Nay to School Vouchers

OK. We are all supporters of free, public education. But some of us see vouchers as a "safety valve" that allows parents to have greater control over how their money is spent and where it is spent.

I say “Nay!!” Rather, vouchers entice people to spend my money elsewhere.

Some thoughts:
1. Stop using the word "taxpayers." It's divisive. All residents (citizens, visitors from other planets, even tourists) pay taxes in some form or another and to some degree or another.

2. I'm not sure that the NEA is the enemy of change/improvement, any more than the AMA is or the ABA is or the ANPA is. Or even the ACLU. They each are "special interests" wearing two hats: experts in a field, and turf-protectors. We as consumers need to out-vote them, even as we heed their advice. (N.B.: Trial-Lawyers Associations seem to regularly out-flank us in the legislature. That doesn't mean that we scrap the liability system. Or does it?)

3. How would you define "free, public education"? "Free" means no cost for using it --as in most highways; as in librarys. Public means everyone goes. One could argue that every child who goes to other than a public school therefor diminishes the "public-ness" of the classroom from which he or she is absent.

4. Encouraging people --by vouchers, tax-deductions or whatever-- to opt out of the free, public education system diminishes its value to those who remain, and removes from the departed any real concern for what they left behind. They no longer have "skin in the game."

5. The keys to success in school --other than the obvious ones such as teacher-qualification & pay, class size, modern texts and equipment--are geographic proximity, parent involvement and participation in extra-curricular activities.

6. You get what you pay for: A mechanic who can't read the computer manual to work on your car, a sales-clerk who can't make change, a doctor who cannot speak your language well-enough to tell you that you are dying, a soldier who cannot speak the language of the country to which we've sent him to fight and die.

7. Pay me now or pay me later. That is, "invest" in free, public, early-childhood education now or "spend" it on prisons 20 years later.

For more on this subject see an article by Zachary M. Seward in the Wall Street Journal of Saturday/Sunday, July 15-16, 2006. In it he reports on a recent study by researchers at the Educational Testing Service, Princeton, N.J. It analyzed 2003 data from the National Assessment of Education Progress --aka "the nation's report card."

While using a statistical model that accounted for a range of student characteristics, including affluence, ethnicity, disability and background in English, Seward says that "public-school students are generally poorer, more diverse and less likely to speak English at home than their private-school counterparts."

Duh! No wonder the release of the report was delayed for more than a year.