Posted April 4th, 2005 at 10:42PMThe public by and large still believes in the public school system. And a majority of the American voting public opposes vouchers. A 2001 Zogby poll found that, when asked whether or not they support tax dollars going to voucher programs, the results were 49% opposing, 48% supporting. Additionally 32% of people strongly disapproved of voucher programs while only 24% of likely voters strongly supported them. Support for vouchers among blacks is even lower than among the general populace, contrary to what some proponents of vouchers would lead you to believe. Blacks disapprove of vouchers by a margin of 57% to 41% according to the Zogby poll. 1
When asked more specific questions, support for vouchers continued to decline. When asking voucher supporters if they would still support the programs if it meant pulling revenue from the public school systems, only 57% still supported voucher programs. Questions like whether or not private schools which accept vouchers should be required to meet the same standards as public schools, and whether privates schools which receive taxpayer money should be required to disclose how that money is spent, was met with strong approval in the high 80-90% range. Finally, according to the 2001 Zogby poll, the question was asked if introducing voucher programs into the respondents’ school district would have a positive or negative affect on the public school districts. The respondents said, with a margin of 49% to 42%, that it would hurt their public school system. 1
A more recent study corroborated these findings, and indeed found opposition to vouchers increasing. The 2003 Phi Delta Kappan / Gallup poll found that 60% of respondents opposed vouchers, while only 38% favored them. 2
1. School Vouchers: What the Public Thinks and Why
2. 35th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward The Public Schools
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There isn’t any public support for vouchers because liberals have successfully demonized it as a way rich people can send their kids to private school on the taxpayer’s buck regardless of the fact it would give everybody the ability to send their kids to private school. What it comes down to is a matter of economics, public schools get paid no matter how they perform so there is no incentive for them to produce quality education. With a voucher system the quality of education would greatly improve as each school is trying to get the voucher money. If we didn’t have such a piss poor education system in this country perhaps people could understand that.
In the Cleveland voucher program, 80% of students recieving vouchers never went to a public school. In the Milwaukee program, the number is 60%. Additionally, vouchers do not give everyone the ability to send their kids to a private school, you’re just speaking nonsense there. The principles of the ‘free market’ don’t work in educating our students. You can’t compare poorly performing companies to schools, because what do poorly performing companies do? Shut down. We can’t afford to simply give up on children because their particular school district might be doing poorly. What vouchers effectively do, is weaken the public education system as a whole, for the supposed welfare of a select few students. The benefits of private schools are not so clear cut either. They do not need to follow the same standardized testing as the public school system, nor are they required to release test scores if they do test. The average qualifications for private school teachers is lower than that of public school teachers. Indeed, private schools aren’t even held to the minimum of standards, like teacher certification. Ultimately befeel, you should be against tax dollars going to private schools, because between 80-85% of private schools are parochial. Taxpayer money going to parochial schools is the exact sort of “entanglement” of church and state that the Supreme Court ruled against time and again in the 60s and 70s. For vouchers to parochial schools to be constitutional, would require the state to meddle in the affairs of these schools, something you’re undoubtably against.
I’ll move this convo to the forums.
http://www.whitemaleconsumer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=40