Monday, March 29, 2010

School Choice and Vouchers

Adam Lee
School Choice and Vouchers
3-29-10

School choice and the voucher system are certainly not new concepts. Many states and individual districts have tried instituting this system for well over 100 years in America. Essentially, the voucher system consists of the state giving the parent their alotted education money to send their child to whatever school they would prefer. Vermont has had vouchers since 1869. 95 percent of Vermont’s towns have no public high school. The debate about whether or not school choice works to better educate the American student is the issue at hand. There seem to be many advantages when instituting school choice. However, the detractors will site a multitude of negative factors to counter every positive sign of progress. Using the interviews of many different education experts, this paper will examine the advantages and disadvantages of school choice and the voucher system.

School Choice Advantages
The advantages of school choice are usually ideas based on helping those students who come from bad neighborhoods or bad schools and giving them the opportunity to succeed in a safer learning environment. According to Paul E. Peterson, from Harvard University, there have been pilot programs in Dayton, Ohio and Washington D.C. that have shown math scores increase for African American students attending a different, private school with a voucher. However, the reading gains were not as significant and Peterson attributes this to school being the primary place for learning math and that reading begins at home.

Another advantage, according to Peterson, is that parent satisfaction is very high with a voucher system. He claims that, “If Parents are given a choice they are very happy.” This idea that parents like to have control over their child’s education is a very strong argument. Politically, parental choice is a popular subject. What parent is going to disagree with the state letting them choose the school of their choice? Thus, some politicians have tried to use this to gain popularity and leverage with voters.

One of the apparent disadvantages of the voucher system is that it takes funding that would normally go to the school district for improvements and allocates the money to Catholic or private schools. Those who are proponents of school choice would say that vouchers actually provide more funding for the public school. Their argument is that the voucher money comes from the state and that the local school budget is never touched. Therefore, for the students still remaining in the school, there is more money for every student because a percentage of the population has gone elsewhere but the funding for the school has stayed the same.

According to Clint Bolick, from the Goldwater Institute's Center for Constitutional Litigation, inner city students who have access to vouchers and choose Catholic schools, actually end up receiving a more diverse education then they would have in the inner city. His argument is that inner city schools are not very racially diverse and when an African American student uses their voucher to enter a predominantly white Catholic school, they receive a more well-rounded education. The voucher program in Cleveland has mostly African American recipients and most of these students are attending Catholic schools. This theory was in response to the question of whether or not placing these students in Catholic schools was beneficial.

School Choice Disadvantages
Rudy Crew was the chancellor of New York’s public schools for 4 years. The largest and most obvious disadvantage of school choice and vouchers according to Crew would be that it takes away the money that should be given to public schools to improve conditions and test scores. His argument is that some children use these vouchers to go to a private or a religious institution, and the other 2/3 of the students are left in failing schools without enough state funding. If a school is broken then it should be fixed. The answer is not to give up on that school and send some of the students elsewhere. What does that teach the children about life?

Barry W. Lynn is the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and he says that a large problem is that most of the recipients of vouchers in Cleveland are using their choice to attend religious schools. The problem is that now the government is taking money and diverting it towards religion. Different religions and their schools, nationwide, would now be jockeying for money and for power in individual districts. Also, the state is now seen as helping to promote religion. Lynn calls this a violation of most state constitutions and of the U.S. Constitution. The line between the separation of church and state becomes very blurred.

Also, vouchers promote something called, “skimming.” Skimming is the practice of taking the best kids out of a failing school and sending them to private institutions. This leaves the school with only the failing kids. It also leaves the school with a lack of involved students for sports programs and other extracurricular activities. It isn’t only the best students that are skimmed. The best parents are skimmed as well. These are the parents that are super involved in PTA’s and are a great asset to any district.

We have to carefully examine the issue of school choice and the voucher system. Our current system is not one that can be easily changed. There are many advantages and disadvantages of the voucher system and every one of the pros and cons needs to be thoroughly tested before any widespread change is made to the American education system.

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