Indiana Families Vote With Their Feet And Vouchers, Head Toward Parochial Schools

And, should we be surprised?

SOUTH BEND, IND. — Weeks after Indiana began the nation’s broadest school voucher program, thousands of students have transferred from public to private schools, causing a spike in enrollment at some Catholic institutions that were only recently on the brink of closing for lack of pupils.

It’s a scenario public school advocates have long feared: Students fleeing local districts in large numbers, taking with them vital tax dollars that often end up at parochial schools. Opponents say the practice violates the separation of church and state.

In at least one district, public school principals have been pleading with parents not to move their children.

“The bottom line from our perspective is, when you cut through all the chaff, nobody can deny that public money is going to be taken from public schools, and they’re going to end up in private, mostly religious schools,” said Nate Schnellenberger, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association.

Under a law signed in May by Gov. Mitch Daniels, more than 3,200 Indiana students are receiving vouchers to attend private schools. That number is expected to climb significantly in the next two years as awareness of the program increases and limits on the number of applicants are lifted.

Let's get our bearings here: Tax dollars are extracted from the populace at the point of a gun. They are spent, in part, on schools that harm children. So, in making those dollars available to the families from which they were extracted at the point of a gun, and granting them the freedom to allocate those tax dollars as best they see fit for their children...this is not a public subsidy of anyone's religion.

It is a family-by-family free choice, to remove their children from harms' way, and place them in safe and productive schools. The parochials have the accreditation, and they have desks to fill. Little wonder the parents seek them out.

In three to five year's time, the public systems will have made some adjustments in order to be competitive, like safe hallways and literate teachers. Other, secular, schools will achieve accreditation. And, there will be families that decide they don't like the parochial school experience, and that there is no 'magic pixie dust' after all. Children who don't work don't achieve, period. Those families will drift back to the county school systems, where they won't feel so bad about being lazy.
The parochials will thrive, and maybe, just maybe, some of those great old neighborhoods will revive.

Everyone, except the NEA, will benefit.

Kudos to Mitch Daniels and the legislature of Indiana.

Indiana's Governor Daniels On ObamaCare And Indiana's Future

An essay and video from Governor Daniels here.

Indiana is still afloat. In fact, we’ve fared better than most. We continue to meet our obligations without raising taxes, and the reserves we carefully built and protected will get us through the downturn.

But as if we did not already have enough on our plates, the passage and implementation of Obamacare presents us with a whole new set of challenges and a costly to-do list.

I note with special sadness that first and foremost amongst the bill’s consequences will be the probable demise of the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP). This program is currently providing health insurance to 50,000 low-income Hoosiers. With its Health Savings Account-style personal accounts and numerous incentives for healthy lifestyle choices, it has been enormously popular and successful.

Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, soon to cover one in every four citizens, will not only scoop up most of HIP’s participants, but will also cost the state between $3.1 and $3.9 billion over the next decade. It is hard to see how my successors as governor will be able to avoid a steep state tax increase to pay for it. Meanwhile, our medical device companies and small businesses will shed jobs as they wrestle with the taxes and penalties levied to help finance Washington’s “reforms.”

Now, this man is:

1. Not running for President.
2. Not a funny-looking guy on a motorcycle with American flags flying on his way to a Tea Party rally.
3. Not a guy living in Momma's basement who obsesses about Obama's birthplace or religious affiliation.
4. In other words, not Astro-Turf that the White House can dismiss.

He's responsible for running one of the largest states in the Union, with a budget larger than a lot of small countries. Geographically, Indiana stretches from the outskirts of Chicago (oh, joy!) to the southern reaches of Kentucky, where the accents and culture are very Dixie. It is a huge industrial state, a huge agricultural state, smack in the middle of the United States. Indiana is not Wyoming.

If we wonder why jobs are not being created, we would do well to read his words.