Senators Like School Choice for Their Own Kids. Why Not for Everyone?

[longknife]

Recognize anyone? And it’s not just Senators, it’s all the hoi piloi inside The Beltway and in the hallowed halls of governments at all levels. What’s good for them isn’t good for the plebes, the common people.

The same holds true with their health care and retirement plans. Ever notice that?

Thirty-four percent of senators had at one time sent their children to private school.

Thirty-nine percent of Democratic senators had at one time sent their children to private school.

Thirty-two percent of Republican senators had at one time sent their children to private school.

More @ Senators Like School Choice for Their Kids. Why Not for All?

 

[Mr Natural]

Nobody's stopping you from sending your kids to private schools.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Nobody's stopping you from sending your kids to private schools.

Bingo!

85%+ of American children go to Public school and that is were the money should go to...

 

[longknife]

Nobody's stopping you from sending your kids to private schools.

You really didn't understand the purpose of the OP, did you?

 

[william the wie]

allowing school choice would lead to informed voters and the Ds in particular don't want that.

 

[usmbguest5318]

Senators Like School Choice for Their Own Kids. Why Not for Everyone?

Thirty-four percent of senators had at one time sent their children to private school.

Thirty-nine percent of Democratic senators had at one time sent their children to private school.

Thirty-two percent of Republican senators had at one time sent their children to private school.

I have news for you. Everyone already has access to the same choices Senators make for their kids. When it comes to sending one's kids to private school, the facts are these:

• If one sends them to a private school, one does not get to lower one's tax burden by the share of it that goes to support public schools.
• Sending one's kids to private schools is much like buying a Bentley or a Camry. If one has them money and is of a mind to do so, one is free to buy the Bentley, but there is no need to buy a Bentley.
• The impetus to send one's children to private school is obviated by the fact that there are public schools that offer as good an education as can be had. (See also: 2017 School & District Rankings) If one's local public schools are not among the ones that do offer as high quality education as can be had, the thing to do is to press upon one's local leaders the importance of their doing so, thus correcting the ills of one's public schools.
• School choice vouchers -- unless they lack an income eligibility ceiling -- are not to anyone going to make affordable the nation's top private schools. Be that as it is, the nation's top private schools have competitive admissions; a voucher isn't going to get one's child admitted to one of them. Also, private schools are not required to participate in a school voucher/choice program.
• A school choice program is good for one class of private schools -- parochial schools -- thus school choice programs will almost certainly boost enrollment at parochial schools, thereby expanding the size of the population that is theologically indoctrinated as a result of attending them. [1] (After all, young minds are the most malleable ones.) Why is it so that school choice programs primarily benefit parochial schools? Because they are, for the most part, the only ones having tuition that can be paid for, or mostly so, by the sum of public school vouchers.
• The majority of high performing college students and adults graduated not from private schools but public schools. Clearly, therefore, going to a private school isn't even near necessary to achieve highly after finishing school.
  
  Percentage of students attending private and public schools
  
  
  
  
  
• Based purely on the existing incidence of the world's 4000 elite individuals, it's clear that there's a correlation between attending an elite college/university and becoming elite, though that correlation is not causal. As goes school choice, however, short of going to one of a very small quantity of so-called "pipeline" schools (the closest thing the U.S. has to schools like Eton and Harrow whereof finishing there is pretty much a guarantee of one's being accepted at whatever college one wants, including the various ones at Oxford and Cambridge), where one goes to high school (or primary and middle school) isn't a controlling factor in gaining admittance to an elite college or university, attending it, and, most importantly, graduating from it. (It's important to note that not many "pipeline" schools participate in voucher/school choice programs.) Indeed, neither President Clinton nor Obama attended an elite high school. In the Trump Administration, Rex Tillerson attended public school. (Here are 14 other Fortune 500 CEOs who were public school educated. There are more.)
• People send their kids to private schools for a variety of reasons, and the education may not be the driving reason for the school(s) they choose. I sent my kids to private school because they were kids and needed adult supervision that neither I, with my job's travel regimen, nor their mother, having passed, could provide.

As for the statistics the OP cites....Well, you know, I too can find 100 people of whom 34% send their kids to private schools. That 34 U.S. Senators send their kids to private school indicates several things, none of which are particularly relevant to whether the U.S. should or should not implement a national level school choice program, but knowing such things is perhaps useful for a game of Trivial Pursuit. What are some of those things indicated by the incidence of Senators sending their kids to private schools?

• Insofar as 34% of Senators send their kids to private schools, 66% do not.
• There are 100 U.S. Senators, and they constitute 0.00003125% of the U.S. population. What those 100 individuals do re: their kids says nothing about what you, I or anyone should or needs to do regarding our own.
• Someone has an axe to grind, but isn't all that concerned about dispassionately considering the facts of the matter. They just want readers to feel like Senators have some special things most others do not. Well, the reality is that Senators do have two such things: comparatively high wealth and a seat in the U.S. Senate.
  
  The fact that the choices of U.S. Senators have been singled out, as opposed to those of any other group of 100 individuals, is indicative of nothing in the context of school choice and the benefits and detractors to such policies. Senators, when deciding how to educate their kids are just like everyone else. Clearly, as seen in the chart above, the choices Senators make re: educating their kids is not in line with those most people make.
• Sending one's kids to private school is not merely a matter of being wealthy enough to do so. Does the wealthy part of your area have public schools? Do kids from the area in which the school is located attend them? I suspect that in your area, just as in mine, the answer to both questions is "yes." Clearly, plenty of wealthy people who could send their kids to private schools choose not to do so. Thirty-four percent of the U.S. Senators just happen to be some of the wealthy people who have chosen to send their kids to private schools.

As goes the matter of school choice, the reason to implement (or not) such programs is on the impact they will have on the quality and delivery of education in the nation as a whole, not, selfishly, on what one might want for one's own kids. To that end, I support school choice to the extent that it means a student (their parents) in a given locale can choose which public school s/he attends. I support that because such programs -- charter and magnet school programs -- have consistently led to increased performance in the schools that participate in the programs. I'm not nuts about the notion of using public funds to pay for private school education, but if the voucher program limits eligibility for receiving public funds to non-parochial schools, I could live with it. I am 100% opposed to and in no way amenable to any share of my tax dollars being paid to a parochial school.


Note:

1. While others may feel differently, I don't cotton to the notion of any tax dollars going to theologically driven grade through high schools. I'm also not keen on theological colleges and universities, like The Catholic University of America, Southern Methodist University or Pepperdine University receiving federal funds via the student loan and Pell Grant programs, though I can be persuaded to acquiesce to that happening. It's not that I have a problem with some or all of the values such institutions preach. It's that I have a problem with their doing so as part of and under the auspices of a religious doctrine.

 

[usmbguest5318]

Nobody's stopping you from sending your kids to private schools.

You really didn't understand the purpose of the OP, did you?

Well, seeing as you suspect that might be so, why don't you share with us what the purpose of the OP is?