School Vouchers

  This commentary from the San Antonio Express News, titled "The Debate Over School Choice," was published on February 22, 2013. In this article, two different people, Kent Grusendorf and Shelley Potter, discuss two different opinions on the issue of school vouchers. School vouchers, would, in short, allow parents to use the tax dollars they would have paid to a public school to pay for a private school tuition. While Kent Grusendorf was in favor of school vouchers, Shelley Potter was not. I will critique Ms. Potter's argument.
    Ms. Potter, being a school teacher addressing the general Texas population, is qualified to write such an article. She makes the vague statement that "...some want to serve the few at the expense of the many..." But she never explains this statement. Next she claims that, under vouchers, private schools would be choosing children instead of parents choosing private schools. This is, once again, an ambiguous statement which she fails to clarify. Ms. Potter's next argument is that tax payer dollars should not go to private institutions because private institutions do not have to reveal their financial records, and, therefore, could do whatever they want with the money. While this is a valid statement, it falls short as a valid argument. It is true that a private school could do what it wanted with the money it receives, but if it is not spending the money on enhancing education, the educational standard would drop, and people would be alerted as to what might be going on. People would not pay to send their children to a sub-standard school when there are better options. After this, Ms. Potter says that allowing children from the same neighborhood to go to different schools would break apart the community. Although this might be true, she offers no evidence or examples to back up her claim. Then she says that, because the voucher system would put less taxpayer dollars into the public school system, it would "withhold state resources from our children." Actually, the government would be providing the same amount of money per student; just under the voucher system, the money would be spread out over several different schools instead of one public school. But it is true that, as parents choose the best schools for their children, the better schools will end up with more money and the lower-standard schools will end up with less money. I agree with Ms. Potter that this puts people who cannot afford a private school education at a disadvantage. However, Ms. Potter completely disregards the argument of choice. She does not offer any explanation as to why people should have to send their children to one school when a voucher system would give them the opportunity to send their children to a school which might be better suited for them.
    I think that, while Ms. Potter has good points, she does not clarify or support her arguments well enough to convince someone that the voucher system would not be beneficial.

Proposed End of Life Bill

This article I found on the Texas Tribune talks about a proposed bill which would spell out the steps to be taken when a terminally ill patient nears death. This bill would give patients and their families more time to come to a decision and take the appropriate actions. For instance, as of now, if a patient/family disagrees with their doctor's decision, they only have 10 days to find a new doctor, but the proposed bill would give them 14 days. The new bill would also give the patient/family a one week notice before appearing before an ethics committee, versus the current 48 hours. I believe that this bill would be beneficial. The decision whether or not to end the life of a terminally ill patient is an extremely difficult one, and more time would be helpful for both the patients and their families.