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L'esprit de Milton Friedman soufflera-t-il sur l'Utah ce mardi ?


José

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Utahns Can Vote for School Choice Tuesday

Next Tuesday, Utah voters go to the polls to decide if their state will become the first in the nation to offer school vouchers statewide. Referendum 1 would make all public-school kids eligible for vouchers worth from $500 to $3,000 a year, depending on family income. Parents could then use the vouchers to send their children to private schools.

What a great idea. Finally, parents will have choices that wealthy parents have always had. The resulting competition would create better private schools and even improve the government schools.

But wait. Arrayed against the vouchers are the usual opponents. They call themselves Utahns for Public Schools. They include, predictably, the Utah Education Association (the teachers union), Utah School Boards Association, Utah School Employees Union, Utah School Superintendents Association, the elementary and secondary school principals associations, and the PTA. No to vouchers! they protest. Trust us. We know what's best for your kids.

They say they're all for improving education but not by introducing choice. "When it comes to providing every Utah child with a quality education, we believe, as do most Americans, that our greatest hope for success is investing in research-proven reforms. These include the things parents and teachers know will make a difference in the classroom, such as smaller class sizes and investment in teacher development programs. Focusing on this type of reform will bring far greater success than diverting tax dollars to an alternative education system."

Please. I've heard that song for years. Government schools in America fail while spending on average more than $11,000 per student. Utah spends $7,500. Think what an innovative education entrepreneur would do with so much money. It's more than $150,000 per classroom!

The answer to mediocre public schooling isn't to give a government monopoly more "teacher development programs." The answer is competition.

Bureaucrats and unions tremble at the thought. On my "20/20" special on education, one teacher had the nerve to sneer, "Competition is not for children!" The opposite is true.

Competition and choice mean parent power. It's parents whom the education lobby really fears. The last thing it wants is a system in which parents choose their children's schools. Parents might not choose the union-dominated establishment schools. Better not take that chance.

Opponents of choice managed to win a referendum on the law, hoping voters will veto it. I hope they don't.

Vouchers will make schools accountable to parents rather than a bureaucracy. Principals and administrators will have to convince parents that they are doing a good job. That's real accountability. And the Utah law requires private schools to submit to independent financial audits and give students a nationally recognized test each year. The results would be publicly disclosed, giving parents information they can use to judge schools.

This anti-voucher coalition says vouchers will only benefit children who would have gone to private schools anyway. But the Vote for 1 Campaign points out that current private-school students would get vouchers only if their families are low-income. So the law would give new opportunities to parents and children who today have no options at all.

The coalition claims that "vouchers will cost at least $429 million … funds that could be used in public schools to reduce class size, provide textbooks and supplies." But voucher supporters note that since an average voucher would be worth only $2,000 and the state spends more than $7,500 per student, government schools would have $5,500 more per lost student to spend on the remaining students. They should be happy about that.

For over a century, American children have been in the hands of education bureaucrats. For over 40 years, the government's system has been dominated by a protectionist teachers' union that puts itself ahead of the children entrusted to its members. The results are what we should expect from a monopoly financed with money extracted from taxpayers: poor quality, lack of innovation and bored children.

The parents of Utah should be the envy of the rest of the country because on Tuesday, they have a chance to take back control of their children's education.

http://www.creators.com/opinion/john-stossel.html

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Utah Rejects Broad Voucher Program

By JOE DANBORN – 1 day ago

Utah voters on Tuesday killed the nation's first statewide school voucher program that promised tax dollars for private tuition, no matter how much a family earned or whether kids were in bad schools.

In another of the most closely watched questions on state ballots Tuesday, New Jersey voters rejected the state's plan to borrow $450 million over 10 years to finance stem cell research. In Oregon, residents decided against hiking the cigarette tax to pay for health care for kids who don't have it.

The Utah measure was the first voucher election in the U.S. since 2000, when voters in Michigan and California rejected efforts to subsidize private schools. There have been 10 state referendums on various voucher programs since 1972, all of them unsuccessful, according to the National School Boards Association.

Utah, with a conservative electorate, a Republican governor and GOP-controlled Legislature, was seen nationally as a key test of voter sentiment for vouchers. But opponents, with millions of dollars from a national teachers union, persuaded residents to say no. Experts had said a green light in Utah could have led to similar programs in Texas, Arizona, Louisiana and elsewhere.

The program would have granted $500 to $3,000, depending on family income, for each child sent to private school. The hotly disputed voucher law won approval by one vote in the Republican-controlled Legislature in February but was suspended before taking effect when opponents gathered more than 120,000 signatures to force a referendum.

[…]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h3qRt_i…iSkrKwD8SONIQO0

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Utah, with a conservative electorate, a Republican governor and GOP-controlled Legislature, was seen nationally as a key test of voter sentiment for vouchers. But opponents, with millions of dollars from a national teachers union, persuaded residents to say no. Experts had said a green light in Utah could have led to similar programs in Texas, Arizona, Louisiana and elsewhere.

Avec quels genre d'arguments? Je vais chercher tiens…..

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The Utah measure was the first voucher election in the U.S. since 2000, when voters in Michigan and California rejected efforts to subsidize private schools. There have been 10 state referendums on various voucher programs since 1972, all of them unsuccessful, according to the National School Boards Association.

Madsen pirie donne des explications tout à fait convaincante de l'échec necessaire des réformes de type bon scolaire. Et des solution alternatives de réforme.

3.2.15 Deuxième exemple : l'enseignement étatisé

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http://www.creators.com/opinion/john-stossel.html

With Government Money Come Strings

I apologize.

Last week, I wrote enthusiastically about Utah's chance to have school vouchers. By now, we know whether voters said yes or no.

Either way, while a voucher experiment is a good thing, and far superior to a government-run monopoly, I wonder if I wasn't too enthusiastic.

As Sheldon Richman, editor of The Freeman magazine and author of Separating School and State [http://tinyurl.com/2egbn7], puts it: "'Public' money going to private schools cannot bode well for the future of those schools. Note that the Utah law requires private schools to give a nationally recognized exam — one approved by the national education establishment [http://tinyurl.com/28zhcg ]. But he who controls the exam controls the curriculum. Schools will have to teach to the test. That will limit innovation and make the private schools more like the public schools."

Maybe the government can't really create choice affirmatively.

We know that government money comes with strings. Federal highway funds came with requirements for seat-belt laws and 55-mile-per-hour speed limits.

In the 1970s, Grove City College in Pennsylvania was ordered to certify that it complied with Title IX, which outlaws sex discrimination. The private liberal-arts school was not accused of discrimination but nevertheless objected to the order on grounds that it took no federal money. The feds insisted, saying that since some students received federal scholarships, that amounted to an indirect subsidy from the government. Grove City took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court — and lost.

It would be astounding if the government didn't put conditions on its grants. In fact, not to do so would appear irresponsible. That's a good reason to avoid taking government money in the first place.

Even without direct conditions, government money taints its recipients. Education scholar Charles Glenn wrote in 1989, "For those who believe strongly in religious schooling and fear that government influence will come with public funding, reason exists for their concern. Catholic or Protestant schools in [France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, Canada, and West Germany] have increasingly been assimilated to the assumptions and guiding values of public schooling. This process does not [even] seem to be the result of deliberate efforts .

. . but rather of the difficulty, for a private school playing by public rules, to maintain its distance from the common assumptions and habits of the predominant system" [http://tinyurl.com/2ar2o8].

Once vouchers are widespread, we can expect the education establishment, especially the teachers' unions, to find ways to turn the program to its advantage. It won't have to look far for ideas. Several years ago the New Democrat, published by the Democratic Leadership Council and Progressive Policy Institute (the "moderate" Democrats with whom Bill Clinton has long been associated and an organization started by my brother-in-law), recommended that any voucher program force private schools to admit all children and "meet or exceed specified performance standards to continue receiving taxpayer funds" [http://tinyurl.com/2cwlqc].

The editorial, titled "Counterpunching on Vouchers," stated: "Such an amendment would effectively turn voucher-supported private schools into public charter schools. A public school is not defined by who 'owns' it, but rather by two features: universal access and accountability to the public for results." In other words, voucher money is a foot in the door for the "educrats."

If vouchers contain this potential danger, what can be done to help get kids out of dismal government schools? A better alternative is a tax credit for any parent who pays for private schooling or anyone else who helps put child through non-government schools.

Of course, to us libertarians, the best idea is to separate school and state altogether.

How would parents afford tuition? Well, they'd have more money if they weren't taxed so heavily to pay for incompetently run government schools. Already, many private schools do a better job than government schools for half the cost. Throughout Africa, parents far poorer than Americans pay to send their children to for-profit schools [http://tinyurl.com/2d7sk3]. For Americans who truly lack tuition money, private charity would help, as I do through the wonderful nonprofit, Student Sponsor Partners [http://www.sspnyc.org].

Education is too important to be left to government. The freer parents and entrepreneurs are, the more innovative American schooling will be — and the more kids will learn.

Ce mix de l'Utah est peut-être plus vendeur vu le tabou en jeu.

Non.

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Visiblement, ils maintiennent les subventions aux écoles publiques en plus du chèque. AL propose de substituer l'un à l'autre. Ce mix de l'Utah est peut-être plus vendeur vu le tabou en jeu.

Oui. C'est souvent comme ça qu'on avance.

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