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.
You are in fact surrounded by leftists (aka Commies).
Just remember that it's your job as a conservative to stand up to them.
Whenever I have have stood up publicly (even when alone) against the forces of ignorance, there has always been someone who has approached me to thank me for expressing their sentiments.
I didn't understand that 15 years ago when I was your age, but I trust it won't take you that long to figure it out.
After all, back in the 80s there was no FR.
I'd never send my kids to a public school. Public school teachers (FReepers excepted) are the bottom of the educational barrel, statistically speaking. Education majors have the lowest scores on the Graduate Record Exam (the one you take to get into graduate school) of any college major. That means lower than psychology majors, communications majors, and exercise science majors. And these are the people who are teaching our kids! Please, take your kids out of public school!
Ah, the tired assumption that more money is the cure for public schools ills.
When government actually pays to send students to private schools, it deprives the already-underfunded public schools of much-needed money.
Why do they need money for kids that they don't have enrolled?
The wealthy have always been willing to exchange money for a riffraff free environment, if poor people are able to buy their way into private schools via vouchers, then the price of a private education will increase accordingly. Capitalism 101.
Per student cost in public school = $7,000 (much higher, some places)
Subtract the cost of the average voucher - $2,500
Hope much money do we have left? $4,500
As this exercise demonstrates, when a student leaves a public school under a voucher system, he or she leaves behind $4,500 which the school system gets to keep for NOT educating that student. In short, vouchers make the money available for the remaining students, go UP on a per pupil basis.
Unless this reporter never learned to count, it would be obviious that vouchers do not cost the public systems a dime. In fact the opposite is true. The systems gain, it is just the incompetent teachers and incompetent administrators who lose -- their jobs. THAT's what this whole fight it about. Continuing to waste money on teachers who cannot teach, and administrators who could screw up a two-car funeral.
Congressman Billybob
Disingenuous is the kindest adjective I can award these two sentences. If vouchers were not a great idea, liberals wouldn't resist so mightily; the voucher idea would merely be allowed to run its minor course to failure. It's because liberals understand that vouchered private schools will break their monopoly on education and that in most cases public schools won't be able to compete with private schools. There go the big teachers unions. There go the trainloads of cash every year to buttress liberal monopoly of education. There go the educational frills and doodads. Well, you get the picture.
Thanks again. Actually, I am 34 years old, and I attend Pitt in the evenings for my engineering degree. Maybe I didn't pay attention when I went to college for my original degree in my late teens and early 20's - but I have never realized the extent of instutionalized leftism in education.
Why does the author compare the amount of money provided in a specific city (Cleveland) with the national median tuition? What really matters is whether or not $2,250 covers the cost of tuition in Cleveland.
Really? You don't think some private schools serve as liberal indoctrination centers? Catholic parish schools in many communities are *far* more liberal than public schools. Those who don't believe this are welcome to do a google search under "catholic homeschooling" - there are many, many websites out there with all sorts of stories about how all these Catholic homeschoolers have pulled their kids out of very liberal, "Spirit of Vatican II" Catholic schools. Giving these schools state money will only make them *more* liberal, not less.
Many Christian schools *are* indeed more conservative, but they are usually not located in the inner cities where voucher recipients live, and many of them are limited to members of their church, or have a strict screening process that involves interviews with at least one parent of how that parent was saved, etc.
As for secular private schools, in my own community virtually every non-religious private school is *very* liberal, and their tuitions usually range from about $9,000 to $13,000 a year. Per kid.
Oh, piffle. I both homeschool AND have kids in public school. Our public schools are rated as some of the best in the state. Many public schools you couldn't send a dog to for fear of being cited for animal abuse, but there are many good, and some great public schools out there. Don't tar them all with the same brush.
There that reads better.
This puts a serious block in their carefully planned indoctrination agenda!
Couldn't they use an example for the dummies, like: 30 kids from PS 101 left with their $2500 vouchers to enroll at private schools. Now we no longer need one teacher who cost us $60,000/year including benefits. Since we spend $5000/year/student, dropping this class not only saved the school system $60K from the teacher's pay but also $75K from the net gain to the system for not having to provide for those missing 30 students. Longer term, more savings will result from reduced admin costs, capital costs for plant and equipment, etc. We will ignore these savings in the short run.
The real reason is this: when parents are no longer chained to the public system, political support for endless tax increases to fund endless promises of improved performance collapses. They see their world ending. That's the real meaning behind their 'rob the public schools of funds' battle cry.
Not to mention that there will undoubtedly be plenty of schools that be created with the idea of charging $2250 per kid. Create a market and businesses will supply the capacity to meet the demand.
Look, when all the schools are teaching revisionist history, who cares if your school is the "best in the state?" If your kids are learning the "multicultural" curriculum being taught in public schools, they are not learning the things that they need to know to appreciate and participate in our form of self-government. Kids in public schools are taught a dumbed-down curriculum more intent on bolstering self-esteem than on teaching kids reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and logic. Grade inflation is rampant. SAT scores are dropping. Many college freshmen take courses in remedial math. Being the "best of the worst" is nothing to crow about.
Here is your data, formatted into a table.
| Rank | State | 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 |
I have no idea what this means as the
*Results of National Assessment of Educational Progress tests from 1990 to 1996, expressed in percentile rankings *Adjusted for cost-of-living differences across states.isn't attached to anything. It has been, however, an interesting exercise in learning about HTML tables.
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