I shared Mike's comments (anonymously) below with a friend who has been involved with the public
schools for years and thought you might be interested in his anonymous comments below:
"I think the big difference is that in our land of "equal opportunity" public schools are forced to
teach to the lowest common denominator'
Higher ed isn't forced to take students who don't want to be there. It can concentrate more on
making the best students world class.
Our kids got a pretty good education because they did what it took to get the very best teachers.
But if we'd had the money, we might have opted for expensive private schooling.
I worry that vouchers will produce a flood of inexpensive private schools, with low standards,
wanting to take advantage of the available money. In Gov. Johnson's voucher plan, the voucher
amounts would have been less than the public schools spend on students, and only a fraction of what
really good private schools charge. And it would have been an opportunity for expensive private
schools to up their tuition even more.
The best answer is to track good students and those who want to learn in one direction and have a
mass detention hall for the rest. But it'll never happen here."
Cathie
Catherine E. Zacher
President
Santa Fe Economic Development, Inc.
505.984.2842
www.sfedi.org <
http://www.sfedi.org>
"If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room....."
-----Original Message-----
From:
[hidden email] [mailto:
[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Mike Oliker
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 5:22 PM
To: Friam at redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] School Vouchers
Re: Vouchers
One curious point to me about the education debate is that we have two broad
educational systems in the US: K-12 schools and our system of colleges and
universities.
The former is a global disaster, ranking below most third world countries.
Even our best 10% do very poorly in international comparisons.
The latter is a global model. People come from all over the world to
partcipate in it. It takes American kids and pulls them from ~last place in
international comparisons to something closer to first place.
The college system is simply ignored in discussions of educational reform.
Isn't that odd? What qualities does it have that could make K-12 work, and
do alternatives like vouchers obtain those benefits?
-Mike Oliker
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