Originally posted by Aristotle
Have we gotten to the point in our fucked up society where we just ASSUME both parents work away from the home and need public school to serve as surrogate parent and day-care?

Unbelieveable.

One of the parents is home teaching the kid. Is that such an impossible thing to comprehend these days? *boggle*

In some neighborhoods, parents work together to split up the topics depending on how the parents were educated.

Furthermore, the teacher's salary is such a puny portion of the average per child cost of public education, that it really isn't statistically relevant if they have factored in some kind of "potential income" the parent could have earned. Think about it. 30+ kids per teacher, teacher is making $25,000 per year, that's about $833 per kid. With a per kid cost of almost $6,000, paying the teacher is not where the money is going.

The point of the statistics is simple: home schooling results in better performance for a fraction of the cost, with a fraction of the time spent. That is why home schooling provides such a brutal indictment of our failed public education system.

That doesn't mean everyone should home school. But it does mean that throwing more money at the public school system, or making kids spend more time at school, or giving them more homework, are definitely NOT the answer.
That's more or less my whole point. A small portion of public education is in the wages. If a person gives up work to home school, they are giving up an amount of income that even on the conservative estimate would be far in excess of the total cost of educating a child in public school. This is more or less the whole point of having public schools to begin with. It frees up parents to work while a specialist supposedly does a better job teaching their kids in the amount of time the average parent could actually afford to spend.

Originally posted by Aristotle
That is one of the sloppiest and poorly researched articles I have ever read on the issue. Talk about some gross abuse of anecdotal evidence.

Only the most elitisit snobs on the planet would make the conclusion this article seems to think is widespread. If this article were even partially true, you wouldn't have every independent (private) school association vehemenly in favor of vouchers. You wouldn't have the parents of kids in those schools as some of the most vocal proponents.

In fact, that article was so looney, I almost suspect it might be an exampe of political reverse psychology: "Make people think snobs don't want vouchers, and maybe they'll wise up and see that vouchers actually benefit the lower and middle classes more than the upper classes!"


Perhaps because you seem to be looking at it entirely from the point of view of private school vouchers. The article is addressing the point that some voucher initiatives are about moving children from poor performing public schools to better performing public schools, not private schools at all.

Public School Vouchers as Part of the Voucher Debate

Second sentence first paragraph. Just in case people thought I was making it up. Vouchers are not just about moving kids to private schools.

How do people feel about vouchers?

Polls

Look at 30-32.

31 specifically addresses the possibility of sending the child to a public school on voucher.

And try to bear in mind, I do not oppose vouchers. It just seems the future of the concept is not as rosy as all that.