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Background: what are vouchers?
Vouchers are grants funded by taxpayers for students to use in private schools. Among the features of voucher programs are the following:
----The private schools are not required to accept school vouchers; private schools are free to choose or reject students with vouchers just as they are those without. ----Voucher schools, which receive public money, may reject students based upon religion, sexual orientation, gender and disability. ----Voucher schools may use federal funds for religious instruction. ----Voucher schools lack accountability to the taxpayers that subsidize them; they would in both congressional plans for D.C. have no substantive requirement for reporting or improving academic achievement by students ----The congressional plans fail to impose the accountability standards on voucher schools that are required of public schools, under the No Child Left Behind law.
Why Vouchers Are Bad:
Vouchers in other Cities have failed.
Voucher programs exist in several cities across the country and have been studied closely with failing results. Recent studies of the Cleveland program have found such programs Fail to raise achievement scores of participating students as against their peers who remained behind in public schools. In some studies, Cleveland public school students who remain in public schools outperformed private school students. Moreover, voucher programs though implemented purportedly to benefit poor children, are vulnerable to expansion as a subsidy for other populations. Reports about the Cleveland program indicate that the move there is to make the program serve better off families.
Vouchers Undermine the Educational and Political Status of Black Communities.
The congressional push for vouchers in Washington, D.C. marks a significant moment in the history of public education. It would serve as the first time that federal funds have been given to subsidize private school education for public school students. This would make Washington, D.C. a model for other urban public school systems.
School vouchers have far-reaching implications for black communities in urban centers. The majority of children are not served by voucher programs and thus the majority of African American youth, should vouchers march across the country, would have funding diverted to private and parochial schools at the expense of their already strapped public school systems.
The voucher push by federal lawmakers will result in disproportionate involvement of government in education policy for children of the Black community. Success by politicians working at all costs to impose vouchers could signal the end of Black political influence over education policy affecting the Black community. Vouchers lack grassroots support in Washington, D.C.. The backers of the local voucher movement are national, well-funded conservative foundations.
Once the education of children is turned over to unaccountable private sector institituions, the Black community is disempowered of its authority to devise policy as appropriate to the needs of its children.
Well-meaning families desperate to give their children a better education have turned to support of public subsidies to private schools for the answer. Some of these parents have been personally recruited for pay to 'educate' other parents to bring them over to the support of voucher programs. Many voucher proponents will point to these families, many of whom by anecdotal account, have received substantial stipends, to participate in public demonstrations and speak publicly on behalf of the voucher cause.
However, the majority of African Americans and D.C. residents oppose vouchers. In local Washington, D.C., a 1981 referendum lead over 80% of D.C. residents to vote the way of every other community throughout the country ever presented with a voucher ballot measure, and rejected vouchers. As recently as November of 2002, D.C. residents repeated their rejection of vouchers in favor of funding for public schools in a National School Boards/Zogby International report.
Voucher advocacy organizations have enjoyed the financial backing of well-funded organizations that receive financial support from organizations such as the Bradley Foundation. The Bradley Foundation has been associated with anti-affirmative action law suits, including the Michigan University case.
Some problems with the D.C. voucher proposals.
Fiscal Impact Not Measured.
The D.C. voucher plans in Congress fail to detail the fiscal impact of a voucher plan on the D.C. public schools. For every 30 students taken from the system and sent to private schools with vouchers, critical staff and local and federal funds will be lost from their neighborhood public schools. The voucher plan will draw sorely needed dollars away from the choices in our system now and curtail, not enhance choice in our public schools.
Meeting the accountability mandates of the NCLB law by some estimates will cost D.C. approximately $9 million, which puts improvements in public schools in direct competition with this new voucher plan whose estimated cost is roughly the same as the NCLB mandate.
D.C. Schools Will Have Trouble Meeting the new NCLB requirements.
If D.C. can not adequately fund the NCLB mandates such as improving teacher training, and raising student achievement, schools will not improve and students will lose. Just at the proposal stage alone we see that the goal is to force out public schools, not encourage them to improve. D.C. students will become the casualties of a crusade to impose vouchers at all costs" said Melody Webb, leader of Stop D.C. Vouchers, a D.C. parent-led initiativestarted by the D.C.P.S. parent who is a D.C. attorney and DCPS graduate mobilizing supporters of public schools that oppose vouchers in D.C..
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Related Links: See status of D.C. voucher plans |