School Choice: Why Tell the Truth When You Can Muddy the Picture?
First, those hoping to muddy the issue hijacked this topic. "School Choice" is the term commonly used to speak about vouchers, not whether a district allows you to send your kid to any school within the district, or even to cross to lines. Those working within the education system, jealously guarding their own rice bowl feel driven to engage in this sort of 5th column attack to purposely confuse the issue. It certainly shines a light on them, their tactics and their true intentions.
Vouchers, or School Choice is the idea that a portion of the per-pupil dollars a district spends to "educate" a child in the public schools would follow that child to any school his or her parents choose to send the child. Hence, a parent may use those dollars to send their child to either any public school in the district or state in which has enacted the program or to a private school. This last is that upon which the self-interested public "education" industry has fallen like a pack of ravenous weasels. In America, most reasonably affordable private schools are religious schools that are able to offer a typically far superior education to that provided in most American public schools primarily due to their mission. Of course, public "educators" aim their strongest accusations at Christian schools, but there are any number of affordable traditionalist Jewish schools and even Muslim schools, as well. Since it would not be politically correct to mention either of these, they are rarely if ever brought into the equation, and those opposed to choice slam Christian schools, typically identifying them with racism and radicalism.
The illogical argument public "educators" use is that if a percentage of the per-pupil expenditure follows a student to a religious school, this means the "state" is supporting that religion. This argument, based on the logical fallacy of begging the question (redefining the question in order to make your own argument more defensible), claims that the US Constitution expressly forbids "giving" money to "the Church." In fact, the US Constitution says nothing of the sort. The Founders were brilliant men able to express themselves quite well, actually. What they said was: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." While those of a certain mindset have in recent years . . . reinterpreted this to mean that no governmental agency shall so much as recognize that religion exists, that's not what the Founders meant. They said what they meant. It's very clear. Just read it.
Another favorite, anti-logical argument used by public "educators" is that under a voucher system all the "good" students would leave a school, leaving behind only the hoods and losers and worse, the special needs students. Here those opposed to choice employ the false dilemma that only two options exist: Aryans, they argue, will attend private schools, leaving everyone else behind in the benighted public schools. This is a telling (and racist and elitist) argument suggesting that public "educators" see a need for the continued captivity of intellectually and academically advanced students in order to bring up the average performance numbers of schools "afflicted" with high numbers of less-desirable students such as those with special needs both academically and physically, and more, that they actually recognize how bad the schools really are.
What's actually happened in places where vouchers have been used is that new private schools catering to students with special needs spring up virtually overnight. The collectivist mindset of the public "education" community in America finds free market capitalism of this sort not only so foreign they don't even consider it in their metric, but also find it an onerous thing, this making of money off special needs students-at least if anyone other than the public schools is raking in the profit, anyhow.
The next argument you most often hear from self-serving public "educators" is an oversimplification based on an outright lie. Anti-choice fear mongers claim that the public schools will collapse if you take "all" the money away. A couple of things: First, if the public schools are as good as public "educators" claim they are, why would a voucher program threaten them so much? Surely few will take advantage of vouchers, right? In reality, the public schools have much to fear. Everywhere vouchers have been enacted, they've been overwhelmingly successful as parents opt to send their kids other places where they'll actually be educated. More pointedly, no voucher program ever suggested, successfully or otherwis would have any more than at most sixty-percent (60%) of the local per-pupil expenditure follow that student. I'm not economist, but common sense tells me that if you eat 60% of a pie, that leaves 40% for someone else. In this case, that 40% goes to the child's "home district" school(s). Now, if my own flawed public school math does not fail me here, that means that the home school gets 40% of the money for a student who is no longer costing the district anything. That would be like me, in my business, getting 40% of the fee for every deal any of my competitors do. Where do I sign up?
The public "education" system knows that their system is so bad, is only getting worse and that it has no chance of ever getting better, that competition would decimate their student populations-it has, everywhere it's been tried. Then how would they continue bleating that they fail so miserably because of "overcrowded classrooms" or a lack of funding? Under voucher programs, local public school classroom sizes drop dramatically, while net funding (per student) increases. I guess I'm not smart enough to figure out how teachers with fewer students but more money isn't excatly what the public schools have been demanding since at least the 1960s.
The real issue is how the teacher's unions are threatened by vouchers. The unions and the teachers know that any time a district gets a voucher plan, schools experience a dramatic decline in population. When a school is down to 1/3 of its former population, but still hiring three or four new teachers every year, voters tend to question the need. The union can't keep it's dues-paying rolls growing if the public is insisting the schools not hire new teachers to teach empty classrooms. Public "educators" know that given the chance, most Americans would flee the public system-it's happened every time vouchers have been enacted. Public "educators" really only care about the numbers, because the numbers (students in the school) mean money and the money means power and influence.
Even though individual schools always enjoy a massive net funding gain under a voucher program, they do see a massive population decline. The public schools view vouchers as the camel's nose under the tent. Once average working class and poor parents are given choice, they leave the public schools, and and quickly realize just how bad those schools really are. So public "educators" and especially their unions are looking at the longer term. They realize voucher programs threaten their rice bowl, filled as it is right now with money and power. Fewer students will result in fewer classroom teachers eventually, meaning fewer teachers paying union dues, which means a loss of revenue to the unions and that translates directly into a loss of political power. Graduating students who can't find America on a map, have no idea what the US Constitution says, are unable to count change or fill out a job application don't matter to the teachers. Filling seats and increasing union jobs is all that matters.
When vouchers come in the schoolhouse door, money, power, influence and status flee through the schoolhouse windows. And no public "educator" is going to give up any of these wonderful things without a long, hard fight.