Originally Posted by indigo
Originally Posted by KJP
I haven't seen a voucher program that would actually pay for tuition at a top tier private school.
Why must it be top-tier, or nothing?

As far as the amount of a voucher, there may be different means of calculating this. I'm familiar with voucher programs tending to allocate the amount of tax money which a public school district lists as its "expenditure per student", although this may be divided into fixed costs or sunk costs (such as buildings) and variable costs (such as teacher salaries), with only the variable costs "following the student" as a voucher payment to the new school.

Originally Posted by KJP
The whole thing seems like a pitch to get the government to pay bible school tuition.
Parental choice.

The current educational system including existing school choice was created under previous administration. Time will reveal how much DeVos may influence the US Department of Education, and how much the US Department of Education may influence DeVos.

My experience with government subsidies in NZ is that when the subsidy goes up so do the fees. Those schools where the voucher will meet the costs are keeping their fees down with difficulty. When the parents have a voucher to offset the costs the fees will go up. If the parents are lucky they will go up less than the voucher but people who couldn't afford it before vouchers still won't be able to. The more expensive schools will also increase their fees by the voucher amount but they will use the money to provide extras that make rich parents even more willing to enrol. The poor kids will still be at poor public schools because that is all the voucher will cover.

This may be cynical but it is what I have seen time and again.

If there is a cap put on fees people will find ways round it - donations where children a shamed if their parents can't pay, compulsory school meals at $5000 a year have been used in NZ but I am sure there are other ways.

Last edited by puffin; 02/18/17 01:48 PM.