Sorry I wasn’t calling you a name!!!

I won’t even try to answer the socialization, your spart. What you wrote shows your prejudice against homeschoolers.. If were around homeschoolers you would see how active they are in sports and activities.

My whole point is we should encourage parental responsibility. If the gov schools are dangerous and failing the kids, don’t hurry up and wait for the gov to solve it. Withdraw the children and give them an education outside the system. Public schools seems to be the only government service that republicans encourage a bigger government and entitlement/helpless mentality. The way the parents are written about in articles like this, like they are helpess victims, is the same exact way the dems present them.

I went to a Catholic boys school for all of my elementary and high school. Our teachers were perhaps slightly more conservative than at a public school, but we had the odd commie, and I clearly remember vociferous debates erupting in class whenever someone tried to push an idealogy on us.

And I don’t really understand how a single parent with a low level of education could possibly pull off homeschooling and hold a job.

Succesful homeschooling is not dependent on the parent’s education or income.

I brought up the parents not paying tax because of the why pay twice posts.

In a vast majority of these cases we are talking about children whose parents have a combined yearly income of under $23,000 (that is about what is necessary to qualify for the voucher). That could lead one to the logical conclusion that the education level of their parent(s) is probably below a high school diploma on average. There might also be a large portion of these children who come from single parent households. What put the families in this sort of situation (education and single parenthood), among other things, is a general failure of the government run education system. DC has consistently been among the worst performing school district in the nation, going back decades. Poorly educated parents probably are not the best home schoolers, and single parent households could only pursue homeschooling if they were to rely exclusively on welfare (not to mention that home schooling is just weird).

In order to give these children a legitimate chance to break out of the downward spiral they are in by being in DC, and by being in a low income situation, a voucher system allowing choice and competition among schools is the best use of taxpayer money that you can imagine.

It is irrelevant if the taxes were paid by “their” parents, or by other people…the facts of public education is that the taxes are paid in an incredibly progressive manner, and with no regard to whether the people take advantage of the service or not (wealthier people tend to live in bigger houses with higher property taxes and send their kids to private school, or perhaps have no school age children whatsoever)……but given that the tax money is collected, it should be in everyone’s best interest that the results achieved with this money are the best they can be. With vouchers, the results are demonstrably better than with the public school sytem, and at significantly lower cost per pupil. how can that not be a positive?

I personally would love to follow the progression of these children, and see them strive and break out of the cycle of poverty that the DC school system has contributed to for so many decades.

That NEA post was to respond to your other post! I’m a slow typer.

So since we can’t just end the dept of Education and the public school system, how do we get to where we should be?

“Are you really suggesting that these families should not only pay taxes to support the public education system they don”t use, but also have to pay for what they do out of their own pocket?”

“I think they should take responsibility for their child’s education regardless of what taxes they are paying.”

If they are paying taxes for the public school and the public school is not suitable, parents are still responsible to educate their child. An employer is not going to hire an illiterate adult as an editor because he knows the DC schools failed to teach him how to read. None of that matters when the child is an adult and has to face the real world.

The article was about low income families and these vouchers that is why I wrote the low income part.

I’m sorry~
I didn’t meant to insult you at all.

Second, Vouchers and Scholarships are not only for the low wage earner, my family was middle class and sent me to private schools after a couple of years of homeschooling. My dad took a job as a handyman/custodian at the school in order to mitigate the costs to our family.

Now you say that “vouchers will end up turning private schools into public schools”, I am not sure that is really the case. I look at it from the opposite side of the equation. I believe that vouchers and scholarships will allow for a way out of the failing school system, which will effectively weaken the special interest groups such as the NEA.

Lastly not everyone can stay at home and do grades 1-12 as home schooling because the cost of living nearly requires a two income household.

It is not that expensive to educate a child. We pour a huge amount of money into a failing system so people believe it is expensive. For $3,000 you can buy enough to educate a child from grades 1 – 12. We already have gov funded have public libraries which can make that number even less.

Vouchers will end up turning private schools into public schools eventually.

I am all for private scholarships but not for government funed ones.

Why is this the only isse we takeup the paying twice for? Why don’t we apply it to other issues like food stamps or TANF or section 8?

I don’t understand why republicans seem to be ok with this type of mentality of the gov being responsible instead of the parents and then encouraging parental anger when they do not get what they want from the gov.

Scholarships and vouchers directly to the deserving (willing and committed to study hard and make better of him/herself) students are generally the most effective way of showing “compassion” to our fellow Americans.

It’s also important that we know the name/s of the students who are receiving our help in order to track down the efficiency of the program that we are participating in.

You are forced to pay for the liberal indoctrination centers because of mandatory attendance laws. That is the issue it is not due to a lack of vouchers. The whole problem is with government and schools tied together in the first place.

Parents are already free to chose the educational environment that works best for their children.

This is just not true. Parents are paying for a service from the government in public education. Parents should be able to opt out of a failing system. by using vouchers and scholarship programs such as this.

Are you really suggesting that these families should not only pay taxes to support the public education system they don”t use, but also have to pay for what they do out of their own pocket? This seams a bit unreasonable to me.

I think we should, as conservatives, encourage more scholarships and voucher programs. Especially since we have seen results in both D.C. and post-Jindal LA.