that and desegregation. The current "religious right" movement was born in the reaction to the IRS beating Bob Jones University in court regarding segregation.
I was all for all inclusive school choice proposals until I took an unobstructed look at the correlation between for profit private prisons and the ever increasing imprisonment rate. I can't support schools (or prisons) run on the profit motive as the conflict of interests soon gets out of hand. I actually do agree in principle that the current public school model, even when executed successfully, is a dinosaur that neglects the great potential of technology, but I do not trust DeVos to be the one to address that. Also, essentially ALL her private associations are with groups who basically want to use the schools as pipelines to create their Christian Dominionist country and that alone is enough to disqualify her.
My only issue with vouchers is that it should be contingent on going to private schools that are held to the same standards as public schools. It's an unfair advantage otherwise.
We don't have "school choice" per se here, but here's what we do have - this county is next door to another, much more rural one with a lot lower property tax base and thus, poorer in terms of financing the schools. There's a system whereby a family can request that their child in one school district be accepted in another, and also a "loophole" by which you can establish an "address" in the other district...by which many parents get their ids out of the poorer school and into the one in our county. BUT How this has actually played out is that the two schools in the poor county, which is about 60% white, is that the larger one is 93% black student population, and the other one is overwhelmingly (78%) white, and the students in that county that don't live in any proximity to the white shool play the loophole to get their kids into schools in our county. EVERY last child in my extended in-laws family lives in that county and ducks the almost all black schools to go to schools in my county. That's what "school choice" looks like in action.
the concept of vouchers in and of itself isn't the problem, there are places where it's done some good. It's the human nature motivations that drive how they will actually be used that makes them problematic. The #1 difference in "good schools" and "bad schools" is the method of financing them. In almost every case if you have a poor socio-economic district, you'll have a "bad school" because schools are largely financed via local tax base. Put schools on an equal financial footing and the interest in vouchers tends to go away and the use of them if you had them wouldn't be a major issue. But as things stand now, voucher equipped parents, in the best of motivations, will flee poor schools if they possibly can (and that will be mostly dependent on whether they can get their kids TO the more wealty school) leaving the poor school even worse off in terms of serving the kids who can't go elsewhere. And not all parents will operate from such noble motives and you'll have defacto segregation again, as I described above. Those in laws I mentioned, and all their peers, avoid the school in their geographic district for one reason - it's heavily black. And since what state and federal funds a school DOES get are predicated on attendance, the black school gets poorer because they flee, which means it tends to have worse outcomes, which reinforces their bigoted stereotypes that black schools = failing schools so they continue to flee. You get the idea. The other part of it is that families in poorer districts DO tend to have more socio-economic difficulties which work to the detriment of a good education in their life outside the campus. When I taught the school was 75% black (that, too, was a district that enabled self-selection segregation ad pretended not to notice) and we had a lot of problems with discipline and behavior issues which the bigots assume was because we had so many blacks, but in truth on a per capita basis, we had just as much trouble from white students as the black ones - it wasn't race but poverty that was the common factor.
there is no such thing as a Christian theocracy Nova. Except in the fevered imaginings of people who believe as you do.
if educational outcomes are better with smaller class sizes - and they are - advocating for more teachers is a reasonable position. There is a practical limit, of course, determined by cost and infrastructure, but it's certainly not an obviously warped position. As for wages, ALL unions advocate for higher pay, and non-union workers would be happy to express the view they should make more money as well, this is hardly a remarkable position.
yet. Give the Dominionists there way and there would be. Here's something from Gary North (close friend of the DeVoses) The Dominionist Agenda is to establish an explicitly Christian (in THEIR view of what "Christian" means) government. The DeVoses have ben funding extra-curricular programs for school kids in Michigan for a long time with the express purpose of populating the government with little Dominionist clones who'll bring about this desired outcome. Which doesn't likely bother you because that's the country you want to live in. But an explicitly Traditionalist Christian government is a theocracy, and the advocates their of are only too happy to explicitly say so.
Be honest. If Christians dominated all levels of American government, all parts of American society, and put their beliefs as Christians into action across the board...........would your life really change significantly? A difference that makes no difference is no difference.
Yes, it would, and as a former Christian Dominionist, I can say that the ultimate goal of Christian Dominionism is to make the world as (selectively) sin free as possible whether by salvation or by the word of law. So please don't bother with the bullshit. I know better.
Wow, is that what's going to happen to us?! Is that before or after they set up the camps for homosexuals? Any more of those trump bund meetings broken up where they were planning cross burnings on lgbt lawns? It would seem Henny Penny had nothing on the left as it deals with the reality of Trump. Meanwhile Anc speculates on secession while the left works to remedy their failure to get its message across (please please please nominate Running Mouth Warren next time please).
of all the posters here, you are seriously asking ME that question? The only sense in which it wouldn't is that being in MS, I'm already in a Dominionist state to the full extent that Federal judges will allow it to be. Dominionism on a national scale would just put everyone else in the country in the same shitty circumstance.
You can relax, since you are approved. You need not trouble your mind for those who aren't. I'm sure you'll enjoy a better, purer world when it's over - so long as you don't dissent from the approved worldview. (I didn't make up that description - it's what THEY say they want to do and right now, they have ideological control of the GOP which has control of the government)
So, you come right out and admit you think it's not theocracy if it's the "right", or "good", religion. Everything I said to you about this went in one ear and out the other. Why should anyone even talk to you if they're just going to be ignored?
What's so special about you? What makes you think you in particular would be singled out for oppression.?
What complete and utter garbage. It has nothing to do with my world view or my philosophy or my hopes and aspirations for the US. Would you like me to write a few choice words speculating on your sexual peccadillos that you *must* have since you are trans? And all the freaks you must associate with and all the houses you must have robbed to pay for surgery that will drive you to deeper depression afterwards . . . Yep, I'm a thug along with anyone who doesn't agree Trump is teh ultimatz evilz. [And your credibility along with that of the 'oh look what evilz Trump did today' brigade is falling faster than the sky in henny penny land.] Now, please tell me where all the death camps are for the homosexuals . . . [No problem, just work that antler a little further up your ass.]
Why, you worried about that last item? Seriously, Tuts, (uh, seriously??) what is this lurid fascination on your part as to what others do for jollies? As long as it's consenting adults and all that stuff. Why on earth would you care??? As for the look-what-evil-Trump-did-today brigade, I'm amazed you guys can rouse yoreselves to notice it what with the sheer exhaustion of eight solid years of hounding Obama for deeds real but mostly imagined. (When he wasn't going to Friday prayers at the local mosque, he was setting up death panels or threatening the lives of the folks who issue birth certificates or looking for new ways to nationalize that hotdog cart out on the street.) Anyway, you are instructing the whole board to suck the bottom of a Kool-Aid jug. I mean, talk about weird.
Also.... The Roman Catholic Church. Yeah, yeah, you'll immediately go to the No True Scotsman defense. Tough titty.
What do you mean? And why are you posting in the manner of our local mid-list science fiction writer?