Omnibus Spending Bill proposes end to DC Vouchers

[Meadmaker]

A piece in National Review caught my eye today.

(ETA: Link - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDFiZWNmZDQwOTZhN2QyODQ0ODYwODExNDc5NjgzNzc=)

Part of the new spending bill introduced in the House the other day eliminates funding for Washington DC's "Opportunity Scholarship" program. I don't know much about the details of the program, but it's basically a school voucher program. I don't know the limits of elligibility, but I know that the total annual cost is 14 million dollars.

That isn't much. 14 million bucks. Not much at all, really, for Congress to get all bent out of shape over. That is slightly more than 0.000001% of this year's projected budget deficit.

Meanwhile, the program doesn't exactly have a lot of detractors. The people using it like it. It hasn't worked miracles in DC schools, but it hasn't cost anything and it has done no harm.

However, I left this in the politics section because this is about politics, not about education. There is one group that absolutely hates that program. That group is the National Education Association. And so, first chance they got, the Democrats, supported by their President, will kill it. There's no real reason to do so, but it will be gone, because their big contributors are against it.

No more will the administration bow down before right wing special interests. Now, they will bow down before left wing special interests. That's change you can believe in.

 

[leftysergeant]

It is a subsidy to the academies for yuppie larvae. Good riddance if they do end it.

 

[BPSCG]

It is a subsidy to the academies for yuppie larvae. Good riddance if they do end it.

Got a news flash for you, Lefty - yuppies in DC already send their kids to private school. Schools like Sidwell Friends, where Chelsea Clinton went and the Obama girls go. Students in DC public schools are overwhelmingly minority and the schools are awful. Vouchers are an attempt to help disadvantaged minority kids get out of failing public schools and into private ones where they can concentrate more on getting an education than on not getting robbed at knifepoint.

But you think it's cool to call disadvantaged minority kids "larvae." Strange that someone who supposedly cares so much for the needy and minorities has no problem characterizing them as somehow being less than human. Disgusting.

 

[leftysergeant]

Got a news flash for you, Lefty - yuppies in DC already send their kids to private school. Schools like Sidwell Friends, where Chelsea Clinton went and the Obama girls go.

And they do it on their own dime. Fine with me. That means that there is less burden on the resources ofschools that need the money to reduce class sizes. Guess what. Even with the subsidies, the poor are not going to have access to the best schools.

Students in DC public schools are overwhelmingly minority and the schools are awful.

Yup. And the white parents who view the color of the typical pupil as a source of the problem will send their larvae to predominantly white schools.

I've seen it happen before. Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining. The elite will still find a way to exploit the vouchers and leave the public schools to rot, rather than to fix the problem.

But you think it's cool to call disadvantaged minority kids "larvae." Strange that someone who supposedly cares so much for the needy and minorities has no problem characterizing them as somehow being less than human. Disgusting.

I was referring to the spoiled brats whose parents can afford to give them everything, and who give a rat's whether the children of the poor have the same access to college.

 

[BPSCG]

I was referring to the spoiled brats whose parents can afford to give them everything, and who give a rat's whether the children of the poor have the same access to college.

What in Hades are you talking about? It's poor, minority kids who are getting the vouchers, so that poor, minority kids can also go to private schools.

And mea culpa for my suggestion that you were calling kids "larvae" because they're poor and black. I understand now that you're calling them "larvae" because their parents can provide for them, an odious moral offense in your eyes, apparently.

It's still disgusting.

 

[leftysergeant]

It still comes down to putting a foot in the door to give everyone a voucher rather than to fix what is wrong with the public schools.

 

[rwguinn]

I had no clue that people who pay for services and then want to actually get some benefit from those services were maggots and larvae.
You live and learn, huh?

 

[leftysergeant]

I had no clue that people who pay for services and then want to actually get some benefit from those services were maggots and larvae.
You live and learn, huh?

The problem here is that the snobbish class thinks that they are supposed to be paying to have their kids educated, and that they are not getting their money's worth, and that they should, therefore, be subsidized to send their kids to a private school on our dime. In the mean time, they will whine and shriek about having to pay to educate a bunch of uneducable slumdog whelps.

Get a clue. The idea is to educate the entire work force, and the people making the most money in the ecconomic system should be copntributing the most money to it. Vouchers are not going to help a starving kid twenty miles from the nearest yuppie academy, nor is the bloated toad getting subsidized to send his kid to an upper-crust school all that likely to vote for a levy to improve the public schools in the boondocks.

A voucher to use a service that you can't access is an insult to the poor.

 

[BPSCG]

The problem here is that the snobbish class thinks that they are supposed to be paying to have their kids educated, and that they are not getting their money's worth, and that they should, therefore, be subsidized to send their kids to a private school on our dime.

What's the weather like on Planet X these days?

I'm saying Planet X because I haven't heard about anyone in DC who's demanding vouchers for "the snobbish class," or even the middle class. It's for poor kids.

Now maybe you know better. So why don't you link to some evidence that "the snobbish class" is demanding vouchers, instead of calling people names?

OBTW, the DC taxpayers are not getting their money's worth.

In the mean time, they will whine and shriek about having to pay to educate a bunch of uneducable slumdog whelps.

Get a clue. The idea is to educate the entire work force, and the people making the most money in the ecconomic system should be copntributing the most money to it. Vouchers are not going to help a starving kid twenty miles from the nearest yuppie academy, nor is the bloated toad getting subsidized to send his kid to an upper-crust school all that likely to vote for a levy to improve the public schools in the boondocks.

A voucher to use a service that you can't access is an insult to the poor.

Your love of humanity shines through - larvae, whelps, toads.

Here, let me help you out. Emphases are mine.

The groundbreaking federal voucher program that enables nearly 2,000 D.C. children to attend private schools is facing an uncertain future in the Democrat-controlled Congress and may well be heading into its final year of operation, according to officials and supporters of the program.

(...snip...)

Changes in District politics have also compromised the future of the aid program, which awards scholarships of up to $7,500 a year to low-income children for tuition and other fees at participating private schools. Early champions of the initiative -- former mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), former D.C. Council member Kevin P. Chavous (D) and former D.C. Board of Education president Peggy Cooper Cafritz -- have all left office.

Do you get it now? Or is your love affair with calling people animals blinding you to how vouchers actually work?

 

[rwguinn]

What's the weather like on Planet X these days?

I'm saying Planet X because I haven't heard about anyone in DC who's demanding vouchers for "the snobbish class," or even the middle class. It's for poor kids.

Now maybe you know better. So why don't you link to some evidence that "the snobbish class" is demanding vouchers, instead of calling people names?

OBTW, the DC taxpayers are not getting their money's worth.

Your love of humanity shines through - larvae, whelps, toads.

Here, let me help you out. Emphases are mine.
Do you get it now? Or is your love affair with calling people animals blinding you to how vouchers actually work?

See line 2 of your signature--but we need to add "Militant" in front.
Why does everyone willing to spend what I have worked and saved to gain consider that I am the "scum", the "toad"?
I spent 5 years in college--which I paid for, thank you-My dad was an auto mechanic, my mom worked in a grocery store, And I have 2 brothers and a sister.
But, unlike the hard-core Liberal Socialists, I don't deserve to keep any of it because I "lost" the election?

 

[Meadmaker]

And they do it on their own dime. Fine with me. That means that there is less burden on the resources ofschools that need the money to reduce class sizes. Guess what. Even with the subsidies, the poor are not going to have access to the best schools.

With or without subsidies, the poor will not have access to the best schools. What's your point? If they get to the second or third best schools, it seems like it's still a leg up. If all the schools get better after a program is implemented, then even the kids without vouchers benefit.

Are you actually aware of how the voucher program works in D.C? This is a real program with a real track record. If you're interested, you can find out who gets the scholarships and how they are used. What sort of schools do the real people go to? Or, you could just mouth off about things in ignorance.

For my part, I don't know much about the DC program. I know a great deal more about the programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Sweden, but not so much about DC. However, what I do know is that it is very popular among the actual people who live there, and the net cost is zero.

So, it doesn't cost anything (the cost of the vouchers is less than the per pupil cost to the school district, so the taxpayers save money) and the people who are affected by it, like it. So, why kill it?

Who is against this program, and why should their interests override those of the people affected by the program?

 

[leftysergeant]

See line 2 of your signature--but we need to add "Militant" in front.
Why does everyone willing to spend what I have worked and saved to gain consider that I am the "scum", the "toad"?
I spent 5 years in college--which I paid for, thank you-My dad was an auto mechanic, my mom worked in a grocery store, And I have 2 brothers and a sister.
But, unlike the hard-core Liberal Socialists, I don't deserve to keep any of it because I "lost" the election?

Get over yourself. You seem to be trying to claim that you are a self-made man and owe nothing to the society that fostered you.

A self-made man is a naked savage poking animals with a sharp stick for a living.

The rest of us got where we were standing on the shoulders of people who pulled together and built an infrastructure that fostered the growth of civilization and industry.

Give something back and stop snivelling.

Keep it civil please.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Gaspode

 

[BPSCG]

Give something back and stop snivelling.

We're not "snivelling." Mrs. BPSCG and I write a big fat check every April 15. We don't do it with any particular relish, but we don't resent it, because we recognize that, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.

But that's not enough for you, is it? You want us to feel middle-class guilt because we've worked for the money that enables us to write that big fat check. And you want us to accept your "bloated toads" abuse as being just what we deserve because somehow, in your strange little mind, we've gotten our financial security by metaphorically mugging the poor - even though a major chunk of that big fat check goes to the poor.

This is the true face of Marxism - class hatred disguised as supposed concern for humanity. Since the rich don't deserve what they have, the poor are justified in taking, by whatever means necessary, what they think is rightfully theirs. Class warfare - literal warfare between the poor and everyone else, with weapons and millions of dead bodies - is what Marxism is all about.

 

[Beerina]

It is a subsidy to the academies for yuppie larvae. Good riddance if they do end it.

You have a problem with people taking part (and only part) of their child's "share" with them to a different school?

I can't imagine why. Seems mean and needlessly angry and controlling, if you ask me.

 

[leftysergeant]

You have a problem with people taking part (and only part) of their child's "share" with them to a different school?

It isn't about paying "your share" based on your kids. It's aboput yourt share as a beneficiary of the infrastructure from which you derive your income.

Vouchers take money that we all contribute to the betterment of society as a whole to subsidize those who would turn their backs on the society that supported them. Totally narcissistic.

 

[WildCat]

lefty wants to keep the poor uneducated and dependent on government, because then they'll vote the way he wants. He doesn't give a damn about their actual well-being, this much is obvious.

 

[Ziggurat]

Vouchers take money that we all contribute to the betterment of society as a whole to subsidize those who would turn their backs on the society that supported them. Totally narcissistic.

Low-income DC parents who send their kids to private school aren't turning their backs on society: they're turning their backs on a government that has failed them. By trying to get their kids a decent education so that they can succeed in life, they're trying to integrate into society at large, rather than remaining in ghettos and on the fringes of society.

But you don't give a rat's a** about them. To you, the fact that they aren't playing along with your statist fantasies makes them as the villains, rather than the public schools which have failed them so completely and consistently. It's funny how leftists like you like to posture about caring for others, but the facade crumbles when the very people you supposedly care for don't want to play victim for you. Then they become targets for you.

 

[Meadmaker]

I don't think anyone familiar with any real voucher program in America would agree with anything Lefty says about them. The longest running program in America, Milwaukee's program, is nothing like what he describes. The largest program in the world, in Sweden, likewise is nothing like he describes.

I can't say I've paid attention to the DC program, although I could end up looking it up if this thread goes on a while, but I assume it, also, is nothing like what Lefty describes.

Of course, I've heard plenty of people use the same arguments that Lefty uses before. Why? They don't match the reality of the real programs, but they are used frequently.

It's telling, to me, that an actual program, once implemented, has never been discontinued either by a vote of the people or action of their elected representatives. Judges have eliminated some voucher programs, but legislatures that represent the constituents who are affected by the voucher program never have.

That goes back to the heart of my question. The actual program is popular with the real people of Washington DC. It doesn't cost anything. So, who's against it, and why should their concerns be more significant than those people who live with the program? I understand that Lefty hates it, but why should anyone care? He doesn't live in DC?

Besides, I doubt that it is Lefty's opposition to the program that caused someone to include its termination in the Omnibus spending bill.

 

[Texas]

It isn't about paying "your share" based on your kids. It's aboput yourt share as a beneficiary of the infrastructure from which you derive your income.

Vouchers take money that we all contribute to the betterment of society as a whole to subsidize those who would turn their backs on the society that supported them. Totally narcissistic.

You do realise that "wealthy parents" that send their kids to private schools still pay property taxes to the public school district the live in don't you? Private schools take NO money away public school systems.

 

[leftysergeant]

You do realise that "wealthy parents" that send their kids to private schools still pay property taxes to the public school district the live in don't you?

So what? They owe it to society.

Private schools take NO money away public school systems.

Government-provided vouchers do. That dooms the schools that lose students to failure. But that is, after all, the GOP plan. If a government operation is working, break it and privatize the salvage.