McGinity is a graduate student in the Anderson School of
Business.
By Gregory McGinity
In her recent article (“Vouchers
hinder education system,” Daily Bruin, Viewpoint, Feb.
28), Mitra Ebadolahi criticizes vouchers and those parents who seek
to provide a better education for their children.
But vouchers are critical to fixing our education system.
First a distinction must be made between public education and
public schools. Everyone agrees that all students should receive a
high quality education provided by public funds. The question is
whether the public school system is the best way to provide that
public education. As such, there are two important arguments to be
made.
First, our public school system is broken for many students
““ not all, but many.
Second, the only way to begin to fix the problems confronting
this crisis is to give parents and students the freedom and power
to decide what education is best for them. This includes providing
vouchers, scholarships, or something similar to the GI Bill. Call
it what you want, but it’s about giving parents and students
the economic resources to choose the best education.
There are many reports of fiscal mismanagement, falling test
scores, and crumbling infrastructure in the public school system.
Here are just a few of the most recent examples:
The San Francisco Unified School District is under investigation
by the FBI for fiscal mismanagement. There are $75 million in
school construction bond funds unaccounted for. The current
superintendent has said, “This is a very broken school
system.”
In the results from the most recent National Assessment of
Educational Progress, one-third of America’s fourth grade
students were found to be functionally illiterate for their grade
level. This includes two-thirds of African-American students and
almost half of all children in urban schools.
The Belmont Learning Center. Enough said.
There are students who are trapped in chronically failing and
many times unsafe schools. Their families do not have the money to
move to communities where the schools are better, and most of all
they don’t have the time to see if the latest promise of
improvement proves any more trustworthy than its predecessors.
A necessary part of the solution to this crisis in public
education is school choice. It is not a radical idea. It is a
system that has already been proven to work in several
locations.
In Florida, a recent evaluation of the state’s School
Choice Program indicated that the introduction of vouchers has had
a significant impact on the state’s lowest performing
schools. Students in those schools made some of the biggest gains
on the state achievement tests.
Each year, California and the rest of the nation provides
millions of dollars to private schools to care for severely
disabled children. In Orange County, 400 students attend private
schools at an average cost of $21,000 per student. Why? Because the
regular school system can’t provide the proper education
required under the law to those students with “special
needs.” But don’t all students have special needs?
Every year, the Federal Government provides Pell Grants,
Work-Study Grants, Student Loans, and other assistance to students
in need to allow them to attend the college or university of their
choice. In California, we also have the Cal Grant. All of these are
similar to the GI Bill of decades ago that allowed veterans to
attend such private, religiously-based colleges and universities as
Notre Dame, Yeshiva, and Pepperdine, and such public schools as the
University of California.
A recent study by a Harvard Economist found that school choice
would improve the quality of teachers in the classroom by raising
the demand for teachers with high quality college education, and
math and science skills.
The federal government currently has several voucher programs
that allow qualified individuals to acquire services in the private
sector: section 8 housing vouchers, the Medicare/Medicaid program,
and job training vouchers provided under the Workforce Investment
Act of 1998, which was signed by President Clinton.
What if Apple decided to sell faulty computers, provided no
technical assistance to fix them, and never returned your phone
calls asking for help? Apple, having forgotten its primary goal of
serving its customers, would quickly go out of business. Such
blatant disregard for consumers is punished severely in
today’s economy. There are consequences for failure. There is
accountability.
In our current public school system, there are no consequences
for failing to educate students. No one is held responsible for the
failure of many schools to provide a quality education. Students
and parents blame teachers who blame principals who blame school
district administrators who blame school boards who blame the
county boards of education who blame the State Superintendent who
blames the State Board of Education which blames the State
Legislature which blames the Governor who blames the Congress who
blames the President. Who is a parent supposed to hold responsible?
With a voucher, parents can hold themselves accountable.
But if we are going to change the system, what should a fair
voucher program look like? I suggest the following elements:
-Limit student eligibility to those most in need. Vouchers
should be available only to those students in the lowest performing
20 percent of schools.
-To ensure accountability, both to parents and to the public,
all students receiving a voucher would be required to take the
current SAT-9 and Academic Standards tests. Schools with students
who do not score above the 33rd percentile would no longer be
eligible to accept voucher students.
-Make it a 7-year demonstration program. If it’s not
working, we’ll end it and try something else. Unfortunately,
the worst government programs have a tendency to last the
longest.
-To ensure a system free of discrimination, schools
participating in the program would have to abide by the federal
Civil Rights Act.
This is a moral issue, very much like the civil rights struggles
of a previous generation. As the southern governors of decades ago
refused to allow black students a quality education, so too the
defenders of the current system thwart the attempts of students and
parents of all types to leave a system that is failing to provide
them with an opportunity for a better life. This is an issue of
freedom and liberty.
The fundamental question today is whether the current public
school system should determine the educational needs of students or
whether the parents and students are in a better position to
determine their own educational needs. I will choose parents and
students over a broken bureaucracy every time.
We all should think radically about what a great education
system should look like. Such a system must include vouchers.