An Education On Vouchers
When George W. Bush and Al Gore argue over school vouchers (Bush is for them, Gore's against), they're not just squabbling over one facet of their much-ballyhooed education plans. They're grappling with a meaty issue encompassing rich vs. poor, local vs. federal control, and open markets vs. controlled economies.
Voucher proposals come in many shapes and sizes, but they all provide parents with funds to help pay for the school of their choice - in most cases, the money comes out of budgets now supporting public schools. In Bush's plan, only schools deemed failures would lose federal funding; the money would go, instead, to the parents whose children were "trapped" in the failing schools.
But where will these bright-eyed and voucher-happy kids go? Parochial and private schools may not be able to absorb hundreds of new students. Some private schools cost well over $5,000 - much more than parents are likely to get from a voucher. Parochial schools are cheaper, but critics balk at using federal funds to support church-run schools. And any school can choose not to accept vouchers.
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"It's a voucher to do what?" he asked. "To go where?"
Other observers think vouchers are just the first step in rewriting the nation's education system.
"Until parents have the power to choose schools, we're not going to see any revolutionary change," said Darcy Ann Olsen, director of education and child policy at the Cato Institute. She wants schools to compete in an open marketplace, much as colleges do. "If parents don't like what they're getting in a school, then they walk out the door, Olsen said.
The concept has a basic, sort of all-American, capitalist appeal. Even as he scorns vouchers, Vice President Gore says he supports more choice. He thinks parents should be able to pull a child out of one public school and send her to another. And Gore, along with Governor Bush, is a big fan of charter schools, which are public, but put together directly by the communities they serve. In short, Gore favors a buffet, as long as everyone remembers to eat their greens.
Many critics, including the vice president, think vouchers will leech away money from public schools, and lead to the privatization of education. John Stevens, the executive director of the Texas Business and Education Coalition, supports more school choice, but he's leery of a full-throated voucher system. He argues that voucher advocates, who say parents could still opt for public schools, aren't working to improve those schools. "It's disingenuous to say you're working for disadvantaged kids," said Stevens, "and not working to improve the institution where all of them are educated."
Olsen said the assumption that nobody will choose public schools, "tells us something about the quality of public schools." She wants all the money funneled into those schools handed over to parents. "There's a misconception about how much education really has to cost," she said, adding that tax credits and private efforts could help families pay for schooling, and that schools could use sliding fee scales, as many parochial schools already do. The point is to "pick and choose schools like you pick and choose your grocery store and the car you buy."
But that market analogy doesn't work for some, and it doesn't work in the areas where schools are most desperate. Look at the south side of Chicago, suggests John Witte, director of the La Follette Institute for Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Can you buy groceries there? Or a car? Or clothes?" he asked. "If those markets don't work, why would an education market work?"
"In education, you don't get the same forces of supply and demand," said Scher. A school isn't a widget factory, and "widgets don't care how they're treated. Kids do."
Wendy Kopp, the director of Teach for America, struggles with the issue.
"On one level, I think that parents in low-income areas should have the same choice as parents in high-income areas have, so it's difficult to argue against voucher plans. On another level, is this really the solution?"
"Voucher plans alone, in my mind, won't necessarily get us where we need to be," she concluded.
Kopp supports programs to recruit excellent teachers and visionaries. Witte favors limiting vouchers to poor families, so as to avoid subsidizing education for families already able to pay for it. Former Democratic contender Bill Bradley thinks vouchers are worth experimenting with, if only to see wether the dire predictions will come true. At the root of all the wrangling over vouchers is, at least, a willingness, or even a desperation, to try something that will end the split between the education haves and have-nots.