Blogs fight resegregation in DC?
The Democrats have officially killed the successful DC scholarship program. Now some bloggers are considering setting up a private scholarship fund to resurrect it. This is a great idea, and a great way to start off 2010. I pledge at least a hundred dollars to it right now.
The Anchoress has some ideas, too:
I’d like to be in on the creation of such an effort. I think this is a terrific and positive note on which to begin a new year, particularly one in which governmental leadership suggests itself to be moribund and completely mad.
And I also like her ideas on vocational training:
If something like this were to succeed, it could even be expanded to include vocational training and apprenticeships for those who would prefer to learn the sort of blue-collar, non-outsourceable and completely respectable jobs that so many of our young people no longer consider because the “you’re nothing without a degree” narrative has become so all-consuming.
The DC voucher program was a good idea at the time, and it’s still a good idea. This was a small program; it lies within the grasp of grassroots donations. The program is 1,716 students, at $7,500 a student, for just under $13,000,000 each year. I’ll be happy to provide my hundred dollars a year to help fund it. Can we get 129,999 more people to do that? I think we can.
In response to No room for education reform in spending frenzy: In a year of record spending, the one thing we apparently can’t afford is saving money on better education.
- D.C. voucher students show gains
- D.C. voucher students show increased learning at lower cost; parents happy. Washington Post not as happy.
- Killing the DC voucher program: Glenn Reynolds
- “The conflict between voluntary charity and progressive tax-funded spending is a very interesting potential battleground. Progressives want to shift away from charitable giving and toward taxes, while libertarians (or civil societarians) ought to be aiming for the reverse.” (Hat tip to Elizabeth Scalia at The Anchoress)
- New Idea for the New Year: Elizabeth Scalia at The Anchoress
- “The voucher program, begun under President George W. Bush, was working very effectively. Yes, it was a ‘bandage’ measure meant to staunch one gaping wound in an educational system that is bleeding out from every limb, but when a bandage is all you have, you apply it where it does the most good; helping kids escape failing schools was a good application.”
- Washington Scholarship Fund
- “The Washington Scholarship Fund (WSF) is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established in 1993 to increase educational opportunities for low-income students and families in Washington, D.C. To accomplish this, we operate two distinct K-12 scholarship programs: the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (D.C. OSP) and the Signature Scholarship Program (SSP).”
More education
- Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave
- Not only does slavery make life worse for slaves, it doesn’t make life better for slave-owners. And the ultimate freedom is freedom to learn.
- Teaching kids to fail
- Are schools designed to teach kids to fail?
- ACLU enables Texas textbook takeover
- If you give the government a gun, some politician or bureaucrat somewhere is going to pull the trigger. Make sure that whatever powers you cede to the government are powers you want them to exercise.
- Government food courts
- Imagine there’s no grocery… it isn’t hard to do… nothing to grill or fry for…… and no bacon too…
- The Washington, DC Prison Experiment
- When public schools are mandated for the underprivileged and alternatives are shut down, abusive behavior on the part of school officials to students is inevitable.
- 10 more pages with the topic education, and other related pages
More educational diversity
- COVID Lessons: How can we respond to a disease before it spreads?
- How can we make ourselves less vulnerable to sudden epidemics, before they become epidemics, and without causing epidemic levels of deaths?
- COVID Lessons: Government Monopolies are Still Monopolies
- Our response to COVID-19 was almost designed to make it worse. We shut down the nimble small businesses that could respond quickly, and relied almost solely on large corporations and the government monopolies that failed us, because they are monopolies.
- Why is it so difficult to hold schools accountable?
- Simulating accountability in education has the same problems as simulating accountability in health care or any other monopoly. Tests and grades and paperwork are never as effective as choice.
- Anything less than school choice is unfair
- Forcing people to pay for one government school regardless of where they want their kids to go is so unfair that even far-left Democrats think it’s wrong.
- OccupyDemocrats breaks with teacher unions, demands school choice
- In a major break with a critical Democrat power base, OccupyDemocrats accuses Democrats, NEA, and former President Obama with “denying minority children the right to quality education in order to keep them in chains to a failed ideology.”
- 11 more pages with the topic educational diversity, and other related pages
Note that, as far as I can tell, Washington Scholarship Fund is the place the money would end up. If nothing comes of the blogger effort, I’ll be giving them some money, but obviously an organized effort would help them and their students more.