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Health & Fitness

School Choice and Vouchers, Working Against Society's Self Interest

The School Choice and Voucher Movement is not only anti-American, but it works against the majority's self interest.

The battle between voucher supporters and detractors is getting more than just a little tiresome. It seems that the same tired arguments are being stated over and over and people aren’t talking to one another but past each other.

When I moved to Wisconsin some 17 years ago, it was my first experience with the issue of school choice, charter schools and vouchers. Of course I had heard of the Milwaukee Experiment and the debate around the program, but I hadn’t taken the time to get into the particulars. We chose the area where we live just because of the public schools, high taxes and all. The education that my two youngest received was excellent and they have achieved much since graduation.

My own research doesn’t support the suppositions put forth by the school choice supporters. There doesn’t appear to be any significant difference in academic achievement between private schools and public schools, in spite of over twenty years of the school choice program. Since the school choice appears to be a dead end, then why is there such a commitment to continue directing money at this solution and to even expanding it? I think it is time to see if we can make some sense of this and who is benefitting.

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To understand the school choice and voucher movement, we need to go back to the migration of primarily white protestant Europeans to North America early in the 17th century. The early settlers in New England were the first to offer public education to its citizens. The earliest of schools were begun by the citizens based on religious principles, biblical teachings and a belief that literacy was important to understand and fulfill religious duty. At this time, public education meant religious education. The earliest settlers were mindful to educate in their own sectarian manner assuring that the citizenry adhered to the deeply held religious dogma and doctrines. In short, universal education meant reading, writing, some mathematics, and religion. The first statutes required settlements of at least 50 families had to provide primary education and settlements of 100 families or more had to also provide secondary education.  To understand the importance of religious education; Harvard University was founded to educate the clergy of Congregationalists and Unitarians in theology so that they didn’t have to go to Europe to be educated.  It was privately founded and remains so to this day.

The southern colonies took a different approach to education, believing it was a “personal matter”, reserving it to the male elite only. This mirrored the English model closely and the first university was established in Virginia, chartered by King William III and Queen Mary II as an institution for training of Anglican clergy, the Philosophies, and Languages. The College of William and Mary was publicly supported from the very beginnings and educated many of America’s earliest leaders and founders. Just a tangential point; the U.S. Military Academy was founded on two principles: The first was to train a military officer corps to lead the various state militias; and two was to train men in the engineering sciences.

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However, this article is not about higher education, but primary and secondary education. As mentioned before the Northern tier of states took an entirely different model than in the Southern tier. Modern public education can attribute their existence to the “Father of Public Education”, Horace Mann (1796 – 1859). He reformed the Public Education, beginning in Massachusetts, which initially moved to many states. His reforms advocated the following:

In 1838, he founded and edited The Common School Journal. In this journal, Mann targeted the public school and its problems. His six main principles were: (1) the public should no longer remain ignorant; (2) that such education should be paid for, controlled, and sustained by an interested public; (3) that this education will be best provided in schools that embrace children from a variety of backgrounds; (4) that this education must be non-sectarian; (5) that this education must be taught by the spirit, methods, and discipline of a free society; and (6) that education should be provided by well-trained, professional teachers. Mann worked for more and better equipped school houses, longer school years (until 16 years old), higher pay for teachers, and a wider curriculum.1  

Horace Mann never envisioned the type of public education system that has evolved absent of all religiosity. He had to deal with the issue of battling for non-sectarian education since schools were being used to accentuate religious differences rather than create universal unity. He assumed that the school would still provide for the Christian moral underpinnings of American Society. However, what he couldn’t have known was the diverse nature of growth that would make up the nation some two centuries later. His model of progressive education set the stage for the adaption and change that has occurred. To further the secularization of public education, the Supreme Court of the United States has applied the constitutional principles to the issue of public education and progressively removed religion as an important component of that education, leaving it to be determined outside the confines of the public school.

The Horace Mann Model and the subsequent court rulings have led to the problem as it is faced today. The courts have kept from interfering in the curriculum of private schools, including sectarian private schools.  Therefore, those objecting to the sectarian nature of public schools have always had a way out through creating, supporting and enrolling their children into the private school. This has been used for both good and ill.

Beginning in the late 1950s, after the Supreme Court ruling of Brown v The Board of Education; those objecting to the racial desegregation of the public schools founded what have become known as “segregation academies”.  So complete was the destruction of the public schools in certain areas, which the affected schools were shut down and school vouchers were issued for attendance to the private schools. This action created areas where affected minorities had no place to go to school. Private Christian academies have been founded, not for racial purposes, but to promote sectarianism and a response to secularization. By the 1980s, most if not all segregation academies have integrated or closed. However, the Christian School, Home Schooling and Cyber Schooling movement has continued to grow and attract more people to their ranks.

The current School Choice and Voucher Programs have used the deficiencies found in some public schools, primarily urban, as the rationale for offering access to private education to families who, here to for, could not personally afford to participate in private education. This is all based on the assumption that it is the school and teachers that has failed and not the students because of social and economic circumstances. Studies have proven this to be a generally false assumption and the majority of students enrolled in Choice and Voucher Programs do no better academically than those who remain in the public programs. Therefore, what are the real reasons for pursuing and supporting this failed solution? We need to look at the causality from a different direction, away from education altogether.

As this nation has become more diverse and the population demographics have changed; the previous suburban white majority has seen their numbers shrink along with the power of their majority. The last two presidential elections have hallmarked this change creating a growing sense of anxiety among the affected white population. To maintain their power, requires an adherence to the traditional values of the past where the white majority ruled without question.  The real objective of the movement is for the hearts and minds of the children and to educate them in such a manner so they will continue to support the fading white majority and an antiquated system. It is a system of covert apartheid perpetrated to keep a future white minority in power.

 Just as anything else, the arguments for the School Choice and Voucher Movements become moot when the foundation principles are based on false premises and turn out to be nothing more than a manipulation of the public sentiment for gain. As evidenced by the main supporters of this movement, including plutocrats from the religious Christian right; Dick and Betsy DeVos, the Bradley Foundation, Walton Foundations, etc.  

 The School Choice and Voucher Movement are insidious and desire the general public to pay for actions that will undermine the best interests of the current and future majority. One of the standard arguments for Voucher support is that it costs the taxpayer less to educate a child through the private voucher school than through the public institution. This is totally misleading since funding is actually based on total funding of participating students. The public institutions have a responsibility to educate all and to maintain staff and infrastructure to accomplish that mission. It has been my experience that you get what you pay for. What is really at hand is a means to subvert public monies to rescue many private parochial schools from insolvency and closure. Diverting money from the public system also increases the likelihood of more public school failures, thus furthering the arguments to continue funding of private institutions. This is a means to completely circumvent the spirit of public education and the court’s constitutional rulings. In other words, it is an “end around” movement.

No one should allow the expenditure of public funds without public oversight, which private schools completely avoid as well as meeting the same standards that public schools are accountable to. It is time to close the School Choice and Voucher programs and place the effort into the public schools.

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