School Choice/Vouchers

Megan Monzo Vouchers/School Choice Debate March 10, 2009

A recent issue involving school systems is the usage of vouchers as a means of school choice by parents. Utilizing vouchers allows parents to use all or part of the government funding set aside for their children’s education to send their children to the public or private school of their choice regardless of where they live or their income.

The program was developed due to failure of public schools in many urban areas of the country (www.balancedpolitics.org) and currently is offered in numerous states. The school systems involved in this plan offer tuition to students for various reasons decided upon by each system. The Universal Voucher Programs allow all children to be eligible for vouchers. The Means-Tested Voucher Programs are for those below a defined income level while the Special Needs voucher Programs target those with special education needs. Failing Schools, Failing Students Voucher Programs are offered to those performing poorly in public school or who are attending failing public schools. The Pre-Kindergarten Voucher Programs are for pre-K age children. There are also Town Tuition Programs. Those who live in towns that do not operate public schools at their grade level are eligible. In this type of situation, the school in which each student is transferred to is sometimes chosen by their district representatives, but usually the student’s parents may choose the school in which they wish their child to attend www.essortment.com).

The amount of money allotted per child is determined by voters and represents tax dollars already being used for education. Approximately $3,000-5,000/student (dependent upon a child’s age and needs) of state allotments each year is allotted with the voucher to provide funding for local systems (www.gainesvilletimes.com) as reported in the Gainesville Times. All of the voucher money will serve as tuition to either public or private schools of the parents’ choice. However, in charter schools, not all of the funding per student goes out to charter school choosing students. Some of the money is kept in the student’s district in which they live leaving the district school without a total loss of funds from each student who chooses to move to a charter school.

There is much debate as to whether or not vouchers are a positive tool. An argument in favor of vouchers is that competition between schools can increase, leading to greater efficiency and student success and is a healthy reason for districts to work hard at improving their schools to increase out-of-district tuition students. However, some charter schools do not collect all tuition leaving the original schools from which students come from may have less incentive to compete since they are not losing the full amount of tuition from a child leaving that school.

Some additional reasons behind pro-school choice are giving people a choice equals liberty (www.friedmanfoundation.org), parents can have a choice as to what type of school their child attends so quality of education no longer needs to be based on where one lives or a family’s income, the quality of education and the opportunity to achieve success can increase, history shows that private schools have had more success in teaching information and values than public schools (www.balancedpolitics.org), studies show that school choice leads to better test scores for all students and higher education rates (www.friedmanfoundation.org), and particularly in urban areas drop out rates are hitting record highs. Additional reasons for pro-school choice are: those who choose different schools could have an increase in school completion, providing private school access to all students can increase diversity, parents who send their children to private schools pay twice – they pay taxes that pay towards public schools as well as private school tuition, and recent poor economic times has had a negative effect on the number of pupils attending private school this year (www.gainesvilletimes.com). Vouchers could help increase attendance in private schools as well as funding for private education facilities.

An argument against using vouchers is by skeptics who fear that ‘choice’ may backfire by taking resources away from already struggling public schools (www.pbs.org) since vouchers can drain funding from public schools. There is also the Budgeting debate. One side of this argument is that planning the budget without knowing if and how many students will no longer be at the schools next year is difficult to gage. If students leave they take funding away with them. The other side finds that even if students leave and the school system is over budget for the number of students in the schools next year, there will be extra money per child to use to improve their education. In addition to these arguments, there is the issue of private schools, which have the opportunity to choose their students, leaving some students with less of a ‘choice’ than others. When students with more ‘challenges’ than others are not accepted into private schools the public schools educate them. Government money tends to go towards special education in the public schools and for more gifted students in private schools. If private schools [discriminate] then special needs students have less advantage by way of vouchers at a private school than someone with higher functioning who uses their voucher at the same private school. If this discrimination continues and the number of parents with higher functioning students choosing private schools increases public schools might become known for teaching lower functioning students while private schools’ reputations will (continue to) be for educating only gifted students.


Another debate on vouchers is the Choice Debate. Some argue that tax dollars for education belongs to the State and should not be spent at the parents’ discretion. Some might argue that parents are not necessarily equipped with enough education on the education system to know what placement or type of school is best for their child. Others feel that parents can make the best choice for their children since they know them best and should decide what school could be best for the child.

Private school curriculum and teacher abilities are questionable to some who attest that private schools are not regulated by the state and their teachers are not required to be state certified (www.gainesvilletimes.com). It may be difficult to know how well private schools perform. It seems that public school teachers have an unfair advantage against private school teachers in that public school teachers may, at times, be limited in their allowance of using certain potentially helpful teaching methods to help students excel due to government regulations while private school teachers get more free range teaching opportunities. Private school teachers may make better progress with students because of this. Parents noticing this might choose to use their vouchers in private schools. However, if government spending may go towards private education it would seem that academic accountability as well as testing regime should be the same across the board. An issue that arises between public and private is that public schools can compete against each other, but only so much against private schools since government rules, regulations, and oversights are different.%

Separation of Church and State Debate takes into account the first amendment. The parent makes the choice of which type of school the child attends, so the government is not imposing religion on anyone and, therefore, not violating the 1st Amendment establishment clause. Others feel that government funding violates the 1st Amendment separation of church and state since the government is allowing tax payers’ money to be spent on religious education (if parents opt for private schools using vouchers). Some tax payers do not want their money to be spent on a religious school for personal and principle reasons. Some fear government spending on religious schools will spread to other religious institutions leading to a type of religion-dominated society.

It is early to tell whether or not the voucher system will be successful on a larger scale. For now, vouchers are being tested and results that come from this could expand or minimize this endeavor and is yet to be discovered.


Resources

www.balancedpolitics.org

www.essortment.com

www.friedmanfoundation.org

www.gainsevilletimes.com

www.pbs.org