Just like many things John Mccain talks about, school vouchers sound good to many Americans when they first hear about it.
The idea of course is to help get your kid out of a public school and get them into some sort of private school by handing over a voucher to the parents to choose a school if the public school is considering failing. I have several points to make on this theory and I hope both Obama and Biden make these as well...
- If a school is failing, then all of the students would get vouchers so where would they go? Many of them to the same private school in that community.
- So now you have all of the students who have had a poor educational experience in the same school again.
- Now the parents of the kids who were paying for "real" private school have moved their kids to a more expensive private school that they consider "smarter" and "safer".
- Where do these government invested private schools get teachers to handle this influx of students? Primarily from public schools, and many from the same troubled school the students came from.
- Many public schools that are failing are in poorer areas of the country, private schools have limited transportation and bussing programs. Mixing public and private schools with the current bus system will just make it that much more inefficient and costly. Expecting parents who may not even have a car or the time to drive their kids to school is not acceptable.
- Many voucher programs lack adequate funding for school lunches. So that might be extra money for poor parents to scrap together.
- Standards and Oversight. Once you privatize these schools it becomes much harder logistically to try to keep standards and raise standards and to monitor progress. It is much easier for private schools that may not be required to take the same standards tests to show that the students are doing better. The real stats will get lost, which could be used by some to try to prove that private schooling is a success.
Please Rec, and pass this to the Obama campaign ;-)