Comments on Into My Own: School choice and the Utah voucher referendum: why...

There are so many examples of visionary change bei...

2007-11-21T15:29:00.000-05:00

There are so many examples of visionary change being squashed by the masses who aren't willing to endure the transition. I got to meet futurist Alvin Toffler once in a small seminar, and he had this great line: "It's easy to envision 10 years out - it's next year that's hard." How true.

As I said, I'm a big fan of capitalism and democracy (which aren't synonymous), but the other thing that's true is that sometimes the majority is wrong, and sometimes free market economics lead to a bad result. This is why we have courts in our system. Many important steps in the civil rights movement were dictated by the courts. They didn't always get it right either, but they made the decision, be it Brown V Board of Education that started it all, or Penick v Columbus Bd of Education here in Franklin County, which actually made things worse.

Read "Getting Around Brown" by Gregory Jacobs sometime. While it's about Columbus, our story isn't that unique.

PL

It's nice to see us agreeing!I think where we diff...

2007-11-21T10:15:00.000-05:00

It's nice to see us agreeing!

I think where we differ though is that I don't believe suburban schools can absorb the numbers of students from lesser performing schools... so vouchers end up being kind of a cruel hoax. Yeah, some of the kids in DPS for example could take their vouchers and go to a private or public school... but only a few, and the rest, probably the most needy, are worse off for it. That's why the change really has to come in a broad systemic way, either by reforming how schools are funded or redrawing the district lines. That's tougher, maybe to enact than a voucher law.

But to expect a voter referendum like the one in Utah to pass--that's a pipe dream, too. So maybe there's no solution... depressing. The best options may have been the kinds of desegregation plans that Louisville had struck down by the court this year. Even more depressing, huh?

Dave:Exactly. I wrote a series of stories on my bl...

2007-11-20T23:45:00.000-05:00

Dave:

Exactly. I wrote a series of stories on my blog that observes that discrimination and segregation are still very much with us, hiding behind the flag of capitalism and free-market economics, two of my most beloved political concepts - seriously. By that I mean that nothing seems more American than working hard, making some money, and using that money to move to a better neighborhood with better schools. Anyone can live that dream if they just apply themselves, right?

Maybe not. Some of our fellow Americans remain trapped in a cycle of poverty, and we end up with generation after generation of kids who drop out and head on a path straight to incarceration.

Now before you accuse me of really being a bleeding heart liberal who wants to fix this by raising taxes to fund assistance programs for the poor, let me say that I think the real problem is that there simply isn't enough middle class jobs available in America anymore - jobs which can be had without a college education, yet pay sufficient wages to allow for decent housing which funds schools adequately with local money. We've let our jobs escape overseas, and when I say 'we' I mean the government, the corporations AND the labor unions.

You're right. The folks in the suburb don't want to share. They don't understand that they're paying to prop up the inner city schools anyway. As the lady said, "let them eat cake." Didn't work out so well for her...

PL