[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Contemporary Problems
School vouchers, also known as scholarships, redirect the flow of education funding, channeling it directly to individual families rather than to school districts. This allows families to select the public or private schools of their choice and have all or part of the tuition paid. Scholarships are advocated on the grounds that parental choice and competition between public and private schools will improve education for all children. Vouchers can be funded and administered by the government, by private organizations, or by some combination of both.
While the twin ideas of choice and competition have become progressively more acceptable, deep disagreements remain about how they should best be pursued and where to draw the line between the public and private sectors in education. In particular, a number of those who support the idea of charter schools remain adamantly opposed to vouchers, which they view as undermining the whole concept of public education. At the same time, some voucher proponents worry that charters will cut the wind from their sails.
School vouchers have been trying to persuade the governments that private schools supported by public funds actually can do a better job than public schools in educating the children. Vouchers provide the poor with an opportunity to approach smaller classes and better teachers. A more structured private-school environment with smaller classes and higher-achieving peers and motivated teachers can increase the student performance.
Adolescence has commonly been characterized as a time during which the peer group becomes increasingly important to the adolescent as a socializing force. Peer influence has dominated studies of the role of the peer group and academic outcomes, and has been associated with gifted adolescents’ motivation on subsequent academic achievement in a number of studies.There are two principal difficulties for theories that rely on peer effects. First, however much sense the theory of peer effects makes, there are formidable obstacles to estimating.....
