A few thoughts on vouchers and charters…
My dad, a pretty open-minded conservative, emailed me an opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal titled “The Greatest Scandal” in support of school voucher programs back in July asking for my thoughts. I immediately dashed back a quick reply off the top of my head, which follows below:
I don’t agree that vouchers are the answer. If school choice and vouchers helped improve the SYSTEM, we would have an improved DC system (we have both school choice and vouchers at play). Instead, the vouchers divert funds that could improve the entire system and instead only benefit 1,900 students, which does nothing for the rest of the students left behind. It seems to me that the two parties are not really debating vouchers and choice vs. maintaining the status quo —- the two parties are talking about different things entirely: individual success vs. system success.
McCain and conservatives prioritize what is best for individuals while attempting to maintain the highest level of group success. Help 1900 kids get a better education? Great for those 1900 kids, too bad we can’t help everyone. Obama and liberals, I think, aim to prioritize what is best for the group/society/the system in general while attempting to maintain the highest level of individual success.
Vouchers, for sure, are a viable answer to individual success. However, vouchers will do nothing to help the public system improve. The people who make the case FOR vouchers as a way to help clean up the SYSTEM have never been inside a school that is losing its students to privates and charters. Teachers stop caring, the Principal stops caring, you basically feel forgotten. As a teacher in one of these schools, my windows were missing panes for the entire year. I had 8 kids at the end of the year and still lacked basic supplies for teaching. We didn’t have specials (music? PE? we did it all in our classroom, even Art was lost by the end of the year) and the morale was so low by the end of the year. The bottom line? My kids who moved and went to the privates and charters are now much better off. But the kids who are left? Please, come to my classroom, look them in the eyes, and tell them not to worry, that really, this is better for them in the long run. There is no way the article’s author can convince me that the students left behind are going to be better off because of vouchers. They do not “inspire” change and they do not “scare” teachers/principals/admins into improving. Vouchers essentially pit a broken public system against a private system that is completely unequal to them, and say “well, why can’t you just improve and be like the private schools?” It is like taking one child who is severely behind academically and saying to them “well, why can’t you just be more like your sibling” (who happens to be gifted).
Another reason why vouchers and school choice fails as a system reform is because privates and charters can expel “difficult” kids back to their boundary (home) schools. Every year, around October, the worse off schools suddenly get BACK really difficult, behaviorally challenged kids. As a boundary or home school, you are legally required to take back any child expelled from another school. But to expel a child from his boundary school is nearly impossible, especially with NCLB and IDEA (edu legislation), it is reminiscent to trying to get an ineffective teacher fired in DCPS. Therefore, the privates and charters can keep the successful students, send back the kids who are troublemakers, and … be heralded as the solution to public education reform?
There is no question that the system is broken and needs major reform. However, I disagree with vouchers and school choice (at least the way it is implemented now) because I don’t think it benefits the system, and ultimately is not best for all kids. It is great for the lucky few —- but only the lucky few. Not the system, not all children. I don’t think it’s wrong for those lucky kids to have a good education (I don’t think we should take back the vouchers or send them back to their home schools) but I reject the notion that the voucher system is working for the system. I think Rhee’s idea of paying teachers like real professionals is a great way to boost student achievement, raise morale, and inspire great change within schools themselves. Money talks. I think we just need to give it to the right people.
