Romney touts education choice

Parents choosing to send their children to private schools should be able to receive tax credits or vouchers, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a crowd of about 100 at EdVenture this morning.

Romney, a businessman and former governor of Massachusetts, said allowing parents to pick the best option for their children would keep American schools competitive.

"I believe in more school choice," Romney said. "I like parents having the ability to send their kids to schools that are public schools, or charter schools or schools that get support from vouchers."

Romney also wants to give public money to parents who choose to home school their children.

Creating competition for students -- and tuition -- would force schools to get better, Romney said.

Vouchers have been a controversial proposal in South Carolina in recent years. Advocates believe they will give another option to students stuck in underperforming and underfunded school districts, especially in rural parts of the state.

Opponents believe vouchers will siphon away tax dollars and the best and brightest students from public schools, and instead the state should focus on funding and building adequate facilities.

Though he would advocate for more charter schools and tax credits, Romney said he would leave it up to states to decide whether or not -- and how -- to allow those options.
In addition, Romney said he favored paying higher-performing teachers more money and maintaining No Child Left Behind federal education standards.

Comments

[GW]

Parents SHOULD be able to send their children to private schools at tax payer expense? But they won't. Ever. Parents have a choice of sending their children to public or private schools to be educated. Sending a child to a private school is a privilege. Sending a child to a public school is a right. As a tax payer I do not support money used to provide education for all pupils who attend public schools, be diverted to any support for private education. This idea of school vouchers is the conservative Republican dream, like posting abortion police at clinics, putting TV cameras in bedrooms, replacing the income tax with a national sales tax, giving the rich more tax cuts, and allowing private corporations to use our natural resources any way they see fit without government regulation. This proposal of Romney has been around for years and has been voted down and defeated all across the country. I can see how parents who opt to send their children to private schools may feel that they are paying twice, but it is a choice that they made. If such a thing comes to be then I support the idea that citizens who do not have children in school not have to pay any taxes to educate other people's children.

[CMC]

GW,

If public schooling is a right, it isn't much of one if the school is failing dismally. Why should taxpayers subsidize a system that won't reform, and we all know it won't as long as it is the only recipient of taxpayer money. The voucher system would force public school districts to shape up or lose out. I say it's worth a try. What we're currently doing has proven to be a failure, and it's taxpayers and kids who are paying for it.

[Ted Mauro]

Fix the public schools and help everyone!

[DemoTaker]

Destroying public education is not the way to go! It's being done in this state.

Thank God for Jim Rex because if not for him, we'd have no public education system - only black public schools and white private schools.

You can keep your vouchers, you dopes.

Public education needs funding, not disbanding.

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[DemoTaker]

Vouchers go down in crushing defeat
Vouchers' money man says Utahns 'don't care enough about their kids'
By Glen Warchol
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:11/07/2007 12:41:02 PM MST

Voters decisively rejected the will of the Utah Legislature and governor Tuesday, defeating what would have been the nation's most comprehensive education voucher program in a referendum blowout.
"Tonight, with the eyes of the nation upon us, Utah has rejected this flawed voucher law," said Kim Campbell, president of the Utah Education Association. "We believe this sends a clear message. It sends a message that Utahns believe in, and support, public schools."
More than 60 percent of voters were rejecting vouchers, with about 95 percent of the precincts reporting, according to unofficial results. The referendum failed in every county, including the conservative bastion of Utah County.
Voucher supporter Overstock.com chief executive Patrick Byrne - who bankrolled the voucher effort - called the referendum a "statewide IQ test" that Utahns failed.
"They don't care enough about their kids. They care an awful lot about this system, this bureaucracy, but they don't care enough about their kids to think outside the box," Byrne said.
Doug Holmes, a key voucher advocate and contributor, said, "We started hugely in the hole and it's always been the case. The unions have done this in four different states, where they take the strategy of confusion to the people."
But Holmes said, "You don't run away from something because the odds are stacked against you."
Utah's voucher program, supported by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and Republican legislative leaders, attracted national attention because it would have provided tax-funded subsidies to any student, rich or poor, to enroll in a private school.
The law passed by a single vote in the Legislature, but voucher opponents, led by the Utah Education Association teachers' union, gathered 124,000 signatures to force it into a voter referendum.
The resulting public opinion campaign included thousands of TV and radio spots and burned through $8.5 million for a program the state estimated would cost $5.5 million in its first year.
The tidal wave of cash changed few minds, however. As far back as January - before the Legislature approved the voucher program - a Tribune poll showed voters opposing vouchers 57 percent to 33 percent.
Had it passed, the plan would have offered tax-supported subsidies of $500 to $3,000 - depending on family income - for each newly enrolled private school student. It would have been the country's broadest voucher program because it would have had no income ceiling - all Utah students would be eligible as the program phased in over 13 years. By the end of the phase in, the program was projected to cost taxpayers $430 million.
Most of the opposition's $4.4 million came from the National Education Association and state teachers' unions from Florida to Alaska. Voucher supporters countered with more than $4 million, nearly three-quarters of that from Byrne and his family. Byrne says vouchers are the only way America's "broken" public education system can stay competitive with other industrialized nations.
"What's got to happen and it might take Utah five to 10 years to understand," Byrne said, "they are at the bottom of the heap [educationally] and the heap is at the bottom of the international heap."
He shrugged off the fortune he poured into the referendum, saying he leads a fairly modest life as far as CEOs go. "The fortune that I'm making is all going toward educating lower income and especially African-American and Hispanic kids," Byrne said. "So this is not a terribly big deal to me."
Supporters argued the program would help Utah absorb a tide of 150,000 children expected over the next 10 years by diverting students into private academies.
The clash quickly became superheated, with voucher opponents warning the program would bleed needed money from the public system, which already ranks last in the nation for per pupil spending and teacher pay. In television and radio spots, they hammered home a message that the program had "too many loopholes and unknowns."
Supporters fired back, connecting their opposition to liberal icons such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy and out-of-state unions. Meanwhile, other media thrusts implied that good Mormons should support vouchers.
Both sides, at one point, embraced the governor, who Byrne blasted Tuesday for his lukewarm backing.
"When he asked for my support [for governor] he told me he is going to be the voucher governor. Not only was it his No. 1 priority, it was what he was going to be all about," Byrne said. "He did, I think, a very tepid job, and then when the polls came out on the referendum, he was pretty much missing in action."
Byrne said the referendum defeat may have killed vouchers in Utah, but "There are other freedom oriented groups in other states - African-Americans in South Carolina are interested in it."

[Spenser]

School vouchers are thinly veiled plans by religious institutions to get Federal & State tax dollars funnelled into private, tax exempt religious schools. The churches all want separation of church and state unless it comes to taxes....they want to keep the exemptions when it comes to paying taxes, but expect to get every tax dollar that a public entity would get.

Want to end the school voucher debate? Just ammend the Constitution to allow the taxation of religious entities.

[christie]

as a homeschool mom, i shouldnt have to pay for the garbage thats called "public school education". I totally agree with Romney.

[christie]

in response to demo taker...ALL schools have some sort of "religion", especially public schools, they expect tax payers to pay for their religion of humanism, which is rooted in evolution. It takes a whole lot more faith to believe that you came from nothing, then to believe the FACT of science that, we have a designer...ie GOD

[Spenser]

ie. God? You mean there is more than one designer? SWEET!! I'll take the one that makes the real world and you can keep the one for make-believe.

[carol]

Why not have vouchers? As a parent if I do not agree with how and what my child is being taught I should have that option and not to have all of my tax dollars going to public schools. We started in the public schools and when the school failed to notify us of problems we wondered what else they were hiding. If a private school can educate my child for 8000 a year, why can't the public schools? They don't want to change they just want more money.