[quote=patientrenter]Well, I am probably in jpnpb’s camp on this one. I’d rather pay for other people’s kids to be well educated than to have them grow up with their knuckles scraping the ground.

But:

1. Anyone who has a middle class income or more should pay for their own kids, in full, 100%. Grade the % down as the parents get poorer.

2. There should be a strict limit on all public school spending on items other than teachers’ pay. Get rid of most of the school district employees, and counselors, and other overhead. If you don’t like that, then pay your own d*^& money to send your kids to a school with all the overhead.

3. Teachers should generally get more pay, and be subject to tough student-based performance standards that eliminate 5% or so of all teachers from the profession per year for lack of suitability/capability. In other words, make teaching a higher status/pay profession than it is, with performance requirements to match.

4. Add the forces of real competition to teaching, allowing schools not run by the local govt to set up shop if they can produce better results for the same cost or less.

I know, none of this will happen, but I feel better now.[/quote]

I don’t mind paying for public education for other’s children provided they are a productive member of society.

Someone’s going to have to pay for the huge deficits we’re racking up, not to mention someone’s going to have to support the underfunded Medicare and Social Security system…

Of course, I wouldn’t mind if they do away with those and let individuals self-direct, but that appears to meet resistance from the baby boomers… which currently outnumber generation X’s and for generation Y’s (which don’t yet really care yet…for now….)

And some of the parents do end up shelling more money to public schools (at least in some of the communities). For example, looks like Del Mar residents did quite a bit of fund raising to keep all the ESC programs that the district was going to cancel due to reduced state funding.

Unfortunately, one of the problems with the education system here imho is that unfortunately you can put a price on education…Better schools cost more money…It’s opposite in several countries overseas when the best public schools are near low cost or no low cost…you just have to get in through your own merits/achievements regardless of financial background. The moment the government starts making quality of education even more polarized toward folks who can pay more, the bigger the gap will be between rich(-er) family’s kids versus poorer families….If government provides average education to everyone, and if you want marginally higher quality, you pay more….Brilliant kids from poor(-er) families won’t have a chance. Imho, that’s pretty backwards. Pretty soon, you’re elite schools is filled with trust funded babies…kinda like how Bush got into Yale….only much much worse…