Reason.tv: A Tipping Point for School Choice - Lisa Snell on the Voucher and Charter School Revolution

"School choice is winning in America, folks," says Reason Foundation's Director of Education Lisa Snell. 

At Reason Foundation's annual Reason Weekend, Snell discussed the great progress that's been made in the school choice movement, with charter schools and voucher programs already making incredible improvements in the quality of American education. 

About 24 minutes. Shot by Alex Manning and Paul Detrick; edited by Zach Weissmueller.

Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel to get automatic notifications when new material goes live.

Comments

[OO]

vouchers are govt abuse of private property rights unless the public school district's voters approve the transfer of property taxes outta district. also the vouchers are the personal property of the homeowner who can sell the voucher on the open market.

[cynical]

Do you just post drunk all the time or something? That shit is indecipherable, especially the second sentence.

Taking the moderate statist view at face value (ie SLD), the public's interest here is in insuring that kids in their district get educated. So long as the kids are getting vouchers from the district they reside in, and so long as the voucher is providing an education, the public's interest is served.

[cynical]

*ensuring, even.

[OO]

so u would vote to allow your local property taxes to be transferred outta the local school district. id bet many, perhaps most would not. regardless - without voter approval, the transfer is govt abuse of private property. go ahead & compromise ur "libertarian" concern for private property because you hate the teachers union. just another pretzel...

[heller]

Uh no. You don't know what you're talking about. There is no private property issue here. Whether or not vouchers are available, the tax money will be taken from those who own it and given to those who don't. Vouchers don't do this any more than normal school subsidies, but they do allow taxpayers to get more control over the tax money that comes back to them.

[OO]

no school levy's can be voted down. the attorney for my district told me this was "unlitigated" but not unreasonable.

[OO]

should have read "no, school levy's can be voted down".

[cynical]

Approving a giant chunk of education spending doesn't mean the people have any control as to how it is used -- the school district could piss it away on daily pizza parties for the students, and there isn't shit anyone can do about it.

[OO]

except vote down the levys & vote out the board of ed

[heller]

So what? A vote doesn't guarantee control of anything. Votes only work when the majority want something changed. They have nothing to do with rights, justice, or the freedom of individuals.

[OO]

that's my only position. let the majority vote vouchers up or down.

[heller]

And what does that have to do with property rights? If the majority can vote against the property rights of everyone else, what does any of the shit you said above have to do with your position?

[Fiscal Meth]

OO keeps using this phrase "private property rights". I do not think it means what he thinks it means.

[OO]

yep, it do

[Fiscal Meth]

Oh, good point.

[cynical]

If you're just saying that the question of whether or not to have vouchers should be put up for a vote, sure, why not?

[syllogism]

"so u would vote to allow your local property taxes to be transferred outta the local school district."

I wouldn't worry about it if it was legitimately being used to educate kids that actually reside in the district. It might set off a red flag to double check that they do, of course.

Why should I? I don't give a shit about schools as a jobs program for those that can't do. If the government takes my money and spends on its own business instead of someone else's, it's just as lost to me either way.

And as far as hypocrisy is concerned, I already added the SLD and stated that I'm taking the premises of the moderate statist at face value.

[OO]

ok but the other local voters should also vote as well & see if ur position carries.

[Cytotoxic]

Or they can fuck off and let me spend my education money as I please.

[Fiscal Meth]

In OO's world, it is a violation of private property rights to let individuals spend their own money on their own children's education unless their community votes in favor of each expenditure since it is not actually the individual's money, just his conditional allotment of the what is actually community's private property. And that is not a contradiction in terms because he says so.

Is that about right Urine Stain?

[Confederal_Republic_by_2030]

"Insured" CAN actually be used in that context.

[heller]

wut.

[Free2Booze]

Forcing local tax payers to finance failing public schools, is an abuse of private property rights.

[OO]

then they should vote down the levy's

[heller]

Are you high?

[OO]

nope just a homeowner & voter w kids in school

[heller]

OK, go vote and shut the fuck up. Voting is just you giving permission to the majority to fuck you over.

[OO]

guess what heller? ur not the boss of me, nor of the majority. maybe try an oligarchy somewhere

[Otto]

You're not the boss of us, either - which means even if you vote, you don't have the right to steal our money for your kids.

Fuck off, slaver.

[OO]

who's "us"?

[heller]

OO, I am the boss of you, because you're about 10 years old, and I am an adult.

[Free2Booze]

We already have an oligarchy, where the power is shared between two teams.

[OO]

true dat

[Fiscal Meth]

"ur not the boss of me, nor of the majority."

Yet you assert that the majority is the boss of me.
Why? What makes it so?
The majority is only the boss of me because there is nothing I can do to stop them. Essentially because they could beat me in a fight so decisively that I would not dare to find out what would happen if I disobeyed them. So by your morality, I would be the boss of you if there was no one else around to stop me. But if "might" is not the sole definition of "right", then my neighbors do not gain some moral right to my property because they voted to help themselves to it. Private property means everyone in the whole world could think that I should put my money into a big education pool for everyone to share and, if their reasoning does not convince me, I can tell them "no thanks"

[Fiscal Meth]

"Forcing local tax payers to finance failing public schools, is an abuse of private property rights."

As is forcing people to be tax payers.

[R C Dean]

vouchers are govt abuse of private property rights unless the public school district's voters approve the transfer of property taxes outta district.

Tell me, do you feel that all expenditures of tax money outside the taxing district are an abuse unless specifically approved by voters?

Because that would be a big chunk of the budget of most municipalities.

[OO]

no because property taxes fund the local school district & is therefore different than a sales or income tax.

[cynical]

Why?

[OO]

pls re-read the above since it contains the answer

[heller]

They pay for different things, but why does that matter if we are talking about control of taxes from a property rights perspective?

[Fiscal Meth]

OO keeps using this phrase "private property rights". I do not think it means what he thinks it means.

[OO]

yep it do

[Fiscal Meth]

"yeah-huh"

OO exlained.

[Fiscal Meth]

^^^p^^^

[cynical]

It doesn't clearly spell it out, and I don't think we're operating under the same set of premises, so you have to be a little more explicit.

[The Derider]

What are the "incredible improvements in American education?"

Five anecdotal studies performed in the past 10 years. Five. Out of hundreds. Five cherry picked reports. No attempt to generate a national average or to normalize the sampling groups.

What a canard.

[yonemoto]

vouchers are govt abuse of private property rights unless the public school district's voters approve the transfer of property taxes outta district.

The taxes were already taken. By your definition, hiring teachers who live out of district transfers property taxes out of your district. Hiring a local teacher who eats lunch at a diner across the border transfers property taxes out of your district.

WTF.

[yonemoto]

(presumably on a weekend)

[Fiscal Meth]

I'm pretty sure that, by OO's logic, if I claim a deduction for my house and spend my increased state and federal tax return on a trip to Mexico, I've violated the whole country's private property rights at a national, state and local level without violating anybody's property rights at an individual level(which is the only type of private property of course).

[The Derider]

Here's a real overview of the charter school data:

http://credo.stanford.edu/

Executive summary:

17 percent of charter schools are better than traditional public

47 percent of charter schools are statistically indistinguishable

36 percent of charter schools are worse than traditional public.

INCREDIBLE IMPROVEMENTS!

[cynical]

Is it an apples to apples comparison, though? If charters are often erected to deal with underperforming districts, then it makes more sense to use underperforming districts without charters as a control group.

[yonemoto]

Also, the worse ones are going to get their asses closed down.

[The Derider]

Yes, public schools too, what's your point?

[cynical]

That should actually skew the stats in favor of charters, though.

[The Derider]

What should? Bad public schools being shut down? Or bad charter schools being shut down? Both happen with frequency, but I don't know which is more frequent.

[Cytotoxic]

I suspect Cynical just won the subthread.

[The Derider]

Yes, it is an apples to apples comparison in exactly the way you described. Charter schools simply don't outperform traditional public schools in the aggregate.

[Free2Booze]

Don't care if charters are better/worse than traditional public schools. What I do care about, is making sure that parents can decide which school their child will attend. A responsible parent would choose not to send their child to a shitty charter.

Choice = freedom.

[The Derider]

If only responsibility were a requirement to become a parent!

Plenty of parents that don't give half a shit about their children allow them to go to public schools when better charter schools are nearby. Plenty of parents allow their children to go to charter schools when better public schools are nearby. If they can't make the right choices for their children, who will?

[Red Rocks Rockin]

If they can't make the right choices for their children, who will?

Behold, the battle-cry of every dickwipe busybody on the planet.

[Confederal_Republic_by_2030]

No governmental involvement of any sort in educational matters is justifiable. That is the end of it. These are only baby steps. Let's move faster, people. MOVE!111111111

[Barry Loberfeld]

I have to agree with the "liberals" on this one: Vouchers are bad news ... for the same reasons that public schools are.

[Libertymike]

Public education is for losers.

Who would want to associate themselves with public education? Dewey's disciples. COLLECTIVISTS.

[The Derider]

I'm pretty sure that if you compare the countries with public education to those that lack it, the "losers" will be obviously concentrated in the latter group. (A quick google check says that Chad, the Ivory Coast, Nepal, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo all lack public education. Quite a team!)

[Cyto]

Here in south Florida we have all those advantages rolled up into one. We have public charter schools that are actually religious schools. Really. They get around it by being magnet schools for "conversational Hebrew". Cool, huh? Somehow I doubt that you'd be successful getting your "catholic theology studies" magnet school approved... Or how about "ancient Greek and Aramaic languages"?

Not that I'm particularly concerned... I just find it funny that the same cast of characters that violently opposes school choice and vouchers is setting up a religious public school for themselves.

[Libertymike]

"Vision ben Gamla Charter School is acommunity of learners that honors individual student needs, varied modalities of instruction and nutures character traits that help to develop good citizens".

Don't you want to vomit?

[The Derider]

So your contention is that the "characters" that violently oppose school choice are "the Jews"?

[Cytotoxic]

Vouchers are still our only escape from the awful SQ and transition to a better world.

[jasnos]

Why does school choice = Charlie Sheen's #winning bullshit?

Sorry, I couldn't make it past the first minute of the video.

[Cc]

Yeah, it's pretty creepy with all that "winning" mantra and the undecided applause.

[oil paintings]

Who would want to associate themselves with public education? Dewey's disciples.

[Wasted Life]

Stop breeding. Kids suck.

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