Correspondence
Correspondence THE PITFALLS OF CHOICE CATHERINE SEIPP'S "Public School Confidential!" seems to make a case against the competition among schools that vouchers are expected to create (Oct. 16). She...
...Furthermore, these schools may lose significant tax support should voters pinched by private school tuitions vote down budgets for schools in which their children have no stake...
...CARL COHEN Ann Arbor, MI DESPITE MY Democratic and heterosexual voting tendencies, because of your Oct...
...JOE WILLINGHAM Berkeley, CA MACHO MAN EXTRAS I'VE JUST READ David Tell's review of The St^rr Rep^-rt Disrobed, by Fedwa Malti-Douglas ("Politics As Fiction," Oct...
...EDWINJ...
...I am also aware that no parent savvy enough to wheel and deal his kid into a "coveted" school is going to be put off by the flunkies who run it, especially when he perceives that some situation might affect his child adversely...
...MATT MATHESIUS Kennewick, WA...
...And most people will remember that a couple of years ago a primary school boy was charged with harassment for kissing a girl in his class...
...But in regard to "civil unions," surely it is more in accord with the spirit of traditional Vermont Republican liber-tarianism to leave the choice of partners (whatever the unions may be called) up to individuals than it is to have government constrain that choice to members of the opposite gender...
...Studies show that high parental socioeconomic levels, which tend to translate into highly active, knowledgeable, and effective school involvement, are the most salient contributor to high test scores and overall quality of education...
...As for sexual harassment and discipline issues, I don't know how any school, public or otherwise, could handle them so casually when we have seen the headlines about students receiving long, out-of-school suspensions for giving "drugs" like Tylenol to other students...
...However, lower income families will not be able to make up the monetary difference between the voucher and the tuition and will be stuck in schools increasingly populated by poorer students...
...It wins my hearty thanks and roars of laughter...
...In my area, a pair of elementary school boys were suspended for pointing their fingers at students' heads on the playground and shouting, "Bang, bang, you're dead...
...There is plenty to fault the Vermont leftists on, and Ferguson rightly mentions over-regulation of business and quackery in education...
...With some trepidation, I'd like to ask the editors to do me a favor: Would you please, when next you see him, give David Tell a hug for me...
...As a teacher in New Jersey, a state at least as litigious as California, I am also well aware that waivers absolving schools of responsibility for mishaps on trips or at school functions do not absolve schools of liability for their clear legal obligations to take all reasonable precautions to care for the safety of students in their charge...
...HECK South River, NJ LIVE AND LET LIVE IN HIS ARTICLE on Ruth Dwyer's effort to "take back Vermont," Andrew Ferguson misses the irony in the current political battle ("Babe Ruth," Oct...
...On the whole, my issue with vouchers is simple, perhaps even a clich...
...Clearly, Bush's manly abs and lightly tufted pecs signify "leader" more than Gore's soft belly and flabby chest...
...Informed, active parents, who know the power of a dollar, a vote, and an action committee, can be the prime actors in supporting those things that increase the quality of a school system...
...9 cover ("Greatest Show on Earth"), I am voting Republican in the presidential election...
...I fear that people of the "middling sort" will have just enough money, combined with vouchers, to get their kid out of a school they don't like...
...As a 37-year teaching veteran, having seen budgets defeated in my school district for more than 30 years, usually by senior citizens who also do not have a stake in schools, I know that a sudden influx of young families with children, combined with the passing away of some politically influential seniors, has been responsible for a building program and several years of budget passage...
...The review is exceedingly keen and wonderfully funny...
...She writes, "The various principals at my daughter's public school used to remind us whenever parents questioned anything too persistently, 'There's a waiting list this long of families who'd love to have a spot here.'" With parents lying about their home addresses or hoping to buy expensive homes in that school's district, it seems to me that competition was certainly in full force and had created a monster of snooty disdain and contemptuous superiority in school administrators...
Vol. 6 • October 2000 • No. 7
