School vouchers: Should there be more quality controls?
Georgia will likely see another legislative attempt at vouchers next session, something that thus far has failed to gain much traction in the General Assembly.
An investigation by the Washington Post will likely revive the debate over whether we should allow parents to receive tax dollars to pay for private schools, especially religious schools.
Most vouchers do not cover the full cost of private school tuition. So, many parents in areas with vouchers send their children to parochial schools, which typically charge less than other private schools. And, indeed, many of the families receiving vouchers in Washington send their kids to Catholic schools.
But what folks don’t consider is that once vouchers are approved for one religious school, they can’t legally be denied to others. Taxpayers could find their money going to schools run by cults equivalent to the Branch Davidians.
The Post found vouchers going to quite an array of schools.
Here is an excerpt of the piece: (Please read the entire story before commenting.)
Congress created the nation’s only federally funded school voucher program in the District to give the city’s poorest children a chance at a better education than their neighborhood schools offer.
But a Washington Post review found that hundreds of students use their voucher dollars to attend schools that are unaccredited or are in unconventional settings, such as a family-run K-12 school operating out of a storefront, a Nation of Islam school based in a converted Deanwood residence, and a school built around the philosophy of a Bulgarian psychotherapist.
Yet the government has no say over curriculum, quality or management. And parents trying to select a school have little independent information, relying mostly on marketing from the schools. The director of the nonprofit organization that manages the D.C. vouchers on behalf of the federal government calls quality control “a blind spot.”
“We’ve raised the question of quality oversight of the program as sort of a dead zone, a blind spot,” said Ed Davies, interim executive director of the D.C. Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp. “Currently, we don’t have that authority. It doesn’t exist.”
Republicans in Congress established the D.C. voucher program eight years ago to demonstrate the school-choice concepts that the party has been espousing since the 1950s. Vouchers were once thought to be moribund, but came roaring to life in 2010 in states where Republicans took control. Fourteen states have created voucher programs or expanded existing ones in recent years.
Some states, such as Wisconsin, now include middle-class families in their voucher programs. Other states, including Virginia, have begun indirectly steering public dollars to private schools by offering tax credits to those who donate to scholarship funds.
In some cases, the public has pushed back against the idea of routing state dollars from public to private schools. Legal challenges are pending in Colorado and Indiana. In the November elections, Florida voters rejected a ballot amendment that would have permitted tax dollars to flow to religious institutions, including parochial schools. That would have enabled the state to revive a voucher program that had been declared unconstitutional in 2006 by its highest court. Yet Florida continues to offer vouchers for disabled students who want to attend private schools and awards tax credits to corporations that donate to private-school scholarship programs.
But the most comprehensive study of the D.C. program found “no conclusive evidence” that the vouchers improved math and reading test scores for those students who left their public schools. The study, released by the U.S. Department of Education in 2010, found that voucher students were more likely to graduate than peers without vouchers, based on data collected from families. And parents reported that their children were safer attending the private schools, though the students themselves perceived no difference.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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57 comments Add your comment
Bill Mackinnon
November 19th, 2012
5:23 pm
There are a lot of comments that exhibit poor critical thinking skills in this blog. Too bad that the energy tied up in attitudes, emotional arguments and straight emotionality could go a long way towards helping the various school systems better. My kids are APS graduates and in college. We were involved parents from the first K day to final high school graduation. All the focus on North Atlanta is warranted, but serves to obscure the state of the system as a whole. Reform from within is the best answer and there is no silver bullet. North Atlanta’s graduation rate is among the top few in the system and at around 65% it is terrible. The kids who don’t graduate are overwhelmingly minority and live below the poverty line. I know teachers who are dedicated, work much longer hours than the regular school day and are caught up in the general vilification of the teacher corps. Crying racism at an institutional level and using that as an excuse to “punish” and excoriate teachers just diminishes the very people we depend on to educate our teachers. APS spends around $12,000 per child. With 47,00 o kids that is “564,000,000. The cost per child keeps increasing every year but all the measures cited show a decline in quality. Vouchers are not the way to better the schools. Focusing on test score has proven to be a Trojan Horse-it brought in teaching to the test and the biggest cheating scandal in the country (Who is holding Beverly Hall accountable? How long before she comes out of hiding and gets another job to promulgate the same thing to another system? She needs consequences, at the minimum have her certifications revoked permanently). I had a conversation at church with a mother of three beautiful black boys (I am white). She says her 14 year old, a very bright straight A student is already under peer pressure to not be “smart.” Peer pressure is one of the strongest forces teens have to deal with. She is working hard to counteract it and only time will tell. That is racism in an insidious form.
It is not true that uninvolved parents are lazy (I can’t find the post above that ripped these parents). It is apparently universally accepted that involved parents are critical to the success of these students. For some of these parents there are huge obstacles to their being involved. The school reform should be focusing on reducing these obstacles. Neighborhood policing which put policeman into neighborhoods to build relationships is acclaimed for significant reductions in crime. School systems can do the same thing. If schools adopted “servant leadership” then every effort, activity and program serves to support the teachers int he classroom. What would happen if administrators and central staff spent the bulk of their time and energy in the neighborhoods interacting with parents persistently until they got the parents in rooms to talk. What would happen if the school buildings were used as community centers to focus resources on the parents, especially those who need it. What would happen if the schools partnered with various county and state agencies to provide services to parents and families with the school as the central focus, particularly where there are high rates of poverty and social dislocation? This seems a lot more effective use of dollars than vouchers.
@ DeKalb Inside Out 3:26 I agree that the idiots could win out, but then the idiots are idiots and outsmartable (is that a word). Of course it would take energy and commitment and would be messy. I think your, and my, vote would count better, though.
Pride and Joy
November 19th, 2012
6:35 pm
“It’s ridiculous that folks feel entitled to the use of public dollars to send their children to the private school of their choice.”
PUBLIC dollars?
There are no public dollars.
There are tax payer dollars.
I am a tax payer and I have a RIGHT to say what my tax payer dollars are spent on.
A corrupt “education” system is ROBBING me of my money and is trying to FORCE me to attend a failing public school.
Money doesn’t grow on trees — they come out of my bank account from my hard work. I deserve the RIGHT to use education dollars to educate my children — to really educate them instead of sending them to an overcrowded, “public” school where only 60% of the children even graduate.
Edurats have only themselves to blame. If public schools were worth the money, there would not be a clamor for charters and vouchers and tax credits.
JW
November 19th, 2012
6:36 pm
@historydawg…The founding fathers most certainly did NOT create public education! The industrialists did many years later in order to produce a workforce that had minimal literacy and could demonstrate the ability to do as they were told.
Bill Mackinnon
November 19th, 2012
10:35 pm
JW What’s your point? So what? That dynamic is in play today. Of course business wants workers who can do the job, which is what they are told. Care to expand and think a little harder?
DeKalb Inside Out
November 20th, 2012
10:58 am
Ed Advocate
Accountability? How is anyone ever held accountable for failing schools, low graduation rates, etc …? That’s why the state chartered school amendment passed and the parent trigger law is coming up.
I call it faux accountability and transparency. I’m with you on more information, but only if it’s accurate. School administrations are cheating on tests, providing false documents and lying to their boards and the public.
We need real accountability and transparency in monopoly school systems where the parents have no choice. Private schools are forced to provide a superior education because parents don’t have to go there.
I prefer choice over faux accountability and transparency. Would you rather send your kids to a public school or Pace, Wesleyan, Lovett, etc… ? Those private schools have hardly any reporting or transparency and absolutely no accountability to the public. Yet, most people would still rather go there.
DeKalb Inside Out
November 20th, 2012
11:11 am
Bill Mackinnon
You want to fix traditional public education from within? Fantastic, me too!! What’s the plan?
At large elections for all local boards of education … just won’t work out. DeKalb has 2 at large board members. Dr Walker (heaven help us) and Pam Speaks (who barely beat a terrible opponent). If it were all at large we would have 9 Dr Walkers on the board. The plurality in DeKalb would have 100% control.
“The idiots” are led by very cunning and well funded people, namely Dr Walker, the Bishop Eddie Long, et al.
Let's face it
November 26th, 2012
10:04 am
I say give parents the exact amount of school taxes they pay in property taxes. If their child attends public school, they must pay the taxable amount. If their child attends private school they use the amount that would have been taxed to help pay for private. You should not be given other’s tax dollars unless you are using the public system and then nothing changes as far as taxes.