Vouchers are here to stay, so make them work better
Published August 12, 2015
by Doug Clark, Off the Record, Greensboro News-Record, August 12, 2015.
When schools and cities began offering vouchers, I approved on three conditions:
1. Only low-income families would be eligible.
2. Participating schools would have to accept all applicants.
3. And religious schools could not be included.
North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program fails on two counts and probably will add the third now that the state Supreme Court has found no constitutional violation.
I was disappointed by the 4-3 ruling but must accept it as the final word from our courts. So it’s up to the legislature. If it won’t repeal the voucher program, it should improve it.
My concerns are simple. If the goal is to expand school choice, as Darrell Allison of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina wrote for our Ideas section Sunday, then provide vouchers only for children whose parents can’t afford private school tuition.
So far, North Carolina’s program does that. So far. But our legislature is loosening family income restrictions and I fear will eventually remove them entirely. It should resist the urge to do that.
I also believe any school that accepts public money should have to accept every child who applies. The public schools can’t pick and choose, and neither should private schools that take public funds. Yet there is no such requirement.
My third objection is to public dollars supporting religious instruction.
I’m all for religious instruction. I teach an adult Bible-study class at my church, and my children attended Sunday school regularly. I just don’t think government should pay for it.
The vast majority of private schools receiving public funds under the voucher program have religious affiliations. I don’t want my tax dollars to pay for Islamic education, or even for Christian or Jewish education. It is not the place of government to support religious instruction, but this is what our state government is doing with millions of our tax dollars.
The Supreme Court, by the way, dodged the question of religion in its ruling. It will come up again. Before it does, the legislature should amend the voucher law to exclude religious schools. There are nonsectarian private schools available to offer educational choices for parents who don’t want their children to attend public schools and need financial assistance.
This brings me to another issue: accountability. As Supreme Court Justice Robin Hudson asserted in her dissenting opinion, North Carolina’s voucher program is one of the weakest in the country when it comes to accountability. It asks very little of participating schools. They don’t have to be accredited, and scores of them aren’t. Teachers don’t have to be certified or hold a college degree. No one except the person in charge of the school has to undergo a criminal background check. Virtually anything can be taught, with little reporting required.
A popular curriculum taught at fundamentalist Christian schools teaches creationism and refutes evolution and other science not based on “Scriptural truth.” But these schools don’t have to provide any information about what they teach. Nor are they subject to state “report cards” on how well they educate students.
See how long public schools could get away with that. Yet, the same public money is supporting them all.
Voucher proponents like Allison say accountability measures aren’t necessary for private schools because parents wouldn’t send their children to schools that don’t provide a sound education.
No? Some parents want schools to reinforce what they already believe.
The highest purpose of education is to expose young people to new ideas, to broaden their minds. Yet, that’s precisely what many parents find offensive about the public schools. They don’t want their kids exposed to new ideas or to develop a broader outlook on life.
For those who may not have noticed, science is taking a beating in some quarters these days. There are people who don’t believe in earth science, biology, climate science, environmental science, social science, medical science, what have you. They can find schools that won’t challenge those attitudes — but they shouldn’t expect the public to pay the tuition.
Are there private schools that deliver superior education? Absolutely. So, if we must have a voucher program, let’s fix it so that children who use it get a better education and not the kind of education that ignorant parents and politicians want them to get.
August 12, 2015 at 10:58 am
Richard L Bunce says:
Parents provide all the accountability required in that the school selected gets no Education Voucher dollars until the parent selects it. The Traditional government school systems should be funded in the same manner. Mr. Clark has had no problems with the quality of private education, religion based or otherwise, "even" Muslim, when it was his progressive friends sending their children to these schools. He also seems to have no problem with the dismal quality of traditional government schools education. He also seemed to have no problem with taxpayers funding pre K and post secondary education at religion based institutions. So having seen through his objection to this K-12 Education Voucher program it comes down to his unquestioning support of the Government Education Industrial Complex and the flawed traditional government schools it has created.
