Republican Educational Stand - Making the Rich Richer

Republicans have long espoussed that government is bad and private business (that is, their rich friends) are good. So it goes that most of them support educational vouchers - the process of taking tax dollars designed for public schools and placing that money in the pockets of their friends who run the private schools.

The following is from Crooks and Liars - click the link for the video of the discussion...

When asked what each would do to improve the primary educational system here in the US, the solution for candidates John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson? Choice–vouchers (naturally), charters, home-schooling, etc. Essentially, anything rather than looking at the actual problem and finding solutions.

Only problem, gentlemen, conservative think tanks can tell you, “vouchers don’t work” and won’t address the underlying problems.

Vouchers Fail

Educational voucher systems have NEVER been about providing better educational programs for children. They have always been about privatizing education so that taxes could be cut, more of the cost of education could be placed on parents, and the wealthy could stop paying taxes into a system that helped poor people. Congress has been messing with a voucher system in DC for several years now and the first report on the success of the program has just been released. It's like almost all of the other voucher systems that have been implemented. They're getting failing grades.

A voucher program designed to send low-income children in the District to better-performing private schools has allowed some students to take classes in unsuitable learning environments and from teachers without bachelor's degrees, according to a government report.

The shortcomings are detailed in a draft prepared by the Government Accountability Office about the $12.9 million D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. The GAO said the program lacks financial controls and has failed to check whether the participating schools were accredited.

From the Washington Post (read more here) via Crooks and Liars (read more here).