Why are atheists or liberals against school vouchers for students?

One's religion or political affiliation has nothing to do with it. Caring about the best education for ALL children is.

To begin with school vouchers do not guarantee that any child can go to any school. What they do is take the money that is given to the public school from the government and give it to the private school. The amount of money per voucher differs from state to state depending on how much money that certain state allots for education, at the moment between 5,000 and 7,500 a year.

Look at the price of just the tuition for the average private school. You will notice that it is way above that amount. Additionally private schools have other mandatory fees like, transportation, field trips, books, uniforms, school materials, …. What will happen to all the children who have parents who can not, pay for what the vouchers do not cover? Will they just not go to school ,or will we send them to public schools which are now even more impoverished due to the money that is going to the voucher schools? (To be honest, this will only affect schools in wealthy areas, since they are the ones that will have children who can afford to leave on vouchers. Interesting right? Vouchers are toted as helping the poor, but in reality the poor will still not be able to afford a private school.)

Which now gets us to another misconception; "private schools are better". For years I set up private schools. I did it because I really believed in Montessori education and wanted more children to have access to it. One of the main reasons I left that job was that I got sick and tired of watching unscrupulous people start private schools to milk cash out of parents who were trying to give their children what they believed was the best education they could afford. You see, people just assume that because you are paying for something, it’s got to be good. Not true. Although there are many private schools that are wonderful, there are many more that are not. Although the requirements for teachers in the public system need to be unified and updated across the country, there aren’t any requirements at all for private school teachers! Yes, there are some schools where all the teachers have masters degrees from prestigious colleges, but there are many, many more schools that have teachers with NO college at all, some even hire people without a high school education!

Won’t parents know? Rarely. People just assume that the teachers are qualified. I mean would you really want to believe that the teacher you are paying thousands of dollars a year for is only there because she wants a discount in tuition for her children, or she wants to make her mistakes on other people’s children so that she will be a better mother, (direct quote from a woman teaching reading at a school charging 12,000 a year), or because she can’t get a job anywhere else?

When pressed about teachers’ credentials school propaganda usually goes something like this…. “We at *** believe that teaching is a gift, (or an art, or a calling from God, …), that cannot be taught in an institution. We hire only those whom we feel embody this calling and then train them specifically ourselves.” What they don’t tell you is that the “training” they receive is an hour in-service where they are told not to hit the children and then have them read a web page on philosophy. (I remember one director telling parents that she was “Swiss Trained”. She just left out the part that she dropped out of her HOTEL MANAGEMENT training in the middle of her first semester!)

But don’t private school children do better on tests academically? First it is hard to tell because they aren’t held to the same rules and regulations as the public schools. Private schools don’t have to test like public schools do, and when they do, they do not have to test all of their students or give them a grade level test. (I know of many private schools which consistently gave their student’s standardized tests two grade levels below each student’s grade. They also asked the lower performing children to stay home the days of testing. Then they posted the school’s scores as being in consistently in the 90th percentile.)

When you make the playing ground even, you find that, in general, children from higher socio-economic groups do better on standardized tests than those in low socio-economic groups. This doesn’t mean that we should write off all disadvantaged children, or that there is nothing that we can do to help them, but it does mean that just putting an “at-risk” child in a private school and assuming they will do better is not the answer. We need programs especially designed to help these students and their families overcome the gaps in their knowledge and the lack of environmental stimulation and nutrition.

You mention that you don’t see a problem with children going to religious schools. I certainly do. Why should my tax dollars go to teach a child that they have to believe in a certain religion o

So you're for allowing poor kids to receive an even worse education from what would be even less funded public schools while children of rich kids get better education, even though its no fault of the poor children that they're being punished with a lesser education? I'm all for private schools if you can afford it, but that doesn't mean public schools and less fortunate children should suffer for it.

Edit: Have you heard of supply and demand? Do you not think the price of private schools that were any good would go up? I don't think this would actually fix anything. How about we work on improving public schools instead, including in effeciancy.

Because they apparently lead people to thinking that Benjamin Franklin wrote the Constitution.

Also, the reason public education is a good thing is because there are guidelines. It's not about indoctrination, it's about teaching students the best of our knowledge at this point. With no guidelines, we will fall behind in the world. If parents want their children to learn things on top of what they learn at school, the parents can teach them. That's what mine did.

Actually, I'm 100% in favor of school vouchers.

The current American school system is communist. People would riot if the government tried to force everyone who didn't have enough money to buy a luxury car to drive the cars built in their nearest auto plant. But when the government forces everyone without enough money to buy a luxury education to send their children to their nearest public school, they think that is fair.

Americans deserve the right to send their children wherever they can find the best education. That is what school vouchers allows. Refusing to allow school vouchers is eliminating the rights of Americans. It is antithetical to the liberal democratic principles this country was founded upon.

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And people should stop pretending that 'private' equals 'religious.' It is entirely possible to create private schools funded by vouchers without them including religious indoctrination. And even for schools that are religious, if the vouchers fund only non-religious activities, and the parents choose to spend their own money on top of that for extra religious classes (the equivalent of Sunday schools that so many public school students attend today), then that should be the parents' choice.

Why do American public schools seem so crappy? I went to an underfunded public school, but I (and most of my senior year) still received a good enough education to get into University.

The "school voucher" scheme takes taxpayer money and puts it in the hands of churches to indoctrinate children in religion. It's a clear violation of the separation clause.

Your argument is inaccurate and poorly articulated.

Public school is no place for religion. Period. Evolution should be taught with the notion that the child has every right to believe what he/she wants (I'm not an atheist by the way).

I think freedom of religion should mean freedom from religion until a child is grown up (18 years) and is able to decide for themselves what they truly believe. Instead of forcing them to go to church and schools of their parents religious orientation.

Because I have no interest in having my tax dollars support religious indoctrination (a.k.a., miseducation).

I don't know, maybe it is because it is a perverted method for religious school to get extra money?