Monday, October 03, 2011

Grand Theft Educ

Angus already mentioned this.

But you may not have read the story. Excerpt:

From California to Massachusetts, districts are hiring special investigators to follow children from school to their homes to determine their true residences and decide if they "belong" at high-achieving public schools. School districts in Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey all boasted recently about new address-verification programs designed to pull up their drawbridges and keep "illegal students" from entering their gates.

Other school districts use services like VerifyResidence.com, which provides "the latest in covert video technology and digital photographic equipment to photograph, videotape, and document" children going from their house to school. School districts can enroll in the company's rewards program, which awards anonymous tipsters $250 checks for reporting out-of-district students.

Only in a world where irony is dead could people not marvel at concerned parents being prosecuted for stealing a free public education for their children.


The only way the teachers' union, the AFT, can keep a lid on this is to keep parents "away from the table." The solution, as I said when I ran in 2008, is means tested voucher. The wealthy have choices now. It's the poor folks who need help.

As it is, we are just putting people in jail for "stealing" what all my leftoid friends assure me is a public good.

ATSRTWT

5 comments:

John Thacker said...

And even if you think that this is wrong, in Ohio they charged a lady with a felony for this. (The governor, John Kasich, reduced it to a misdemeanor over the unanimous opposition of the state's parole board.) I can't see at all how this would be felony worthy.

HBanan said...

On the one hand, lots of kids here in this country illegally get educations and then get in-state college tuition in some states. On the other, poor American children's parents will be jailed if they go out of town, or just to another section of town. It's like if people can be so compassionate to undocumented migrants, they don't have to bother extending compassion to their own long-time neighbors.

Anonymous said...

In car adds, a beautiful woman sits on the hood. Thats the hook. They are selling you a car not a beautiful woman.

In political adds compassion for the poor is the hook. What they are selling you is teachers unions. Flight from underperforming schools is a threat to teachers unions.

Richard Stands said...

The problem is government provision of education. A market-based competitive solution has the incentives to provide services far more efficiently and responsively the a government monopoly system.

Those too poor to afford basic education could still make use of charity (government means-tested vouchers, if nothing else). But if you want better education, let a market provide it.

John Thacker said...

On the one hand, lots of kids here in this country illegally get educations and then get in-state college tuition in some states.

In Texas, there's no income tax. Illegals pay sales tax and property tax as much as anyone. The in-state college tuition is paid for via taxes that the illegals pay in Texas, so no problem.

The income tax is a terrible tax to have if you're worried about illegal aliens.