Q. How can government officials give poor families and all families a choice of
schools?
A. The government can enact an education voucher program.
Q. What is an education voucher program?
A. An education voucher program is similar to the GI Bill. Parents would receive
an education voucher from tax funds to pay the tuition to the schools of their choice,
public or private. For example, the St. Louis City Public Schools currently spend
an average of $11,600 per student per year. Local private school tuition is usually
about $5,000 or less.
Q. Could such an education voucher be used to pay tuition in all schools?
A. Yes. Families would have the right to choose from among all eligible schools.
Education could be purchased in any school, be it public or nonpublic, religious
or nonreligious, college preparatory, technical, trade, or business.
Q. Which schools would not be eligible?
A. A voucher program would not permit parents to pay tuition with vouchers in racially
segregated schools, or in schools failing to meet minimum academic standards.
Q. How would vouchers improve the quality of education?
A. Public schools are now running the only game in town, like the Postal Service
used to do. And like the Postal Service was before UPS and Federal Express, they
have no reason to improve quality of their educational service. As long as money
and students are guaranteed, and families cannot afford an alternative school, public
schools have nothing to fear.
Poor families have no choice.
However, if parents have vouchers in hand to purchase education in the school of
their choice, they will certainly choose a high quality education for their children.
Q. Would family choice in education destroy public schools?
A. No. In fact, family choice would strengthen public schools. It would force public
schools to improve the quality of their education. Schools that refuse to provide
quality education would be forced out of business. But most schools would strive
to improve so that they could attract students and education dollars.
Q. Would that apply to nonpublic schools, also?
A. Yes, of course. Nonpublic schools that do not provide quality education would
not be chosen by parents. Like a grocery store that provides low-quality food at
high prices, low quality nonpublic schools, too, would be forced to close their
doors - casualties of the great power of family choice.
Q. If there aren't any quality schools in a neighborhood for families to choose,
how will the voucher help them?
A. The voucher plan would allow parents to send their children to public and non
public schools outside the neighborhood, or to found new community schools of high
quality.
Q. Have inner city parents really lost confidence in public schools?
A. Yes. Inner-city public education could hardly be ranked lower by inner-city residents.
According to a Gallup poll on attitudes toward public education, over 30 percent
of the residents in the inner city gave the public schools a "D" or failing
rating. HEW reports that 42 percent of 17 year-old blacks are functionally illiterate.
Q. Is there any evidence that nonpublic schools do a better job educating minority
children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds?
A. Yes there is. Citing several recent studies, black Economics Professor Thomas
So well of the University of California in Los Angeles said, "Black students
are two or three years behind in some public schools that are spending $10,000 to
$15,000 per pupil. In nearby private schools which are spending half or a third
of that, the students are reading at or above their grade level.”
Q. Is the voucher plan found in other government programs too?
A. Yes. Mrs. E. Babette Edwards, president of the Harlem Parents Union, told the
Democratic Platform Committee "Vouchers and vouchering are as American as apple
pie. The GI Bill is a voucher system, Medicare and Medicaid are voucher systems,
and so are the Child Care programs and most programs where funds are vouchered and
expended from the state treasury and the federal treasury."
Q. Wouldn't the voucher plan put too much control over nonpublic schools in the
hands of government?
A. Certainly not. Families, not government, will determine what is taught to their
children above and beyond the minimum state requirements, which must be met by nonpublic
schools even today.
Q. Is the voucher plan a new idea?
A. Not at all. The GI Bill for high school and college education is really a voucher
program. The college tuition grant programs in 29 states are voucher programs. And
the federal Basic Educational Opportunity Grants program that provides grants to
more than two million low income college students is also a voucher program.
Q. The voucher plan, it would seem, merits the support of inner-city black families.
A. In their own interests and that of American society, yes. Black children in inner-city
nonpublic schools are doing exceptionally well. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions,
of other black children would do equally well - if given the chance to go to quality
schools.
Q. Do vouchers siphon money away from public schools?
A. Vouchers have the potential to save money for the districts. The average per-pupil
allotment in the form a voucher to a private school is typically less than what
we spend per student in a public school. This means that a larger sum of money is
spread over the remaining student body that remain in a public school.
Q. Are voucher schools accountable to the government for funds?
A. The accountability discussion should be shifted from one about public funds to
one about parental rights. If parents are not satisfied with a voucher school, they
can hold that school accountable by taking their child and their voucher elsewhere.
Q. Do vouchers "cream" the best students from the public schools?
A. Statistics show little evidence to support the claim that voucher students are
either socioeconomically privileged or academically gifted. Voucher students might
enjoy one major advantage: involved parents.
Q. Are students that receive a voucher to attend a private school performing better
than students remaining in a public school?
A. The academic achievement gains of voucher students have been well documented
in cities such as New York and Milwaukee. No evaluation of voucher programs show
worse performance by their public school peers on standardized tests. Even if academic
gains are not made, vouchers save taxpayer money and empower parents.
Q. Do other school reforms such as smaller class sizes perform better than vouchers?
A. While some reforms might be effective on a small scale, vouchers have the potential
to effect large-scale change, while increasing student achievement and saving states
money.