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Petitions are now circulating to place the Education
Opportunity Amendment
on the Colorado ballot this
November. If it passes, Colorado parents would be able to
pick which schools -- public or private -- their children
attend. The state aid, about $1,600 per student per year on
average, would then be passed on to the chosen school.
Naturally, anything so sensible has run into opposition. Not from the public at large -- a recent Gallup Survey shows that Americans like vouchers by a 49-27 margin. The opposition comes from a special interest group that is also the most powerful union in America: the National Education Association, to which most teachers belong.
Even so, good teachers would prosper from a voucher system. As way it is, there's usually only one place a teacher can find work -- the local public school monopoly. With vouchers, every city would contain dozens of schools, all with different philosophies, and all competing for students. So they would all be competing to hire good teachers, too.
The pay and prestige of good teachers would rise. As for the great mass of incompetent deadwood -- the NEA seems to care a great deal about their welfare. I don't.
The NEA, in its quest to advance knowledge, opposes
funding for even studying the voucher system. In the NEA's
view, vouchers could lead to racial, economic and social
isolation of children and ultimately weaken or destroy the
public school system.
The clear implication here is that we do not already
suffer from racial, economic and social isolation of
children.
Which is poppycock. If public schools are at the forefront of the battle against racial isolation, then why are private schools, in general, more representative of the racial composition of their communities?
If the public-school monopoly truly eliminates economic isolation, then why is it that study after study has shown that the most important factor in an adult's later economic success is not which school he attended, but his home environment?
Look at those exemplars of the American way, poor boys who made good. Thomas Edison spent all of three months in a public school, which decided he was retarded; his mother tutored him. Henry Ford dropped out when he was 15. Abraham Lincoln had less than a year of formal schooling. Schools do not turn poor people into rich people.
Does anyone benefit from this alleged reduction of social isolation? For my part, I'd rather my kids learned to read, write, and add during their formative years. Later on they will have ample opportunity to deal with thugs, fixers, cheaters, jocks, snobs, snoops, gossips, plagiarists and the other supposed benefits of socialization in schools.
Then comes the NEA's clincher. Vouchers might destroy
the public school system.
This is the system where half the 17-year-olds do not know Don Quixote from William Wordsworth. Four out of five cannot write a simple business letter. Two-thirds do not know when the Civil War took place, and a third cannot find France on a map of Europe.
America's school statistics show that we're a gigantic Lake Woebegone -- every one of the 50 states claims that its public-school students score above average on national tests. Even if you went to a public school, you can see how that is impossible.
The more that funding rises for public schools, the higher go the drop-out rates and the lower go the test scores. Only two groups benefit from our current system, and those two groups are not students and parents. Incompetent teachers keep their jobs, and overpaid administrators get even more overpaid.
And we are supposed to be worried that vouchers might destroy the public schools? If vouchers will smash this parasitic and inept monopoly, then bring on the vouchers.
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