I don't think vouchers are a good solution to the ailments of public education, based on my own experience as a student and then a resident of New Orleans.
Prior to Brown v. Board of Education and integration, public schools in New Orleans were indeed segregated. This was bad, but the public school themselves were pretty good, at least the white public schools.
Private schools, of course, were better, and affluent people sent their kids to private schools, but almost all private schools were Catholic. The black Catholic elite sent their own kids to black Catholic private schools, and these schools taught the black Catholic New Orleans elite many things, including how to govern. New Orleans is one of the few places in the country that actually has an educated black elite running things, because of these schools.
But after Brown v. Board of Education, all the white people pulled their kids out of public schools, or else moved to whiter suburbs, and thus, all public schools in New Orleans are totally overloaded with black kids from poor families, who have many many problems, not just the normal ones suffered by others with the same skin color.
The functional illiteracy rate in New Orleans is one of the highest in the country.
I realize that this problem is like the Greek mythological Worm Ourobourous, which eats its own tail; in other words, this is a problem where it's almost impossible to find the right end to begin to solve it.
Putting poor black kids into private schools will help the individual kids but it won't solve the problem of bad schools. |
