Reader comments
John Florez: Vouchers increase chasm between rich, poor
26 comments | Read story
A past Davis County science teacher, now of Eastern elites, calls our schools best. False pride costs far more. Inner-city Philly schools had worn her out; kids there fell asleep: many worked nights for their families to survive.
Vouchers' usual shortfall of $thousands will force many poor students to likewise work nights to pay.
Claimed "mitigation" offsets to public schools for five years if students leave are false: Voucherites rejoice that HB-174's redo of HB-148 "accidentally" deleted offsets needed to pass HB-148 by 1 vote. Reneging, they say mitigation reduces better ideas from competition.
HB-148 line 97 makes voucher-eligible all kids (worldwide) if "NOT a resident of Utah on Jan. 1, 2007". It's to entice all to come here; Utahns will pay -- including for already-private pupils from other states (NO public-private conversion): A black-hole unfunded deficit.
This will drive up home prices hugely (explaining why realtors and builders immediately favored vouchers), from huge crowds of newcomers causing shortages. Our insurance and home taxes will soar too, ironically also burning newcomers enticed here to vote for ever-more vouchers at our (and their) expense.
So how do you improve the public schools, Change the framework and motivation. There's nothing like a little competition to get the quality up.
In the last few years all we have heard is that we need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make class sizes smaller. Now we have a way to make class sizes smaller for a lot less money. And the public schools are suddenly silent about class size.
If we can give the poor an option of $3000 toward private school, how can you say that will not help them? A lot of poor kids already get $5000 scholarships to pay for private schooling. How many more can now be helped now that they only need another $2000?
And our public schools get their goal of smaller class sizes to boot. Or did they really just want more teachers and more union dues?
Pro voucher advocates keep claiming that vouchers help everybody. Right. The few thousand who get vouchers get to go to private school. Everyone else watches.
Let's all just sit around and be mediocre together and hate the privileged. Vouchers will give the public school systems a bit of heartburn, they need it.
x 3 children = $22,500
I get $9,000 in voucher $, leaving me a $13,500 bill to pay. I make $40,000/yr. How does a voucher help my family again?
Private schools do better because they get to pick only the best students... and kick those out who won't/can't/don't measure up. On the other hand, public schools must take all comers... even the academically and socially challenged.
You don't qualify, Jose. You need to be rich to participate.
We have mandated that kids must go to school. Then we say they can't choose which one. (And don't start with the open enrollment thing--a choice between the Layton Walmart or the Centerville Walmart is not really a choice).
What if we were all required by law to have telephone service, but also told we had no choice but to get it from Company X. Then Company X has a sweet deal: no real competition, no reason to streamline or provide extras or options, no reason to invest in innovation, no reason to take any risks in finding new frontiers, no reason to provide top-notch service. A nice, captive customer base.
Except for a few wealthy folks, who can afford a nice service plan with TMobile, or ATT, or whoever is out there doing those things that competition does best: raising quality and lowering costs.
If we mandate education, we should also enable choices. Saying it's a "handout to the rich" is disingenuous--the law prohibits creating an educational opportunity that is not open to all citizens.
But how about a 100% voucher for poor families then?
Maybe Mr. Flores could give some ideas about how education could be reformed in the present government school environment.
I think I would support a voucher program for 100% tuition for only poor families, paid for by tax increases for the richest Utahns.
In all seriousness, my biggest complaint about the voucher program is the dishonesty with which the issue is presented. "Good for Utah's Children" and "Win-Win" are so dishonest they make me sick. Obviously, vouchers are good for the kids that get them. But, this is another big problem in my opinion. How do we determine who actually gets these things? Certainly there are not enough vouchers for it to be an educational opportunity available to everyone, as you say.
It seems to me that the ability to send students to private school is disproportionately distributed towards the wealthier Utahns, and not just for tuition reasons.
But voucher programs aside, there are two issues to this. Choice and funding. Choice may be great, but do we automatically fund private choices with public funds? How is this possibly fair? To those who don't even have children, to those who don't get one of the precious rare vouchers, etc. Just because a citizen wants to choose a private option does not mean the public must fund it.
Add your comment
Comments are monitored. Any comments found to be abusive, offensive, off-topic, misrepresentative, more than 200 words or containing URLs will not be posted.
E-mail address: For internal use only. We may want to contact you to publish your comment (not your e-mail address) in the newspaper or for a separate story idea.
- Will people start dying younger? 9:59 p.m.
- Am.F. teen seeks to honor soldier 9:59 p.m.
- Spartans' Dick Tomey to retire 9:57 p.m.
- Seabrook's OT goal lifts Blackhawks 9:55 p.m.
- Birthdays for Monday, Nov. 16 9:50 p.m.
- Attorney to write book about sniper 9:49 p.m.
- Police seek clues in Crawford case 9:48 p.m.
- Blushing Boss at a loss 9:48 p.m.
- Immigrant tuition bill gets push 9:42 p.m.
- U.S. help has strings attached 9:42 p.m.
- BYU happy to escape with victory
228 - TCU creams U.
222 - Editorial: Mormons and gay rights
206 - Will state consider gay rights law?
149 - Letters: Strange breed in Utah
133 - Can BYU root for (ick) Utah Utes?
131 - RSL heads to MLS title game
124 - Utes remain silent about BCS
120 - Celtics crush Jazz
104 - TCU stays 4th in AP; Y. 19th, U. 23rd
90
Maybe someone out there can help me understand how raising the state...
Bennett is a conservative Bennett is NOT a lifetime politician Bennett...
CNN is hardly raw news free of analysis and without bias.
Playing lousy is never good. If it were, BYU would have been a monster after...
TCU's footballers aren't any better than BYU's or Utah's, but they are better...
Hey all of you 2A teams and fans. Is San Juan so predictable? Im not sure....
BYU has been up and down under the watch of Bronco. IF I hear them say "its...
Thank you Jerry Sloan for 20 years of coaching the Jazz. But it is time to...
2004 was our year. 2008 was our year. 2009 looks to be TCU's year. I say...
True, football does make the most money and it has traditionally drawn the...
You summed it up perfectly -- also my reasons for voting ABB next year --...

