He is promoting vouchers.

The argument is about vouchers. The article is "Why I'm against vouchers". Vouchers are another big direct government payment plan inherently tied to and requiring controls. Ayn Rand addressed the problem and the proper solution long ago in Voice of Reason already discussed in this thread https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

Milton Friedman made one of his big mistakes in advocating vouchers, just like his "negative income tax" for income subsidies and other attempts to ignore philosophical principles. Both Friedman and Hayek were welfare statists trying to make a welfare work in an artificial "market".

1860 to 1880 as I recall, to the last hold-out in Massachusetts. I think John Gatto referred to this in Dumbing Us Down. And then, I spent a lot of time among teachers trying to figure a new way apart from anything but local funding for education.
The monster can be defeated. I'm listening to the music / rage of Five Finger Death Punch, Disturbed, Tool, Korn, raging at the state of affairs. This is the crowd to offer solution, withdrawal from conspicuous consumption, corporatism and profiteering and immerse in community where all age groups interact. Above I mentioned an outlet through theater. I've an extensive background in Tech theater and manufacturing......and....I just located a property that would serve as community center, picnic / playground and manufacturing base for all this.
I can't wait to get out of Minneapolis, despite some of the really neat things that are happening in education and youngsters finding a format to express themselves......this isn't "home".

Your argument isn't necessarily tied to vouchers - vouchers are peripheral to your actual concern: governmental control of the curriculum. I agree with your underlying concern about governmental controls. I simply point out that you associate vouchers as inseparably connected when I don't believe that is the case. I read the article and could find nothing that argues A -> B. There was only A & B. It is a false conflation/correlation.

Samuel Blumenfeld wrote an excellent book on the early history of American compulsory, state controlled education, Is Public Education Necessary?, Devin-Adair 1981. It is a lesson in the role of ideas in public policy and how, on the other side, ideas drove the movement for contemporary public school control. It started as an ideological religious battle by New England Unitarians afraid of Catholic immigrants influencing education.

Government controls would no longer be limited to that once government is paying for it.

The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. There are a lot of ways to go wrong besides following DiBlasio. If you adopt whatever is done by someone you don't like as a standard for what not to do you are just as dependent on him as if you were to follow him. Independence requires thinking for yourself for what is right regardless of who else does or does not do it.

No, we are against government "vouchers" as another expanding government-paid subsidy program that inherently includes more controls over all aspects of schools, not even limited to the curriculum. Tax credits means the taxpayer uses his own money tax free if he has it and chooses to spend it that way.

Vouchers that "go through the parents" are not tax credits. If the government gives people money it is responsible for how it is spent, especially for something as controversial as competing educational philosophies and methods. Tax credits are for those who choose to use their own money, with limited standards on how it may be used tax free.

Ayn Rand argued for tax credits for private education as a means towards breaking up the government school monopoly in her 1972 article "Tax-Credits for Education", reprinted in her anthology Voice of Reason. That article was in response to a Nixon proposal to impose a national sales tax to expand the public school system and government funding at all levels of education, but she first advocated education tax credits in her Los Angeles Times column in 1962.

Tax credits allow taxpayers to pay themselves for their own or others' education tax free. They are not vouchers, which are government payments.

Ayn Rand opposed the expansion of government subsidies for education, including vouchers. Direct government funding requires government controls since the government must be responsible for what it is paying for.

As long as taxation is still recognized as taking money that belongs to the taxpayers -- in contrast to the increasingly promoted progressive notion that tax cuts are an "expense" to the government -- tax credits are less susceptible to accompanying complete control and they limit the inevitable growth in government spending for new government programs.

Tax credits also avoid the inherent contradiction of government voucher payments to religious schools: Public funds to support religious schools are and should be unconstitutional, yet children of religious parents should not be denied what is available to the non-religious.

Tax credits are not a permanent solution, but are a common sense first step towards opening up school choice on a free market. They are opposed by the teachers' unions and statists of all kinds, whose monopoly situation is far more entrenched now than when Ayn Rand was writing. The unions are more powerful, the scope, amount and intensity of government funding and controls are much greater, and government is far more entrenched into funding and controlling what is left of "private" education.

At this point almost anything that increases school choice would probably help, but we must always advocate and maintain proper principles in reform measures on the way to private choice. Adopting statist collectivist premises inherent in plans like vouchers only further entrenches the problem.

Hillsdale was founded in the nineteenth century as a stridently religious school, and still is. Another one that says it takes no Federal funds is Ozarks, also a religious school. That these schools do not accept Federal money and that they reject racism and affirmative action as the racism it is are good but that is not a defense of what they teach and promote, and they should not be endorsed by implication as a source of a proper education.

Unfortunately, she doesn't have her thinking and premises straight in her mind, so she's conflicted.

Did you read the article? I give my reasons there.

Yes, now I understand a valid reason to be against vouchers. Tax credits are a better idea. But we have to do something soon!

I agree! I'm very glad the book was even mentioned, and I hope my peers read it in the future. I do like my teacher and we have good conversations. She seems a bit conflicted with politics. Often times she exclaims, "Why can't everyone just be nice!" She's also very hesitant to stray from leftist ideology. In response to Bill C-16 or the SAT adversity score, she indicates that she agrees with more conservative stances on the topic, but then has almost a battle with herself. I don't look down on her at all- if anything I look up to her. She has so much more life experience than I do and a lot more knowledge on well- everything. It's just interesting to see her moral dilemmas.

The standards you mentioned (hours of instruction, health code, etc.) are what would apply to a school in Illinois accepting vouchers if my idea were implemented.

Government control of curriculum = A. Vouchers = B. A != B.

Vouchers are not dependent on government control of curriculum. They could exist completely independent if curriculum was independent. I'm not seeing where you are equating A and B or deriving the necessity of A -> B. So my question is given all that, why do you think they are NOT different?

How is that "entirely" different?

Thanks and your way sounds wonderful, much like Montessori. FYI, Improv Comedy classes are integral to our Leap Year program!

That varies state by state. Illinois has no educational standards for private schools, just hours of instruction, health code, fire code, be non discriminatory.
But that's a good idea for the states that do have educational regulations for private schools.

Exactly! You know the story? For those who don't: Hillsdale was an abolitionist school from the start. Then the Feds tried to make them do affirmative action and they thought that was discriminatory, so they opted out of the govt loans, etc.

Yes, and why have public schools at all? There are better alternatives to helping everyone get an education.

Yes, that's why I argue for tax credits.

Thank you. And you're so right!

My article offers an alternative to vouchers.