This will be a fast entry. More tonight on funding, especially the true meaning of WPU and the mysterious MSP: http://le.utah.gov/%7E2007/bills/hbillenr/hb0148.pdf (Lines 309-313)
But anyone reading this who cares about the true impacts of vouchers needs to talk to someone about it today. Most of my neighbors are not strongly one way or the other. They care, but want to avoid confrontation, so they stay out of it, just watching and reading about it. In most of the blogs and online forums that have been examining HB 148 rigorously for months, even most voucher supporters have relinquished the BS claims of $1.4 billion in savings. And most when pressed acknowledge the $7500-2000=5500 in savings is ridiculous. But there's so many opinions online, it's easy to forget what a miniscule percentage of the real people I interact with each day are connected to this web of debates online. They might read an online paper and a stupid comment board under a D-news or Trib article, but they miss out on the meat of the majority of discussions. The opposing images they have of voucher effects are the cookie ad vs. some teachers saying "That's not true!" The teachers may be right, but they can't give any explanation in a 30 second TV spot.
There is a large George Will article today http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/241871/ where he repeats every talking point of PCE. I seriously doubt he did any research of his own. He reflexively (that's the word he ironically used about our opposition) takes the "conservative" viewpoint and just repeats what some PCE bulletin told him. My neighbor got a PCE door hanger on Monday that repeats in huge type on the front the $1.4 billion lie! And the back consists almost entirely of teachers oppose $5500 in extra money per kid, so that means they're just preserving their power.
This is what people are seeing and hearing. Take 2 minutes and explain the true meaning of voucher funding to someone today.
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2 comments:
Hey, great stuff here. Do most public teachers feel the same way you do?
You probably already thought about this, but if you could get your hands on the original "cookie ad" that you make reference to, you could post it in here. Then you could go through it and discredit its claims.
Good idea, but it only makes one claim...and you must be the only person in Utah to have not seen it! =) It claims that for every voucher, we get to redistribute $4500 dollars. I answered it even more thoroughly in my new post.
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