Reply #169: Clearly you've never dealt with being or having a child in a bad... [View All]

[colinmom71]

Private school. The vast majority of private schools are religious based and no, that is not in name only. In the community I was raised in Georgia, there was only one secular private school within a 40 mile radius. The only other choices for private schools were a Catholic school and several Christian (Protestant) schools, some of whom did not always hire properly licensed and degreed teachers. Most of these, except the one I attended, did not offer classes beyond the middle school grades.

I went to a private Christian academy through part of my elementary school years, one that was taken over around 1978-1979 by a fundamentalist preacher. He insisted on at least one hour of chapel Bible service every school day, and of course his sermons usually ran way longer. He actually spent one Bible study lecture on the importance of treating your copy of the bible with respect, like never setting anything on top of your bible even if it's just a sheet of paper. Attendance to fall and spring revivals was manatory and if a student did not attend, their grades definitely suffered. Corporal punishment was pretty much a way of life, with my third grade teacher seeming to have a real fondness for paddling for infractions as minor as forgetting to get your homework signed by a parent. Parents were routinely told what TV shows, movies, music, etc. that we students were to be allowed to be exposed to. This is just some of the crap we students put up with on a daily basis.

My mom finally caught on when they undermined her parental authority during re-enrollment after my third grade year. It seems I'd scored very high on placement exams and the school was insisting on me skipping fourth grade, telling my mom that her opinion (that I wasn't ready to skip a grade) in this matter was irrelevant. If I remained at their school, I would have to go to fifth grade. She responded by withdrawing my re-enrollment and sent me to public school. Funnily enough, it turns out the public school's curriculum was relatively similar and the teachers were just as competent (not to mention a heck of a lot nicer!). Oh, and I got to actually meet and socialize with minority students, something that was not a dynamic available at my previous religious school. Believe me, I felt far better serviced by the public school than the private school.

Yes, my mother did pull me out of the bad school, but she was just lucky that it happened at the school year's end and we had the summer to enroll me into the public school. Imagine now a whole group of voucher parents have a similar experience and decide their kids need to be out of the bad school immediately. Do you think any school (public or private) would be able to suddenly transfer in large groups of kids at any time in the school year? The resource strain on the new school may be unbearable and force them to deny enrollment until the next school term. Guess those kids would be "left behind"...

Oh, and concerning your idea that "General standards could be and often are set up with private schools (state accredication).", many of these fundie driven Christian schools actually fight state standards for a regulated curriculum. Some think that all instruction should be biblically sourced and are likely to argue against being forced to teach science as an infringement upon their religious based instruction. Then you'd also have Christian biases being taught within history, current events, and civics lessons. Yes, I do think that private schools should be required to meet a state regulated curriculum, but the reality is that many of these schools will do all they can to either skirt around or even outright violate those regulations.

And once some of these private school learn that by accepting state based funds requires them to adhere to state and federal non-discrimination laws, you're going to see them dropping voucher student like hot potatoes. That's why most voucher programs are written to distribute the money from the state to the parent, who then pays it to the school. It's to get around that pesky non-discrimination clause attached to state funds. It's sort of a religious based money laundering scheme if you think about it...