come again?

so I’m reading a great article/editorial titled Putting Children Last at the WSJ. I don’t usually discuss education policy on the pages of my blog but I felt that a discussion of educational policy was certainly warranted given both its importance to our nation’s children and its currently broken state. Allow me to first briefly re-cap the Wall Street Journal:

Democrats in Congress have finally found a federal program they want to eliminate. And wouldn’t you know, it’s one that actually works and helps thousands of poor children…

This fight has nothing to do with saving money. But it has a lot to do with election-year politics. Kevin Chavis, the former D.C. City Council member who sits on the oversight board of the scholarship program, says, “If we were going to do what was best for the kids, then continuing it is a no-brainer. Those kids are thriving.” More than 90% of the families express high satisfaction with the program, according to researchers at Georgetown University.

Many of the parents we interviewed describe the vouchers as a “Godsend” or a “lifeline” for their sons and daughters. “Most of the politicians have choices on where to send their kids to school,” says William Rush, Jr., who has two boys in the program. “Why do they want to take our choices away?

Ms. Norton contends that vouchers undermine support and funding for public schools. But the $18 million allocated to the program does not come out of the District school budget; Congress appropriates extra money for the vouchers.

The $7,500 voucher is a bargain for taxpayers because it costs the public schools about 50% more, or $13,000 a year, to educate a child in the public schools. And we use the word “educate” advisedly because D.C. schools are among the worst in the nation. In 2007, D.C. public schools ranked last in math scores and second-to-last in reading scores for all urban public school systems on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Opponents claim there is no evidence that the D.C. scholarship program is raising academic achievement. The only study so far, funded by the federal Department of Education, found positive but “not statistically significant” improvements in reading and math scores after the first year. But education experts agree it takes a few years for results to start showing up. In other places that have vouchers, such as Milwaukee and Florida, test scores show notable improvement. A new study on charter schools in Los Angeles County finds big academic gains when families have expanded choices for educating their kids.

If you want a more complete context, I suggest you read the full article but I hope that the selected passages give you at least a taste for what is at stake for DC children under this program. What is very apparent, however, is that the DC public school systems have deteriorated DESPITE the Liberals, the Federal Government (i.e. the Department of Education) running them for decades. Instead of ‘admitting defeat’ and ‘pulling the teachers out’, the Liberals in Congress have decided to FORCE students to attend under-performing schools. (aka, the “surge” strategy). Never mind the fact that every single congressman and senator can have a choice about where to send their kids… but inner city kids are being denied this privilege/choice by the supposedly ‘compassionate’ Liberals in Congress.

Now, although this is a valid criticism, it is incomplete. There are a number of arguments against school choice–each with varying degrees of validity. In fact, one of my good friends in college wrote a rather lengthy paper detailing many of these. I want to briefly discuss the arguments against school choice and their pitfalls.

1. Voucher programs take money away from public schools–where it is desperately needed to improve the education of the under-served.

Conveniently for purposes of this post, I would point out that the DC voucher program doesn’t take a penny away from the public schools! Now, this isn’t to say that all voucher programs are modeled after the DC system; some may, in fact, take money “away” from the public school system–but only money that was meant to be spent on that particular child’s education. If the child doesn’t attend, why should the public school get free money without having to spend the resources educating? Funding schools per-capita should produce the results a per-capita system is designed to produce–funding based on the number of students! Why is this so incomprehensible to liberals? What part of a per-capita funding system don’t they understand?

Furthermore (and particularly in the DC example), if private schools can provide the SAME (even dismal, for our purposes) level of education for half the price… why waste $600 PER STUDENT and get nothing more in terms of educational performance?

Liberals think Oil companies are getting too much profit (and they actually PRODUCE something of value) why would they allow Public schools to mooch $600 in taxpayer subsidies per student and produce NOTHING MORE than the the typical charter school? This is an example of utter hypocrisy within the Democratic party. They turn a blind eye to wasteful spending in one area, but threaten to punish businesses with 8% profit margins. It’s really maddening.

And if this weren’t enough; we are spending billions to support a NATIONAL education department… and for what? To figure out what to teach students??? Why on earth does it take a huge federal bureaucracy to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and the arts? Well, I hope it’s obvious to even those without a 133 IQ that… well.. IT DOESN’T. Follow the money, anyone?

Actually, that’s all I got; I can’t think of any other reasonable argument against school vouchers; but would be happy to entertain and discuss any that you may wish to mention in the comments.