Frequently Asked Questions on School Choice

Why America Needs School Choice

Our United States of America, from its beginnings, has been dedicated to the noble ideal of freedom for all citizens, the freedom, of course, to do what is in the best interests of the people and our nation. Our freedoms must be conceived in liberty to do as our first President, George Washington, so wisely said - “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.”

We now force our children into a God-less government education system - the “Public School”; a government monopoly funded by compulsory taxation and compulsory attendance for children ages five through sixteen. A free nation must have freedom in education. We in America do not. Private, God-centered schools are denied tax assistance and are forced to pay taxes to the state.

Why Taxpayers Love School Choice

School Choice, tuition vouchers, parent’s choice in education - everybody is talking about this real reform for American education. Even before the 1988 Presidential election, a headline read, “Voters Like Vouchers”. A poll taken by the Gallup Organization and funded by the Times Mirror

Information Services showed that the majority of Americans of all walks of life, from wealthy to poor, favored the tuition voucher for parent’s choice of schools.

While parents are in the forefront of supporters of the tuition voucher for school choice, including private schools, taxpayers are all for saving some of their money by allowing private enterprise and competition to cut costs in the bloated education budget.

How would parent’s choice vouchers work to the advantage of the taxpayers, the children, parents, teachers, grandparents, and just about every American, except the NEA (National Education Association) teachers union, the ACLU and the public (government) school bureaucracy?

By allowing competition in the education marketplace, it would provide more education for your money, instead of more and more money for education.

Let us just list the advantages of school choice vouchers:

•  This system would give parents a choice and children a chance for a quality education.

•  Parents could choose from among public, private, religious, or home schools.

•  Innovative education programs would be designed if educators could attract students who brought vouchers to help pay for them.

•  Families would be able to choose the best school for each child’s learning style, abilities, and each family’s values.

•  School choice would help improve the quality of all schools, and would lead to increased efficiency.

•  All taxpayers would benefit, since overall school costs would be kept down, and less tax½ to ⅓ of what the money would be needed. The research shows that private schools spend public school spends, and achieves superior results.

•  Even the poor would be able to afford private, quality education with the voucher system.

•  Grandparents can rest assured that their grandchildren would not be cheated out of a good quality education, by being forced to attend a public (government) school, which is dangerous and destructive to their future.

•  The children would be able to enjoy the enrichment of the private God-centered school when parents can choose where their children go.

•  No longer would the poor and middle income families be forced to pay double (taxes and tuition) for choosing a private, religious school for their own children.

•  There would be real accountability. Parents would make the decisions of where they send their children to school, not public school     bureaucrats.

How can government officials give poor families and all families a choice of schools?
The government can enact an education voucher program.


What is an education voucher program?
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.


Could such an education voucher be used to pay tuition in all schools?
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.


Which schools would not be eligible?
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.


How would vouchers improve the quality of education?
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.


Would family choice in education destroy public schools?
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.


Would that apply to nonpublic schools, also?
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.


If there aren't any quality schools in a neighborhood for families to choose, how will the voucher help them?
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.


Have inner city parents really lost confidence in public schools?
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.


Is there any evidence that nonpublic schools do a better job educating minority children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds?
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.”


Is the voucher plan found in other government programs too?
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."


Wouldn't the voucher plan put too much control over nonpublic schools in the hands of government?
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.


Is the voucher plan a new idea?
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.


The voucher plan, it would seem, merits the support of inner-city black families.
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.


Do vouchers siphon money away from public schools?
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.


Are voucher schools accountable to the government for funds?
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.


Do vouchers "cream" the best students from the public schools?
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.


Are students that receive a voucher to attend a private school performing better than students remaining in a public school?
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.


Do other school reforms such as smaller class sizes perform better than vouchers?
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.