School Vouchers: Fact and Fiction
The idea of school vouchers was created as a method of improving the educational process. Parents were upset that they were trapped in an inferior school district, but they did not have the financial ability to send their children to a private school. Vouchers will give parents a predetermined amount of money (between $2,000 and $4,000 is typical) to help them pay for private schools for their children. The following analyzes some fiction and the surrounding facts on school vouchers.
FICTION: Vouchers will help all students attend better schools:
FACT: Private schools charge high tuition, and voucher proposals so far have provided very limited amounts of funding, usually between $2,500 and $3,500. Vouchers will allow students to attend only the poorest private schools, which fare no better than most public schools. The majority of poor public schools are in the inner-cities, where there are few, if any other choices for students.
FICTION: Vouchers allow for parental choice:
FACT: Vouchers will provide additional funding which will help lower-class families afford to send their children to better schools, but this is not parental choice. The final choice of who can attend a school is up to the admissions department. As in higher education, just because a student can afford to attend a school does not mean that he is admitted. Vouchers may allow for better students to attend a private school, but many of the poor students can not be admitted, forcing them to remain in a failing public school. Similarly, many private schools are not likely to admit special needs or handicapped children, which will force them to remain in the public school system.
FICTION: Vouchers will not hurt public schools:
FACT: Many public schools, especially in suburban America, are providing a satisfactory education, but this is not the case in inner-cities and other economically poor areas. A voucher system would empower many of the good students or students with strong financial background to leave the public school systems and attend a private school. As stated above, many poor or disadvantaged children would not have this option. This would hurt the school districts in several ways. First, teachers may leave public schools. Many good teachers enjoy teaching upper level classes, including Advanced Placement and Honors level courses. If the upper-level students left, these teachers may follow them to private schools. Along these lines, many of the students left in public schools would be those who do not care about their education, are affiliated with gangs, or have problems with drugs or truancy. This places much more of a burden on teachers, and it may be cause for some of them to leave. Having only the under-achieving students in public schools would also hurt districts in other ways. Many states give funding based on standardized test scores or other factors such as attendance rates. Also, public appearance would suffer due to poor performance on standardized tests, which would cause more parents to pull their children out of the schools. These factors combined will cause schools to fail and die. This will take away any hope of an education for the poor, disadvantaged, or handicapped students that would not be admitted to private schools.
FICTION: Vouchers will improve schools by providing competition:
FACT: America has thrived on a free marketplace, so it would make sense to assume that competition would help education. However, this is not the case. Already, many of the brightest students have left public schools to attend private schools, and public schools have barely flinched. There is no proof that public schools will change if more students leave. Vouchers may force private schools to improve in order to stay in business, but public schools, who will still be funded directly by taxpayers, will have no incentive to improve.
FICTION: Vouchers will allow for parents to have more of a say in their children’s education:
FACT: In our economy, the marketplace is consumer-driven. If the consumer is not happy, they can take their money elsewhere. When a company loses business, they know that they need to change something to stay in the market. This makes sense as far as private schools are concerned. However, the effect on the students needs to be considered. It is relatively simple for a parent to remove their child from a school and enroll him in a different school. However, this is a major upheaval in a child’s life, requiring a change in habits, surroundings, friends, and expectations. Anybody who has ever moved and changed school districts can tell you that it is indeed a difficult adjustment. While a parent can certainly show their disgust in a school by withdrawing their student from it, it may not be the best for the child. If a parent is not happy with a school, there is a much better solution already in place in public schools: school boards. Because public schools are funded by the taxpayers, they must answer to the taxpayers. If people are not happy, the members of the school board have an obligation to change. If the taxpayers are not happy with the response from a school board member, they can respond by voting him out of office at the end of his term.
Private schools do not have this obligation. They are often dictated by a board of trustees or the group in charge of their sponsoring organization (i.e. church elders or pastors). This governing group can run the school the way they see fit, knowing that if parents are unhappy enough, they will withdraw their children. If anything, vouchers would make this situation worse. There are not enough private schools to support everybody, so if enough students choose to leave public schools, there will undoubtedly be waiting lists for schools. This will mean that school directors have nothing to worry about, knowing that if students leave the school, there will be an abundance of students waiting to enter the school.
FICTION: Vouchers do not violate the Separation of Church and State:
FACT: This depends on the way that the policy is written. In Cleveland, where they are finishing the third year of a trial voucher program, vouchers can be used at any private school, and any suburban school that agrees to accept outside students. Expectations were high for suburban public schools to join the program. However, no public schools agreed to accept vouchers, knowing that the students who would be using them were largely the poor minorities from the inner city. A similar result could be expected elsewhere. As a result, all vouchers are being used in private schools, many of which are religious. This means that government money is being used to support religion, which is a clear violation of the Separation of Church and State.
FICTION: Vouchers will eliminate double taxation:
FACT: Double taxation is when a parent is paying tuition at a private school, along with taxes to support a public school that they are not using. First of all, tuition at a private school is not a tax. It is an added expense that they are choosing to pay. They are paying a tax, which supports the public school. They are entitled to use that public school, and if they choose not to it is their decision. They are still expected to help support that school, just as a childless couple or a retired person would. Public schools are a part of the infrastructure of a community, just as police or fire departments are, which everybody in the community has a vested interest in. Vouchers would actually cause a state of double taxation. With vouchers, the general population would be forced not only to pay for the public school system, but also for vouchers which in turn would support private school systems.
FICTION: Vouchers can be limited for use at certain schools:
FACT: Vouchers are designed to let children attend a private school instead of their public school. Any attempt to control which schools can be a part of the voucher program would certainly bring accusations of discrimination. Most voucher supporters would not have a problem supporting a mainstream Christian or Jewish school. What if somebody opened a school for homosexuals? What about a school affiliated with neo-nazis or the PLO? These schools would be entitled to the same vouchers as all of the mainstream schools. Vouchers, in order to avoid full-scale attacks by various organizations, must take an all or none approach to supporting private schools.