https://www.axios.com/2023/01/08/public-school-enrollment-decline A couple key points, the students in question haven't just DISAPPEARED. They've just left public schools for other types of educational opportunities. This could be a private school, charter school or home school. The number of students taking advantage of those types of educational opportunities doubled to five million. The "why it matters" is because when those who can FLEE do so, the funding leaves. Even if it doesn't go to the new place, it leaves the public school and the students being serviced by that school are now proclaimed to have a disadvantage. There is a strange sort of paradoxical argument put forward that the students who cannot flee public schools are at a disadvantage since they cannot flee and likewise are also at a disadvantage because others have fled public schools. Why do you think this argument is being made both ways? What does it say about a public service when people flee it and refuse to use it even when from their perspective it is free and local? The article notes this trend is slated to continue to progress. The article notes several problems, learning loss, students being at a disadvantage, students fleeing to alternatives, public schools being closed but treats all of this as a bad thing. Why is it a bad thing? Why is it not a good thing that schools that do not educate are being closed and students are fleeing from them? Instead of simply noting they are leaving and where they are going instead, why do they not ask why public schools should not change and adapt to students and investigate why they prefer the other solutions even if they have to pay out of pocket for them?
What do you see as reasons why schools are failing? The article really doesn't get into the problems in Education today.
Where does the funding go? Presumably folks are still paying their property taxes, so who gets the money thats being taken from the schools?
Well I don't know that this is really different than in the past so much as demographic shifts and white flight have left them with fewer ways to spin the numbers. There have also been kids "failed by the system" so to speak. They just used to have middle and upper income kids' who were going to do better anyway to skew the numbers up. There is one school district near us where property has always sold super fast at or above asking price---the one whose high school is almost 80% white. There is really nothing we can do to reverse this trend until cities stop driving people away into the suburbs. Right now it feels more like they are penalizing successful people who are left behind as opposed to incentivizing people to come back.
I hate the tired argument that all socialism is bad, or all capitalism is bad. I think we should pick and choose what to do collectively, issue by issue, as it makes sense. Public education has no logical argument to exist. Doing things collectively makes sense for many things, such as healthcare. Competition is the magic that fuels the engine of capitalism, and in healthcare, it can't benefit the industry. Nobody knows what any of it costs, and nobody knows the quality of the care, so there is no way to make it better, via chasing profit. There just is no consumer choice in Healthcare, generally speaking. Nobody in the back of an ambulance ever says go to the hospital further away, because it's better, or cheaper. But for education, none of these issues exist. All we need is a building, a teacher and books. There is nothing complicated about it, like in Healthcare. Of course we need to publicly FUND education, because we all benefit from an educated public. But there is no logical reason to not put schooling to the test of capitalism, and let schools compete for results. To the point out losing funding when students are not enrolled, why is that a problem, really? I see how it CAN be a problem, depending on the numbers. But when that money was lost, the cost of educating that student was lost. Obviously a low enrollment school, would suffer more from losing students, if it leaves classrooms empty, etc. But one student leaving should otherwise have no impact at all. The teacher doesn't need to grade their homework, or tests. The cafeteria need not feed them. Also, the money lost for the student, is only the Federal money, which varies but is usually less than the state funding, that is based on the local population's taxes, regardless of any students being present. Perhaps these Federal rules exist in some places, for the state and local funding, but not in my state. Everyone pays school taxes, who owns real estate, where I live. School choice is the solution to bad education, in the short term. But the truly long term solution is to get government out of it, so the market can choose the winner of the competition for higher test scores, etc. If every parent had the money, and the transportation, there would be no students in public schools.
Many Americans feel like they can't afford to have children these days. I'll point out that fewer students also mean lower costs for the school. If there are half as many students, the school might only need half as many teachers, for example. But it's often not entirely that simple, since single schools also have overhead costs that don't go down much if there are fewer students. Fewer school children could also mean lower taxes. (Typically around 40% of school funding comes from state governments, 50% from local property taxes, and 10% from the federal level)
I say just give people that want to go to a private school a tax cut for the amount they paid for public school, no way should we be giving religious schools 5 grand for every child they entice to go to their schools, especially when most of them are against birth control, a family of 10 would cost a fortune 10 vouchers x $50,000.00 x 13 years = $1,300,000 for just one family (tax free), no wonder Muslims and Christians want vouchers
That's generally how school vouchers work. If you have a child and your child goes to a private school the government pays money to the private school, since the child is not in public school. Under these vouchers, it's usually not the full 100% of what it costs the government per student to have a child in public school. More often it is somewhere around 70 to 90%. Sometimes even 50%, which is much better than nothing. The parents usually end up having to pay some of the cost for the private school because the government education vouchers do not cover it all. 5 grand would actually be very cheap. In the U.S. public schools spend an average of $14,400 per child per year in K-12 education. In other states it is higher, for example Washington spends $18,350 per child. To emphasize again, if the child is going to private school, then it saves the government of having to pay the cost of the child being in public school. You might complain about the cost of educating children, but if you're not complaining about the costs in public school, then your complaints about government paying money to private schools are irrelevant. No government is going to pay more for an ordinary child to go to a private school than it costs per person to have children in public school, nor is anyone arguing in favor of that. That is a total red herring and straw man.
vouchers should come out of a separate fund then public schools and if private schools take taxpayer money, they have to meet taxpayer guidelines to receive that money
I think you are being emotional and not logical. Why would it matter what fund the money comes from? It would still be coming from the same place and going to the same place. What states typically do is make some estimation, like 15% of the school's class time is religious or does not conform to the state's expectation, so the state is only willing to fund 85% of the education. Seems reasonable to me.
