Kevin Woster, a veteran journalist in South Dakota, explains here why he opposes vouchers, even though he sent his own children to Catholic school and appreciated the education they got there.
He notes that the South Dakota legislature considered vouchers and did not pass them but he is sure that the issue will be back again for debate.
He and his wife made the right decision by sending their children to Catholic schools, but he nonetheless thinks it would be wrong to take public money for private schools.
He believes that public money should not be used to fund private schools.
It’s public money, for public schools. And the commitment and responsibility to provide a free public education isn’t a new idea. It’s a constitutional idea, as in the South Dakota Constitution, which reads in part:
“The stability of a republican form of government depending on the morality and intelligence of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature to establish and maintain a general and uniform system of public schools wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all; and to adopt all suitable means to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education.”
And as taxpaying citizens, it’s our duty to support that system of free public schools.
Making your choice with your checkbook, not public money
Just because my first wife, Jaciel, and I decided to send our kids to a Catholic-school system didn’t mean we were absolved of our responsibilities as citizens to support public schools. You don’t stop being a citizen because you decide to become a private-school parent. You are both. You must be both.
It would be wrong, he believes, to weaken the public schools for the benefit of those who have made private choices.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
He is correct. I sent my 2nd child to private HS and there were many parents, both from private and public school systems, who wanted vouchers. I kindly explained to them that if they wanted vouchers from the state (MD), they would have to abide by the rules of the state….testing madness/mandates, common bore curriculum, data collection/surveys etc. Most were sending their children to private schools to avoid all the bad “deforms” imposed by the state. Kind of made them think. The problem is that most parents don’t know how public education if funded (defunded by deformers!) and the rules for that funding….federal, state, district/county/city.
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Lisa, I totally agree with you. Although most of the years that my child was a K- 12 student we chose public schools. However the brutal world of high stakes testing drove our family to go to a private school for students with learning disabilities. Friends encouraged me to try to get the district to pay for the LD school. I never considered it, since if the local public school district was paying for it then they could control it.
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In my state, the private schools (both faith based and independent) are filled with former public school students AND former public school teachers. Parents are tired of having to deal with all the deforms and the lack of actual education/teaching in lieu of mind numbing test prep for data collection. Every single Presidential candidate spews the same mumbo jumbo, change public education/schools speech to get elected and then doubles down on the deforms. I’m just sick of it! It makes me angry that my tax dollars are used to actually harm children in public schools….because the testing madness, IMHO, is child abuse and it deprives children of a decent and true education.
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Correction:
“He and his wife made A decision by sending their children to Catholic schools,”
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Yes, Duane, I noticed the same arrogance in his statement.
It didn’t surprise me.
When Woster selected a Catholic school, presumably he could suspect that it was anti-gay. He may have understood that 63+ % of the school’s parents were voting for a racist, sexist and fascist President and a GOP state legislature that
imposed their “Christian/Catholic” social values on the constituents. Woster could have known that 30% of the Catholic schools are single sex. He knew that the Catholic hierarchy wouldn’t allow women to hold top leadership positions because Christ did not select them as disciples (if one believes male interpretations of God’s word). He knew the hierarchy was authoritarian and practiced widespread cover-up of priest pedophilia.
When Woster chose Catholic schools he knew the demographic would be a higher economic class.
So, for which of the aforementioned reasons did he make the “right” choice?
Woster could impart his religious sect’s views after school, on weekends and, during vacations but, that wasn’t enough. why?
Is he similar to Amy Comey Barrett’s good friend, Notre Dame Prof. Nicole Stelle Garnett who didn’t like vouchers in 2012?
If Woster is funding the anti-gay, anti-woman, authoritarian, Trump-leaning Catholic Church, he is the enemy.
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Duane, I don’t get it– what were you correcting?
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the right decision –> A decision
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Thanks Robert for the clarification.
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It’s easy to dislike and find fault with Kevin Woster when you read the entirety of his opinion. His grandson who requires special ed services for his behavioral challenges (services not available in Catholic schools- elitist reasons obvious) is, in his opinion, the perfect candidate for public schools. Woster’s very accomplished children, who were destined for careers in medicine and law belonged in the private Catholic schools, unlike his grandson.
So, those are the values Woster gained in his own Catholic education? Presumably, Trump-supporting Catholics share those values although they may be more social Darwinist and think government should let students not destined for high status careers, learn in the same gutters where people should die like feral dogs. If Woster’s grandson hadn’t needed public schools, which camp would he have been in?
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I don’t see anything objectionable about sending one’s children to private school if one thinks they will benefit most from it, or to public school if one thinks they will benefit most from that.
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Better chance for your point to resonate- public schools were selected for the lawyer and doctor candidates and a Catholic school was selected for the kid with behavioral problems.
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The point stands no matter what, I think. There’s nothing wrong with sending two kids to private school because you think that will be better for them than your local public school. And there’s nothing wrong with sending a child with developmental challenges to public school because you think the public school is better equipped to meet those challenges.
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I agree with FLERP on this, Linda. I went over & over this piece trying to figure out what you found that sounded arrogant &/or elitist. Since when is going to Catholic school “elitist”? I actually thought he noted his kids’ professions to show one can get a good ed there– not that that’s where you should send them if you went best results. [That stems from my own bias, based on the schdistricts I know best, that Cath sch ed is probably not as good as your local pubschool.] Meanwhile he has nothing but praise for the pubschool his grandson attends [whom—again, my own take—I pictured as on the spectrum, as opposed to “a behavior problem.”] Read it again: the writer makes no generalizations comparing Catholic ed with pubschool ed.
Regardless—all that stuff was in the context of distinguishing personal choice, which one pays for personally, and the obligation of all to financially support a strong pubschool system– a well-reasoned argument against vouchers.
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Bethree-
In the article, Woster refers to his grandson’s “behavioral challenges” but, if you are looking for a way to spin that, have at.
If the strongest frogs leave the pond and then the weaker frogs are more representational of the pond, can you foresee any problems? What do you think the odds are that the weaker frogs will be attracted to a pond which requires traveling a distance, qualifying for admittance, paying a hefty price for entrance and, then feeling like they are odd man out among strong frogs?
You make an original argument, big picture, the weakest frogs with the least caring parents are choosing a Catholic pond not the neighborhood public pond. Other readers can decide if that matches their experience. It doesn’t match what Woster related.
Adding- my objection to Catholic schools is that I am opposed to students learning that women’s rights don’t matter. When those students go to the polls and elect people who legislate to take away the rights of my daughter and my nieces and my friends, I can’t express how strongly I believe it is bad for democracy and good for the American Taliban.
You are welcome to simply believe extrapolations have no merit. And, that strong and weak frogs abandon private and public ponds in the same proportions.
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I have always thought that treating the stronger frogs as a means to help the weaker frogs in the pond was an underlying principle of orthodox posters of this blog. It seems to me that all parents reasonably want their children to be treated as ends in themselves, putting those parents at odds with the orthodox position of the blog.
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Te-
No, as usual.
The conditions in the pond suffer from the neglect when it is perceived as a cast off. Witness the lands of native Americans and pipelines that slice through or Black communities that have roadways cut through, as contrasted with the nimby of wealthy areas.
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Linda—am I just not communicating this well or what? You are taking the opposite of what the man is arguing and applying it to his article! Regardless of what one thinks/ has experienced on whatever the merits of any private-school alternative to the pubschsystem may be– we don’t pay for the alternatives from public funds.
It doesn’t matter a whit whether the Catholic school he chose was better than the pubschool, or whether he thinks his $sacrifices were worth it– his whole point is, those are personal choices that have nothing to do with the bad-for-society plan of tax-paid alternatives to the pubschsystem. Even backed up with examples of how losing any tax $ from state/ locals can hurt the system– the real “pond” discussed in the article.
Your metaphor of weak/ strong frogs in pond incorrectly widens the pond to include privately-paid options. Therefore you are saying, there should be no privately-paid options. [Especially not Catholic ones 😁]
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Linda,
I think we are in complete agreement: if the stronger frogs are allowed to leave the pond and the remaining frogs will suffer from neglect.
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Bethree
What I think about the private school option is immaterial to the subtext of Woster’s opinion piece.
IMO, you are focused singly on the text.
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Is the following a summary of and analogy for Woster’s point?
He is willing to have the middle class pay for the education of his grandson with behavioral problems and, in return he’ll pay for private schools for his kids who are students of high quality.
Is it analogous to him saying he will pay taxes for indigent care in hospitals, believing the facilities are inferior, while blowing smoke about the indigent hospitals’ fine quality (the ruse makes him appear to be a better person)? If the indigent patient is a kid with a problem that requires the best care, the kid’s going to be up a creek without a paddle. Families that have resources, will be in the better, private hospitals.
GOP values consistent with 3rd world countries- not very original.
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“ He is willing to have the middle class pay for the education of his grandson with behavioral problems and, in return he’ll pay for private schools for his kids who are students of high quality.”
I think he’s saying that (1) everyone, including him, should pay for public school educations for all children who attend public school, and (2) people should pay for private school for their own kids.
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Others, except for Flerp, should skip this comment. It’s anecdotal and of little import.
I have an acquaintance (GOP voter) who boasts that her son (autistic) receives $100,000 in benefits per year from Ohio (grandfathered from some “gold ” program). GOP voter refuses to give her son’s Social Security payments to the home that cares for him because on the weekends he’s with her and her husband. The GOP voter gets irritated when the home won’t keep the son while she and her husband vacation. Her rationale, the cost to the home for 4-6 weekends of care would amount to insignificant variable costs. GOP voter’s husband, a lawyer, took action to qualify himself as some type of government-paid overseer for his son (the son is the only client the husband oversees).
The taxpayers now pay for both the private religious school for GOP voter’s 2nd child and for the autistic son.
As I write this I have mixed thoughts. If the child in Catholic schools is indoctrinated into the GOP view, maybe taxpayers will be able to off load the son’s expense, following implementation of starved government. On the other hand, if the Catholic student votes Republican, her vote will take away the rights of Americans based on her sect’s beliefs.
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I get that there’s a burden-shifting of the hardest-to-educate students onto public schools. I think that’s unavoidable.
I get the point about state and local subsidies for students with disabilities. As I think you know, I live in NYC, and there is a cottage industry of parents working the system to get absolutely massive subsidies based on bullsh!t diagnosis that basically come down to (1) ADD or (2) antisocial kids. The parent profile is lower-middle-income, but educated, smart enough to game the system and tweaked enough to have the energy to spend half their lives doing it. Almost always driven by the mother.
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Flerp
Justice should rain down on Wall Street which drags down GDP by 2%.
my example, your example, annoying, yes, small potatoes, yes.
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“The stability of a republican form of government depending on the morality and intelligence of the people,” vouchers are anti-republican.
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It’s interesting that the state constitutions often emphasize both–schools as places for moral and intellectual edification.
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But, but, but. . . you can’t have morals without god!
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That’s why, Duane, I believe in ALL the gods, not just one of them or some family group of them. Don’t want to miss out.
And the Papua Pig Goddess makes sure you get plenty of pigs!
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I teach morality to be certain. It’s the most important aspect of learning embedded in my English curriculum. My students read literature and discuss and write with empathy, contempt, or a mix thereof of the characters. Through that they learn to do good because they vicariously experience the pain of being wronged. They think about ideas like right and wrong.
The Bible has many great stories that teach lessons of character, and so do Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, and Langston Hughes’ writings. By rejecting standardized teaching, especially Common Core, I teach my students to be better citizens by reading with them.
I believe there was a time when leaders understood that morality must also be secular when there is a social contract and a democracy, a time when constitutions were written.
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You know what, as a matter of fact, that’s the whole point. Morality. That’s the everything thing. You can’t have a democracy if everyone relies on their selfish, brutish qualities to govern themselves. When teachers have crossed my picket lines when I’ve been on strike, I haven’t called them stupid; I called them ethically challenged. Morality is the everything thing.
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damn right, LCT
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You can’t have dog without kibbles” is what I always say
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And you certainly can’t teach a dog morals (or anything else) without kibbles.
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Bob Yes, “interesting.” Again, from a longer-perspective, I think there is probably a long-time political link between the degeneration of public education over the last 60-or-so years (via intrusions from above, test-mania, drill, seat-time, defunding, etc.) and the forces that now “provide” for quasi-private education (charters, vouchers, etc., even home schooling) and the multi-pronged push for the migration of “the public” to private education.
Also, I have seen several similar (moral and intellectual education) State Constitutional texts. These must have been written in much saner times. And that “moral” comes before “intellectual” is a big “tell.”
The other thing is that, though many qualified-today moral principles are a part of most if not all founding religious texts, there is nothing inherent to human living or even history that makes moral teaching necessarily identified only with religious teachings.
I find it helpful to back up into the prior questions that are addressed by one’s moral/political and then spiritual life. That is,
A moral-political life answers the general question: How do we best live in the world with ourselves and with others? While the spiritual life answers the general question *How do I relate to (whatever I mean by) God; and the question that underpins THAT way of life, which concerns faith and what we really do not know in any empirical sort of way?
How the outcomes of those two questions relate to one another in history or in anyone’s life provides the chalkboard on which most of our present problems are written. CBK
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These must have been written in much saner times. And that “moral” comes before “intellectual” is a big “tell.”
YES. Saner in some ways. And, totally agree about the relative priorities.
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Many years ago, CBK, I taught in a Catholic girls’ high school in a Chicago suburb. It was run by Sisters of Charity, and almost all my fellow teachers were nuns who, in those days, wore the traditional garb, including the Cornette. You know all the stereotypes about mean nuns smacking kids’ knuckles with rulers? Nothing could have been further from the truth. These women were amazing. They were so generous and kind and hardworking and knowledgeable! Learned folk. The girls they taught were fortunate indeed to have them. I was astonished at how even-tempered these women were and how generous of their time. If a kid had a problem a Sister would be there for her. Sometimes, I would see the nuns together after school when they thought they were alone, and they could be snippy with one another–letting their guard down, I suppose. But in their quotidian work days, they were amazing. Such good people. People whom I was proud to call my colleagues.
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Bob: Reply gone to moderation, but also gone from the blog. CBK
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Your reply is no longer in moderation.
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Well said, LCT!
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The Pugs are horrified because theirs is a jerk agenda–take from the poor and brown and give to the pampered and white. And so any teaching about morality done in school goes against their points of view. They are so worried that kids will learn in school that arranging things so that babies and children will be sliced by razor wire and drowned isn’t such a good thing.
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The choice of a school is about the best fit. As a public school teacher, I often had to confront the fact that some kids were not served well by my school. This was usually because the people who supported the school with their taxes either could not (in most cases) or would not agree to pay taxes at a rate that would support all the students and their educational needs. There were, therefore, children who found a better experience elsewhere.
Comments above about Catholic Schools assume they are monolithic. I thought the writer was very balanced in his support of public schools, and he should be commended for this. I am fine with religious based schools if that is what the parents want. They just need to pay for it themselves. I think most of the religious based schools I have known things about do a poor job, and often they are fronts for cultural indoctrination. But it’s a free country.
When we attack religious schools in the public discourse, we feed the silly belief that modern liberalism is really a sort of Jacobin extremism designed to destroy religion.
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Well, how has the hands off of religion approach been working?
Are the state Catholic Conferences and Koch achieving fewer wins in the states?
Has Amy Comey Barrett’s friend Nicole Stelle Garnet been losing, relative to the advance of religious charter schools? Btw-next up Idaho. Papers have been initiated.
Is Leonard Leo’s power waning while the public is unaware he is right wing Catholic with 9 kids?
Are organizations like Legatus contracting or expanding?
Have taxpayers made Catholic organizations the nation’s 3rd largest employer?
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Did Roe v Wade get overturned?
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Stick with the losing strategy you’ve been on and ignore Jefferson’s warning, in all countries, in all ages, the priest aligns with the despot. Then, sit back and expect wins.
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Have you chosen for yourself, the same strategy that your enemy would choose for you?
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Hello Bob: I’m just looking in here, and will be gone again for several weeks, having enjoyed freeing up my time (from the blog) for work, not to mention lessening my sense of aggravation. So if you respond, I won’t be reading it myself.
That said, this is off topic; but I wanted to share an insight with you that I had about the recent discussion on teaching from the “To Kill a Mockingbird” text.
Besides all of the other good arguments for keeping it in the curriculum, the fact that the work was so well-read in overlapping generations past makes it ALSO important to continue teaching now . . . precisely because it offers a kind of cultural “glue” that can be shared between past and present readers.
The work has also gained a place in history that cannot be replaced, on principle, precisely because of WHEN it was written, about WHAT, and even because of any legitimate criticisms that have come its way. Children learn different things in different ways; and becoming acquainted with such a work that crosses many generations and ideas, we know, can change a person’s life.
But “things” have gone by so fast over the past 60 years, and so much has changed, that we certainly can use all of the generational “links” we can find . . . and this one is no slouch where that’s concerned.
That is not to say that “we” don’t need the influx of multi-cultural and varied kinds of writers to offer our children–we do. I remember very well a time of “white,” “male,” “young” and more recently “straight” EVERYTHING; and it took me a long time to get over that poisonous aspect of my own upbringing.
On the other hand, I do think way too many younger teachers (from your and my perspective) have no idea about the import of all things historical, most of which we only touched on in our past conversations about this work. And like fascism, racism, or “how it was” that they didn’t experience first-hand or learn from having had a good education, or just luck, makes most of us deaf to it. CBK
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precisely because it offers a kind of cultural “glue” that can be shared between past and present readers.
Superb point, CBK.
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Agree, Bob– Dept heads/ older/ veteran teachers are likely to select books whose lessons they learned long ago connect to today’s issues. Many examples leap to mind from high school reading I was assigned in the mid-‘60s.
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Siddhartha. Lord, what that book meant to me when I was 16!!! Still does.
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Vonnegut’s Player Piano.
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