Dean speech
 

But if there were any real correlation between per student funding and the costs thereof, it shouldn't make a large difference. If it costs $100 dollars to educate 10 students (i.e., $10/student), and 1 student opts out, the school still gets $90 ($10/student).

I realize that this is extremely oversimplified and may still result in a funding deficit, but given the enormous fluff in per student spending, my bet is that there is plenty of room to spare.

Dean speech
 

I would imagine that there are fixed as well as variable costs involved.

Dean speech
 

That's taken care of, SS, by the "enormous fluff."

Dean speech
 

I didn't realize it was a term of art. Apologies.

Dean speech
 

Exactly. Exhibit A: It costs parochial schools roughly half as much to educate students.

Dean speech
 

Not hard to do when their teachers have taken vows of poverty.

Dean speech
 

teachers make a little less, but the real savings are in administrators, and that they don't HAVE to take anyone. That is, there are no special ed classes.

Dean speech
 

Half of what? As non-parochial private schools? Okay, but so what? As public schools? Not according to the data I've seen (which is admittedly at least 10 years out of date since the last time I thought about this).

Dean speech
 

yes, public schools.

Dean speech
 

Bingo. Plus transportation expenses -- even in the Enlightened North, where there is no court-ordered busing, public schools will give your kid a ride on the Big Yellow Bus of Joy. For most non-public schools, there ain't no such option. For example, everyone had to walk, bike, or get a ride to the Catholic elementary school I attended (Our Lady of Perpetual Motion) as a young Not Bobby. We had bus envy.

Oh, and thanks to Gatti for answering Club on my behalf. My point, as he noted, was that more money may not be a fix, but I kinda doubt that less money will work.

gay marriage- unintented consequences besides Bush's re-election.
 

http://www.boston.com/business/artic...nefits?pg=full

Dean speech
 

I believe that private schools are usually more costly and charter schools slightly more costly than public schools, but that parochial schools are much, much less costly, like 1/2 to 1/3 of the average public school cost per student. I'll hunt around half-heartedly for some cite, but that's my recollection of the data I've seen in the last few years. And it's not entirely surprising - free nuns, after all.

Dean speech
 

Are we including costs of defense of lawsuits?

gay marriage- unintented consequences besides Bush's re-election.
 

I agree it's unintended, but I do think it's fair. The only justification for providing same-sex-partner benefits, but not non-spouse-opposite-sex-partner benefits, was that gay couples can't marry. It was an attempt by the private sector to in some way mitigate a social wrong to which the legislatures/courts hadn't yet caught up.

If MA passes that constitutional amendment, I hope they will reinstitute them.

Question - would the MA cons. amend. invalidate gay marriages legalized during this window, or just prevent any future ones?

Dean speech
 

So I found this cite for the proposition:

• Private schools also achieve these results with fewer resources. According to the Department of Education, the average cost nationwide of all private K-8 private and parochial school tuition is $2,300, almost a third the average public school cost of $6,800.

http://www.pioneerinstitute.org/rese...constamend.cfm

Of course, this essay doesn't give a cite for the data, and follows with this completely absurd statement, so I'm still taking it with a grain of salt:

• America has no shortage of gifted teachers or eager students.

And I'd note that the statistic compares apples to oranges. It's comparing tuition on one hand against cost of education on the other.

If significant numbers start moving to private schools, those tuition costs are going to go up, because despite assertions to the contrary, there is a shortage of gifted teachers in America, and private schools will have to compete more for that talent. And their endowments will be stretched more to cover more students.

Dean speech
 

Is the "cost" of parochial school the tuition cost, or the actual cost? I think that parochial schools frequently get quite a bit of financial help, and probably also administration and teaching help, from the churches with which they are associated. And, I'm pretty sure that to the extent the teachers are nuns or what have you, and they live in church housing, they don't have imputed income so you don't have to pay them enough to cover the costs of the housing and the taxes on the amounts that they pay for housing/food.

It's just not apples/oranges.

On second thought, I am not up for this conversation either. Club, go ahead, say whatever uninformed, un-thought-through crap you want, and then as a bonus you can take the silence of balt and me as assent.

You'll be deluded and wrong, but probably happier.

Dean speech
 

Since I can't seem to drag myself out of this, I'm going to expand a bit.

I think my view on this debate is sharply shaped by my personal experience: as bad as the public schools I attended may have been, the private schools in the area, all parochial (but none of them Catholic) were much, much worse. Like can't do math at all worse. Like can only read at all so that one can read the Bible worse. Like schools that choose to respond to the evolution debate by simply omitting biology, chemistry and physics from the curriculum, replacing the time public schools waste on those classes with bible study.

For every voucher that would be used to send a kid to a better, happens-to-be-affliated-with-a-church school, at least one would be used to send a kid to a worse, doesn't-just-happen-to-be-affliated-with-a church-but rather that's the reason it's worse school.

That's what I hear when I hear "vouchers." I hear I'm paying for nutcases to send their kids to nutcase schools.

Dean speech
 

The people I know who went to catholic schools are pretty well-educated, like "got into Michigan and I didn't" educated. You raise an interesting point re. how they teach biology/evolution, I just don't know what they do. I do believe that HS sciences are so much wasted time. Sciences are generally a college subject.

The main benefit to sending kids to Catholic schools comes from the principal being able to hit them and expel them. My kids are in public schools and no one is ever hit. Instead loads of kids are found in need of meds. If I had to choose, I'd rather my kid gets spanked to settle down instead of drugged.

Dean speech
 

I want to be clear: I'm not slamming Catholic schools. Quite the opposite. I've got a lot of respect for the Catholic system of schools, especially as run by the Jesuits. I just don't think those schools are going to be the primary beneficiaries of voucher programs.

I'm talking about the Podunk Christian Academies. These places are good in the "got into Oral Roberts University and I didn't" kind of way.

Dean speech
 

I just prefer to ignore you.

Dean speech
 

SS may not post here much, but I know he still reads most of the posts. There is just no reason to get personal like this.

Dean speech
 

So what I think you are saying is that both choices suck, but you are not in favor of moving funds from one to the other?

I don't agree with you at all, and my view is based both on personal experience and the volumes of data out there. But that's probably not good enough for Fringey, because public school = good; vouchers = bad.

Dean speech
 

Sigh. Why are you attacking me when I said, go ahead and delude yourself? There are few independent studies, and of those how many are actually comparing apples to apples?

But you are a scum-sucking assjack who pegs his grandpa on a regular basis, so that's probably not good enough for you.*

*gratuitous personal attack because I'm overtired.

Dean speech
 

Catholics don't take the Old Testament literally, so there is no problem with Catholic schools teaching evolution, and carbon dating, and stuff. I know, because I learned all about the monkey to man thing in sixth grade biology at Extreme Unction Middle School.

Yep, once we burned Gallileo at the stake*, we got that anti-science stuff out of our system.

*Yes, I know that he wasn't actually burned at the stake, but it works better this way.

Dean speech
 

I've seen both. I've seen entire communities deluded into thinking Podunk Christian Academy is some miracle of education and discipline for wayward teens, when in fact it is a hotbed of abusive freakazoids producing illiterates. I've also seen parochial schools sneered at for producing dim, obedient papists when they actually produce students who learned stuff like history, as in what events actually happened (as opposed to the PC revisionist BS I learned at my, unarguably, excellent public school). I agree that a some parents would use vouchers to move their kids into strange, inadequate schools for bizarre reasons. But I still believe that the main beneficiaries of vouchers are poor families stuck in completely fucked school districts.

In any event, I don't think anyone can escape their own school experiences in thinking about the debate, rendering every view annecdotal and relatively worthless. My public schools were superb. The products of a lot of of the supposedly elite private schools on the east coast that I met in my (supposedly) elite east coast university were about on a par with our remedial-track kids. Where I grew up, private school (parochial, military or otherwise) was for the backwards kids with social problems, not the smart, able, well adjusted ones.

However, the next school district over was a complete basket case, despite having about the same per-head funding (though they had a more economically and socially mixed population). In fact, that district was so bad that it was studied by some friends in city planning as the classic example of how to totally fuck up a school system (their conclusion: let the teachers run it; salary demands took precedence over books & plant, seniority trumped ability, social goals trumped educational goals). And the poorer kids livng in that district were absolutely trapped there, and absolutely fucked. Even if only the "cherries" of the bunch could have escaped, however, be it to my district, private school, or into the arms of the Jesus freaks, I think it would have been supremely worthwhile.

IMHO, of course, which is probably worth a pitcher of warm spit.

Dean speech
 

Comparing cost of education to tuition is ridiculous.

I'm pretty sure that the bricks and mortar fund for my Catholic elementary/middle school came out of the general bricks and mortar fund for the church it was associated with. There are a lot of people who really do give 10 percent of their income to their church. Additionally, the annual bazzar made a shit-load of money.

My private high school fundraises better than any of the colleges or universities that I've attended. They are a quarter of the way to their $2M goal for the annual fund (9% of the total budget). Additionally, according to the annual report, the endowment per student is at $36,000, which is much, much higher than tuition.

ETA: And the catholics will deeply discount tuition and give group rates, subsidizing through the general church fund. Their interest is getting the kids in while they're young enough to brainwash, and they realize that their own teachings lead to bigger families. They don't want high tuition costs to be to blame for someone using birth control.

Dean speech
 

I thought of another, similar way this is ridiculous on my way to grab some coffee.

The tuition for my private university alma matter is lower per student per year than the flagship state school spends per year to educate the students who attend. Shouldn't the state just shut down the state school and start paying subsidies to send kids to the private school?

Oh yeah, they can't get in. I say this not in an elitest way, but rather in a the private school has an enrollment of aproximately 1/20 the state school. and thanks to its endowment, it spends even more than the state school per student, above and beyond the tuition, an advatage that's gone when the enrollment suddenly goes up by a factor of 20.

Dean speech
 

Now I'm confused. You got into Harvard but not Michigan? In-state penalty?

Dean speech
 

Hank's a closet Buckeye fan. Automatic GO BLUE! reject.

aV

Note (and vote in) the new poll.

Rumsfeld's response to the troops was bad enough without this, but oh. My. God.

• Armor Holdings Inc., the sole supplier of protective plates for the Humvee military vehicles used in Iraq, said it could increase output by as much as 22 percent per month with no investment and is awaiting an order from the Army.
  
  U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday the Army was working as fast as it can and supply is dictated by “a matter of physics, not a matter of money.'’
  
  Jacksonville, Florida-based Armor Holdings last month told the Army it could add armor to as many as 550 of the trucks a month, up from 450 vehicles now, Robert Mecredy, president of the company’s aerospace and defense group said in a telephone interview today.
  
  “We’re prepared to build 50 to 100 vehicles more per month,'’ Mecredy said in the interview. “I’ve told the customer that and I stand ready to do that.'’

Bloomberg

You don't understand, Ty. You can have all the armor in the world and a tank can still get blown up.

I thought they made hot dogs.

Compare (from the Corner):

fat kids, skinny kids -- even kids with chicken pox
 

That's Armour with a U. Now they are a subsidiary of ConAgra. http://www.conagrafoods.com/brands/armour.jsp

All is calm here; don't believe what the media tells you
 

Ah, yes -- the "email from Fallujah" response.

What does military aircraft have to do with armor for HVs?

Not that I have anything against anyone buying more military aircraft.

fat kids, skinny kids -- even kids with chicken pox
 

What colour will they paint the armor?

fat kids, skinny kids -- even kids with chicken pox
 

Jesus fuckign christ, you fuckign moron, it's going to Iraq, so I'M GUESSING it will be painted desert camo.

God. The sheer idiocy.

(It's Friday somewhere.)

death and taxes
 

In comments today, Bush ruled out raising payroll taxes to pay for Social Security reform. "We will not raise payroll taxes to solve this problem." (Income taxes are presumably off the table as well.) "White House aides said Bush also remained committed to making no changes in benefits for those at or near retirement."

So the plan is to borrow a lot.

A question for the conservatives among us: Is there some principled reason why it's OK to borrow government money that taxpayers in the future are going to have to pay taxes to repay (with interest) but it's not OK to collect taxes now to pay for the same thing?