Sean Andrews writes. >> I think you're missing the point: the goal is not to increase the >> choice of the individual schoolchild: it is to increase the quality of >> schooling for all school children. The innovations of some charters >> might help to do this, but the way it is set up, it basically takes >> money from the system that is required to serve everyone equally and >> funnels it into the system with no such mandates.
I too very much appreciate what Sean Andrews writes, because it makes the issue ever more crystal clear. I exactly get the point and want to stress that, intentionally or not, you are agreeing/conceding/making explicit my very point. That is why I am so surprised that Max Sawicky was so defensive. When you boil it down, it is your position that it is better not to give school choices to parents because if you give them choices, that will consequentially lower the quality of the schools that are not chosen. In other words, it is immoral/should be illegal/etc. for individual parents to make decisions that you admit are better for the individual parents and their children, if there is some hypothetical negative result for the other children and the neighborhood school. This is a naked utilitarian. cost-benefit argument that I personally find abhorrent. You cannot avoid the intent and effect of your position -- given the choice (pun intended), it is more important to you that little Johnny go to the neighborhood school to improve the neighborhood school, than little Johnny go to a school that will maximize the educational value for little Johnny. Mr. Andrews' sketches a beautiful vision of a school system. The fact that it does not exist and is not an option for little Johnny today is irrevant to Mr. Andews. Mr. Andrews would apparently deny little Johnny a charter school today on the hope that the lack of an alternative to today's desultory neighborhood school would create political pressure to allow Mr. Andrews' idyllic vision to come to fruition. This is not a conclusion that a traditional conservative or classic liberal would reach. It is not the conclusion of the people in Los Angeles who (until recently) buy ridiculously overpriced homes 50 miles from their workplace because they want to choose a school. It is not the conclusion of people in poor neighborhoods who bus their kids two hours each way to go to a better school. It is not the conclusion of just about every person on earth who has the ability to make a choice. The only people who can rationalize the argument are (1) "progressives" (2) and memb! ers of the National Education Association (and even if they can rationalize the argument, they don't act on it: http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/15818/Where_Do_Public_School_Teachers_Send_Their_Kids_to_School.html). David Shemano _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
