What If A Home School Family Received A Tax Deduction Voucher Because They Were Not Using Taxpayer Dollars That Were Allocated By The State...

[Selene]

I know, according to our "progressive" whore advocate that is defending us on the foreign lines of O'biwan's projected disarmament models, that home schooling is not good news...

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/07/Report-Growth-in-Homeschooling-Outpacing-Public-Schools

[Mark]

What if a home school family received a tax deduction voucher because they were not using taxpayer dollars that were allocated by the state ...

If homeschoolers (who don’t use public schools) then why not people who have no children in any school, home or public?

The state will twistedly see this tax deduction as somehow paying for home schoolers, and what the state pays for the state will eventually, if not immediately, control.

Instead of vouchers consider this: As more children are homeschooled and public school attendance drops, so the expense of public schools drops and the taxes that pay those expenses drop.

That is, if the state were honest. In fact the state won't reduce public school expenditure with lower enrollment and won't reduce taxes even if it were reduced, without a fight. But better that fight than fighting for vouchers.

[Selene]

What if a home school family received a tax deduction voucher because they were not using taxpayer dollars that were allocated by the state ...

If homeschoolers (who don’t use public schools) then why not people who have no children in any school, home or public?

The state will twistedly see this tax deduction as somehow paying for home schoolers, and what the state pays for the state will eventually, if not immediately, control.

Instead of vouchers consider this: As more children are homeschooled and public school attendance drops, so the expense of public schools drops and the taxes that pay those expenses drop.

That is, if the state were honest. In fact the state won't reduce public school expenditure with lower enrollment and won't reduce taxes even if it were reduced, without a fight. But better that fight than fighting for vouchers.

I can work with that concept...

I, since I was elected to my local NY City school board, ...was astounded to realize that no one within the system cared if an individual student stayed in class after "being recorded" as in attendance because they already had the ring on the state/per student/ cash register working.

I could easily support that point of view Marc.

A...

[dldelancey]

What if a home school family received a tax deduction voucher because they were not using taxpayer dollars that were allocated by the state ...

If homeschoolers (who don’t use public schools) then why not people who have no children in any school, home or public?

And people who pay tuition to send their children to private school?

Actually, in LA, private school tuition is now deductible for state tax purposes, has been for a couple of years. Woot!

[Selene]

What if a home school family received a tax deduction voucher because they were not using taxpayer dollars that were allocated by the state ...

If homeschoolers (who don’t use public schools) then why not people who have no children in any school, home or public?

And people who pay tuition to send their children to private school?

Actually, in LA, private school tuition is now deductible for state tax purposes, has been for a couple of years. Woot!

Agreed Deanna.

My argument extends to that also. It is an "unjust taking" of tax dollars since you do not "use" the public school.

Where the argument gets "sticky" is when a person has no children. Should there be a basic flat fee because there is a tangential relationship between the "quality of the public school system" and the relative property values of the surrounding areas?

I could live with a basic property tax which would be significantly lower based on that concept.

A...

[caroljane]

You are determined to see government as a business, which it is not and has not ever been in any sovereign nation. User-pay and cost-benefit are not the measures of a nation and its concern for the education of the next generation presupposes that the whole and future of a nation, are greater than the sum of its individuals. I know you will never see it that way, but that is the way I cannot help but see it.

[Selene]

You are determined to see government as a business, which it is not and has not ever been in any sovereign nation. User-pay and cost-benefit are not the measures of a nation and its concern for the education of the next generation presupposes that the whole and future of a nation, are greater than the sum of its individuals. I know you will never see it that way, but that is the way I cannot help but see it.

Carol:

I understand your perception...

However, your public school educational system that is supported by invasive and repressive taxation is producing barely literate graduates who cannot function in the real business world, should we continue this expensive failure?

A...

[caroljane]

You are determined to see government as a business, which it is not and has not ever been in any sovereign nation. User-pay and cost-benefit are not the measures of a nation and its concern for the education of the next generation presupposes that the whole and future of a nation, are greater than the sum of its individuals. I know you will never see it that way, but that is the way I cannot help but see it.

Carol:

I understand your perception...

However, your public school educational system that is supported by invasive and repressive taxation is producing barely literate graduates who cannot function in the real business world, should we continue this expensive failure?

A...

Well, certainly not if it is so in the |US. I don't think it is happening here and as you know I strongly support public education.

[caroljane]

In my view the stronger municipal and especially state powers, influence and dare I say graft, weaken any federal initiatives to raise the standard of American basic education across the country.

[caroljane]

I am so glad I raised my kids before the exhausting age of \'play dates" and "school runs" and the "right preschool|" Jesus please us! Driving kids four urban blocks to a school surrounded by speed bumps and crossing guards.My kids like me and their father walked it, including home and back from lunch. They learned what they wished and were able to learn and they made their friends there and in their evening and weekend sports, Scouts etc, and those friends they still have. \They can now hold down jobs and have found loving mates and I do not think they are in the slightest envious of any of their more financially fortunate peers.

[Selene]

Here is an interesting article from The Freeman on the "history" of the development of public schools in America.

Hardly anyone disputes the contention that the modem public school is seriously flawed. Test scores continue to be poor while metal detectors are found in the more violent schools. Welfare-state liberals argue that schools in poor areas need more money to place them on an equal footing with their richer counterparts. Conservatives usually reply that the solution is a voucher system that would break the government monopoly on education by restoring choice and control to parents. But virtually all participants on both sides of the debate concede the nobility of the original reformers; in their view, the “good intentions” of such school champions as Horace Mann and John Dewey led to “unintended consequences.”

I do not believe that Mann and Dewey had "good intentions."

Nevertheless, the author continues, explaining that:

Such admiration is misplaced. As historian Michael Katz writes, “The crusade for educational reform led by Horace Mann . . . was not the simple, unambiguous good it had long been taken to be; the central aim of the movement was to establish more efficient mechanisms of social control, and its chief legacy was the principle that ‘education was something the better part of the community did to the others to make them orderly, moral, and tractable.’ ”¹

The author concludes, with one truthful statement that:

Most people—who were themselves educated either in the public schools or who used state-approved textbooks and state-licensed teachers—were taught that the founders of the American public-school system were simply devoted to ensuring opportunity to all Americans, rich or poor. But we have seen that the main thrust of the system was to assimilate those elements of the population, such as the Catholics, poor, and foreigners, who did not fit the mold of what a “proper” American should be. School was transformed from a voluntary setting of learning into a coerced detention center, with its wards being fed consciously selected information in an attempt to produce acquiescence in the status quo. America’s current education crisis will only be solved when, ironically enough, the words of Horace Mann are followed: “[T]he education of the whole people, in a republican governnent, can never be attained without the consent of the whole people. Compulsion, even though it were a desirable, is not an available instrument. Enlightenment, not coercion, is our resource.”¹⁵

Read more: http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/the-origins-of-the-public-school#ixzz2WNzgoVba

Well worth the read.

A...

[BaalChatzaf]

Horace Mann had a crush on Prussia. He wanted to see the U.S. turn out well behaved non-rebellious citizens who would never give the Authorities a hard time.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Horace Mann had a crush on Prussia. He wanted to see the U.S. turn out well behaved non-rebellious citizen who would never give the Authorities a hard time.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Precisely. As a progressive statist scumbag, he should be dismissed completely.