School Vouchers Clearly Failing in Cleveland!

SCHOOL VOUCHERS CLEARLY FAILING IN CLEVELAND!
Rev. James W. Watkins

Let us be clear. Every citizen has the responsibility to support public education through taxation. School vouchers further cloud the basic distinction between public, private and religious responsibilities for the funding of schools. Public schools are public institutions created by and responsible to the citizenry for the education of all school age children. Private and religious schools are created privately to accomplish private aims and to serve a select group of students. They have private educational and social goals usually including evangelism and religious education. They are responsible, not to the public, but to private entities. Therefore, they have no legitimate claim on public tax dollars.

Voucherizing education in America means that not only will the public be taxed to support public schools but increasingly the public is being asked to bear the burden of financing private and parochial schools. Limited experiments with school vouchers have highlighted that these multimillion dollar spending plans have the potential of either bankrupting local public school budgets or substantially raising taxes. This is the real "choice" school voucher plans pose to the public. Such proposals are totally out of sync with efforts toward less costly government.

Let us be even more clear. The school voucher experiment in Cleveland is failing. Voucher proponents promised "dramatic academic improvement." Yet, an unbiased Indiana University report on the 1997/98 Cleveland voucher program found only small differences between public and voucher students in their performance on proficiency tests. Voucher students attending Catholic schools did only slightly better than their public school counterparts. Hope Academy students, who comprise about 20%of the total number of students receiving vouchers, performed an average of 12.5 points below Cleveland public school students. Time Magazine (4/26/99) observed, "...the only students who really stood out--for weak performance--was the city's two Hope academies." Ouch!

Supporters of vouchers seek to create a new entitlement to the public purse by posing a false choice. They ask, "Shouldn't parents have a right to ‘choose' how their educational dollars are used?" Families who choose private schools have every right to do so. But this does not relieve anyone of their community responsibility to support public education, any more than not owning an automobile relieves one's civic responsibility from taxes slated for highway construction. If citizens could receive tax rebates for various unused public services, civil government would soon collapse. Whether we are talking about public schools, fire and police, or road maintenance, responsible citizens have always understood that the general civic betterment is every citizen's duty and no one really has a "choice" about paying their taxes.

Couching school vouchers in the language of free enterprise is a cruel hoax. Advocates claim that competition from publicly financed private schools will force public education to improve. Capitalism is a wonderful system. However, it has not yet solved a host of gnawing social problems, such as hunger, poverty and homelessness. Why? Because the market principles, on which free enterprise operates, are cruel, amoral and simply ignore glaring social needs. The free market only provides a product if a profit can be made, and it is impossible to profit from those students who are most in need of help. A "sink or swim" free market in education will not provide education for all our children. But it will automatically insure that large numbers of students will be left behind in underfinanced and imploding public systems. The profit margin alone cannot rule in every area of community life. Community values must also come into play. We must not allow impersonal market forces to dictate the availability of education to our children.

Can public schools really be improved by giving part of their funds to non-public schools and encouraging the best students to leave? Not a chance! No real competition exists between public and private schools. Private schools do not provide education for every child regardless of economic class or special need as do public schools. School voucher plans leave public schools responsible for students in the most need and with less financial support to do the job. Obviously, under any school voucher plan those children who need the most help receive the least and those who need the least help are given the most.

Finally, Americans have never thought it proper to use tax revenue to support the teaching of specific sectarian religious doctrine. School voucher plans entangle government in sectarian religious education. They are a clear violation of church/state separation and are generally being rejected by the courts on that ground.

As bad an idea as school vouchers are, we will continue to hear about them because:

Some parents who have chosen non-public schools now want the taxpayer to pick up the tab. In the Cleveland voucher plan 25% of students receiving vouchers (469 students) were students previously enrolled in private school. Some families receiving vouchers made up to $80,000 last year.
Some politicians do not shrink from the use of public funds in ways that curry favor with a significant demographic of voters needed for their election.
School voucher plans are a potential "God send" for Catholic school systems perpetually low on funds. Currently, in Cleveland 33 of 59 schools approved to receive school voucher funds were Catholic schools.
School vouchers fit nicely with the Religious Right's desire to dismantle public education, replacing it with publicly financed religious schools.

Any school voucher system that transfers public funds to non- public schools as tuition is bad public policy and is bad educational policy. In the short term such a system may aid a few students but over time it will degrade education for the vast majority of students in any community.

Rev. James W. Watkins has been pastor of Old South Church, United Church of Christ, Kirtland, OH, since November of 1993. Over a 28-year ministerial career, Rev. Watkins has been pastor of six churches. In addition to his pastoral work, Rev. Watkins is an author, educator, and community activist.