Vouchers a scary tool of the rich
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No comments [ Add Comment ]By Cheryl Ferrin
Guest commentary
W
ith all the talk about vouchers in the news today, how much do we really know about vouchers? A few states have experimented with vouchers and met with a measure of success. We hear of a single mother from a large inner city extolling the virtues of the voucher that her child received. We now hear on television how every child in Utah can qualify for a voucher and give the parents the choice that they need for their child's quality education. How scary can this be?
The voucher bills passed by the Legislature will give parents the ability to spend a varied amount of returned tax dollars on a private school. It's true that this money will come out of the general fund (i.e., money that's used for roads, corrections, law enforcement, etc.) instead of the education fund, and that a large portion of that which would have been spent on the child, had he or she stayed in public education, will stay with the schools. And it is also true that classroom sizes could be lowered for awhile. How scary can this be?
The scary part comes when we look deeper into the roots of the voucher movement. Where does it come from? Why has it been pushed so hard? And what will be the final outcome?
A small group of very wealthy and powerful people from across the United States have found that by creating a voucher system in every state, they will be able to pull money out of public education and start their own private schools. There is a lot of money in education, and they would be able to tap into that money and pull it into their private schools. These people are powerful and pervasive. They have offered large sums of money to people running for office throughout the country if they will back vouchers. Once they have converted all the states to the voucher system the way will be opened for them to create their systems of private schools. This money comes only from a few sources; in 2004, Wal-Mart gave this group $6 million to further its cause.
Seeing the impoverished, single mother sending her child off to a private school partly funded by vouchers brings a ray of sunshine to the soul, until you realize that most impoverished or at-risk families will not be able to pay the balance of the tuition money, nor be able to obtain travel for their child unless they live in an urban area where public transportation is readily available. In Utah we have 29 counties. Twenty-one counties in Utah do not have private schools. Is it any wonder that the rural areas of Utah are reluctant to let go of their tax dollars knowing that their children will never see any of that money and that most of it will be going to the Wasatch Front to those children for private schools.
I am not afraid of vouchers. They may help some students. And used in a limited area where there are schools literally falling apart, as has been the case in a few other states, one can see a need. However, one has to wonder what the Legislature was thinking when we went from no vouchers at all to the most liberal voucher system in the entire United States. Was the Legislature really thinking of the rural areas, the at-risk families that can't afford the extras that private schools demand, the nonexistent transportation that the child will need? As for the "falling apart school" idea, no school in Utah is ill-managed nor could any be considered as such.
Even in our schools that have the most difficult situations there is an abundance of good that is happening to help promote student achievement.
Schools in Utah that are designated as struggling schools are doing a great job with the special needs that the children bring with them each day. They are not needy schools, they are schools with needy children who have many of their needs met by quality teachers and staff.
There have been past occasions when Utah has gone with the rest of the country and implemented educational tactics promoted as the answer to public education worries. One specific movement that Utah bought into was the open classroom of the 1970s. Schools that built open classrooms have spent the past 30 years dealing with the problems that idea caused. Using other states' ideas won't always work well in Utah. When there are problems with Utah schools, we need to use Utah ideas to address those problems.
Let's reverse the situation and pretend we have always been in the "voucher mode." Every year parents had to seek out the "perfect school" for their child, find transportation and come up with the extra money that is needed to fill the tuition bill. How, then, would it look if the Legislature passed a bill promoting schools that offered a comprehensive curriculum, competent staff, certified teachers, state oversight and assistance, free transportation, free speech therapy, free special needs instruction, free lunch, free tutoring, free after-school programs, free summer school, not to mention neighborhood schools where the parents are welcomed and encouraged to sit on governing boards and a system where the schools are held accountable for the money that is spent.
The view that competition is good for business, therefore it will bring about better schools, is not a proven idea. In Utah, where money is scarce and children are plenty, cooperation has been a better path to take. Competition divides and brings a negative atmosphere to the community. Cooperation lifts everyone and better uses our valuable resources.
We do not know the long-range effect of the voucher idea; that is the really scary part. By pealing off scarce resources to blindly support vouchers across the state, we could be looking at the beginning of the end for one of the most successful school systems in America.
Ferrin lives in Eden.
