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Comment by um_ya | Hacker News Reader

I personally like the school voucher idea Trump was proposing during his campaign... Each student is given a voucher, as good as cash, and schools compete for students, leaving the decision to families on which school to go to. This also brings students that live in poor neighborhoods the opportunity to travel to a better school perhaps outside their district. Schools might even buy new buses and pick up students further away if it means getting their voucher money.

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And that leaves poor, sometimes young kids taking long bus rides to other parts of town. The more affluent districts are already well funded enough. Those parents are going to do everything they can to keep “them” from thier schools.

I would rather take a bus a half hour to school rather than get stuck in a poor school district with bad teachers and students in similar conditions. It would be nice to have the option to take your kid out of that environment.

You’re not six years old and catching a bus from the side of my metro area - where the school system lost accredition to the side where the median income is over $100K - takes over an hour and a half in traffic. Both districts are considered in the same MSA (metropolitan statistical area).

If there's demand for something close by, then the market will provide it. The key point is, parents can make a decision with vouchers, rather than being forced to go to a particular school based on your district.

How much of the reason behind a failing school district is because of the the school and how much of it is because of the environment, home life, etc?

If another school came in the same environment with the same socio-economic issues would the outcome be that much different?

The whole charter movement at least in the south is an attempt to funnel public money into private either for profit schools or “faith based education”.

Man, if you could cash that voucher in for other educational materials, that would be an idea. What a library I could have had... Even in the broke, rural, low-cost-of-living area I came out of, the last school budget works out to more than $14k/year per student, mostly funded by local taxes.

It would be competitive too, and certain schools could target special needs children or problem children. Online schools could be possible too. I could see it being VERY economical.

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