Public schools are more likely than private schools to have unions that can bargain for lower class size and better learning environment. Private schools can cut costs by underpaying non-union teachers with more profits going to management. Private schools can teach the "corporate" line, select text books, teach religion and indoctrinate students in ways that public schools do not.
Privatization is not only to put taxpayer education dollars in the hands of corporations, it is also union busting and corporate control of curriculum.

The experience with for profit charter schools in Michigan is that they have carried out what I think of as K-8 arbitrage; they offer schools for lower cost K-8 students only, and ignore high school students. This is possible because Michigan funds all K-12 students the same. Market mechanisms will not guarantee that all students are served. Further, they require a PR campaign to attack public schools so that parents feel a need to search out alternatives.

Sure, Romney probably wants to subsidize the Sidwell and Friends or Georgetown Day Prep education of his peers' children. This is just another handout to the wealthy. Poor people can barely afford to pay for school supplies, clothes, and field trips. I am sure a voucher that gets left in the dust by education inflation will help make things better.

If for-profit education turns out anything like for-profit health care, we will be paying twice as much for education as other developed countries.

This is a way to get more money into the hands of the Catholic and other religious corporations to cultivate another generation of sky fairy believers that will try to take over government and inflict their beliefs on the rest of America. It's also a way to give money to the rich as they already pay for their kids to go to elite schools - now they can save money for doing so. Also how many open spaces do these elite schools have open for the poor kid with a voucher. I can hear it now: "Get In line".

As a 25 year veteran of teaching in the public schools, I've never been able to understand how vouchers would work. Neighborhood public schools have always served the children in their neighborhood and when there are too many children for the school another is built and the boundaries are redrawn. If children are given vouchers to attend any school they want how will getting the right number of children in the right number of desks, classrooms and schools be accomplished? If parents are knowledgeable and quick about which schools are "good" ones, there will be way too many applicants for those schools. Good suburban schools and private schools are already full and the private ones have waiting lists. Where will the overflow go? The "bad" schools will have only the children of the unknowledgeable and slow parents in them and will probably have many empty seats. I can see nothing but chaos at the start of a new school year and this chaos will hurt no one more than it hurts the children.


In addition having the children of the rich, smart and quick all together and the children of the poor and slow all together just increases the gap between the rich and poor, the knowledgeable and unknowledgeable. I realize that this is what the proponents of vouchers say they are trying to correct but 25 years of experience tells me that vouchers will only increase the problem.


The solution is to make early childhood education universally available to reduce the gap between the children of the rich and poor that is evident when they enter kindergarten and improve the compensation and working conditions of teachers so that the field will draw a better quality of people to its ranks.


Public schools are what made this country great and privatizing education will only be to the advantage those who already have the resources to make good choices for their children. Ultimately this will lead to a country that looks more like a third world one that has a small upper class and a huge lower class. Only a huge middle class brought about by good public schools will bring us back to greatness. I know this would be very expensive in difficult economic times but the greatness of our country is at stake.

we are setting ourselves up to fail as a country by continuing the disparity between the haves & the have nots. as romney has probably a little better than a 50% chance of being our next pres, we will fall farther behind the rapidly progressing countries such as china with his silly voucher ideas. china is number 1 in science, math & reading comprehension in the world. we are 32, 24 & 25. probably the only hope for america is obama or romney will make things so awful that in 4 years we will get another fdr. course that's probably only wishful thinking.

Melinda does point out the altruistic idea for public schools and our successes with turning out good students. She also points to the concerns some parents have with dropping off their kids to a challenged enviroment where gaps in "absorbing reality" are getting wider by more or less parent/home education. As the world moves closer and closer to challenge each countries' right to have the resources it consumes, do we have the time and can we afford the risk of looking back and thinking what worked then will work now?