WashPost's Strauss, Who Sends Her Kids to Private Schools, Rails Against Romney's Support for Vouchers
The Washington Post's Valerie Strauss -- who sends her daughters to private schools -- lashed out recently in her The Answer Sheet blog against Mitt Romney's ideas for education reform, in which school vouchers are a central piece.
Romney's ideas are predicated on "an ideology that demonizes unions." Strauss complained in her May 24 post -- which was also printed in the May 28 Washington Post on page B2 -- concluding that "if Romney gets a chance to run education policy according to his new plan, [you can] expect things to get worse."
When they were younger, Strauss's daughters attended Georgetown Day School, which costs at least $30,000 in tuition per year.
Yet when it comes to having school vouchers that could empower parents to defray some of the cost of the private or parochial schooling, Strauss believes Romney's voucher plans would be wasted on poor parents, who clearly can't be bothered with having to shop around for the best school for their children:
In a Romney-run education world, the parents of poor and special education students would choose a school — public or private, based on standardized test scores and other data — and then a specific amount of public money would follow the child to the school.
It’s a voucher system that would, among other things, require families of the neediest children to constantly shop around for schools in an unstable market and would likely exacerbate the very thing — a chronic achievement gap — all of this is supposedly intended to fix. Obama opposes vouchers.
Strauss is also dismissive of Romney's skepticism of teacher certification:
Romney opposes what he calls “unnecessary” teacher certification requirements, leaving the teaching door open to anybody who, for example, thinks they can teach math because they got good grades in the subject.
At press time, Georgetown Day School (GDS) has not returned my email inquiry as to their policy regarding hiring teachers who lack public-school certification. That said, a GDS spokeswoman on the phone yesterday did tell me that a number of their teachers have come from other professions, suggesting that teacher certification is lower on their priority list than say hiring successful individuals with a knowledge of and passion for the subjects they teach.
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Comments
The Left's apoplectic reaction to vouchers is 2-fold
Submitted by Galvanic on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 11:19am.
1. They are protecting the bad teachers' jobs. If average people are given real school choice, they will abandon the bad schools, and scrutiny of tenured bad teachers will follow.
2. Allowing poor kids with vouchers to attend the schools where wealthy white liberals send their kids means is not desired by the Leftist elite. It's not so much mixing with other races that the white libs fear; it's mixing with poor kids.
Its going to get worse? I
Submitted by MrSnuggles on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 11:26am.
Its going to get worse? I think it can only get better, that's what the leftists are truly afraid of.
And they dare refer to Mitt Romney as "elitist."
Submitted by The_Barrel_Guy on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 11:33am.
There really are not sufficient printable adjectives in our language to describe just how contemptible is this hypocrite...
Hyperventilating Hypocrites
Submitted by Pilgrim1949 on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 11:35am.
Sometimes these (il)logical (il)Liberal twits just make it tooooooo easy to lampoon and skewer their histrionic hyperbole and totally hypocritical double standards in the "OK for me but not for thee" department.
Thanks to Ms. Strauss for providing yet another very public window in the the TRUE (bleeding?) Liberal heart.
Keep up the front-and-center follies, Libs. November is fast approaching!!!
"Ye canne change the laws of physics....." but some politicians believe that with the right legislation you can pretend they don't really apply to your own pet projects...
It's pure hypocrisy
Submitted by c5then on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 11:37am.
The wealthy liberal elite do NOT what the poor unwashed masses to have the same choices that they themselves enjoy. They would rather pontificate and patronize and attempt to fix a broken system from the outside by throwing taxpayer money at it.
IMO, the problem with the public schools is that they don't teach the basics anymore at the elementary level but are more interested in socially engineering the children to a more liberal society. Kids in most major metropolitan areas, by the time they are going into middle school, don't know their multiplication tables or the difference between an adjective or an adverb, but they do know that bullying is bad (duh), that it's OK for Suzy to have two Mommies and are almost experts on the Holocaust.
Also my experience has shown me that knowledge of a subject is only 50% (or less) of the equation. The ability to impart that knowledge is just as important. Some people just can not teach. Teacher certifications are far less important than results.
Madison and Jefferson and Franklin built a Republic - Roberts killed it!
Full disclosure.
Submitted by Newsbubba on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 11:42am.
I grew up going to public schools when they actually educated you. I would not let my kids near a public school when they came along because it was obvious that they had gone to hell in a hand basket.
They attended private school all their educational lives, and loved it. They also got an education, and a funny thing happened on the way to the polls. They all became quite conservative.
This is what liberals fear more than anything. If poor kids got a chance at a real education instead of an indoctrination they would most likely vote more conservative and less liberal.
This private school went out into the community and looked for promising minority and poor kids who had potential, and after testing them, offered free rides to these kids beginning in first grade. Those kids, almost without exception, stayed all 12 years and went on to college, and a great life.
The same would happen with vouchers. The parents of promising kids, if they actually give a Shiite, would do the work necessary to get their kids into good schools, and to keep them there.
Wait!...
Submitted by BBallleaper on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 12:01pm.
She has kids???????? Turkey baster?? No way a man was involved here. Yuck!
She is just being prudent.
Submitted by JLin on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 12:13pm.
Although she sends her own kids to private school, the proletariat must be succored directly by the State so as to maintain control of them. Vouchers might be used to buy educations which are not conducive to the advancement of "progressive" politics.
No comments permitted on her
Submitted by Pinetree3 on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 12:51pm.
No comments permitted on her blog. Figures. That way no one can ask her why she sends her kids to private schools. Typical liberal hypocrite.
Liberals don't want any
Submitted by Free Stinker on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 1:03pm.
Liberals don't want any Conservatives sneaking in to post facts or logic on their blogs.
/// Sarah Palin Fan since July 11, 2007 /// خال
Libs vs schools
Submitted by mmilesll on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 2:04pm.
This is so typical of libs, make everybody else suffer with crappy schools, but don't dare make me send my kid to a crappy school. The libs were the ones who made the public schools such crap anyway.
Strauss's private school
Submitted by dubuqueman on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 2:50pm.
I doubt they require certification or even a degree in education. No it does not mean anyone can teach math because they got a good grade; it does mean that schools are confined to hiring only people with education degrees. Her ideal does mean that you could have a PhD from MIT and teaching experience and you cannot teach in public school.
A cursory review of Georgetown Day School's 'media gallery'
Submitted by SickofLibs on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 3:12pm.
reveals that 95% of the student body is white.
Therefore in my professional opinion, Valerie Strauss also be rayciss.
Liberal policy of GFMBNFT
Submitted by CO2Maker on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 4:05pm.
Good for me but not for thee.
How often do they do that?
And the other argument against vouchers (which Rev. Hymietown Jackson made in Washington many years ago) is that, because it won't save all the students in bad schools, it would be unfair for some students to be left behind. Their solution: no vouchers for anyone. That's like saying that because there were too many passengers to fit into the lifeboats on the Titanic, the crew said no one could use the lifeboats.
I can just
Submitted by nolefan2 on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 5:10pm.
picture Ms. Strauss sniffing haughtily as she tosses a few dollars to the riff raff she encounters on her way to work. She personifies the typical liberal who "cares" for the poorer people in society, as long as they don't taint her own personal space and heaven forbid her elite spawn should actually have to sit next to them in class. Her middle name should be Hypocrite.
What's the very worst that can happen..
Submitted by Indie Dude on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 7:53pm.
What are they really afraid of? If Ultra-liberals are so concerned with, "it's about the Children" If Vouchers work, then every kid and their parents would benefit. If it doesn't, then we "gave it a fair and honest shot." But that's not a Liberal reality! It is all about the money! Your Money! In the teachers and their Union bosses' pockets, it's about suppression of your KIDS! Just Imagine, the freedom to choose, freedom to be a free thinker, freedom to put your hard earned money towards your kid's best interest, and future. If Libs can over-come their ideology, this would be a start of a great country (that they always envisioned).