Background:
http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/03/14/florida.vouchers/
http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/03/14/florida.school.voucher.ap/
http://www.cnn.com/1999/US/12/20/school.vouchers.02/
So, in both Florida and Ohio the voucher programs are down.
But the reasons are quite different. In Cleveland they are saying
its a violation of the separation between Church and State, while
in Florida they are saying that it violates the state's constitutional
requirement to provide a "high-quality system of free public schools".
However, the voucher supporters seem to be vowing to pursue this.
The articles seem to suggest that given the variability of the
state constitutions, unless the Supreme Court says "no vouchers", we
are likely to get some split between voucher and non-voucher states.
Given the recent newspaper article, where I think it was claimed
>60% (!) of Americans supported teaching both the theories of
creationism and evolution side-by-side, of course it doesn't take
much to realize that if parents move their children en-mass to
"religious" education, we are going to end up with a larger fraction
of the population who cannot think "rationally". [Unless you
believe in the pipe-dream that a "religious" education will
promote rational thought and downplay "miracles".]
Now, fairly often the finger-of-blame for the poor-quality public
education goes to the teacher's unions. How do extropians reconcile
the freedom people should have to organize for collective barginning
with the result (which seems to be the freedom to teach poorly)?
Robert
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