Shut-up Stupid Sunday: School Vouchers

There are some ideas that are wrong on every level. School Vouchers are one of them.

The idea is to do to the Public Schools what we have done to higher education over the last thirty years. Back when I went to college there was a choice of going to a State University, for almost free, or pay out the nose for private school. Just like parents have the choice in school now.

Having to compete with free made private universities have to really look at their programs and justify the value for students. Not just the big name Ivy League schools. Places like Devry specialized in awesome job placement. Some of my classmates would graduate and take a special six week course at Devry just to get in their job placement program.

Then funding for State Universities got chopped to the bone by people claiming the private market is better. Student loans replaced funding for State Universities.

The result was programs that the State Universities and Community Colleges used to handle shifted to for-profit colleges. Many of which barely kept their accreditation for a few years then lost it. All the students who spent a few years struggling to pay for the courses are told, “Oops, tough luck your diploma isn't worth the paper it's written on.”

So now people want to repeat this by offering school vouchers instead of funding public schools.

Here is my quick answer to the claim that Private Schools are better than Public Schools. If that is true why do they need my money?

I went to Private School until High School. Those Schools really needed to prove they were worth the money as they had to compete with free.

Those in favor of school vouchers like to claim, “It's my money, I should have a choice.”

No, it is not. Part of it is mine. I pay school taxes. For that money I get in return the comfort of having the majority of people around me not be total morons! A good value in my opinion.

Using my money to have your kid go through some religious indoctrination so they want to kill me, or get a substandard education so they end up being a beggar on the street, isn't quite as good a value to me.

So to all the people who are pushing to have vouchers replace the public school system, I say, “Shut-up Stupid. It didn't work with Higher Education, it just got rid of the competition. If public schools are so bad then private schools should be able to easily beat them for people's money. The fact is public schools make a minimum standard for education. If private schools want your money they have to go above and beyond that standard. Vouchers are great way to destroy the value of both Public and Private Schools.”

By Darrell B. Nelson author of I KILLED THE MAN THAT WASN'T THERE