kitchen table math, the sequel: Indiana

Friday, May 6, 2011

Indiana

lots of changes in Indiana schools

sounds good to me, but the folks at Cato take a dim view...
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3 comments:

Bonnie said...

If private schools are going to accept taxpayer money in the form of vouchers, they dang well better be subject to the same testing and assessment as the public schools. It seems fair to me. The Cato people seem to want the perks without the accountability.

May 6, 2011 at 3:44 PM
Anonymous said...

bonnie, did you read the response by Schaeffer?

To wit: "To see why, consider the bill's regulations. Most people would agree there are some topics about which every child in this country should learn. Historical documents, for instance, that are vital for understanding our shared American heritage: the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and Chief Seattle's 1852 letter to the United States government.

Chief Seattle was a great leader of native Americans in the Northwest, and this moving letter lays out the vast gulf between how his people and the "white" man viewed the land, not as a commodity to be bought and sold but a part of themselves, a sacred trust. Chief Seattle's letter is also a modern fabrication sprung from the pen of a screenwriter for a 1972 film about ecology.

And in Indiana, it is a legally protected historical document that public, and now voucher-accepting private schools, are required to have on hand for academic use by students."

No the people at Cato worry about the educational wolf in sheep's clothing that laws like this are to parents' actual choices.

"The voucher law places private schools under the supervision of the state Department of Education, making them accountable to career bureaucrats and political appointees for performance on government standards and curriculum. It is an authorization and framework of accountability to the state, rather than to parents and taxpayers directly."

Joanne Jacobs quoted even worse, which i'll quote here again
"For instance, private schools must "provide good citizenship instruction that stresses the nature and importance of," among other items, "respecting authority," "respecting the property of others," respecting the student's parents and home," "respecting the student's self," and "respecting the rights of others to have their own views and religious beliefs." What does this mean for religious private schools teaching that one can only be saved by belief in Jesus Christ? "

Sounds like the death of Catholic schools to me, if by Catholic they mean faithful to the magisterium.

May 6, 2011 at 6:14 PM
Anonymous said...

I take a dim view of the law as well. but at least it will be a good experiment. If in a few years, all of the privates are teaching the same curriculum the publics do, we'll be able to see the connection. After a few years, we'll be able to tell if the Catholic schools have gone under or not. Better this experiment at the state level than a national one.

I do think it will doom Daniels' ability to win the GOP nomination, though. This won't look like a "truce" on social issues at all. It will look like capitulation.

May 6, 2011 at 6:29 PM

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