Homeschool News & Views

February 23, 2007

from Homeschool Helpers,

in association with Pass It On Ministries

Greetings. This is Dan White with Homeschool Helpers, and issue number 11 of Homeschool News & Views.

Utah just passed a new law providing for vouchers for public school students to receive money from the state to attend any private school of their choice. This is a statewide program, and therefore the very first of its kind in the nation. There are already some education voucher programs in existence but these are applied to specific groups or localities, such as inner cities, or only to very low income families. All those programs are limited, and are not available to the general student population.

Utah is a Republican state. The Parent Choice in Education Act passed the Utah House of Representatives by only one vote. Then it passed the Utah Senate more easily and was signed into law by the Republican governor. The bill was passed in the House only because of a stipulation that if students decide to leave the public schools, the public schools will still get paid for those students for five years. The amounts of the vouchers are from $500 to $3000, depending on family income.

Utah is last in the nation in spending per pupil in the public schools. Therefore they have been extremely wise in using their tax dollars compared to other states.

A great propaganda blitz over many decades has convinced most Americans that US public schools are always underfunded, and that the more money you give them the better they will be. That has no basis in reality whatsoever. It just ain’t so.

Look at these quick excerpts from the recent news.

In Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell's historic proposal to bolster state spending on education by more than $1 billion a year is a good start - but not good enough, a coalition of municipal and education officials said. In New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine today will propose a $33.3 billion state budget that would spare residents any tax or fee increases, beef up state aid to public schools by nearly $600 million and provide more property tax relief. In South Carolina Superintendent of Education Jim Rex, traveling on a red activity bus, visited schools in the so-called "Corridor of Shame" on Wednesday, saying the state must find a way to "more fairly, equitably and justly fund education for every child and every school.

In all those cases the premise is that government schools need more tax dollars to make them better. More blood does not make a cancer better. More blood makes a cancer bigger. Giving more money to the public schools does not solve the education problem, because the public schools are the education problem.

A study on the web site heartheissues.com shows that public school spending and public school achievement do not correlate. Utah spends the least per pupil on public education. Alaska spends the most. According to the incessant cries for more money from the educrats, Alaska should therefore have a far higher student achievement that Utah. But using the standards of the No Child Left Behind Act, 59% of Alaska’s students passed, while 82% of Utah’s students passed.

Whoops.

Analyzing the data further, the top half of the states with the highest per pupil spending had a passing rate of 73.55%. The half with the lowest spending had a passing rate of 73.32%.

Six states did not report passing rates for the No Child Left Behind Act, while forty four states did. Breaking those states down into four equal groups shows that the highest spending quartile had a passing rate of 72%; the second highest quartile had a passing rate of 75%; the third highest spending quartile had a passing rate of 78%; and the lowest had a passing rate of 70%.

There is no correlation between amount of money spent on the public schools and the learning achieved.

The same is true of teacher salaries.

New Jersey has the highest teacher salaries, and 54% of its students passed the No Child Left Behind standards. South Dakota has the lowest teacher salaries, and 78% of its students passed. Dividing the states into two equal groups, the half with the highest teacher pay had a passing rate of 72.5%; the half with the lowest teacher pay had a 74.36% passing rate. Dividing the states into four equal groups from highest to lowest teacher pay showed passing rates of 72%, 73%, 72% and 79%.

Why don’t we hear that on the news? Something like a shocking expose – “More money does not buy better public schools!”

Isn’t it incredible that almost everyone is convinced that the public schools are bad, that the reason they are bad is because they don’t get enough money, and the more money they get the better they will be?

Only one part of that three part statement is true. The public schools are bad.

In any normal business, the worse you do, the less money you get. In public education, the worse they do, the more money they get.    You did notice in those stats the huge number of public school students who are failing the basic standards, didn't you?  In New Jersey, with the highest teacher salaries, 46% of its students failed.    In Alaska, with the highest per pupil spending, 41% failed.  Wow!  Why don't we get the government to do something about that!

So Utah has been extremely wise in stewarding tax money by spending less on the public schools. And now they have passed a statewide voucher program, open to almost all students, to allot $500 to $3000 per student per year to attend any school of their choice.  This will also be available to current private school students from low income families, but not to those from higher income families.

The teachers union says that tax dollars should not be spend at private schools. They say that tax dollars should be spent with them.  One Democrat said that the law had nothing to do with educating children, only with giving tax dollars to a private industry.

What industry?

Private schools where the teachers get less, do more and turn out a superior product? Right now the tax dollars go to an ever expanding government monopoly.

The order of spending is public schools, private schools and home schools. The order of achievement is home schools, private schools and public schools.

What is shocking about that Democrat's statement, about giving tax dollars to a private industry?  You see, he is automatically assuming that a lot of people are going to be leaving his schools!

One of the cornerstones of liberal power in America is the government schools. They know that, even if most Americans do not. They will fight for blood to prevent this bastion of theirs from falling. We can expect this law to be challenged in court, over and over again. Liberals do not respect the will of the people. Liberals know better.  They try to get their way, any way they can.

The liberals are not interested in getting the best education for America’s children. They are interested in teaching their religion to the youth of the US, as they have been doing, and as they are doing now. And that seems to be the only part of their education program which really works well.

The left wing organization People for the American Way made this official comment about the Utah law.

“This is a sad day for Utah students. No matter what kind of fuzzy math legislators push, the bottom line is that money will be taken from public schools and sent to private ones. That’s no way to help our education system.”

But should we be interested in helping the education system, or should we be interested in helping educate our children? The government education system has shown long ago that it does not help the children. It helps the left wing maintain control on the minds of the children.

The PFAW statement went on, “Children will not benefit from this program. Vouchers have always been about ideology and not education. We’ve never seen a shred of credible evidence that shows school vouchers actually help students learn.”

They have never seen credible evidence that shows a non-public education actually helps students learn. What would they define as credible evidence? Only that evidence which agrees with them. Anything which does not support them is not credible. In making this statement they tacitly admit that there is evidence that non-public education is superior. They just don’t accept it as being credible.

They say that vouchers are about ideology and not about education. Therefore it has to be true that their education system is about ideology, too. They are promoting an ideology which many people want to get away from.

The People for the American Way statement concludes, “Every child deserves an excellent education, not just those who can get admitted to a private school.”

What in the world does getting an excellent education have to do with the public schools? Nothing. That’s like saying that every child deserves an excellent home, and then requiring all children to live in public housing projects. Welfare housing and excellent living do not go together. Welfare education and excellent education do not go together. That’s why the well-to-do left wing liberals, who vociferously support the public schools, almost never send their own children to those schools.

The Utah voucher program is scheduled to go into effect in the fall of 2007. The left wing has about half a year to try to subvert the will of the people, through whatever means are available to them.

Remember that the public schools will still get paid a portion for those students who leave them. That seems like paying ransom to rescue kidnapped kids.

There is no explicit provision for homeschooling in this law. Laws are technical, and the way a law is put into practice is often different than was envisioned, as people find ways to work with the literal reading of the law. It may well be that homeschoolers may be able to organize in such a way as to qualify for tuition assistance. Or homeschoolers may be able to work with a private school, sharing some classes and activities while still homeschooling for the most part. I know of parents who have done that with a Christian school we worked with, not for money but just because they wanted to do it that way.

A voucher law was put to a referendum in California several years ago, and the right wing Christians joined with the wrong wing leftists to vote it down. The Christians fear is that by accepting government funds they will eventually face government control of their education.

That is certainly true.

It is also certain that the left wing will try to control all Christian education, anyway, government funded or not, and they are using the public schools as a power base to accomplish that right now. In the public schools they train their anti-Christian youth corps, who then become left wing adults and support their anti-Christian efforts. This takes a while, to be sure, but it is working like clockwork.

Some locales already forbid foster parents from teaching the children placed in their care that sodomy is wrong. A foster parent in those locales cannot freely read the Bible to the children in his care.  If the present anti-Christian trend continues, it is only a question of time before all parents are forbidden to teach their children that sodomy is wrong. It is absurd and absolutely immoral for Christians to support this anti-Christian education system in any way whatsoever. A program, such as the Utah voucher program, which hinders this Godless indoctrination education system has to be a benefit for the nation.

Will this voucher program help homeschooling or hinder it?

A great problem with America today is that parents do not take time for their children, Christians included. If a Christian parent sends his child to a Christian school, but still lives in a mode of routine panic and does not take time to personally teach, admonish, nurture, love and have fun with his kid, he still has a major problem. I have seen this happen in Christian schools, where some parents are just drop off parents, with both parents spending their lives making money, and hoping someone else can be effective in teaching their children good principles. Homeschooling, on the other hand, is taking time for God and family. There is no better way.

It might be that a voucher program will hinder homeschooling. If homeschool parents cannot receive tuition assistance, and private school parents can, some may decide not to homeschool for that reason, choosing a private school instead.

It may be that homeschoolers can set up some mechanism whereby they qualify as being part of a private school, and so receive vouchers. In that case, more public school parents might be inclined to homeschool.

This battle over education is a battle for the soul of the nation. Most parents don’t see that. Most Christians don’t see that. The liberals understand it very well. For the moment, the liberal monopoly on education is ended in Utah.

This is Dan White with Homeschool Helpers. God bless the Christian homeschoolers.