http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/big-week-for-school-choice/Content?oid=2624370 Comments On: Big week for school choice by Max Brantley en-us Copyright 2013 Arkansas Times. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, Arkansas Times readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact Arkansas Times. robert@arktimes.com (Arkansas Times Webmaster) Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:01 -0500 Tue, 21 May 2013 09:00:00 -0500 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
Social democrats and liberals who favor the use of state and federal funds only in public schools are depriving students of the wide variety of options available in today's three tiered system of school choice: Home schooling, private schools, public schools. It's important there be a wide variety of choice because there is a wide variety of learning ability and level of discipline in students.

There is advanced placement in public schools for the highest achievers but there is no mid-level placement. Intermediate learners are placed in the same classes as slow learners resulting in decreased educational challenge for these students. Slower learners are not being served by these policies either because of the alienation and discouragement they feel when they fall behind resulting in a lack of interest in learning and a high drop-out rate.

Vouchers for private schools are the most cost efficient method of educating young Americans. Some public school districts such as Washington DC spend on average $25,000.00 per student but they still score at the bottom on standardized tests. And with a protracted economic contraction underway due to the failure of Obama's stimulus package to restore employment and revenues it will be impossible to finance education, entitlements, defense and other government programs without exploding the deficit and a subsequent financial collapse.

There are many other examples of public school systems nationally that have the same high cost - low educational achievement ration as the DC schools. Clearly, increasing funding is doing no good for these students. What they need are vouchers that would expand the number of private schools to offer at the grass roots a tailor made and individualized program and challenge for each student.

The greatest problem with many public school systems and the reason so many are irreparable is because they are being organized primarily for integration and only secondarily for education. Judges inclined to invalidate school choice systems should step back, take a look at the history of federal court intervention and they would see it has been a colossal failure and that they are not anymore able to improve the educational achievement of students than their predecessors. As I said, this preoccupation with integration instead of education is the reason so many students enter the job market lacking the education, social skills and unprepared to be a productive worker!

It's the Department of Education, not the Department of Integration!
Posted by Thomas Pope]]> Thu, 17 Jan 2013 15:29:09 -0600 Arkansas Times