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    Filed at 11:56 am under by dcobranchi

    I’m trying to provide equal abuse to the extreme anti-voucher right and to the extreme anti-voucher left. Today, Tapped steps up to the plate.

    The Other Case Against Vouchers:
    Forget church and state. Vouchers are bad for a gazillion secular reasons.

    To begin with, the stipends that most voucher programs grant their students aren’t enough to pay for a good private school. Florida’s program offers about $4,000 for students, for example, while Ohio’s offers $2,250. Although vouchers won’t pay for the best secular private schools, they generally do pay for inexpensive, inner-city parochial schools — which explains why so many vouchers go to religious schools… Some parents argue it grants them choice, but a choice between a failing public school and a mediocre parochial school is an unenviable one.

    So, high tuition equals good secular private schools and low tuition equals mediocre parochial schools. What does this tell us about the free public schools? No, there are many reasons that parochial schools could provide a good education with low tuition: lower paid teachers who view their jobs as a higher calling, subsidies from the parish or diocese, no unions, etc.

    And even if voucher programs conferred more money onto students from failed public schools, there’s no reason private schools would accept these students — who, sadly, come from schools that have often failed to teach them basic reading and writing skills, leaving them years behind their peers in private institutions.

    And they should stay in these same failed schools? If there are no private schools that will accept vouchers then the program will have no effect. Where is the harm in trying?

    Conservative economists claim that schools will materialize to cater to these students, in accordance with basic supply-and-demand market principles. But schools designed to accept voucher-students will inevitably [emphasis added] be profit-making ventures.

    Why are we to assume that anyone who goes into the field of education is in it only for the money? I think the NEA would beg to differ. There must be thousands of churches and civic organizations that would love to sponsor a small, private school that caters to lower-income kids from failed public schools.

    These voucher mills would be forced to put revenue drives and cost-cutting ahead of education, just like any other for-profit organization. They would also likely be prone to creative accounting. Edison Schools, the largest for-profit operator of schools, was just reprimanded by the Securities and Exchange Commission for booking costs as revenues.

    Here’s a red-herring if ever I saw one. People starting up these private schools are not going to be public companies. They’ll be individuals or groups of parents who are just frustrated in the current system.

    And still, there are other reasons to be skeptical of vouchers. For instance, they undermine the teaching of pluralism because voucher users will naturally gravitate toward schools that represent their own demographic. In fact, The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University recently found that 48 percent of black students in Catholic schools and 44 percent in other religious schools encounter a heavily segregated educational experience, meaning that fewer than 10 percent of students in their schools are white. While public schools have used busing programs for years to desegregate the schools, religious institutions have been unable to overcome the patterns of residential segregation. The situation is likely to worsen with the promulgation of vouchers.

    A legitimate point. But what percentage of the kids in the failed Cleveland schools are white? Yes, segregation is worrisome and I don’t have a solution but I don’t see that “pluralism” should be the primary mission of schools. It should be educating the kids. The public schools have failed at their primary mission. Why should we be concerned about secondary or tertiary missions?

    Hidden behind the effusive rhetoric about democracy and school choice, voucher proponents make a very simple statement to the public schools they believe are inadequate. The message is this: Schools can’t improve. Therefore, rather than waste government money on reform, we should put the onus for change on the market. It’s a horribly demeaning — and certainly incorrect — message for public-school faculty, administrators and students.

    Is there evidence to the contrary? We’ve been working on improving schools since at least the Reagan administration. How many more generations of public school students are going to have to suffer with lousy schools before we can pull the plug? It is very difficult to prove a negative. Who knows? Maybe the Loch Ness Monster does exist. And maybe public schools will show some dramatic improvement. Just not yet.

    Usage statistics released just this week in Florida suggest that parents aren’t actually dying for school choice the way voucher advocates portray them. Of nearly 8,900 eligible students, only 338 filed for vouchers — less than 4 percent. The numbers are comparable elsewhere. This lack of interest could mean anything, including a larger problem of priorities at home. But it’s just as likely that all of these obstacles make the voucher program more impracticable than public-school reforms.

    And who exactly is throwing up the obstacles?

    Most importantly, however, is that the assurances from voucher proponents that the programs will show real results are meaningless until these proponents actually try to measure results. So far, most private schools that accept vouchers have demurred from subjecting their students to the same standardized tests given regularly by public-school students. And they have completely balked at the prospect of industry standards…But without standards, or at least tests, the success of voucher programs will forever remain inconclusive.

    Just how stupid are parents supposed to be? We know when our kids are learning and when they’re not. Any parent willing to be involved enough to get their kids out of a bad public school will be involved enough to pay attention to the private school. Does anyone really believe that the accountability tests revealed new information? Ohmigosh- I thought my kids were attending a great school and it turns out that it really stinks!

    As long as regulation remains a conservative bogeyman, private schools will be free to disappoint students the same way America’s worst public schools have.

    But maybe they won’t disappoint. The key is, we just don’t know. Public schools have not demonstrated an ability to improve. Vouchers are not a promise; they are an experiment. I don’t believe anyone knows what will happen if they become widespread. I think we do know what will happen if they don’t: If nothing changes, nothing changes.

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