Re: Defending public education

["Claudia Ayers" <cayers@aptoshs.net>]

This is a tough one.....when MY OWN children were in Waldorf schools because 
the public schools inisted on teaching reading in Kindergarten....I was 
rather interested in the idea of vouchers. I thought it would be fair if the 
State gave me half the money they spent on my kid's public ed as a voucher 
towards the tuition at my kid's school....thereby cutting me some slack 
(30%) ..I didn't want to be too greedy.

But, one divorce later, and popping the kids back into public school, where 
I, myself, took up a new career....all those thoughts faded quickly. BUT, it 
is hard to want to give your kid an appropriate education in private 
schools, because the public schools get further and further away from 
appropriate, and not want some of your tax dollars to help out.

Maybe the war and the rest of the disastorous public policy decisions made 
by the Republicans in charge will bring about a sea change that will allow 
us to truly save public education from the doom that we do, indeed, face 
from NCLB.

> I had a nice long conversation with a teacher who teaches at a Waldorf
> school. I thought I did a good job informing her of the complexities of 
> NCLB
> and its intent to destroy public education. She is very liberal, so very
> receptive to what I had to say. When it came down to answering WHY would
> they want to do this, and I gave the answer - vouchers, there was this
> moment of silence and she may have possibly been pondering, hey, then this
> is a good thing for us in private schools. We had to go back to what we 
> were
> doing before the conversation, but it got me thinking that I need to be
> articulate about defending public education in general. This may be a 
> simple
> question for most of you, but I was hoping you can help me get my speaking
> juices flowing about why we NEED to have public education, (i.e., why not
> vouchers?) why everyone, even those without school-age children in the
> public schools, needs it.
>
> Hoping to get a response,
> Diane