Posted on 03/01/2002 11:40:14 AM PST by Hacksaw
by Columnist
Do vouchers save children from schools in “an unprecedented educational crisis” or do they siphon much-needed money from public school systems into private schools? Currently, this debate is being waged all over the country. As more areas of the country implement vouchers — something supported by the Bush administration — questions surrounding them were sure to reach the courts. Last week, one did.
On Feb. 20, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Zelman vs. Simmons-Harris. At issue is whether Cleveland’s voucher program violates the First Amendment separation of church and state.
According to The Cleveland Plain Dealer, 46 of the 51 private schools to which parents have the option of sending their children are religious, and 99.4 percent of the roughly 4,300 children enrolled attend those schools. But supporters of the vouchers argue that it does not violate the First Amendment because the parents have the option of sending their children to other, secular schools.
The issue in this particular case concerns simply religious schools. But it could have an effect on the broader issue as well. According to Brookings Institution researchers Jeffrey Henig and Stephen Sugarman in their book, “School Choice and Social Controversy,” 85 percent of children who attend private schools attend religious ones.
Proponents of vouchers say that they save children from failing public schools. This is understandable, as public school systems in many parts of the country are in a state of disarray. There is also an argument of equality at work here: Why should only the rich be able to send their children to private schools?
So in theory, vouchers sound like a great idea. But in practice, they are not.
In the United States, government does not provide many of the same services — such as health care — that most other governments in the so-called developed world do. But we do believe almost universally that it is the duty of our society to educate its citizenry.
Our country has a long tradition of public education. We believe that the only way our country can continue to compete is if we have an educated populace.
Unfortunately, we do too little to accomplish that goal. Many complain about the state of our public schools, but do not want to pay the taxes needed to do anything about it.
Few doubt that our public schools nationwide need help. But the proposed solution, vouchers, will only exacerbate the problems.
When government actually pays to send students to private schools, it deprives the already-underfunded public schools of much-needed money. Vouchers could be a whirlpool for the ship of public education in the United States — by further cutting into public school funding, they will make the schools even worse, causing more parents to pull their children out, causing an even greater lack of funding, causing … Well, you get the picture.
Pretty bleak, isn’t it?
And, not to mention, the equality argument does not work for vouchers either. In Cleveland, for example, The Plain Dealer reports that the vouchers are worth $2,250 per year. Yet private school tuition is higher than that. According to the National Center for Education Statistics Web site, www.nces.ed.gov, the median tuition at private schools nationwide was $4,166 in 1997. This means that half of the private schools in this country charge higher tuition than that.
So for a poor family, that $2,250 per year would not go very far. With a voucher system, better-off kids would have an even greater opportunity to escape failing schools while poor kids would remain stuck.
No one doubts public schools in the United States need help. But vouchers are a destructive solution when constructive solutions are the only ones that will have any chance of saving our ideal of education for all.
David McKenzie is a graduate of the Texas public school system who knows that two plus two equals five. He can be reached at mckenzie@pittnews.com.
Nothing like a little apples/oranges misdirection to make your case. Who gives a rat's a$$ what the national median tuition is - what's the average tuition in Cleveland?
Morons.
At no point in his commentary does he demonstrate or even suggest that there is proof that vouchers harm public schools in any way.
Then please do me a favor and please add a comment to the Pitt News forum. As an adult engineering student there, I feel far outnumbered by the leftists.
Private schools succeed because they control the quality of admissions, curriculum and teachers. Parents who pay the bill for a private education tend to take an active interest in the academic success of the student. Public schools tend to fail on every one of these issues.
Money cannot buy happiness; it cannot fix relationships between people; it does not rule in any kind of emotional context. I am paid a lot of money to do what I do; but it still matters when I'm treated badly by the boss.
Education is far more about relationships between people than money; even more so than the workplace. The attitudes of the teachers, pupils and administration are what matter, not whether you have $4,000 per pupil or $6,000.
The cost of education is fairly linear - the more pupils are educated, the more facilities and teachers are needed, the more money is spent. Therefore, if you take a pupil out and take out the cost of her education, you're not going to hurt the remaining pupils.
Study after study after study has found out that the problems with our public schools are not money-related, and cannot be fixed with money; they are emotional, not physical. We can give people all the shiny facilities we want, but if they don't want to learn, they won't.
Vouchers are an effort to put more pupils into an environment where they can learn better. The public schools have had decades in which to improve; what we know for sure is that they're not going to get any better without some kind of push. Vouchers are that push.
As a result, I heartily support vouchers and any similar experiments. I can't help but notice that the article I'm replying to mysteriously lacks solutions; it is merely fighting vouchers. The solutions that have been proposed by teachers' unions have been tried; they do not work; it's time to try something new.
So we need vouchers, desperately, to prove that today's kids can be educated. Then, maybe public schools can get better, too.
I hope this has been helpful.
D
David H Dennis is a Californian who has a good friend who lives in Pittsburgh with his pregnant wife. Their kid may well have to face Pittsburgh schools.
I am always amazed when I hear this argument. If the kids leave the school, the school will require fewer teachers, administrators, etc, so their costs will be lower. If the school still spends the same even though fewer kids are there, then something funny is going on entirely separate from the voucher issue.
Actually the public schools should come out ahead on the deal. They are giving the parents a voucher worth 1/3 rd of what the school had been spending! And as for the contention that this is all a charade because private schools cost way more than the voucher; has this guy ever heard of Catholic schools? You know those old buildings sitting in the ghetto which have been serving fewer and fewer families every year because all the white families had progressed up the income scale and moved out, but the poorer families, as much as they would love to, are not able to afford even the modest tuition those schools charge! Catholic schools could educate 3 public school kids for the price of what the public schools spend on 1 kid!
And even though in Cleveland, the parents had the choice of spending that voucher in another public school, the suburban schools WOULD NOT TAKE the inner city black kids, so what other choice did they have? Studies have shown that religious schools are much more capable of educating those poor kids than the public schools will EVER be! And the dropout rate for poor kids in Catholic schools is miniscule compared to public schools!
You know, I don't think that needing more taxes is the problem.
Hmmm, people want to flock to private schools at a claimed $5,000 per head, yet the $10,000 per head at the public school is not enough?
Pointing out the average/median nationwide tuition doesn't tell us much - there's no real ceiling for tuitions, which drags both of those numbers into territory where they don't mean much to the average parent. Plus, costs of living vary wildly from place to place - an "expensive" school in one place might very well be considered a bargain somewhere else.
There are private schools out there where the annual tuition is higher than Harvard University, but that's clearly not the typical private school. What matters is whether the vouchers are effective at providing choices other than the public schools in Cleveland, and Cleveland alone. Pulling that national median number out is just bogus - the kid who wrote that either has an agenda, or is a fool. Neither one reflects particularly well on Pitt...
Vouchers aren't flawless, but at least be honest about the financial impact!
Please respond to the Pitt News forum. There is a time lag between your response and when it is posted. Comments have to be approved by the moderators, but they post almost every comment, unless it is extremely profane.
Thanks! -Dan (The Hacksaw Man)
Private schools can go as high as 10K or more a year in town, I researched em all, of course the 10k a year is pretty much a school for the upper crust and the education is great, but not double the cost of others, it just a way guarantee riff raff won't be in the school.. which is fine by me... I need my kid surrouned by snooty brats about as much as I need him surrounded by thugs.
And on another cost-related subject, there is a table available showing public school ranking on standard academic tests (i.e., how well they're doing their job) compared to the per-pupil costs. There is no correlation at all. In fact, some of the worst schools (Washington, D.C., for example) are some of the most expensive. Here is is, from a FR post in September of 2000. I don't think I'll be able to format it:
Grades and dollars
Does higher spending on education produce higher test scores? Not necessarily, according to a recently released state-by-state comparison of how students from demographically similar backgrounds performed on standardized tests.
Test Scores Test Scores Spending
1. Texas 5.6 24 $5,650
2. Wisconsin 4.8 9 6,700
3. Iowa 4.1 21 5,940
4. Maine 3.4 3 7,750
5. N. Dakota 2.8 20 5,970
46. Alabama -4.5 42 4,340
47. W. Virginia -4.6 14 6,350
48. Mississippi -4.7 43 4,000
49. Louisiana -5.3 29 5,430
50. California -5.9 38 4,750
*Results of National Assessment of Educational Progress tests from 1990 to 1996, expressed in percentile rankings *Adjusted for cost-of-living differences across states Sources: RAND Corp. and Fortune magazine
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