The talk of the Trump administration has changed direction again. This week it’s about school choice, or at least that is the reason for yet another trip to join with his pal Rick Scott, the governor of Florida, and visit a local Catholic school to push for a voucher system. For those that don’t follow the news a voucher system would allow parents to take taxpayer money and use that money to pay tuition for their kids in the private, parochial, or charter school of their choice. In fact, parents could choose to take this money and use it to home school their students. The second thing Trump and his Department of Education Secretary have been pushing for is removing a lot of the Federal oversight of education and returning it to state control. This would allow states to set the standards and the curriculum that their population feels that their children need, or what they feel is appropriate.
Now, before I go any further, I want to make a few disclosures. First, I did attend a private boarding school during high school. No, it is not funded by the taxpayers, it is funded by a trust fund setup by Milton Hershey, the founder of the Hershey Chocolate Company and administered by a board of directors under the Hershey Trust brand. So, even though I was not attending school the taxpayer money was still going to the school district regardless if I was there or not. The second disclosure I need to make is that I have been a very strong proponent of educational change. I also have been a member of the alternative education resource organization (AERO) and am a firm believer on alternatives to traditional education. But all of this does not mean that I am a proponent of the voucher systems.
The premise of public education and the public school system is that every student will receive the same education regardless of location, race, income level, disability, and a number of other categories. What a student is required to learn in Indiana, another student needs to learn in New York, and another student must learn in California. The reasons for this are simple; we live in a global economy. Upon graduation students will go on the college, technical education, or into the workforce. Furthermore in our economy students will be competing against students from other countries. Additionally, the Federal oversight is important to those with learning disabilities or special needs. The Federal oversight prevents states from de-funding programs or segregating students with special needs. In the 1970s and 1980s students with special needs were put into special classes that covered a bare minimum, sent them to a shop based program, which kept them out of the way of the “real students” (that is a term I heard an administrator use once) and just graduated them with a basic diploma. The Federal Education Department guideline and laws are designed to prevent this scenario.
State control of education, curriculum, and content is not a good idea. States can be influenced too easily by groups of individuals within a state. For example portions of the South and Midwest are controlled very heavily by the churches. If a pastor in a church suggests (or in most cases preaches) about students being taught creationism versus evolution the majority of the people in those congregations will turn out at the next election and vote for removing evolution from the text books. This puts students at a disadvantage, unless they are planning on studying theology and entering the ministry after high school. Another example is even more life altering. A school district in Alabama would be able to decide that health class will not include any mention of safe sex practices other than abstinence. Now, we all know teenagers and young adults are going to eventually become sexually active. We also know that this is a very uncomfortable conversation for many parents to have with their kids and be open and honest. So, the students from this Alabama school system will not have honest conversation and instruction on safe sex and pregnancy prevention. The will know the mechanics, but they will not have access to options. This puts the young adult at risk for unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. Some of them may be life threatening.
Lack of Federal oversight and federally mandated curriculum will lead to differences in educational standards, material, and potentially some life threatening mistakes. Lack of Federal oversight will also allow states to de-fund special education programs, release special education teachers, and push those students into “alternative” classes to reduce budgets.
The voucher system that the Trump administration is pushing for is even more dangerous. Let’s break it down using rough math. A school district gets it’s operating budget based on a percentage of the property/school taxes taken into the city, county, state, and country. This money is supposed to be allocated to all of the schools in an equitable manner based on the population of students attending the school. The school funding pays for teachers, school improvements, books, testing, and transportation. It also helps fund after school activities and lunch programs for low income students. Each state does handle the school funding in different ways, based upon Federal guidelines.
The voucher program would say that “Johny” is worth XXX dollars to the school district per year. So, Johny’s parents would be given a voucher that would transfer that XXX dollars to any school that the parents chose to send him to. This would include religious schools, private schools, or even they could choose to keep that money and home school Johny. OK, make sense so far? So, let’s say Johny’s friends Bob, Billy, Max, and Chris parents all decide to take their vouchers and send the five angels to the “Academy of the Evangelistic Preaching”, a school that promises to not teach any science, history, or activity that is not in the Bible, interpreted by the Pastor (headmaster) of the affiliated church. So, the five angels go to this new school. Yet the other 300 students are still in their old school. The same number of teachers must be in the old public school. The same building maintenance must be done, and the same activities must happen. But, they now have to pay the Academy of the Evangelistic Preaching the value of the five students and this comes directly out of the operating budget of school. Sounds about right? But think about it. You have the same number of teachers, the same building, the same core expenses, but five less XXX dollars to deal with. Since it costs about $20,000.00 per year to have a student in the public school this voucher number would very well be something close to that. So, in this fake scenario the cost to the district could well be $100,000.00 per year out of the budget. This will affect the quality of education of those left. This is two teachers salaries, a computer lab, or a librarian (or two). It isn’t about the students that are leaving, it needs to be about the students that are remaining. Those are the ones that are going to be short changed and eventually receive a lessor education when our societies contracts are that all kids will receive, at minimum, the same quality education.
Next let’s talk about the students that are leaving. Many parents have already said they would remove their students from the local public schools because they do not want them exposed to ideas, education, and beliefs they do not agree with. This could be racial differences, differences in sexual orientations, differences in gender identity, and the list goes on. So, in the case of my made up “Academy of the Evangelistic Preaching” described above, the church may not have tolerance for interracial dating, may be very white (or African American) centered, may not allow gay students, may in fact advocate hatred for various groups, under the guise of saving them. And do not fool yourself, this happens and is real. So, the impressionable young person may not learn tolerance, acceptance, and may be raised in company of a single belief system. What happens to them when school is over? What happens to them during their teenage rebellion years? Are they going to lash out against other groups in society? Or are they all of a sudden going to learn tolerance? Will they be more apt to trample on others rights? Or will they become supportive members of a diverse society? I believe we have learned over the years the answers here.
Corporations love school choice as well. They want to be able to run charter schools and make a lot of money from taxpayer money. Well, this has been tried in many states and has been a total failure. Look it up on line. Edison Educational services, a few educational companies in Washington, DC and Florida. New Jersey has had a trial with this idea. Each and every one of them has been a failure. Some of them failed and had their CEO’s and board of directors locked up. But in each and every case the students, teachers, and population paid a very steep price.
School choice and school vouchers are a way to further drive a wedge into the diverse society and roll back our country 50 plus years to a time of segregation, class systems, the haves and the havenots. School choice is a way to funnel public tax dollars to the religious schools in this country so they can further control and direct societies thought processes to their way of thinking. School choice is designed to destroy the public education system in this country, the system that promises that all children will receive and equitable, standardized education.