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IN RESPONSE: Vouchers a bad idea

To the editor:

A recent opinion piece in the Review-Journal touted the benefits of a voucher system for public school students. The folly of such an idea has been demonstrated time after time in schools across the nation. Voucher systems simply do not work. They create more bureaucracy, open the system to legal action and do not improve student opportunities or test scores. Let’s examine some of the major points against a school voucher system.

First, vouchers fail on a student achievement level. Author Jeff Reed wrote for the Freidman Foundation. Mr. Reed neglected to remind readers that the Friedman Foundation has been dubbed "the nation’s leading voucher advocate" by the Wall Street Journal. The "savings to the state" numbers quoted in his piece were from the Freidman Foundation’s own non-scientific studies that they refused to submit to their educational peers for review. As a matter of fact, the Freidman Foundation’s findings showed that parents, when offered a choice, still chose public schools more than any voucher-funded option.

Last year, research by the Department of Education concluded that there was no significant difference in the test scores of schoolchildren who receive vouchers and attend private schools when compared to those who attend public schools. Also, a survey of the 20,000 vouchers being used in Milwaukee found no significant difference between the achievement of students who used a voucher and students from Milwaukee Public Schools.

Clearly, the best research to date finds relatively small achievement gains for voucher students; these tiny gains are not statistically different from zero. So, despite the well-wishing of academics who are paid to promote self-serving causes, vouchers do not achieve their primary goal.

Second, vouchers fail on a public funding level. How can taking school monies and average daily attendance funds out of state coffers and giving it to private schools benefit the state or in any way reduce budgetary problems? It cannot. Schools from Wisconsin to Georgia to Colorado to Washington, D.C. to California to Florida have all tried vouchers. They don’t work. The main reason? Public or private, the "good schools" aren’t going to suddenly empty out or add huge staff numbers so there is room for all the voucher kids to attend. Most private schools already have a waiting list; voucher students would just be stapled onto the bottom of those lists.

Third, vouchers fail as a public service strategy. School funding is public money; virtually all private schools where vouchers can be used have religious affiliations. This line of reasoning is simple: public money for public schools. This really isn’t a point for discussion. It’s settled. The state should not be in the business of using taxpayer money to fund and thus promote religious schools. Not to mention that public schools are held to considerable amounts of public scrutiny and accountability; private schools are not. For example, private school teachers do not even have to be state certified to teach. So what happens when private schools take public money? Private schools should be every bit as accountable and held to the same high standards as other schools that take public funds.

Of course there are some terrible examples of public schools in the news, and of course all children deserve a quality education. However, yanking taxpayer money out of public schools and the state budget system and handing it over to private schools is not going to fix these problems. If private schools want to increase their enrollment and expand the demographics of their student bodies, then let them raise funds from wealthy benefactors to fund and endow scholarships, not raid public coffers through a voucher system.

Current and past secretaries of education, existing case studies, and common logic all emphasize the failure of school vouchers and decry their promotion as a viable system. Don’t take money from the state and leave schoolchildren with fewer options by blindly accepting this ill-advised agenda.

Brian Mason

Las Vegas

The writer is a doctoral alumnus of the University of Southern California and was recently honored from among 90,000 educators as the 2009-2010 Los Angeles County Teacher of the Year.

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