Timothy Sandefur, the resident no-comment Libertarian at Panda’s Thumb, asks us Is School Choice the answer?, and links us to a mini-debate between Neal McCluskey of CATO and Matthew Yglesias on the issue of resolving the creation/evolution debate.
The simple answer to Sandefur’s question and McCluskey’s assertion is, obviously, no – vouchers would not solve the problem of kids getting a poor science education. Vouchers would merely force me and other taxpayers to foot the bill for deluding children with demonstrably incorrect pseudoscience.
Sure, vouchers could eventually end the complaining about what kids were being taught in public schools (by eliminating the public schools), but it would do little else other than shift the complaints onto other targets.
Colleges would (rightly) penalize students with with the kind of substandard education you get from the small, fundamentalist schools that stand to benefit the most from vouchers. And then these disadvantaged students would sue the colleges, et cetera. Problem most definitely … unsolved.
Please provide some evidence that “small, fundamentalist schools” would benefit the most from vouchers. I can think of many schools and individuals who would reap rewards from a voucher program. It almost seems too simple for you to make this into a fundamentalists-versus-the-rest-of-us-argument.
The short, short answer to that question is that here in rural South Carolina, that’s all you have: Public schools and small religious schools. In other areas of the state, the religious schools are cheaper than the exclusive college-prep private schools. Vouchers or no, the exclusive schools would still be off-limits to poorer children (because the exclusive schools already charge much more than the voucher would provide).
The current push in the SC legislature seems to be tax credits for the wealthy and vouchers for the poor. There are a few bills bouncing around the state legislature to that effect, but I’ve not had the chance to read all of them what with my freshmen taking finals this week.
Not to mention the NAEP study that shows that COnservative Christian Schools did the same or measurably worse tahn public schools.
I can’t imagine what the science scores were.
Off topic Rick, I detoured off I-95 to Sweatman’s last week but found it to be closed. I hear it’s a manditory BBQ experience in SC. I might try and head out there this weekend. It’s not really that far from Charleston.
Maybe I attended one of them?
Sorry for the typos. I had some comment code issues and must have gotten distracted.
I did. But I’m all better now. Honest. 🙂 Sorry about the comment code thing, but I thought it was a better fix than having to moderate all the comments once this little blog found its way into the spammers’ gunsights.
Patty and I have been meaning to try out Sweatman’s, but we haven’t been that far down I-95 for a while. Closed because the owners went on vacatrion. or closed permanently?
(Oh, and curse you for mentioning BBQ on MONDAY, when the BBQ places won’t be open until THURSDAY!)
Not closed permenantly from what I could see. I’ll let you know after this weekend if I make it up there.
You say the short answer is no, but you have changed the question to whether vouchers would solve the problem of students getting a poor science education. The original question was whether vouchers would resolve the creation/evolution debate.
How about answering the right question?