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Saturday, September 29, 2007$4520
This bit of research indicates the average cost for the majority of private schools in Utah is about $4,520 per year.
Smart aleck rebuttal here. The point: A $3000 voucher would put realistic, desperately-needed alternatives in reach for many Utah families. Most don't need an alternative. Some do. Parents would know. If a family chooses the private-school option the public school district, of course, continues to be funded for five years as if the child were still there. Volunteerism. Class size reduction. More funding for education.
posted by The Senate Site at 10:11 AM | Link
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17 Comments:
Wow...do you really think $30,000 vouchers are a good idea? :-)
The smart aleck rebuttal is right on target and then some. You only get $4520 as an average price if you ignore the expensive schools. You also end up relying too heavily on tuition amounts for parochial schools that aren't a good fit for many average Utahns.
When are we going to get beyond the rhetoric and focus on WHY so much money is being spent on this issue? It is easy to see why NEA is investing, why is the Far Right so involved? Do they want to eliminate the Blaine Amendments from state constitutions in order to enable public money to fund religious instruction? Is it to capitalize on the privatization of public schools? Is it to bust the most powerful union in the country?
Why is Utah a target? Are the members of the Utah Conservative Caucus wannabe members of The Council on National Policy? Are we known for being exceptionally compliant or is it raging arrogance?
Let's follow the money, it does not all lead to the NEA.
And why haven't we heard from transportation and social services who will be hit hard when funds are siphoned off of the General Fund to double fund education?
C'mon, Ric, snarky rebuttal I'll give you, but sarcastic seems to imply that it wasn't a pretty good break down of the fact that once again, another supporter/booster of PCE is throwing around flawed and dishonest statistical data as fact.
Bob was right on breaking it down with a touch of humor. That snarky tone we get about this topic id fueled by a desire not to use the "f" word in ever sentence.
Yeah, Ric, this one is fishy even by Sutherland Institute standards.
Wow, people seem to have strong feelings here. That's great because people stay involved instead of being apathetic. I just wanted to offer a differing view point to this discussion.
My kids attend a public charter school now, called the Open Classroom, which works great for us. It is a co-oping school which allows both for me to be very involved in my children's education, and also for them to reap the benefit of about 300 volunteers in their school weekly. One of the reasons I feel so drawn to this school is because parents are in the classroom everyday working with the teacher.
As a former School District employee. I did not feel comfortable just trusting that a teacher would always behave him or herself, or that a principle or district officials would do anything about it. I worked in special needs with wonderful dedicated teachers and also with one who thought the kids couldn't learn. They sat in a room all day and watched cartoons, or animal shows. Occasionally some of the children would play a game on a computer, or some other token activity. This teacher would also have irrational and innapropriate mood swings. They would slam things around, be angry and make the entire class uncomfortable. Other teachers were forced to take some of this teacher's higher functioning kids onto their workload so that they could receive any education at all.
Everyone knew about this teacher. Everyone seemed to know what a poor job they were doing. The reason I heard offered was, because of the union this individual would be too hard to fire. The district waited years for them to retire instead.
Now I hate propaganda and I know both sides dish it out. But, I know this happened because I watched it happen year after year. and sadly this is not an isolated incident. It is still going on now with other teachers.
Our schools are filled with wonderful dedicated professionals who nurture and educate our children. They deserve the highest praise for their work.
However, whether it be on the state, district, or individual school administrators level, some people are not doing their jobs.
I don't really see what is wrong with a little competition for the districts. Provided there is testing and acceptable accountability. With the money continuing to go to the schools it seems like some class sizes will go down, and money will stay the same.
Thanks for reading this I know it's long, I just wanted to share my experience and thoughts.
Yeah, 30K is a little high. Thanks for the catch, Jeremy. The correct amount is up now.
JM: Appreciate you not dropping the F-bomb here. Witnessing such restraint makes me proud to be an American. I like Aagard's sense of humor.
Voice: I smell no fish.
A Mom: thank you for your thoughtful comment.
All: One of the arguments against vouchers has been that the scholarship amount won't help anyone. The point here is that vouchers could put an alternate private school within reach of a lower income family, should they determine that's the best option for their child. Don't be so sad. You still have some anti-voucher arguments left. Just not that one.
RC
You should be embarrassed putting up that number when all factual data shows a much higher number.
"We want to welcome Ric Cantrell as one of the newest members of the Sutherland Institute..."
I would only accept that honor if it includes secret meetings with Dick Cheney.
Seriously though, what is the higher number? The number I had previously was a little lower than $4520.
If the actual number does turn out to be higher, does that negate the basic point here that Utah's voucher program could put a private school option within reach for lower income families?
Hello everyone, I don't know about the cost of private schools. But what I do know is that Utah's public school system does amazingly well with how especially when you consider that Utah schools have some of the lowest funding in the nation.
My main concern is the constitutional issues that this voucher program would raise.
I am a secular humanist, which basically means that I base my morals on my love for my fellow human beings and the power of reason which we all posses. I do not believe in basing morals off of the claimed authority of institutions or ancient books. Some private schools teach prejudice toward religious minorities and homosexuals as well as other things that to me and many other Utahans, seem morally questionable.
This makes me very sad, but I respect the right of private schools to teach such things. All I ask is that the state of Utah does not force those of us who do not agree with these messages to fund the promotion of them. I do not believe it's fair to anyone to use taxpayer money for the funding ideology based schools regardless of whether or not they agree with the ideology that the school is promoting. Private school means private funding.
Finally our state constitution specifically forbids public funding of religious schools:
Article X, Section 9. [Public aid to church schools forbidden.]
Neither the state of Utah nor its political subdivisions may make any appropriation for the direct support of any school or educational institution controlled by any religious organization.
I hope that those who read this, religious or not, republican or democrat, progressive or conservative will vote NO on the voucher program. It is up to you. Thank you for reading this message.
Sutherland statistics = fuzzy math.
Yes it does Ric. It is just another red voucher flag.
Just a little thought to add to the voucher debate. If you have a k-6 school with 700 students (100 in each grade) and you lose one student to the voucher program, what costs do you end up saving the school district? You still need the same staff, utilities, administration, etc. So what does this do the the cost per student? It actually increases the costs because there is a smaller student base to cover the cost. Also, since funding for public schools is based on enrollment, the districts will loose on that money as well further increasing the cost per student.
Webb: Whether vouchers win or lose on Nov. 6, the Big Idea behind school choice isn't going away. A lot of legislators and business leaders want fundamental reform and more parental options. A voucher defeat, especially, will motivate them to continue the crusade.
Lawmakers will look at voting results in their own districts to help guide them on further reform efforts. Overwhelming anti-voucher votes in Democratic and swing districts in Salt Lake County, for example, won't dissuade powerful Utah County lawmakers from continuing school choice efforts and other reform ideas.
Public education governance might be addressed in the 2008 session. Some lawmakers want to revamp the state Board of Education into a 29-member body (districts aligned with state Senate districts), with candidates nominated and elected through the political party process.
Currently, hardly anyone knows or keeps track of their state school board member. If board districts were the same as Senate districts, and if candidates sought the office through the regular political process, voters would be more engaged and knowledgeable about the candidates and the issues.
Meanwhile, some legislators are thinking about ways to create more school accountability to parents. Here's a basic philosophical question: When public money provides services to citizens, are better results achieved if the funds go to the user, allowing them to shop for services, or directly to the institutions providing the services? I believe, generally, that superior outcomes occur when money flows to individuals (with appropriate safeguards), rather than to institutions.
Federal college financial aid like GI Bill money goes to individuals. Colleges then compete for students and have an incentive to perform well. Low-income housing programs work better when rent vouchers go to individuals, who then shop around, giving landlords incentives to provide better service and keep properties in good condition. The magic of the marketplace performs well even for some government services.
So here's a scary Halloween thought for the education establishment. Why not expand the education voucher concept to ALL families and students. Provide a portion of per-student public education funding directly to families, as a scholarship (with proper safeguards), for them to invest in the school (public or private) of their choice.
Let money flow to the students, rather than the institutions. This would really just be a change in nuance, because money follows students to schools, anyway.
But it would give accountability and parental control a big psychological boost. Families would feel they are investing their scholarship money in a particular school, becoming shareholders in that school. It would follow that parents could form a shareholders committee that would hire the principal and serve as a school board of directors. Boo.
Do the tutition figures include all fees or is it only tuition? A little research that I did showed that many schools had new student fees, curriculum fees, activity fees, etc. that were in addition to tuition. So even if you accept the skewed average tuition figure, I doubt it included the other fees that sometimes added an extra $400-$500 per student on top of tuition. And that obviously didn't include other additional costs, such as greater transportation costs, uniform costs, etc.
007--no, our calculations did not include student fees (I am the guy who did the calculations) because the voucher bill stipulates that voucher money does not apply to anything other than tuition.
Your pertinent comment on fees highlights one of the purposes of the voucher bill. It was never meant to fully pay for private schooling. Part of its intent was to put within reach (economically) an opportunity to exit the public school system for those who are struggling in it but stuck economically. Like Ric points out, the main point of our research is that the voucher bill accomplishes that very purpose, even though it won't pay all tuition and fee costs.
When investigating the question of affordability of private schooling for low-income families, it makes no sense to look at schools that charge over $10,000 annually because it is blatantly obvious that these schools are not affordable for low-income families. For that matter, it's likely that schools charging between $6000 and $9000 are not affordable either, but financial aid programs may bring these schools within reach (more than 20% of private school students receive financial aid from their schools accoring to a USU study, by the way). Evidently however, some believe that using logic and reason like this to investigate a pertinent voucher question is doing "fuzzy math."
So again, what this research shows is that there are a significant number of private schools in Utah that will move into the range of affordability for low-income families if they receive a private school voucher. They'll still have to work for it to happen of course, but they are willing to do so (see the Children First Utah website: a private voucher program that only pays for half of private school tuition no matter how much it is). Can't we help these families out a bit by relieving some of the financial pressure they already face so their children can have the education they have a right to? That is the question of this referrendum.
By the way, for all of you who out there who still think that $4520 figure is deceptive after reading my last post, the median annual tuition (which isn't pulled around by extremely cheap or extremely expensive schools) of all of the schools that responded to our survey was $4445.
Responding to Jared (9:41 a.m.):
One child taken out of an overcrowded classroom = class size reduction, for the child that leaves AND for those who stay behind. The voucher program should make ALL schools better.
Under Utah's Voucher Law, the money stays with the public school for five years as if the child still attended.
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