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Opening Arguments

Choice plans

It's big enough news that Indiana is creating what will be the largest school voucher program in the country. The bigger news is that we're part of a nationwide trend representing the resurrection of school choice as one tool in efforts to improve education. In Washington, House Republicans managed to restore the school choice program in D.C. killed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. And voucher plans are being implemented or debated in a growing number of states:

When congressional Democrats killed D.C. Opportunity Scholarships in 2009, the word in education circles was that school choice was passe and that the wave of the future was Obama's Race to the Top program. No one is saying that any longer. The resurrection of school choice may not be The Greatest Story Ever Told. But for the children who will be liberated from failing public schools, it's a life-changing story nonetheless. And that is something worth celebrating this Easter season.

Voucher plans, like the charter school concept, have a defensible premise, that freeing schools from regulatory restraint will produce better teaching and learning and that competition will improve public schools that want to keep per-pupil tax dollars. But there are legitimate objections, too, and I don't think the evidence is in yet on how effective such efforts will really be. When they're compiliing studies, educators shouldn't just concentrate on how well students do in the new school environment (which seems to be the focus of most research now) but also pay attention to whether the public schools in the affected districts really do get better or not.

Comments

Tim Zank
Tue, 04/26/2011 - 2:51pm

Just like everything else, the voucher program will take off and work well for a while, UNTIL, the government & unions horn their way in, and then "POOF!" it will suck as bad as the public school system.

It's kind of an American tradition now, bringing everyone down to the lowest comon denominator so we can all be equal.

If only our public schools had more money.

littlejohn
Tue, 04/26/2011 - 2:55pm

Whatever you think of vouchers, they will almost certainly not survive their first challenge in federal court on First Amendment grounds, since most private schools are church-supported.
Second, our public schools are already bad. If the better students attend private schools, the public schools will get worse. And church-affiliated schools pay even worse than public schools. To make matters worse, they have the legal right to discriminate against teacher applicants who don't subscribe to the "correct" religion. All in all, a bad idea.
If we can raise money to distribute vouchers, then we can raise money to improve public schools and raise standards for public school teachers. Most teachers now come from the bottom third of their college classes, based on SAT scores. Improve the job and the pay and that will change. It's called capitalism.

Tim Zank
Tue, 04/26/2011 - 3:52pm

Littlejohn, you are mistaken about "If we can raise money to distribute vouchers, then we can raise money to improve public schools and raise standards for public school teachers."

No MORE money is being raised for the vouchers, it's being diverted.

And as I've mentioned (sarcastically above and seriously numerous times) if money was the problem, public schools would have improved 30 years ago.

Harl Delos
Tue, 04/26/2011 - 4:58pm

Vouchers will ensure that private schools will be able to dominate the state athletic championships. They can recruit, but public schools cannot.

William Larsen
Wed, 04/27/2011 - 1:52pm

"Whatever you think of vouchers, they will almost certainly not survive their first challenge in federal court on First Amendment grounds, since most private schools are church-supported."

I seriously doubt this will be found unconstitutional. The state is relying on the parent to make the choice of a school recognized in meeting the states standards. The state will not be the one making the choice, but a parent who has the right to freedom of religion.

The total budgeted as Zank has stated, will remain the same. The difference is that instead of a school being the only one to submit a voucher to the state for each student the enroll, the parent will submit a voucher, reducing the local school total submittal.

In many ways this is similar to what I ran into with the New Bern School system when they attempted to change one of the middle schools to a year round education school. The test school was located outside Cherry Point, a marine air station. The children that attended the school were nearly all from military families who lived on base, no property taxes were paid. The school gave each student a "white" card to fill out by parents which then was submitted to the DOE for payment to the school, $5,000. There was no requirement that the white card be filled out. If not, the school was out $5,000 per student.

The problem was the school system did not listen to the military families who did not like YRE. They had been trying to get rid of it for years and now the middle school was changing into a YRE while the other schools in the district were not.

Leave it to me to form a group and call over 800 families myself to inform the marine families that even though they could not vote for the school board, they did have a great deal of leverage over the school board - don't sign the white card.

Schools are no longer under local control of parents, but basically some state and a lot of federal control. I support vouchers and hope that Danniel's does not get re-elected and that the current superintendent of schools is replaced. It is time parents have a say. When money begins walking out of public schools, then someone had better wake up and figure out why and make changes.

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