped jobs overseas. The voters spoke that November, but Rick Snyder wasn’t listening. Governor Snyder’s plan for public education in Michigan would allow students to receive instruction from “online educators”. That instruction would be paid for with money from the school aid fund. In essence, online education is private school without the building.
I’m guessing you won’t be surprised that a controversial company called “K12, Inc.”, with ties to the DeVos family, would likely be ready to sell their programs to Michigan schools at a moments notice. I can’t help but think that we are on the same path as Gateway. Outsourcing our teaching jobs to online companies is not going to improve student scores or the unemployment rate in Michigan. It may however, make someone a bunch of money which could allow them to become a Governor someday.
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Comment 5 (Reply)
Why should people without children pay anything at all?
You appear to think it's okay to pick their pocketses for your preciouses.
It appears to me that *some people* these days simply don't understand the concept of the common good.
Maybe I should I blame their education.
Or maybe it's the 24/7 brain-washing from the corporate owned media that has made them forget what they once learned about it.
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Comment 6
There are some things about vouchers that I used to think were obvious to everyone, but now I see they are not, and I think that may account for the fact so many people of good will are taking past each other in this discussion.
First of all, those of us who spent the last twentieth of the second millennium criticizing “establishment” and “status quo” ways of doing just about everything, including education, have always been open to diversification and experimentation in our schools, so long as those alternative schools do not put developing characters and our democratic way of life at more risk than people of good will would dare to venture. Many of us have long criticized models of funding based on property taxes and more lately lotteries, and we know that many other funding models could lead to higher quality education being both more versatile and more widely distributed. But we recognize that the current “status quo” got established largely on account of the natural desire of local communities to control the quality of education in their areas. As a consequence, local school boards have to be jealous of the funds they are given to do what their communities demand of them. If we want to change the consequences, we have to change the antecedents. Vouchers do not do that. They merely undermine the ability of school boards to do what we demand of them.
All I have room for in this post. More later …
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Comment 7 (Reply)
If all people are born equal, and all people have equal rights under the law, and education is not only a right but a duty in a democratic society, why should some schools be better than others, if the main thing it takes to make them equal is equal funding and equal protection under the law?
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Comment 8
Public money comes from the public, which is a much bigger population than parents, and a far bigger population than people with school-age children at the time the taxes are collected. Governments derive their right to collect taxes from that larger public solely on the condition that those funds support the good of that larger public.
Some people these days appear to be having trouble with the very concept of the public good. Let us pray they don't learn it the hard way. Let us say, one day when they crash their car on a rural county road, and the inner city kid who wanted to become a doctor and might have been encouraged by a Federal grant to begin her practice in an under-served region is not there to save their lives. But let us pray they go to their reward of the non-monetary kind feeling blessed in the knowledge that their daughter the doctor is enjoying her holiday in St. Moritz.
Let us pray …
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Comment 9
Q. And what will they become if they do all that?
A. They will become public schools.
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Comment 10
A former teacher explained it to me this way:
“Vouchers act as an escape valve for politicians because they take the pressure off elected officials to actually fund and improve public schools. Instead they allow a lottery-like system that makes everyone in poor school districts think that they will have the opportunity to send their children to better schools — which is not the case since the better schools will not take all of the children from poorer school districts.”
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Comment 11 (Reply)
No group, numbering 1 or many, can vote to support an establishment of religion with public dollars.
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