The Voice of the LC Dems: School Vouchers: Bad for students, bad for schools

In an age of ever-increasing global interdependence, education must lie at the forefront of American values and interests. Gone are the days when a person’s education was merely the time between learning to tie his or her shoes and going to work. Instead we live in a world where every person must acquire a set of indispensable skills to compete in an incessantly evolving and increasingly globalized economic marketplace.

We can equip future generations with these skills, but it will require a reaffirmation of our commitment to public education and a refusal to publicly fund school voucher programs. Further implementation of publicly funded school voucher programs would result in a few students benefiting at the expense of students in public schools, a lack of accountability that exposes children to poor educational conditions and taxpayer’s wallets to corruption, and a movement of the American educational system toward greater marketization and commodization. This would be a system where children do not benefit, but suffer. The goal of voucher programs can be appealing to the American “market” obsession—creating better schools through competition—but in reality, they do just the opposite.

First, voucher systems can only affect a small percentage of public school students. Even if it were possible to fund vouchers for every student, private schools have the prerogative to admit or deny any student they choose. With admission already competitive for these classroom spots, the majority of students will be turned away and sent back to schools suffering from an even greater lack of funding.

Second, many students who can use vouchers will either attend a parochial school or have always attended a private institution. In 2002, two-thirds of Cleveland voucher recipients had never attended public school! Vouchers drain money from schools that need it and subsidize private education for those already able to afford it.

That same Cleveland program was charged $419,000 in taxi over-billing for absent students, creating greater taxpayer burden. Voucher students in Milwaukee went to school in a building that was 110 years old with no fire alarms or sprinklers and paint containing levels of lead more than eight times what is safe. One teacher at this school had been convicted of first-degree murder, and another school enrolling voucher students was founded by a convicted rapist! These institutions lacked the oversight and accountability needed to protect enrolled students because they were private schools.

While there must always be a push for greater equality in educational opportunities, publicly funded school vouchers simply are not the answer. Vouchers drain money from public schools while benefiting few students and exposing others to great risks. As we have seen with the current economic crisis, markets create both winners AND losers—will we allow the same to happen to our children?