You can understand just how good an idea school vouchers are by how vehemently the teacher’s unions, the left, and their wholly owned subsidiary the New York Times hate them.
Like many other parents, Governor Mitt Romney would prefer to no longer consign children to a government school based on their zip code. This has rankled the New York Times, prompting the paper to dedicate prime real estate yesterday (following a 10-page screed earlier this month) to demonize school choice once again.
It’s amazing that providing children a lifeline to escape an underperforming or dangerous school should stir such angst on the part of the Times. But yesterday’s attack referred to the word “voucher” as a “fighting word in education.”
The thought of vouchers bothers the Times so much that they obscure the facts about the powerful impact of school choice: “[T]here is limited evidence in the real world of schools improving much as they compete for students, according to education experts.”
In fact, there is a growing body of evidence that school choice improves educational outcomes, all derived from “the real world.”
Lindsey Burke at NRO details some real world success stories of vouchers. My favorite story comes right from the belly of the beast, DC.
A congressionally mandated evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program by Patrick Wolf, which provides vouchers to low-income children in the nation’s capital, produced graduation rates 21 percentage points higher for enrolled students. Students who used a voucher to attend a private school in D.C. had a 91 percent graduation rate; graduation rates in D.C. public schools hover around 55 percent. Nothing is different about these children. It was simply school choice that improved their educational opportunity and attainment.
Vouchers are the future, regardless what the New York Times thinks.
June 14, 2012 at 3:09 pm
Who reads the New York Times ? The left who already believe the bs and a few on the right who already knows its bs?
Mike in Indy
June 14, 2012 at 3:49 pm
What improves children's education is the State getting out of it and supporting the natural educators and moral authorities in providing the necessary moral and intellectual, physical, social and spiritual education for the good of the individual and the good of society. States always subvert education to their own political and ideological ends and to increase their power.
June 14, 2012 at 4:42 pm
Do we really think there will be no strings attached? The last thing Catholic schools need is more government intrusion justified by acceptance of government funds. We saw what happened Catholic social agencies, and what is happening to Catholic health care.
The Catholic school system originated on its own funding, and its raison d'etre was to protect Catholic children from the government assimilation program otherwise known as the public school. Public "education" is today, and always was intended to be, about socialization. They will make sure any funds meant to go towards "education" will not be wasted on a purely Catholic notion of education. Don't fool yourself. The public school system is not a failure, unless your idea of education is booklearning, reasoning, etc. It is actually pretty effective at what it does.
June 14, 2012 at 4:49 pm
Do we really think there will be no strings attached? The last thing Catholic schools need is more government intrusion justified by acceptance of government funds. We saw what happened Catholic social agencies, and what is happening to Catholic health care.
The Catholic school system originated on its own funding, and its raison d'etre was to protect Catholic children from the government assimilation program otherwise known as the public school. Public "education" is today, and always was intended to be, about socialization. They will make sure any funds meant to go towards "education" will not be wasted on a purely Catholic notion of education. Don't fool yourself. The public school system is not a failure, unless your idea of education is booklearning, reasoning, etc. It is actually pretty effective at what it does.
June 14, 2012 at 5:51 pm
Our parish school has had a voucher program for many years and it has been a tremendous blessing. We have 1,600 students (it was the largest parochial school in the US, might still be) in K-8, and we've started a thriving high school that will expand to 9-11 next year and graduate its first class the following year.
This school has been such a blessing to the tremendous amount of underprivileged and/or minority students living in the poor neighborhood surrounding the parish. They are given a top-rate, REAL Catholic education, and it is paying off in leaps-and-bounds!
@ Robin…Your point is well taken and it is something that has to be considered if a Catholic institution is to link itself with government funding. The problem I think is not the funding directly, but the short-sightedness on some in the leadership who didn't think this time could come and didn't financially prepare for it. If they had continued to make a strong push for private support, instead of counting on federal money w/o moral issues, to always be there.
June 14, 2012 at 7:52 pm
I agree with Robin E. I am very concerned that (in the future) private schools will get dependent on the voucher program, and then will bend to the state/federal demands that probably will start coming. But on the other hand, I would have loved to send my kids to Catholic school but I didn't have the personal cash to do so.
June 15, 2012 at 12:25 am
Vouchers are taxpayers money given back to taxpayers. Taxes belong to the taxpayer even as the taxes are administered by the administration. The administration likes to strangle the very freedom out of every citizen who asks freedom of its government. The taxes belong to the taxpayers even as the taxes are administered by the government because the government as a servant of the taxpayers cannot and odes not own anything. Eveything, ewvery public place is owned in joint and common tenancy by each and every person,WHO HAS PAID FOR THESE IN THEIR TAXES. Even government officials pay taxes, I hope, (Gitner didn't)so, government officials own a common share of all public places and things, but government, as an entity, owns nothing.
June 15, 2012 at 12:32 am
In the above, I posited the idea, often in bad spelling that each and every person owns everything in America in joint and common tenancy. For government, the administration, to withhold vouchers is cheating the people of equality, and freedom because of religious discrimination, plain and simple, by the people who administer government unequally.
June 17, 2012 at 4:47 pm
The idea that there is no such thing as private property dooms humanity to poverty and privation as the strong and politically connected will "own" everything…in the name of "the people", of course. Are you able to enter the White House, any gov't owned park, even the post office as if you own them? Of course not, because "we" the eople, do not own them. The ruling classes force us to pay for their wishes and they then control "the peoples" property. Control is the essence of ownership, which is why socialism also is a faiuled economic system, as would be distributionism. Vouchers are a Trojan horse. But most "Catholic" schools are little better than the government kidjails, anyway. If you want your kids to respect your values, religion/worldview you'd better teach them yourself. It is notr hard and its a lot cheaper and better for a growing kids mental health and social well-being than the kidjail mind laundries.