Taking away the best students and moving them to private education hurts those left behind.

That is absolutely incorrect!

Grouping students according to their ability to learn various segments-amounts of instructional material (i.e., special ed and AP classes) has been proven to be the optimal method of delivering instruction to high and low performing students for decades, and serves as an effective model in the argument for private education.

Not only would-do private schools offer advanced students the type of educational opportunities and experiences they could never hope to receive in public schools, by attracting a nominal number of the academically gifted away from public schools, they also help reduce the class load/size on public school teachers.

The reduction in class size would result in PS teachers being able to devote more time and resources to their less able students, ensuring that these kids learn the necessary skills and concepts they not otherwise grasp if they were in a diluted educational environment.

Because school vouchers come at the expense of the children who are stuck in the sub-par public school. Taking away the best students and moving them to private education hurts those left behind.

While I don’t want to open up a new can of worms here, I find it sad that the good students should be denied access to a good education because it’s “unfair”.

Try coming to MPS once. See how the public schools run. Absolute chaos. Violence, disrespect, not doing homework, piss-poor graduation rates.

The kids hurt most by a lack of school choice are minorities. Those in Milwaukee fortunate enough to be in the choice program are far better served.

And it’s the choice – of the crappy parents, the misbehaving students, the ineffective administrators – that the schools, quite frankly, suck.

Kids who want an education so as to break out of the cycle of ignorance and poverty should not be denied.

I know the counter-argument is that abortion comes at the expense of the fetus, but many don’t consider the fetus to be a human being.

Unfortunately for them, the baby is a human being by the very nature of his DNA. He is not a chicken, not a whale. A human being.

And with medical advancements, children as young as 22 weeks gestation are able to survive – and thrive – outside the womb.

It is my sincere hope that if hearts can’t be moved, medical science will make abortion irrelevant by discovering what pro-lifers have argued all along: a baby is a human being.

I’m also against public money going to religious programs (such as parochial school).

I know the counter-argument is that abortion comes at the expense of the fetus, but many don’t consider the fetus to be a human being.

If you are so “supportive” of “choice”, why can’t parents “CHOOSE” what school their child attends?

Why such blatant hypocrisy?

At least 60% of women who do have ultrasounds choose not to abort.

Which is great. But some women make the decision and don’t want to have second thoughts. That’s their right.

Because a woman shouldn’t have to jump through coercive hoops to get a legal medical procedure.

I’ll toss that one on my doctor the next time insurance paperwork comes up to be filled out and see how it goes for me.

I’m against laws that make viewing an ultrasound mandatory to get an abortion, but, I’m more or less right there with you.

This goes back to fully informed consent, Rusty.

Why? Scared they might actually see a baby in there and choose to let it live?

At least 60% of women who do have ultrasounds choose not to abort. Often women who abort – especially women who have chemical abortions and “deliver” at home – report being absolutely devastated by seeing that the 8-, 10-, 12-week gestation baby actually looked like a baby and not an indistinguishable clump of cells. Many of the same said they wouldn’t have had an abortion if they had been told what their child was actually doing in regards to development.

It’s at least comforting to know you didn’t understand the anger toward those two films. I, however, do. In both cases, the women (fictional, mind you) chose life. I can’t remember the exact quote, but one columnist was appalled they didn’t at least consider abortion more seriously. That didn’t make sense to me because, in “Juno”, she actually goes to the clinic and decides to leave. I don’t know how much more serious needs to be, but…

I guess I hearken back to the quote by Harrison Hickman to NARAL back in 1989:

“Nothing has been as damaging to our cause as which have the advances in technology [that have] allowed pictures of the developing fetus, because now people talk about that fetus in much different terms than they did fifteen years ago. They talk about it as a human being, which is not something that I have an easy answer how to cure.”

It’s a pretty telling quote. An ultrasound does nothing more than show what’s really there (a human being), smashing the pro-abortion notion that a baby doesn’t look or develop into a human until before birth (and then, if you’re Barack Obama, it might not be human after birth either).

DP opined:

I’m against laws that make viewing an ultrasound mandatory to get an abortion

Why? Scared they might actually see a baby in there and choose to let it live?

So, please then, explain to me why pro-aborts get hyper every time proposals to offer pre-abortion counseling (including an ultrasound, alternative resources, etc.), or why they splash headlines when abortion rates decline?

More to the point – even recently – pro-aborts have gone after films like “Juno” and “Knocked Up” on the sole basis that the women in these films choose not to abort.

I’m against laws that make viewing an ultrasound mandatory to get an abortion, but, I’m more or less right there with you. I would love it if abortion clinics had adoption brochures. I have no problem, in fact I prefer it, if the mother to be chooses life.

Some (not all or even a majority, mind you) people were really upset at Knocked Up and Juno. I will never understand that. They made their choices. If they chose otherwise, I don’t think the movies would have been as funny. Or as long.

Why the hypocrisy?