Writing for the Herald-Zeitung, Ernie Wittwer critiques the false promises of school choice in Texas.
School privatization has been offered by politicians across the country for the past four decades as a solution to everything that ails our educational system. Unfortunately, those politicians have not taken the time to read any of the extensive research that has been done on the experience of vouchers in education. Educational outcomes have been evaluated extensively. Do our kids really learn better after choosing vouchers to move from a public to a private school? Nearly every researcher has found the answer to be no. Only in very narrowly-focused programs designed to aid disadvantaged kids have any measurable improvement been found. In more broadly-defined programs, as has been proposed here, students typically did no better than their peers who stayed in public schools. In some cases, they did much worse.
Funding is always an issue for schools, particularly in Texas were per pupil funding is 46th among the states. We have been assured that public schools will not see any reduction in funding because of vouchers. In a moment of exuberance, some have even argued that vouchers will increase funding for public schools. Vouchers are expensive. Arizona estimated the cost of their program at $65 million in the first year. The actual cost was 10 times that amount. Those dollars come from the same tax dollars used to fund nearly all of state government. Another significant draw on public funds means fewer dollars available for other programs. Even if the total amount allocated to public schools went unchanged after introduction of vouchers, amounts available to specific schools would go down since the number of students in a school is a basic factor in the distribution of funds. A reduction in the number of students will mean a similar reduction in funding.
Helping disadvantaged kids who are stuck in failing schools is an argument often heard for vouchers. The experience of other states, where as much as 89% of voucher dollars went to the parents of kids already in private schools, undercuts the argument. Ironically, we will never know if a student in a private school is in a failing school, since private schools tend to be exempt from state testing and reporting requirements.
Helping the disadvantaged also falls apart when the urban/rural divide is considered. Disadvantaged kids live in rural areas as well as urban, but rural areas tend to not have private schools available. How will vouchers help those kids?
Our schools and the students who attend them face problems and need help. If only our political folks would stop pushing imaginary fix-all solutions and start looking for solutions to real problems.
