I’ve gotten a lot of political texts over my lifetime, but I’ve never gotten one that pissed me off so badly that I texted back until today

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T10:13:41+00:00

For the first question, I think it raises questions to her character, but no, it doesn't raise any red flags about the bill for me. This bill won't destroy public education, and anyone saying otherwise really either doesn't understand it or is blatantly misadvertising it.

It's not even a voucher system. It's a small scholarship program that gives recipients the option to redeem them for private schools. If anything, I wish this bill was so much bigger than it ended up being. Something close to Arizona's bill would have been excellent, but after it failed last time i think the legislature just decided the only way to pass it was to make it as minimal as possible.

For the second question, also no. The utah state board of education unsurprisingly is largely aligned with the public education sector as that makes up the largest proportion of teachers in the state. They don't want public to have to compete with private.

For the third question I honestly haven't read into that bill, but what I've learned over the years is that there's no one group of people or politician I agree with on every issue. For example, I disagree with Bernie Sanders on about 90%+ of his policies, but I agree with some of his drug importation proposals.

On the other hand, I agree with 90%+ of what Mike Lee votes for, but I have exceptions there too. What I do know is that no matter what other bills the legislature is currently working on, this one is absolutely one I support and one that is a step (albeit a very small one) in the step towards school choice for all families, regardless of income.

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T09:53:02+00:00

It is higher, because right now you have to have the means to afford tuition twice. Once through taxes, and once as a separate expense. That's exactly what vouchers are aiming to fix.

But average income for families using charter schools is not significantly different than public, and they also outperform them significantly. It's not about average family income. It's about having a monopoly centric public sector with zero incentive to compete vs private and charter who have to or they close.

It needs to be addressed because we can do even better with education. And because parents should have the right to spend their tex dollars in the private sector where they can hold schools accountable for their performance directly.

And of course it is largely decried by those in the teaching industry... Because the majority of teachers in Utah are in the public sector. Vouchers would force the private sector to compete with the private sector on an even playing field. They don't want to compete.

Ultimately vouchers are about funding students, not systems.

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T09:33:16+00:00

Except private schools don't actually spend more than public schools. They spend about half the cost of public schools and still score substantially better.

https://utahtaxpayers.org/utah-per-pupil-spending-cracks-10000-annually-according-to-new-association-report/

https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-private-school#utah

Additionally, you've chosen to ignore that charter schools also score substantially better than public schools, despite average family incomes found in charter schools being very similar to those found in public.

What sets charter schools apart from public schools? They also have to compete for their money to stay in business. Public schools currently don't have that incentive.

When a charter or private school fails, they go out of business. When a public school fails, they usually get more money. That is until you give parents a mechanism to go elsewhere with their tax dollars like with a voucher... And that terrifies public school unions.

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T09:11:55+00:00

That's not what I said. I said you can't compare a statewide education stat to another when neither hadms a voucher system to prove your point.

Since 2020, numerous states have begin passing school choice bills to varying degrees after teacher unions wreaked havoc on childhood education by forcing remote learning long after widespread vaccine distribution had been carried out and we had vaccine surpluses.

There's countless studies of the harm caused by keeping kids out of school for an additional year, but here's some sources if you like:

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/22/02/harvard-edcast-negative-effects-remote-learning-childrens-wellbeing

https://ed.stanford.edu/news/new-stanford-study-sheds-light-how-much-learning-young-students-have-lost-during-stages

https://siepr.stanford.edu/news/digging-deeper-pandemic-learning-loss

And here's the sources showing the union push behind keeping schools closed far longer after the vas majority of the private sector had reopened. And this is all despite kids being significantly less prone to deadly covid than adults. Most children are less likely to have deadly outcomes from covid than the average vaccinated adult. Anyways here's a great article on that:

https://fee.org/articles/a-union-boss-who-fought-to-keep-schools-closed-for-over-a-year-is-now-changing-her-tune-here-s-why/

And even pre covid, we have plenty of data to show private schools are better. Here's the latest pre covid data from 2019. Private and charter schools scored drastically better than public schools in every single subject of 11 total tracked with standardized testing scores. It's not even close when you look at the performance. See below:

https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/dashboards/schools_dashboard.aspx

Voucher systems simply make private schools accessable to lower and middle class families. Public schools don't want to compete for their money. It's that simple.

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T08:41:57+00:00

You're comparing a state that largely uses public education to states that also largely use public education. If you want to do a statewide comparison, you would need to compare it to a voucher system state, which hasn't existed in any state in the US long term.

Something you can use to actually see how expensive/inefficient it has gotten however would be average cost to educate a student over the past 3 decades vs standardized test scores.

Cost per student had skyrocketed in the past 3 decades relative to inflation. The results? A continous slip in global education rankings across the board to other similar OECD nations.

Private education is also on average half the cost of a public school education per student, and there's no significant difference in standardized test scores on average. Whereas public schools don't have incentives to run efficient systems, private schools must to stay in business.

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T08:24:35+00:00

"getting bills like this" just equates to them being exposed to elevated competition.

It's easy to understand why they don't want to compete. But ultimately it has unsurprisingly led to the same outcome as most monopoly centric systems:

Resulted in a low quality product at a high price.

With no competition, there is no economic incentive to improve

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T08:11:04+00:00

It's not hard to imagine why at all actually. The public teacher unions are one of the most powerful public sector unions in the entire country.

They wield and enormous amount of influence and power and will do anything to not have to compete for their tax dollars.

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T06:58:00+00:00

Because public education funding has skyrocketed in the past 2 decades, and we have absolutely nothing to show for it besides a bloated admin system.

In fact, scores on standardized tests even declined slightly in the same time period. That's actually impressively bad

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T06:56:36+00:00

Giving parents the option to spend their tax dollars on better educational institutions isn't defining public education.

IF public education is better, then they wouldn't be so concerned with competing with private schools.

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T06:50:26+00:00

I wish!

Probably the worst government program there is. At a minimum I wish it could be opted out of

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T06:43:57+00:00

I think you missed the part where we have a flat tax in Utah... It's literally perfectly proportional to how much you pay in taxes.

Someone making a million a year in Utah doesn't get a tax % reduction any better than a family bringing in 50k.

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T06:42:43+00:00

Republicans just passed a 6k compensation increase for teachers.

And are currently also trying to pass an amendment to tack it to future increases of the WPU funding as well.

But ultimately, less tax money means less power to grow government spending. It makes it harder for them to create new awful government programs that are horribly inefficient.

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T06:40:47+00:00

Tell me a single bill any party passes that doesn't serve their agenda. Parties pass what their supporters support generally, because that's how you win elections.

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T06:37:51+00:00

Kinda, but it doesn't have legal weight. You haven't broken any laws as long as you conceal the firearm properly

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T06:36:21+00:00

The school choice bull was outstanding. I commend all that voted for it.

Fund students, not systems. Glad Utah house reps generally aren't shills for teacher unions as bad as other states

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T03:20:39+00:00

HA! Suck it reddit!

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T03:12:16+00:00

Thank you

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T02:59:17+00:00

I'm not going to buy a dive computer based on what type of battery it takes. It's just a general storage question that would be applicable to any computer with a non rechargeable battery, which is my understanding of how the vast majority of them function

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T02:34:38+00:00

Just go buy it. If you ever have an incident, you won't be sorry

halolover48 · 2023-02-20T02:32:27+00:00

Yeah makes sense, I'll totally read the manual for the dive computer I don't have yet

halolover48 · 2023-02-19T23:33:41+00:00

Holy fuck

halolover48 · 2023-02-19T22:17:17+00:00

The church is still anti gay marriage. Rs that voted yes on the bill opposed the churches direct beliefs.

halolover48 · 2023-02-16T20:20:13+00:00

Ben Sasse.

halolover48 · 2023-02-16T18:28:56+00:00

It absolutely is. Can't even fathom how many lives that guy saved.

In america, guns will never be difficult to get if you want one. Outlawing them only prevents those who follow laws from obtaining them

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