Can't Vouch for Vouchers

Steve Gilliard hits it on the head when describing the failings of school vouchers:

"The voucher school is reflective of America's wider contempt for expertise. Americans have a native belief that any guy, with common sense, can do any job. Which is why we have barely educated parents home schooling their kids, using right-wing Christian books (often the only ones available). You just had a mother, who home schooled her kids, sent to the loonie bin after she brained two of them. The fact that dealing with small kids all day takes four years of education and extra training eludes most people. It's now understood that the earlier the kids are exposed to education, the more they learn and can retain. They don't need to be stuck at home becoming little anti-social freaks. School is only partly about education. It's also about socialization. You can be a genius, but if you can't hack school, life is gonna be that much harder. Voucher schools were created by conservatives to destroy public education. Instead of increasing the flexibility of schools and allowing teachers to teach and principals to have real control of their school, this was a way to siphon money off and usher in a system of private schools where rich, white kids going to private schools would eventually get government money, and the rump public schools would have to take the loser kids, the cripples, the idiots and violent abused kids. Now, the only kids affected by these scam voucher schools, and they showed one in Brooklyn in a storefront, are poor, black and desperate. Yet, they're literally thrown to the wolves without any educational support. Schools of education exist for a reason. And even if some teachers and some schools suck, ripping them apart and handing out the money to any hustler who talks a good game is an especially cruel hoax. Where did the idea that voucher schools needed to be exempt from the same rules that public schools come from? The right, blathering about market forces. Yet, they wouldn't let their precious prep schools be run without accountability. That's only suitable for poor kids."