> Wall Street Journal - September 6, 2000
>
> The Case for 'Progressive' Vouchers
>
> By Robert B. Reich.
<snip>
> The only way to begin to decouple poor kids from lousy schools is to
> give poor kids additional resources, along with vouchers enabling them
> and their parents to choose how to use them. Per-pupil public
> expenditures now average between $6,000 and $7,000 a year in the U.S.
> (with some states spending as much as $9,000, and others as little as
> $4,000). Ideally, a child from America's poorest 20% of families would
> receive a voucher worth between $10,000 and $12,000.
<snip>
> A progressive voucher system is a very long shot for now. For it to
> become a reality, we would need a substantial overhaul of the
> financing of public education. This would entail pooling local
> property taxes from both rich and poor communities (which the rich are
> likely to resist with no less intensity than they've opposed state
> schemes to better equalize educational spending) and dramatically
> increasing federal and state funding.
In other words, vouchers would work fine in heaven, or after the revolution.
Didn't Reich say similar things about workfare? That it could be progressive if enough money were put into it to actually train people and then guarantee them decent jobs? And we know how that turned out. This seems like a similar bit of self-delusion. If the great way is hugely expensive, and the awful way is cheap, you don't get the great way by signing on and nudging left. You just grease the skids for the awful way.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com