Because I say so!

Megan wrote a long post about vouchers, and, as you'd imagine, it's a doozy. To begin, she's still fond of the "picture of own ass as works cited" method of citation. The piece is just shy of 1800 words long, and does not contain a single citation. There's a link to a private voucher "charity" she supports, but not a single pointer towards any further information on the topic, unless you count what you can find out at the thread on another site she's posting in response to. Megan vaguely mentions "studies" here and there, but, well, we gotta take her word for both their existence and results, because she doesn't even name them, let alone link to 'em.
So then, let's go over her versions of the arguments against vouchers.

1) Vouchers don't work This is the best argument against school vouchers.

... Yah think? Good argument, sure, but unsupported by studies Megan tells us exist, and evidence of a subtle class bias. What? Yep...

Vouchers are no panacea, and they may not work at all. But we know that what we're doing now isn't working, and moreover, hasn't worked for going on fifty years. Unless you've got compelling evidence that your plan will overcome all the barriers that have doomed urban school reform for decades, and actually succeed in educating more children (rather than enriching the lives of teachers, administrators, and curriculum salesmen, who certainly have been helped by the many failed educational overhauls), why not let a thousand points of light bloom?

Hasn't worked for going on 50 years? Ummmm, since Brown v. Board of Education? Is that a subtle shout-out to your racist readers, Megan, or just you being fucking stupid? Oh, wait, you claim teachers are profiting off keeping students dumb. You're just fucking stupid, in ways that leave openings for the support of other idiots who happen to also be racist. Megan isn't racist herself, she just knows her readers.
Moving on, we have

2) Voucher advocates are total hypocrites too, because why don't they start private vouchers, huh? Bet you never thought of that! Actually, we did, my love, and thanks for giving me an opening to plug the Children's Scholarship Fund, my charity of choice. If you support vouchers, you should be supporting their amazing work.

Here's more info on this amazing charity. How can a charity with Trent Lott AND a member of the Wal*Mart ownin Walton family in its leadership be bad? Note, also, that the word "vouchers" does not appear on the front page, at least, of the website. (Now you know why I reinserted the link.) Oh, and, according to the mediamouse page, "In many cities, the scholarships are too small for poor children to participate." Way to support the kids, Megan.
What any of this has to do with the efficacy, or lack thereof, of vouchers is left for you to figure out, cuz I'm stumped.

3) The community doesn't want vouchers. Awesome. Then the community won't take vouchers, and you'll win by default. If what you mean is that some people claiming to speak for the community, want other people who are members of that community not to be able to have vouchers, then I'm less than interested in your argument.

I'd respond to this, but first I'd have to be able to find something resembling coherence in it.

4) Vouchers are a subsidy to rich people. Then means test them, by all means. Anyone who makes more than $100K a year can't have them.

....says the woman pimping a charity which poor people can't afford. The underlying argument, that vouchers would likely end up becoming an easily abused system that mostly serves to subsidize private school for the already affluent, is never taken up by Megan. Shocking, innit, that Megan formulates these arguments in ways she (thinks she) can easily dismiss?

5) Vouchers destroy the public school system So? Having a public school system seems like a dumb goal to me, but even assuming that the very existence of such a system is somehow a worthy thing to aim for, surely it's achievement should be a second-order priority.

I.... she.... the kids.... jebus. Talk about straw men. Yes, Megan, your opponents in this debate are in favor of a public school system first, education second. Dismantling the public school system in favor of a wholly new, and thus only, at best, partially regulated, private charter school system wouldn't have any negative effects for the kids. Because every public school in the entire country is as bad as the horror stories coming out of DC.
After some glibertarian crap about the magical powers of the market, Megan comes up with this,

But honestly, there's no reason that vouchers will destroy the public school system provided that the public school system is doing a decent job of educating our kids. This argument sounds to me like an implicit confession that public schools can't compete with private ones.

Or that defunding them might have a negative effect on their ability to provide services. One of the two.

6) There aren't enough private schools Right. Do you realize that in 1995, not a single iPod had been manufactured? That must mean that the iPod I am currently holding in my hand doesn't actually exist! I'm living a lie . . .

I'm getting a headache. Fifth graders could find the flaw in this argument. Apparently, Megan thinks start-up charter schools, run by people interested in making a profit off a new, private, company, will be better than public schools. Because.... well, because. It's just cynical to think otherwise, and Megan believes in people. Don't you?

7) Public education is vital to creating a common identity as American citizens

Megan snarks that poor kids will thus feel a sense of community with the rich people they grow up to work for, because she's an asshole snob. I'd talk about how Megan is totally missing the point, that a good public school experience can help prevent kids from growing up to be selfish pieces of shit like her by showing them the good that can come from using the government to help people, but I'm getting a headache and there's 4 more "arguments" to plow through.

8) Vouchers don't make things any better; they just give the appearance of working by pulling the successful away from the unsuccessful, in the process dooming the latter to failure As I said before, you can't have it both ways. Either the school environment matters--in which case, this argument is false--or they don't matter, in which case it can't harm the unsuccessful kids to lose the successful ones.

Again, I'm lost in Megan's "logic". If anyone can make sense of this, I'll post it in an update. I can't make heads or tails of this "argument". But Megan really thinks she's onto something here, even resuming her pretense of caring about the poor kids (who can't afford to participate in her fav charity for them).

And morally, as I said in my earlier post, unless you have chosen to live in the inner city and allow your kids to bring up the tone of the place, you have no [expletive deleted] right to say that someone else's kids should be left in a failing school for the benefit of a third set of kids.

If you're against vouchers, you're pro-pedophilia. It's just that simple. The free market has a long and storied history of helping children, and, again, only a cynic would mistrust its ability to provide better bang for our our bucks. (Also, you have to love Megan's psychic defenses here. She's trying to claim the moral high ground in an argument that, in all likelihood, is based on her belief that vouchers will lower her school taxes.)

9) I don't want my tax dollars used to pay for religious education Waaaaaaah.

Who ever heard of a libertarian sticking up for separation of church and state? Sheesh.

10) Vouchers wouldn't pay the tuition at a top-notch private school Okay, I went to the school that is now vying with Matt Yglesias' alma mater for the title of "Most expensive private school in New York City". It gave me a terrific education, better than that received by any of the kids from expensive suburban public schools with whom I went to college. But talk about making the perfect the enemy of the good! A private school doesn't need to be Groton in order to make it worthwhile sending needy kids there; it just needs to be better than the hell-hole they currently attend. And frankly, that's a really, really low bar. There are a lot of kids for whom a trip to Chuck E. Cheese would be safer and more educational than a day at their district school. I could just as easily turn around and use this argument to prove that we oughtn't to have public schools unless every last one can be Dallas's Talented and Gifted magnet school.

Let them eat cake. And remember, every public school in the entire country is an urban public school plagued by poor funding, a culture that doesn't place great value on education, unfunded No Child Left Behind mandates, staffing shortages due to low pay and horrible work conditions, and so on. Plus, there's a huge supply of highly qualified teachers out there, just waiting for the private sector to give them the same low pay and crappy work conditions without a union or any kind of job security, meaning they can be scapegoated for every F they have no choice but to give out.
Megan went to private school, so obviously they're superior. Her own intellectual failings and lack of ability to look past her own situation and biases do not, in the least, speak to the primary weakness of private schools; their production of entitled assholes who lack a realistic sense of their place in the world and how they got there. I, having gone to public school until sophomore year of high school, then to a very expensive, and, yes, good, private boarding school, have no ability to speak to this, either.
And, finally,

11) There's no way to assure the quality of private schools Ha. Ha. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Seriously? The problem with private schools is that they can't match the same level of quality we've come to expect from our urban public school system? And what else have you learned in your visit to our planet?

Cuz every school everywhere sucks, unless it makes a profit.
I wish I could get Jillian from S.N! to guest post here on all the ways Megan is incredibly wrong here, but I like her too much to ask her to read Megan's work on this. It was painful enough for me to do.
I'd like to end this on an amusing and snarky note, but I'm still feeling overwhelmed by the dumb. This woman is paid by what was once one of the most highly respected imprints in the world, not just the country. This... should not be.