X, You didn't address these questions to me, but as a supporter of vouchers I thought I would take a crack at them.
I'm curious. Do your children attend public schools?
Yes. As did I throughout all my education including college and grad school.
Are you happy with those schools?
The schools my kids go to are generally quite good. But....the people who run our schools know that we as parents would not hesitate to pull one or more of our kids out to send them to private school if the public school didn't meet our needs. I have sensed a high degree of motivation on our schools' part to address issues and concerns we have. Once we suggested that we may need to explore other options if a particular issue was not addressed, and that issue and every issue since has been addressed with a great deal of energy by the district. The trouble with the system as I see it is that many, probably most, parents don't have that choice, and as a result their schools are largely unresponsive. They also have no ability in certain areas to pull their kids out of schools where the local populace is not, shall we say, "educationally oriented".
If vouchers were implemented in your area, would they make a difference to you?
I think if vouchers were implemented in our area, there would be an uproar, and it would make a difference because the demand for our school district would exceed the available space. The real dilemma of a voucher system is that the good schools, which are now rationed based on housing decisions, would have to be rationed some other way. There are a couple of nearby suburbs where the schools are not as good. The same house in the next suburb over costs 150K less, due almost solely to the difference in the quality of the schools. If the kids in that district could come freely to our district, voucher in hand, there could well be a big change not only in educational opportunity but also in housing prices. As for the effect on my local schools, it would probably increase diversity, because right now 85 percent of the students in our school (it is about 15 percent low income and the rest middle and upper middle income) are there because the parents can afford to live here. The devil will be in the details, though, because our district would likely try to prevent outside students from overrunning the district, which is already crowded.
Do you wish to see money siphoned off from your local public schools and used for religious schools?
If you spend the same money, but let the parents decide (rather than some person in our state capitol 200 miles from here) where it should be spent, I don't see how the overall spending per pupil on education changes at all.
We have a great diversity of religions in those schools. I would hate to see anything that would lessen that diversity.
We have some diversity of religion but relatively little diversity in class and income background here in the public schools in Illinois. The city of Chicago is renowned for awful public schools, and those forced to attend them are never going to have much chance to achieve certain types of life outcomes that require a top notch education. The media reports that those schools have improved, though it appears to be from "really awful" to merely "sort of awful". The other end of the spectrum, in numerous suburbs, are some of the best public schools in the world. Half the nation's perfect scores on the ACT in a couple of recent years came from Illinois, but the neighborhood Chicago schools weren't responsible for any of them. So an answer which tells kids whose parents (a) don't have money; and (b) happen to live in Chicago, that they can't have a good education but my kids can strikes me as unfair. Giving the entire per pupil expenditure for that Chicago kid to the parent in the form of a voucher which the parent can take to the best school they can find strikes me as a better way out than the present system, which essentially dooms the vast majority of these kids to failure.
There is not much that holds this country together. We have great freedom, and this allows us to continually pull apart. But the public schools at least gives us a common base or reference point.
I would prefer that mediocrity not be our nation's common base or reference point. I would prefer that a system which ensures that class mobility is limited from generation to generation not be our common base or reference point.
And I also think that under a pure voucher system, it is not only religious schools that would benefit. I think that academically oriented private schools, perhaps with differing emphases to attract parents and kids with different strengths and interests, might very well take hold if the parents had control over the money that is spent on education. Right now a private school that is not religious has no viable economic base except the very rich. Vouchers have the potential to change that in a dramatic way.
IT is true private schools can often do better educationally (by leaving out of the process the behaviorally challenged, the disabled, the student who is difficult to educate) but by allowing that, by in fact paying for it with taxpayer money, we may end up with a system that is more full of inequities than the system we have now.
That is going to be the most devilish detail of all in implementing any widespread voucher program. Schools will compete even more than they already do to show that their "average" student is doing really well. The temptation and incentive to cherry pick will be enormous. Should rules be implemented to prevent that? Would rules about diversity defeat the purpose of vouchers? What about parents who don't want their kids' stimulating intellectual environment to be adversely affected by "slow" kids? Should their choice be validated?
To me, those are the real dilemmas of a voucher system, not the religious question. It is unfortunate that this became a religious debate, which has allowed many to avoid these real issues and barriers to making a voucher system work for the benefit of parents and children alike. |
