Pope Benedict Urges Government Subsidy of Faith-Based Schools

[FishMonger]

And that is why I think we should cut the Gordian Knot. Let us recognize that public education (paying for the education of every child) is one thing and public schools (owned by the government) are another.

We should pay a standard tuition for each child, and let the parents pick the school – any school, public or private. Let good schools flourish and bad ones wither and die.

That would certainly put the system on a far more rational footing, with parents exercising choice over the available offerings.

It might be time to start thnking about how a system would work when vouchers are eventually used. For example, would schools have to be licensed? Could anyone teach anything and collect the voucher? Could a voucher go to a school that did not teach reading, but only memorized oral tradition? How about an Islamic madrassa that taught nothing other than the Quran and Jihad? A school that had kids spend the day in meditation?

Would a cardboard sign I hang on my front door allow me to collect vouchers from kids who watch TV and eat chips in my basement all day?

We have a very good collection of private schools today, and the temptation is to think the quality of new private schools will be the same as the existing private schools. I have to question that.

Then we have a very interesting question of home schoolers. Let’s say a twenty-year teacher from a proven private school opens up her own school in her home. No problem there. Then let’s say she collects vouchers from five kids who attend her small school. She takes in $30,000 per year and the kids make remarkable progress.

Next door, we have a mother who is home schooling her five kids. Do we also give the mother the $30,000?

So, the idea of vouchers is great. In fact, there’s really nothing wrong with the idea of government schools, either. However, the success of any program relies on the detailed planning and administrtaion. Maybe it’s time to start doing that so vouchers can actually succeed.

 

[FishMonger]

I wish the Govt would keep a better eye on the hordes of functionally illiterate kids our Public School systems turns out.

I agree. These illiterates are the very people who should not be homeschooling their kids.

 

[pnewton]

However, the success of any program relies on the detailed planning and administrtaion. Maybe it’s time to start doing that so vouchers can actually succeed.

Yes, but that shouldn’t be an issue. After all, day cares already are held to standardization in safety and care. There is already certification process for teachers. Most of the infrastructure needed to protect against fraud is already in place.

 

[FishMonger]

Yes, but that shouldn’t be an issue. After all, day cares already are held to standardization in safety and care. There is already certification process for teachers. Most of the infrastructure needed to protect against fraud is already in place.

Of course it’s an issue, just as the quality of day care is an issue. Perhaps it is not a decision variable upon which support for vouchers should hang, but it is one that could crush them.

Private school teachers do not need certification. Catholic school teachers do not need certification. Wander down to the local Catholic school and ask how many teachers are certified. Anyone can teach in a private school. This existing system is exactly why people who really want vouchers to succeed should begin thinking about how they would actually work.

And, in terms of gaining acceptance for vouchers? Suppose one were arguing in favor of vouchers against a representative of the teachers union. Suppose the union representative posed the questions I have posed? I’d hope a voucher supporter would have studied the issue enough to have cogent and reasonable answers. If he doesn’t, the lack of answers could easily be used to derail vouchers.

Marva Collins created a fine school in her house on the west side of Chicago. That’s great. But, it’s reasonable to ask how the druggie next door will be prevented from establishing his school, too. Remember, no certification needed.

Voucher supporters need a lot more than slogans. This will be a very nasty fight. They need very smart people, with very well thought out programs.

 

[vern_humphrey]

That would certainly put the system on a far more rational footing, with parents exercising choice over the available offerings.

It might be time to start thnking about how a system would work when vouchers are eventually used. For example, would schools have to be licensed? Could anyone teach anything and collect the voucher? Could a voucher go to a school that did not teach reading, but only memorized oral tradition? How about an Islamic madrassa that taught nothing other than the Quran and Jihad? A school that had kids spend the day in meditation?

Would a cardboard sign I hang on my front door allow me to collect vouchers from kids who watch TV and eat chips in my basement all day?

If you’re interested in my proposal, here it is:

The Three-Paper Solution

This paper addresses the issue of education in America. It is based on four principles:

 We, the public, should pay for the education of each child in the nation.

 If we pay for a child’s education, the child should get an education – one commensurate with the amount we pay (which is to say, a world-class education).

 There should be no disparity among children, either in what we pay, or the quality education they receive.

 America works best when we have free and open competition among suppliers – and that applies to suppliers of education as much as to any other thing.

The Three-Paper Solution is a framework for applying these four principles. In practice, it is quite simple – first of all, get three sheets of blank paper:

On the first sheet: write the standards which you feel every school should meet. If you want a school to serve a hot lunch, write it down, and set standards so we can determine if the school is meeting the requirement. Similarly, if you want integrated schools, write standards for integration. Continue until you feel you have described all the standards a publicly-funded school should meet.

When writing, remember – all schools which receive public funds will have to meet your requirements, not just “public schools” and not just “private schools receiving public funds.” Schools which cannot meet your standards – whether public or private – will not be eligible to receive public funding. Also remember – these will be the only public funds the school receives.

On the second sheet: write the standards which you feel every student should meet. Specify how well children should read at the end of each grade. Set standards for electives as well as mandatory subjects – for example, if a school has a course in carpentry or automotive repair, set standards for courses in those subjects.

Write your standards as objective, measurable standards. Tell what the students must do to prove the standards have been met.

On the third sheet: list those things for which you are willing to pay extra and set a price tag beside them.

(Continued on next post)

 

[vern_humphrey]

The Three Paper Solution
(Continued from previous post)

How it works: any agency or business can open a school and receive ninety percent of the per-pupil share of the state’s educational expenditures for each pupil the school attracts. This is the only source of public funding any school will receive; public, private non-profit, or private for-profit.

But won’t that drive the public schools out of business?

Only if you assume the public schools cannot compete in an open market – a market in which the same standards are applied to all schools. Schools which cannot attract enough children will go out of business – and they should go out of business. Any school – public, private non-profit, or private for-profit, which can attract enough children will have enough funding to continue operations.

Won’t poor children suffer?

No. Poor children will be better off under this plan than under the present “public school” system, because they will be able to attend any school they wish,. just as the children of more affluent parents can.

What about children trapped in a declining school as other children leave?

No one will be “trapped” in a declining school. All children will have the same opportunity to move. Children whose parents do not move them at first can be moved later, at any time – because their parents will have the same funding the other children’s parents had.

Would parents be allowed to supplement the public funds?

Of course! Look at it this way – I open a school that gets $5,000 of public funds per child (the national average is closer to twice that, but we’ll use $5,000 in this example), and the parents kick in an extra $10,000 per child. I successfully recruit nine affluent children. But in your First Sheet of paper, you said that to receive public funds I have to have at least 10% poor minority enrollment. So now I have to recruit a poor minority child, or lose $45,000 in public funding
How do I do that if the poor parents can’t afford to pay the extra $10,000?

I give the child a $10,000 scholarship, of course – and the public funds kick in another $5,000 for that child. So for a $10,000 scholarship, I get $50,000 in public funds.

Who loses?

Not me – I qualify for $50,000 in public funds in return for a $10,000 scholarship.

Not the public – they’re paying $5,000 per child, just as they would at any other school.

Not the students – they’re attending a first-class school (and if it weren’t first class, their parents wouldn’t be willing to kick in an extra $10,000 per pupil).

Not the poor minority students – they’re getting the same first-class education and making all the connections the children of the affluent are making, and it isn’t costing them a cent.

Nobody loses, everybody wins.

.

Continued on next post

 

[vern_humphrey]

The Three Paper Solution
(Continued from previous post)

But wouldn’t the private schools “cherry pick” – take the best students and leave the problem students for the public schools?

Of course not! After all, you’re the one writing the rules. If you’re smart enough to figure they might do this, you’re also smart enough to write a standard to prevent them from doing it.

But wouldn’t the private schools avoid ghetto areas?

That’s what your Third Sheet of paper is for – if private industry or non-profit organizations aren’t willing to open a school in a particular area for $5,000 per child, bid $5,100 – and keep bidding until you get a good school there. You have the money because you held back 10% of the funds, remember?

What about rural areas, or parents in areas where there are no alternative schools? How will these children get to school?

When the money accompanies the child, schools will be where they are needed – aren’t there gas stations and fast food joints wherever they are needed? In addition, there are many alternatives to the traditional method of schooling. A good example is the Arkansas Virtual School. This is now linked to the public school system, and currently offers a complete curriculum up thorough the eighth grade via the Internet. This technology – already available throughout the state – will allow any child to attend a quality school.

But can it be done at the figures you use?

Absolutely! I have worked for a for-profit company as a training analyst, developer and program manager. I have costed out, bid on, and won contracts. In the commercial training industry, the “burden rate” – the cost of overhead, administration, benefits, profit, and so on – is about 100%. That means that for each dollar the company pays a professional (like myself) it must charge the customer two dollars to cover rent, salaries for administrative personnel, social security, benefits and the like, and still make a profit.

If we maintain one teacher for each 25-student classroom and assume $5,000 for each child (Arkansas currently spends over $9,000 per child), that teacher is generating $125,000 per year, and we can afford to pay the teacher about $62,500 a year in salary.

But in a competitive market, we can do innovative things. For example, instead of starting school once a year, we could start school every quarter. This would generate a one-third increase in efficiency, so now the teacher is generating a little over $165,000 a year.

We can do other things – for example, I mentioned the Arkansas Virtual School earlier. I have extensive experience with this type of technology. My company developed Computer-Based Instruction (CBI) programs in basic educational subjects for the Department of Defense. These programs were designed for military personnel who had graduated from the Public School System without the necessary reading, writing and math skills they needed.

We can use such programs combined with live classroom instruction to further increase the efficiency of the professional teacher, and raise the income generated to well over $200,000 per year – which means we could afford to pay teachers an average annual salary of about $100,000. Of course, starting teachers would receive less, while experienced, star-quality teachers would receive much more.
**
But what would happen to the public schools?**

They would become part of the Public Education System – a system in which every child receives the same funding, and can attend any school the parents choose.

Bad public schools – and bad private schools – would fail. Good schools – public and private – would prosper.

What about rapidly-growing areas? How would they get schools?

Very easily. It typically takes the current bureaucracy-ridden system about five years to establish a new school.

But it doesn’t take private industry five years to put a shopping mall near a new subdivision, complete with fast food outlets, grocery and drug stores, video stores and gas stations. Private industry has shown that it can meet all the needs of the public, no matter how fast they change, if the profit is there.

Open up the Public Education System to private industry, and stand back and watch our schools improve.

 

[rlg94086]

Hi Vern,

I have a couple of thoughts on your proposal.

1. This is doable on a state level, but a little trickier on a national level. The reason is in the financing. Currently, schools get some federal funds, but the bulk of most systems come from property taxes. Are you planning on doing away with the property tax funding and going to national funding? Or, are you planning on doing a national distribution (i.e. state funds all go the the feds and are then redistributed as vouchers to individuals)?
2. Your 3-sheet method sounds reasonable, but the devil is in the details. I am still concerned with bureaucrats dictating things to private schools - prohibitions against prayer, sex education, etc. It would be important to keep the standards as general as possible. My preference would be just basic language, math, history and science requirements. That way the greatest latitude would be given to schools outside of those guidelines.

 

[estesbob]

I agree. These illiterates are the very people who should not be homeschooling their kids.

Yet they were educated by people certified by the State. Go figure.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Hi Vern,

I have a couple of thoughts on your proposal.

1. This is doable on a state level, but a little trickier on a national level. The reason is in the financing. Currently, schools get some federal funds, but the bulk of most systems come from property taxes. Are you planning on doing away with the property tax funding and going to national funding? Or, are you planning on doing a national distribution (i.e. state funds all go the the feds and are then redistributed as vouchers to individuals)?

Education is one of those things not assigned to the Federal Government, nor forbidden to the states by the Constitution. It therefore falls to the purview of the people individually or to the states.

1. Your 3-sheet method sounds reasonable, but the devil is in the details. I am still concerned with bureaucrats dictating things to private schools - prohibitions against prayer, sex education, etc. It would be important to keep the standards as general as possible. My preference would be just basic language, math, history and science requirements. That way the greatest latitude would be given to schools outside of those guidelines.

That’s how I would keep it, too – in fact in a world with common sense, you would have schools with sex education and schools without sex education - catering to different groups. You would have schools with prayer and schools without prayer, and so on.

 

[rlg94086]

Education is one of those things not assigned to the Federal Government, nor forbidden to the states by the Constitution. It therefore falls to the purview of the people individually or to the states.

Yep. An end to the Department of Education would be a good thing IMO.

That’s how I would keep it, too – in fact in a world with common sense, you would have schools with sex education and schools without sex education - catering to different groups. You would have schools with prayer and schools without prayer, and so on.

Right. The problem is that not everyone agrees with us. I see a lot of problems that will arise once funding is diverted to private institutions. There are too many people in this country who prefer government to be a nanny rather than allow any freedom.

That said, I am in favor of voucher systems…we just have to figure out how to keep the state’s involvement limited. [edit… I mean my individual state…I don’t care what people in other states decide to do. That isn’t my problem. Of course, that doesn’t preclude me from opining on their poor decision making. ]

 

[vern_humphrey]

Yep. An end to the Department of Education would be a good thing IMO.

Right. The problem is that not everyone agrees with us. I see a lot of problems that will arise once funding is diverted to private institutions. There are too many people in this country who prefer government to be a nanny rather than allow any freedom.

That said, I am in favor of voucher systems…we just have to figure out how to keep the state’s involvement limited. [edit… I mean my individual state…I don’t care what people in other states decide to do. That isn’t my problem. Of course, that doesn’t preclude me from opining on their poor decision making. ]

There you have it – many things in this country don’t work because there are people who don’t want them to work.

 

[FishMonger]

Yep. An end to the Department of Education would be a good thing IMO.

Right. The problem is that not everyone agrees with us. I see a lot of problems that will arise once funding is diverted to private institutions. There are too many people in this country who prefer government to be a nanny rather than allow any freedom.

That said, I am in favor of voucher systems…we just have to figure out how to keep the state’s involvement limited. [edit… I mean my individual state…I don’t care what people in other states decide to do. That isn’t my problem. Of course, that doesn’t preclude me from opining on their poor decision making. ]

I don’t really see a problem with interference. The GI Bill is the model. Veterans enrolled in an approved course of study get a check, and they can use it at the university of ther choice. I’m not aware of any attempts to control universities by usng the GI Bill. Secular, Catholic, and Jewish universities all qualify.

Ths has worked very well for about 60 years.

 

[rlg94086]

I don’t really see a problem with interference. The GI Bill is the model. Veterans enrolled in an approved course of study get a check, and they can use it at the university of ther choice. I’m not aware of any attempts to control universities by usng the GI Bill. Secular, Catholic, and Jewish universities all qualify.

Ths has worked very well for about 60 years.

Assuming that model is used, you are correct…no problem. I make no such assumption. Experience tells me that not all my fellow voters agree with that approach. Many want to interfere.

 

[FishMonger]

Assuming that model is used, you are correct…no problem. I make no such assumption. Experience tells me that not all my fellow voters agree with that approach. Many want to interfere.

Of course they want to interfere. That’s why it’s important to let them know how well the GI Bill has worked and how much it has benefited the nation. It demonstrates that a hands-off approach can be very successful. Lots of time, that’s all some of those voters need. Remember, vouchers don’t need unanimous support.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Of course they want to interfere. That’s why it’s important to let them know how well the GI Bill has worked and how much it has benefited the nation. It demonstrates that a hands-off approach can be very successful. Lots of time, that’s all some of those voters need. Remember, vouchers don’t need unanimous support.

The problem is so many people don’t want a hands-off approach. They want people to do it their way and are perfectly willing to use force to make them.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Pope Benedict Urges Government Subsidy of Faith-Based Schools

VATICAN CITY, October 11, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI said today that governments are morally obligated to fund faith-based schools. His remarks were made in greeting Francis Kim Ji-young, the new ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the Holy See.

“Faith-based schools have much to contribute,” said the Pope in ensuring young people receive a sound education. “It is incumbent upon governments to afford parents the opportunity to send their children to religious schools by facilitating the establishment and financing of such institutions.”

“Insofar as possible,” he added, “public subsidies should free parents from undue financial burdens that attenuate their ability to choose the most suitable means of educating their children.”

Some faiths are anti-Christian - the Church is not obliged to commit suicide.​

This is the same tired old relativism, corrupt because it utterly ignores the rights of God which are made known through revelation, that he is meant to be resisting This sort of thing completely undermines his objections to relativism in public life, & is all the worse coming from someone in his position. If he can’t do the job - then he ought to resign, to let someone do it who can; someone who won’t send mixed messages to the rest of the Church, but will be clear, consistent, Catholic, and (most of all) Christian.

Rome needs to stop contradicting itself, ASAP& PDQ. Otherwise, there is not the slightest possibilty of knowing what it wants.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Pope Benedict Urges Government Subsidy of Faith-Based Schools

VATICAN CITY, October 11, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI said today that governments are morally obligated to fund faith-based schools. His remarks were made in greeting Francis Kim Ji-young, the new ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the Holy See.

“Faith-based schools have much to contribute,” said the Pope in ensuring young people receive a sound education. “It is incumbent upon governments to afford parents the opportunity to send their children to religious schools by facilitating the establishment and financing of such institutions.”

“Insofar as possible,” he added, “public subsidies should free parents from undue financial burdens that attenuate their ability to choose the most suitable means of educating their children.”

Some faiths are anti-Christian - the Church is not obliged to commit suicide.​

This is the same tired old relativism, corrupt because it utterly ignores the rights of God which are made known through revelation, that he is meant to be resisting This sort of thing completely undermines his objections to relativism in public life, & is all the worse coming from someone in his position. If he can’t do the job - then he ought to resign, to let someone do it who can; someone who won’t send mixed messages to the rest of the Church, but will be clear, consistent, Catholic, and (most of all) Christian.

Rome needs to stop contradicting itself, ASAP & PDQ. Otherwise, there is not the slightest possibility of knowing what it wants the rest of us to do.

 

[FishMonger]

The problem is so many people don’t want a hands-off approach. They want people to do it their way and are perfectly willing to use force to make them.

That’s a problem everybody faces in implementing their agenda. Some people didn’t wnat a hands-off approach with the GI Bill. You want to do it your way. I want to do it my way. They want to do it their way. So what? I would be very surprised if everyone just keeled over and agreed to do things my way.

Whenever someone recommends a law, they are also recommending that force be used to enforce it. That’s how our system works. The fact that sombody opposes what we might want shouldn’t be at all surprising or distressing.

Look back at the various pieces of social legislation in the history of the nation. How many of them have been a walk in the park? How many did not face stiff opposition. This is a game for the strong. The weak have already surrendered.

 

[vern_humphrey]

That’s a problem everybody faces in implementing their agenda. Some people didn’t wnat a hands-off approach with the GI Bill. You want to do it your way. I want to do it my way. They want to do it their way. So what? I would be very surprised if everyone just keeled over and agreed to do things my way.

Whenever someone recommends a law, they are also recommending that force be used to enforce it. That’s how our system works. The fact that sombody opposes what we might want shouldn’t be at all surprising or distressing.

Look back at the various pieces of social legislation in the history of the nation. How many of them have been a walk in the park? How many did not face stiff opposition. This is a game for the strong. The weak have already surrendered.

So is anarchy a game for the strong – and the weak surrender or die.

But is that how a nation should be governed?