{"id":454,"date":"2008-04-19T12:38:54","date_gmt":"2008-04-19T17:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinbryant.com\/2008\/04\/19\/guest-blogger-joshua-phillips\/"},"modified":"2008-04-19T12:38:54","modified_gmt":"2008-04-19T17:38:54","slug":"guest-blogger-joshua-phillips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/guest-blogger-joshua-phillips\/","title":{"rendered":"guest blogger: Joshua Phillips"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My name is Joshua Phillips.\u00a0 <\/span>I am a 10th<\/sup> grade student that recently had the privilege of shadowing Senator Bryant for a day.\u00a0 <\/span>While in Columbia, I read and analyzed a bill that was being brought before the finance committee that afternoon.\u00a0 <\/span>The bill calls for appropriating funds to pay for \u201cat risk\u201d students\u2019 attendance in full day, four-year-old kindergarten.\u00a0 <\/span>The program would allow the funding to apply to private, as well as public schools.\u00a0 <\/span>A number of problems exist within this bill.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 First, there are presently fully funded public four-year-old kindergartens for \u201cat risk\u201d students.\u00a0 <\/span>The impetus behind the bill is obviously not to give at risk children a chance to participate in four-old-kindergarten, for a system is already in place that provides this service.\u00a0 <\/span>The bill actually creates a voucher program allowing four-year-olds to attend private schools at the state\u2019s expense.\u00a0 <\/span>This could cause trouble for the private schools who accept the funding.\u00a0 <\/span>Under Section 59-35-390 of the bill, schools that accept the funding must relinquish control over the curriculum and follow the guidelines set by the First Steps state educational program.\u00a0 <\/span>In addition, all instructors must be state certified and selected.\u00a0 <\/span>The bill seems to promote educational choice, but in reality, it only allows the government to expand its influence further into private education.\u00a0 <\/span>Finally, funding the bill would cost the state a massive amount of money.\u00a0 <\/span>The finance committee estimated that the cost of implementing the bill could total as much as $185 million.<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If the bill is passed, private schools may be lured into accepting the funding, only to have <\/o:p><\/span>increased government authority over their system.\u00a0 <\/span>Under the guise of educational choice,<\/o:p><\/span>the bill would increase governmental authority and involvement in education.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My name is Joshua Phillips.\u00a0 I am a 10th grade student that recently had the privilege of shadowing Senator Bryant for a day.\u00a0 While in Columbia, I read and analyzed a bill that was being brought before the finance committee that afternoon.\u00a0 The bill calls for appropriating funds to pay for \u201cat risk\u201d students\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2gEQ0-7k","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}