I’ve been thinking about school vouchers. I know that this is not a hot issue just now, but it will be again when the next election heats up.
I believe that interest and participation of parents is a key reason why private schools generally outperform public ones. Nevertheless, a growing number of people seem to believe that vouchers, by allowing more kids to go to private (still largely parochial) schools will somehow improve education across the board.
I believe that is a mistake. For the very reason private school children now do better than public school attendees, vouchers will tend to bring down the averages in the private schools rather than raise the averages over all. That is because many of the parents, whose (tax supported) vouchers will permit them to enlarge the student bodies of private schools, will pay no more attention to their children’s schooling than they did before. Why should they? It won’t be costing them any more than public school.
I believe end result will be a flattening of public and private school test scores, a dramatic increase in the money available to operators of private schools, and a concomitant decrease in the revenues available to the public school system.
Further, the former public school children will bring their present attitudes and habits into the private schools, adding discipline problems to the sudden overcrowding with which private school teachers will be burdened. The public system will have been destroyed and the private system damaged with no net benefit to the state.
I’m on the same side as you, but I think your analysis is off. You assume that because a parent has a voucher, their child automatically gets into a particular private school, and thus overcrowds them. Also, it seems that you assume that one voucher is good for either one public education or one private education. Vouchers in the traditional sense would mean either one public education, or about 1/2 a private education (going by costs alone).
The problem with vouchers is not the possibility of lowering standards and results in the private schools, it resides in pulling already-scare resources away from the public school system, where those dollars (and many more) are needed.
The key words you hear in the voucher debate and especially in the charter schools debate are “competition” and “choice”. Both of these terms are inherently flawed in a system like this. Competition, while good in the marketplace, is dangerous in the school system. Would you want to put your child into a school system where failure is inevitable for a certain number of individual schools? For every school that excels in a competitive environment, there is another that is beaten by that system, and children’s educations at stake, not dollars.
The term “choice” (usually found in a charter schools debate) is false, because not everyone is given that choice. Most charter schools run on a lottery system - every kid in the area can put his/her name into the pot to get a chance to go there. The purpose of a charter school is to provide an alternative to Public School No. 453 in downtown with the asbestos problem, the crack house down the street, and 18 bullet holes in the wall. However, when charter schools are built, maybe 10% of P.S. #453 gets to enroll in Sunnyside Charter. The other 90% is still stuck down in #453, but now there’s even less money to improve the situation.
Sorry if this spilled over into charter schools, but there is a parallel.
You’re probably right that private schools won’t automatically accept just anyone with a voucher. But even in education, especially among private schools, isn’t there at least some incentive, not to say pressure, to take the money and hope for the best?
Also in the back of my mind (although it would probably be better discussed as a separate thread) is the idea that vouchers provide a back door for those who would like to use state and federal money to promote schools with a religious bias. I have nothing against parochial schools pre se. I even applauded my brother’s putting my nephew into a Catholic school, because the alternatives were academically less appealing. But I don’t care to support church based schools with tax money. If the government is financing parochial schools, it seems as if that’s a lot more than allowing public ones a “moment of silent prayer,” and it tends to erode the separation of church and state.
Voucher discussions might belong in Great Debates (or the Pit).
IMHO, Vouchers have exactly one purpose: to destroy the public school system. And since free universal public education is crucial to the development of the US, that would be A Bad Thing.
As per the OP, I don’t see a leveling at all. The public schools would quickly turn into rat holes like the schools in the south set up for blacks in the segregation days. (Which in some parts of the country is a main attraction for vouchers to a certain segment of the population.)
It was never level–north or south. It’s always been local economics, with possibly local spins. Unfortunately, unlovely and very cynical federal implications have intruded.
For perspective, I strongly urge anyone considering this issue to read Savage Inequalites by Kozol. And be prepared to wince–and weep–no matter your political leanings, if you at all value the sheer, obscene waste of children through a failed system of civil education.
I’m ashamed and guilty for my country. This republic was founded to guarantee knowledge, and its applied individual application toward happiness, conscience and productivity, as a birthright. Holding people hostage through economic stress to an unlovely–and temporary–political/religious fervor purely sucks.
Parents should be able to rely–demand!–an excellent education for their children. Without strings.
My non-GD short answer: vouchers sound great in theory, but probably won’t work, because either (a) the private schools are required to accept “difficult” students as a result, or (b) the more expensive private schools refuse to accept “difficult” students, which will channel them into inexpensive schools and putting an unfair burden on children from poorer families.
Every school voucher proposal I’ve heard sounds like a disguised attempt by upper-middle-class families to get the government to subsidize sending their kids to private schools, at the expense of anyone unfortunate enough to be in a lower class.
I know a teacher in the public school system who supports the voucher idea solely because that teacher believes it will reduce their own swelling class sizes. I don’t have an opinion either way – yet.
Economics are vicious to children… I was fortunate to grow up in the best neighborhood in town, and to attend an excellent elementary school. My son most likely won’t have that advantage.
Our options are private schools (which I can’t afford) or parochial schools (and I’m not Christian, so…) I’m not a big fan of home-schooling, but it’s sounding better and better the more I read…
