Voucher advocates have relied on a curious argument: Parents with students in voucher schools feel better about the education their children are receiving.
Republicans in Congress pushed a voucher plan aimed at students in Washington, D.C., through Congress late in 2004. The controversial plan was described as an “experiment” that would be subject to oversight to see if it was effective.
The first results are in. An objective study of students taking part in the program found no significant improvement in academic performance of the voucher students compared to students who remained in D.C.’s public schools. (As is common with voucher plans, most private schools taking part in the Washington program are religious.)
Voucher boosters immediately began arguing that these results are premature. The study, they argued, examined only the first year of the voucher program. They say more time is needed.
But there is no reason to think test scores will improve. Other jurisdictions with voucher plans have not seen the academic gains parents were promised. A 2006 study of Cleveland’s program, for example, found no academic gains for the voucher students. In fact, they did worse in mathematics.
Other states have been reluctant to test voucher students, perhaps fearing the results. Wisconsin lawmakers stopped testing students in Milwaukee’s voucher program after years of studies showing no academic improvement. Recently, officials in Florida announced that special-education voucher students would not be evaluated because they take a different test than their peers in the public schools. Officials admitted there is no way to tell if the program works.
In the face of this data, voucher advocates have relied on a curious argument: Parents with students in voucher schools feel better about the education their children are receiving.
That may be so, but it won’t help a kid get into college. Imagine a parent telling an admissions officer at a state or private university, “I realize my son flunked most of his courses, but it’s OK because I really feel good about where he went to school.”
(Ironically, only the parents feel good about the voucher schools. In the D.C. study, the students reported feeling no more or less safe in voucher schools than they did in public ones.)
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a misguided ruling in 2002, upheld Ohio’s voucher plan. Since then, the argument has shifted away from constitutional provisions toward public policy concerns.
In a recent column in The Washington Post, Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s representative in Congress, outlined her objections to vouchers. “Most members of Congress join the American principled consensus that public funds, always in short supply, should go to public schools, and that funding for religious schools crosses the line of separation between church and state, wisely drawn by our nation’s founders to avoid the religious strife found in many countries,” she observed.
Holmes Norton added, “For me there are two additional principles: No. 1, no system for educating our children should be imposed on any local jurisdiction against the will of the majority of elected officials and residents, and No. 2, every child is entitled to a good public education for which families have paid taxes.”
Holmes Norton suggested a compromise: privately funded scholarships to pay for private education backed with public school choice and expanded use of charter schools. Her advice should be heeded. Not one more taxpayer dime should be spent propping up religious schools in Washington.
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