Civitas propagandists contradict themselves, again
Submitted by scharrison on Wed, 02/02/2011 - 2:21pm
Via e-mail from the Puppetshow:
One idea the new leadership should give serious consideration is some version of tax credits to parents who send their children to private schools. Tax credits are an effective way of expanding educational opportunities for middle and low income students. In addition, tax credits can help to reduce overcrowding in public schools and reduce the student/teacher ratio.
This is (at least) the third time they've flipped on the issue of class size to promote their agenda to cripple the public school system. Here's what they said in June of 2009:
Increasing class size by 2 saves $184 million (2009-2010) and $264 million the following year. This change will reduce the need for 6,000 teachers, about 6 percent of current state teacher workforce.
Research on Class Size is Not Conclusive.
North Carolina has spent millions to reduce class size. Test scores do not justify continued investment. Major studies supporting smaller class size are flawed. Research shows student achievement is more tied to teacher quality than class size.
Just like other issues, class size is merely a propaganda tool to be used, like a ratchet that can be switched back and forth, depending on whether you're trying to fabricate or deconstruct.
And just a fiscal note for the (supposedly) fiscally conservative Republicans: As of 2009, there were 98,545 private school students in North Carolina. Using the most commonly referenced voucher pricetag of $1,250 per, that's over $123 million taken out of the education budget (lost, not saved), and that cost will rise each consecutive year, maybe a lot, as parents get wind of this money.
I've seen the bill
The tax credit that they claim will magically fix education is $2500 for families making up to $100,000 AGI.
Now, because of the unholy mess being made by the current Wake County School Board, I have been going against every fiber of my being and exploring private school options for middle school. In the best of conditions, the middle school years are a miserable time to be a person, so my kids don't need to deal with it in an underfunded political football of a middle school.
But I have looked around. There isn't a private school within 100 miles of Raleigh that charges $2500.
"Man is free at the moment he wishes to be." -Voltaire
Almost a quarter of a billion dollars
skimmed off the education budget in the first year alone, using that $2,500 per student figure.
What is that, another 600 public school teachers getting axed, on top of the 6,000 already heading for the chopping block?
Their "policy" is somewhere between reckless and feckless, making a train wreck look like a minor course correction by comparison.
Not sure of all the implications
but if we could get away with only spending $2,500 in tax credits per student, it might be a good "deal." According to The Census, that would "save" the state $5,500 per student per year.
Let's also not forget that the net number of teachers in the state would not drastically change. The private schools need teachers too after all.
I'm not necessarily advocating the tax credit option, but it could possibly save money. Don't forget that the credit could be income limited, so it may not apply to the mostly well-off families already sending their children to private school.
Tired argument
I'm not saying you're a tired arguer, just that you've been drinking from a tainted pond, as it were.
That projected "savings" ignores the glaringly obvious: Those approximately 100,000 students are already outside the public school system. Spending $2,500 on them for vouchers is $2,500 more than we're already spending on them. Along the same lines, how can you "save" $5,500 when your cost is already $0?
The only argument that carries any water (and it ain't much) is that some parents are paying for two different school systems for a child that only uses one. But the majority (that's a guess) of the taxpayers in our state pay for one school system when they (personally and currently) don't have a child enrolled at all, so that argument is pretty shaky also.
One concern of mine
is siphoning taxpayer funds away from public schools that anyone can attend, and moving them towards private schools that not everyone can afford to attend and that might discriminate against people like gay students or students with gay parents.
Public = Bad
Civitas et al are funded, run, and staffed by people who believe (or at least are prepared to earn their pay by pretending to believe) that public equals bad. They will say and do anything to advance an argument for private alternatives and defund public ones.
Tax credits for private schools, or vouchers for private schools, which do not add up to the cost of sending a child to any halfway decent school, are not intended as real help to families. They're intended primarily as means to reduce public revenues and undergird the argument for cutting funding to public schools. Subsidizing the costs of private schooling for those who are already sending their children to private schools is a valued secondary effect, since most of those parents are considered likely constituents for Civitas and its favored candidates anyway.
Few economically rational parents will move their children from public to private schools for these subsidies which represent a mere fraction of the extra they'll pay for the private tuition and fees.
To the privatization true believers, such credits and vouchers don't represent the desired end game in any case. They're way stations en route to the desired dystopia of ending public support for education through any means.
Dan Besse
Tax credit sham
Also, a family would have to be well above the poverty line to have a taxable income high enough to generate the state tax liability against which the credit would be applied.
THere is a blog post out there
criticizing Gov. Perdue for referencing MLK, Jr. and claiming that a "free public education" is the ultimate development tool.
http://tarheelred.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/what-the-message-of-dr-martin...
The blogger responds that such a message "perverts" MLK's message and then says:
The implication of course is that it is a leftist horror to have free and public anything.
This is the Civitas agenda.
"Man is free at the moment he wishes to be." -Voltaire