Posted on 07/16/2002 7:15:43 AM PDT by xsysmgr
The American Federation of Teachers has just announced its strategy to destroy school choice: regulate private schools to death.
On June 27, the Supreme Court declared educational vouchers to be perfectly constitutional, even if they're used at religious schools. The Zelman decision has invigorated the school-choice movement. Advocates now hope to expand school choice outside Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Florida, which currently pay for the education of about 20,000 kids through vouchers. House Majority Leader Dick Armey is promoting a school-choice bill for the District of Columbia, similar to the one Bill Clinton vetoed five years ago.
This is all worth doing, but conservatives must be cautious. The Left will continue to oppose school choice vigorously at every opportunity. When it fails, it will try to subvert — and it will use the current accountability movement as its primary vehicle.
AFT president Sandra Feldman announces as much in her current "Where We Stand" column, which is published as a paid advertisement is several publications. Her July commentary (not yet available on the web) announces, "Voucher schools that refuse to be held accountable to the public must not get public dollars."
Accountability can mean many things. Private schools are already held accountable to the public in a number of ways. Their buildings must abide by fire codes, for instance. In terms of the education they provide, however, they're by and large exempt from government meddling. They can design their own curricula, determine their own teaching methods, and hire their own staff. This freedom is an important part of the reason why private schools outperform public ones.
Feldman and the AFT, however, want to change this. "Parents and the public have a right to know how well students are doing in any school that receives public funding," writes Feldman. "Public schools are now required by law to test their students and to report the results of these tests to the public. ... Voucher schools do not have to meet any of these standards. They are free to be excellent, but they are also free to fail."
Feldman would have private schools accepting vouchers conform to the same "accountability" standards that the public schools increasingly face. She would also force these schools to hire "certified" teachers.
These are both very bad ideas. Private schools, even those accepting vouchers, should be able to set their own scholastic standards, including testing standards. Some may conform to various accountability requirements imposed on public schools, while others may not. Parents with educational vouchers can decide for themselves how much these decisions matter.
The same goes for teachers. Private schools should be allowed to hire anybody they want to teach their students. Education degrees are vastly overrated — history majors without degrees in education graduate from college having taken more history courses than education majors who go on to teach history. It makes no sense to exclude these people from the teaching professions. Public schools currently do this; many private schools rightly view these people as a tremendous resource.
One of the primary goals of the school-choice movement is to privatize a portion of the public-education system — and thereby improve the education kids receive. What the teacher unions will now try to do, however, is the reverse: impose regulations that have hurt public schools upon private ones currently immune to them. Vouchers financed by tax dollars will be their wedge.
School choice remains a worthy pursuit, but conservatives will have to guard against the creep of regulation — otherwise they will contribute to the destruction of something they now look to for salvation.
However, in the meantime, where's the accountability for public schools?
Yep, most haven't been paying attention up until recently because it wasn't in their backyard. We'll they're starting to notice the dandelions and crabgrass spreading across their own lawns. Gonna get out the weed killer. Oops! Being vague and obscure again.
If legislators attempt to attach strings to vouchers that contravene the goals of say a Catholic parochial school, the school will turn the parent away. At THAT POINT, the parent will realize they need to put a little more thought into their vote the next go around (the remaining dominos).
All the arguments that the current crop of private schools will bend to the will of legislators is bogus given the evidence of their existence now in spite of the present government monopoly. If parents are using their own funds now to send their kids to private schools, why would that market just suddenly dry up? It belies basic economics.
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