Vouchers

My hopes of pursuing topics on language variation have been dashed by the paucity of the news available.  So, I’m going to focus on education in the inner-city.  I’m picking this at least in part because, coming from the white-bread town of Stevensville, MI, I don’t have a lot of first-hand knowledge.  The closest I ever came to the inner-city was Grand Blanc Middle School, which is a suburb of Flint.  The main difference, and forgive my bluntness, was that at this school, there were black kids, and Latino kids at well.  At least one third of that school was non-white, and outside of that, I’ve never gone to a school where there were more than maybe 10 non-white students out of 500-1000.

 Today, I’m going to focus on the topic of vouchers.  You know—the thing where, if you want to send your child to a private school, the government will give you the money.  On the propents side, you have the fact that there are many schools, especially in the inner-city, that really aren’t very good—but if you decide to send your child to a private school to get them out of that environment, you lose the money that would have otherwise been spent on them by the government.  There is also the idea that competition would help public schools.  The Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman puts it thus on his website:

Public schools pay attention when school choice is on the table. For example, even in Florida, site of the country’s newest voucher program, schools identified as failing are already publicizing their efforts to improve by hiring more teachers, increasing funds for after-school tutoring and lowering class sizes. One superintendent, Earl Lennard, even vowed publicly to take a five percent pay cut if any of his county’s schools received a failing grade. . .

On the opposing side, you have the idea that vouchers are going to deprive schools of much needed funding, and that vouchers would just reinforce the failure of failure of failing schools.  There is also the notion that vouchers would essentially break the first amendment by giving government money to parochial schools who would use the money for non-secular purposes—a voucher proposal in Florida was struck down for just this reason.  There is also concern that private schools could simply ignore certain voucher students once admitted, as in this editorial from the Salt Lake Tribune in Utah, where there is currently a voucher proposal in the state congress:

While private schools are a rational alternative for many students, they are not the solution for the challenges facing the public’s educational system. It is more than likely that a private school wouldn’t bother with difficult, low-achieving or differently challenged students in the first place. Being private, they simply don’t have to.

Personally, I’m not sure what to think.  It seems that, when given the option, many inner-city parents do want the option, or will at least take advantage on it.  For example, in Milwaukee, where there is an extensive voucher program, over 100 million dollars has gone to vouchers, and, if the students in the program were counted as their own school district, they would be the 6th biggest school district in Wisconson.  I have seen varying opinions on whether the program works or not.

 That’s all for now.  I may return to this topic later though.