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Category:
Published: November 2006
The schools in America are in peril. We spend almost more per student than any other country on the planet, and yet when compared to students from other industrialized countries, our pupils consistently under-perform. To remedy this problem, we cannot simply spend more money. We should spend money smarter through a voucher program. School voucher or school choice programs are programs in which parents are given an amount of money from the government (usually the city or state) to send their children to the school of their choosing, whether private or public.
The voucher movement has been gaining ground throughout the United States, most recently with success in Washington DC with the first federally funded voucher program, which began in the 2004-05 school year. Though most of the programs have been small, they are models for future success. Choice is what has made this country prosper in so many ways, and the lack of choice is what is destroying education in America.
With the current public education system, emphasis is placed not on educating students, but instead on employing teachers. In New York State, tenure usually comes after only three years and raises are earned independent of one's quality of work. Firing a teacher for incompetence is virtually unheard of. It is a common complaint that teachers are paid too little, but that is true for only the good teachers. Should bad teachers be paid $70,000 a year? Should a terrible teacher even have his job without question? Opponents of voucher programs claim that the intention of these programs is to destroy the teacher unions. The fact of the matter is that they are, in part, right. School choice isn't just about helping some lucky students go to good private schools; the intention is to make the public schools truly competitive with private schools. That includes limiting the influence of the teacher unions.
The monopoly status of the public schools has left many teachers uninspired. To compete with private schools they will have to experiment and innovate. As a start, public schools will relax their union rules and give their teachers more freedom in the classroom. That will surely benefit both teachers and students. The public schools right now are huge, expensive bureaucracies; they spend more per student than most U.S. private schools and yet usually get worse performance. However, because of their monopoly they can get away with it. With a voucher program, they wouldn't be able to any longer. With a market system in place, public schools would be forced to get rid of all the unnecessary expenses that they have.
A common argument against school choice is that it will only work if all parents are well informed. At first glance this seems compelling. Parents need to make intelligent decisions for market forces to truly take effect. But even a very low percentage of parents can move the market. When buying a complex technical item like a computer mouse, how often do you do the detailed research necessary to ensure you're getting the best one? For most people, that degree of research is rare. Those few who learn the facts end up creating the market forces that eventually improve all the goods. However, one must also look at the assumption inherent in this argument, which is that parents of underprivileged children won't take an interest in their schooling, which is a very questionable assumption to make.
A voucher experiment already took place in Albany that showed much promise. Unlike what this article focused on, this was not a government program, but rather a private initiative and it focused on one school. In 1997, the 'A Better Choice' (ABC) program offered vouchers to the students of the Giffen Memorial Elementary School, and approximately 100 students accepted them. The students who took the vouchers could transfer to the school of their choosing. The students who remained behind, though, were also helped. By 2000, the principal had been replaced and twelve new teachers were hired. Between the years 1999 and 2000, Giffen's students' 4th grade language arts exam scores improved by fourteen percent.
School choice will initially allow some fortunate students to escape poor public schools to better private schools. Consequently, the public schools will improve so that they don't lose taxpayer funds. Over time, public and private schools will equalize with one another, and likely be far superior to what we have now. Eventually, new private schools will be started by entrepreneurs targeting specific interests, thus opening a new age for American education. Introducing a grand-scale voucher program into the United States would be a radical step, but it would be the bold move needed to invigorate our schools.
Read So You Want to be a Millionaire? Part 2
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