The School Voucher: Killing Our Public Schools

The School Voucher: Killing Our Public School

Abstract

The founding fathers of this country were unable to promote a national system of education. The U.S. Constitution does not even mention education. The power to form, preserve, and administer schools became a state right under the Tenth Amendment (Pulliam, Van Patten, 2007). The control of education has been a contention between local, state and federal governments for decades. The school voucher idea has been debated many times since the 1950s. Those in favor of school vouchers have made claims that vouchers will improve the educational system. These claims have not been supported (Alex Molnar, 1999). There are many flaws within the private school sector. School vouchers would enable those schools to continue without accountability.

The School Voucher: Killing Our Public Schools

Economist Milton Friedman first proposed school vouchers in 1955. The motivation for using school vouchers was from opposition to court-ordered desegregation. Virginia and other southern legislatures passed laws that gave tax dollars to students so they could pay tuition at any non-sectarian school in their district. This was done to help keep schools segregated (Alex Molnar, 1999). Private school vouchers have been debated at the federal level since the late 1960s. The idea appealed to the administration of Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II. They were unsuccessful in getting Congress to pass such legislation.

Supporters believe that vouchers will promote competition and in turn create public school improvements. They also claim that vouchers will reduce the cost of education and promote major academic improvement in the students that receive the vouchers. Proponents of vouchers tend to base their position on three widely held beliefs about public education:

- that educational outcomes have deteriorated,

- that American public education costs have accelerated

unreasonably, and

- that the public schools cannot reform themselves because

of bureaucratic and political constraints (Alex Molnar, 1999).

Studies show that vouchers have not supported their claim.

Since 1990 school voucher systems have been in place in four states. Studies show that private schools are not any better than public schools. According to The RAND research organization, “there is little information that would permit the effectiveness of vouchers to be compared with other reforms, such as class-size reduction, professional development, accountability, and district-level interventions” (2001). The research company Mathematica wrote in Time Magazine, “Statistically significant achievement gains for voucher students are negligible” (Time, 10/09/00).

The school voucher system has not proven to be of value. The vouchers cause competition for funding with public schools. This competition takes away the attention, energy and resources from efforts to reduce class size and increase the quality of teachers. The schools that accept the vouchers are not held accountable for