>Bull-hockey! All across the country the voucher initatives got trounced. >Public schools need well-paid teachers, well-equipped schools and the $ to >do the job. Bush & Gore are beholden to those that pumped in the money to >their campaigns, (read, you owe me dude). The Green Party Rules (at least >in our minds) > >David I. > >> The teachers voted for Gore because Gore is beholden to them and wants to >> continue to pump more money to teachers, is against vouchers (read >> competition), etc. >> >> If Bush is elected we'll get to see that he is a man of his word and the >> scare tactics used by Gore were unfounded. What makes public schools any different than any other enterprise. Lets look at it this way: There was one piano tuner in your city that was the authorized piano tuner. Everyone in town was forced to pay an annual piano tuning tax based on the value of their property. People in the town that own a piano would get their pianos tuned for "free." The authorized tuner in the city had RPT members, built a lavish shop, etc. The rates the tuner got were $125 per tuning, paid for entirely by the tuning tax. Some people in this town didn't particularly care for the calibre or service from the authorized tuner- His tunings are not necessarily the best and it takes sometimes 2-3 weeks to set up an appointment. The people that want to use another tuner that they like better are free to call up another tuner from outside of the area but they have to pay the going rate for his tuning-which is only $75. BUT they still have to pay the yearly piano tax. Some bright individual comes up with the following idea: If they choose to get their piano tuned by someone else they should be able to take a portion of their piano tuning tax and have it credited to the other tuner. The authorized tuner does not like this idea at all. What about all the people that can't afford to use a tuner from another city, what would happen to them? We have the trained tuners, they're qualified and doing this would take money away from them. In reality this is how the public school system works. In any other enterprise we would say that it's a monopoly and that the lack of competition serves only to raise prices and lower services. There are many great public school teachers and districts-my daughter is in college studying to be an elementary ed. teacher. I did have a friend who started out teaching High School. He left teaching after a few years though. The reason was that he was trying to do a great job-he put in a lot of extra time researching and preparing for his classes. His idea was that the kids had to learn the material. If they didn't, they got bad grades. The administration got calls from some of the parents in this affluent area that their kids were not doing well in his class. The principle had a talk with him and asked him to take it easier, even though most of his kids were doing well and what he was teaching was what he was supposed to. He left teaching because he noticed that while he was putting in much more time outside of the classroom, the extra effort was not rewarded. Other teachers putting in much less effort were in better graces with the administration. He's now the VP of sales with a French pharmacutical company in the US. Glenn Grafton Grafton Piano & Organ Co. Souderton PA http://www.dprint.com/grafton/ gleng@fast.net 800-272-5980 The box said "Requires Windows 95, or better." So I bought a Macintosh.
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