Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/279010
AEA Advocate x Summer 2014 9 AT THE CAPITOL The Facts About Vouchers "What have you got against private school vouchers?" your brother-in-law demands over Sunday dinner. Ah, if he only knew the facts. Next time someone puts you on the spot, use these talking points to debunk the most popular voucher claims. Fact: There's no link between vouchers and gains in student achievement There's no conclusive evidence that vouchers improve the achievement of students who use them to attend private school. Nor is there any validity to claims that, by creating a "competitive marketplace" for students, vouchers force public schools to improve. In fact, the most dramatic improvements in student achievement have occurred in places where vouchers do not exist — such as Texas, North Carolina, Connecticut, and Chicago. Instead, those states and communities focused on teacher quality and extra help for students who need it. Fact: Vouchers undermine accountability for public funds Private schools have almost complete autonomy with regard to how they operate: who they teach, what they teach, how they teach, how — if at all — they measure student achievement, how they manage their finances, and what they are required to disclose to parents and the public. The absence of public accountability for voucher funds has contributed to rampant fraud, waste, and abuse in current voucher programs. Fact: Vouchers do not reduce public education costs Actually, they increase costs, by requiring taxpayers to fund two school systems, one public and one private. Such as in Milwaukee, where taxpayers must come up with an additional $1,000 per voucher student over and above what they spend on each public school student. Voucher supporters also don't mention the fact that fixed costs—things such as salaries and benefits for staff, maintenance, utilities, and supplies—are not reduced when a few students spread across different grade levels leave a public school for a voucher school. Instead, those students take their entire per-pupil expenditure with them, leaving the school to fund its programs and staff with fewer public dollars. Finally, as voucher programs become entrenched, they tend to enroll a higher proportion of students who would have gone to private school anyway, and who thus represent an entirely new cost to the education system. In Cleveland, two-thirds of voucher users attended private school the year before they received the voucher, while in Washington, D.C., 200 of the 1,300 vouchers issued the first year of that city's program went to students already attending private school. Fact: Vouchers do not give parents real educational choice Participating private schools may limit enrollment, and in many cases may maintain exclusive admissions policies and charge tuition and fees far above the amount provided by the voucher. Unlike public schools, private and religious schools can — and do — discriminate in admissions on the basis of prior academic achievement, standardized test scores, interviews with applicants and parents, gender, religion, income, special needs, and behavioral history. Americans want consistent standards for students. Where vouchers are in place — Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Florida — a two- tiered system has been set up that holds students in public and private schools to different standards. Despite desperate efforts to make the voucher debate about "school choice" and improving opportunities for low-income students, vouchers remain an elitist strategy. From Milton Friedman's first proposals, through the tuition tax credit proposals of Ronald Reagan, through the voucher proposals on ballots in California, Colorado, and elsewhere, privatization strategies are about subsidizing tuition for students in private schools, not expanding opportunities for low- income children. Fact: Vouchers leave students behind A voucher lottery is a terrible way to determine access to an education. True equity means the ability for every child to attend a good school in the neighborhood. Vouchers were not designed to help low-income children. Milton Friedman, the "grandfather" of vouchers, dismissed the notion that vouchers could help low-income families, saying "it is essential that no conditions be attached to the acceptance of vouchers that interfere with the freedom of private enterprises to experiment." Continued on page 11 Summer.14advo.indd 9 3/14/14 2:58 PM