1. At what cost? The Government and public education advocates have yet to demonstrate correlation between the amount of money spent overall or per student and student performance.
2. What evidence do you have for these assertions? The evidence I have seen is on the side of those who are for charter schools and voucher programs. If the Government has a monopoly on education then what incentive does school administrators and teachers have to improve their school? Inevitibly schools with involved parents will protest poor teachers who will be shuffled to schools where parents are less vocal. These poor teachers end up in schools in poor neighborhoods further hampering students education and opportunity. Where voucher and other school choice programs have been created the incentives placed on public schools change. Parents whose children are in poor schools can take their money elsewhere to a private school which causes the public school to lose funding. The private school must provide a better education than the public equivalent or parents would never put their children there. The children who attend those private schools recieve a better education than they would have if they remained in the poor public school. This means that because the public school loses funding the education of the remaining students is worse right? Wrong, actual experience has found that in this circumstance the Public School's competition with private alternatives incentivizes it to improve education.
The findings have been that the education has improved for those students who go to private alternatives and for those who remain in public schools provided that the public school loses funding as parents take their vouchers elsewhere. Competition is what allows educational improvements for society by more efficienty allocating the scarce resources of tax dollars and education professionals.
There is a simple reason why Texans are opposed to evolution in schools. A majority of parents hold to a Theist Philosophy. They believe in some concept of a god or deity creator. In our nation a philisophical battle has been waged for many years between theists and their humanist counterparts. An argument can be made that humanism is religous due to the belief in man's reason as the highest authority and the replacement of the theistic idea of a savior deity with man himself: "No deity will save us; we will save ourselves" -Humanist Manifesto. Evolution is not incompatible with faith; it is merely incompatible with a theistic faith just as a deistic creation story or intelligent design is incompatible with a humanist faith. The religon verses science argument in this context has been often used by humanists to gain the upper hand over theists in the public arena. The truth is that both theists and humanists have faith in their underlying assumptions: there is a god or there isn't a god. These assumptions lead them to different conclusions in their scientific endeavors. Scientists dig up a bird fossil. Theists conclude that his was an extinct bird species and humanists conclude that this was a transitional form between reptiles and birds. So which is it? Is the scientific method even capable of deciding? Assumptions can kill you and perhaps having a variation of starting assumptions will lead to a broader, more diverse, and more effective scientific establishment than if we as a society say that the only valid starting assumption for science is that "There is no god."
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1. At what cost? The Government and public education advocates have yet to demonstrate correlation between the amount of money spent overall or per student and student performance. 2. What evidence do you have for these assertions? The evidence I have seen is on the side of those who are for charter schools and voucher programs. If the Government has a monopoly on education then what incentive does school administrators and teachers have to improve their school? Inevitibly schools with involved parents will protest poor teachers who will be shuffled to schools where parents are less vocal. These poor teachers end up in schools in poor neighborhoods further hampering students education and opportunity. Where voucher and other school choice programs have been created the incentives placed on public schools change. Parents whose children are in poor schools can take their money elsewhere to a private school which causes the public school to lose funding. The private school must provide a better education than the public equivalent or parents would never put their children there. The children who attend those private schools recieve a better education than they would have if they remained in the poor public school. This means that because the public school loses funding the education of the remaining students is worse right? Wrong, actual experience has found that in this circumstance the Public School's competition with private alternatives incentivizes it to improve education. The findings have been that the education has improved for those students who go to private alternatives and for those who remain in public schools provided that the public school loses funding as parents take their vouchers elsewhere. Competition is what allows educational improvements for society by more efficienty allocating the scarce resources of tax dollars and education professionals.
There is a simple reason why Texans are opposed to evolution in schools. A majority of parents hold to a Theist Philosophy. They believe in some concept of a god or deity creator. In our nation a philisophical battle has been waged for many years between theists and their humanist counterparts. An argument can be made that humanism is religous due to the belief in man's reason as the highest authority and the replacement of the theistic idea of a savior deity with man himself: "No deity will save us; we will save ourselves" -Humanist Manifesto. Evolution is not incompatible with faith; it is merely incompatible with a theistic faith just as a deistic creation story or intelligent design is incompatible with a humanist faith. The religon verses science argument in this context has been often used by humanists to gain the upper hand over theists in the public arena. The truth is that both theists and humanists have faith in their underlying assumptions: there is a god or there isn't a god. These assumptions lead them to different conclusions in their scientific endeavors. Scientists dig up a bird fossil. Theists conclude that his was an extinct bird species and humanists conclude that this was a transitional form between reptiles and birds. So which is it? Is the scientific method even capable of deciding? Assumptions can kill you and perhaps having a variation of starting assumptions will lead to a broader, more diverse, and more effective scientific establishment than if we as a society say that the only valid starting assumption for science is that "There is no god."