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Vouchers hurt those most in need { October 6 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1006-05.htmhttp://www.commondreams.org/views03/1006-05.htm
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/bookman/index.html
Published on Monday, October 6, 2003 by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Vouchers Sure to Hurt Those Most in Need
by Jay Bookman
The school-voucher crusade is a fraud founded on a myth.
Let's deal first with the myth -- that public schools are failing.
Long-term statistics from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as "The Nation's Report Card," indicate that reading scores for 17-year-olds were about the same in 1999 as in 1973. Given our increasingly visual, anti-reading culture, that's success.
Math scores are better than in the early '70s. Science scores, which declined sharply from 1969-82, have rebounded and are now only slightly lower than in 1969.
In other words, despite the social turmoil of the past 30 years -- increased immigration, higher divorce rates, more single-parent homes -- the nation's schools have actually performed pretty well. How then can you account for the perception of failure?
First, public schools, like all public institutions, have come under an insistent ideological attack by those who are hostile to any tax-supported endeavor. If it's public, and if taxes support it, then by definition it must be bad. The insistence by some that public schools be called "government schools" illustrates that mind-set perfectly.
Second, the stakes in education have gotten a lot higher. Twenty years ago, high school graduates or even dropouts could still earn a fair living. Median income for a college graduate was just 42.6 percent higher than that of a high school graduate.
By 2000, though, median income for a college graduate was 90 percent higher than that of a high school graduate. In other words, within a generation the economic advantage of getting a college education more than doubled.
That sent a strong market signal, and people have responded to it. In 1980, 49.3 percent of recent high school graduates were enrolled in college. By 2000, that figure had risen to 63.3 percent, setting off intense competition for college admissions.
So, while public schools have improved, parental anxiety about their kids' education has gone off the charts. And the schools have responded. Speaking from personal experience, the academic program my children experience in Atlanta public schools -- an inner-city, largely minority school system -- is considerably more rigorous than my own public-school education.
Now, let's address the fraud issue. Those who champion vouchers claim it will address the needs of children who today are being left behind by public schools, particularly in inner-city areas. That's just not true.
The movement's core theory is that given the economic freedom to choose, parents will search out better schools for their children, and by doing so become a force for reform. Good schools will get more business, and bad schools will fail, just as good restaurants succeed and bad ones close.
Of course, that's pure theory -- no statistics exist to support the claim that schools are like restaurants. But for the moment, let's accept that theory as fact.
Even under those terms, a voucher system could work only for those students whose parents care enough and know enough to get deeply involved in their kids' education. And as most classroom teachers will tell you, those students are already doing well.
Those students without parental involvement are the ones in need, the ones in whose name this "reform" is being sold. And they would not be helped at all.
To the contrary, the children of unmotivated, uneducated parents would be left behind in the worst schools under a voucher system, while the students and the parents motivated to demand better performance will leave.
And that, in the end, is the hidden danger of the voucher movement. Public schools used to be known as common schools, and they remain perhaps the last institution in which Americans of all types still attempt to forge a common national identity.
Vouchers offer us a tax-funded escape hatch from the untidy necessity of each other, encouraging us to seek custom-designed curricula and student bodies. If vouchers are ever widely adopted, they would further fragment a nation that is already struggling to define a common future.
© 2003 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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