The School Voucher Scam
It was always suspicious that right-wing Republicans were enthusiastically supporting a tax-funded government program they claimed would help poor children of color receive a quality education.
Historically, the right has consistently fought tax funds going to people in need, especially those who are not white. The only government programs they support are huge tax cuts and corporate welfare benefiting the wealthy.
For two decades, voucher supporters resisted testing of poor children receiving private school vouchers to track their performance. Now we all know why.
The first comparison of voucher students to their matched counterparts in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) shows the publicly stated premise of the voucher program is a fraud.
Poor children using tax vouchers to attend private schools are not receiving a better education than students with a similar background attending public schools. In fact, they perform worse on state achievement tests.
The academic researchers hired by the state to examine the results later tried to fuzz up those numbers, saying some children do about the same.
But the fact remains we've spent billions of tax dollars for private school vouchers for more than 20 years and private schools aren't any more successful than public schools in educating children of color and closing the state's appalling black-white achievement gap.
The voucher results look even worse when you consider that private schools routinely shun special needs children, leaving them to the public schools to educate.
According to the researchers, only a minuscule 1.5% of voucher students have special needs, compared to nearly 20% of MPS students.
So working with the most promising of impoverished students from Milwaukee—those without special needs who have highly motivated parents searching for better schools for their children—voucher schools fail completely to deliver any educational improvement.
Another Tax Giveaway for the Wealthy
The reaction of supporters to this first concrete
evidence of the failure of the voucher program has been brazenly dishonest.
First, they continued their long-held opposition to
voucher school students being required to take state achievement tests.
Republican Gov. Scott Walker is attempting to kill the requirement.
Apparently, if the public doesn't know voucher
schools are failing to improve the academic performance of poor children,
supporters think they can continue taking tax money away from public schools
and shoveling it into private schools forever.
A subtle shift in rhetoric by voucher supporters is
even more insidious. Supporters of the program now pretend it doesn't matter
whether poor children do better academically in voucher schools or not.
The point is, they say, low-income parents now have
more choices available to them. Of course, a choice that doesn't produce any
better results isn't much of a choice.
And get this. They say that even if voucher students
don't do any better, the program is still a tremendous success because it
accomplishes the same result at half the cost.
We all need to remember the history of two separate
systems of education in this country, one public and the other private.
Public schools were the great democratic guarantee
to every child in America. Every child, regardless of economic circumstances,
was promised a comprehensive basic education to get started on the path to
success in life.
Because we all benefited economically whether we had
children or not, we all paid for public schools through our taxes.
Beyond that basic guarantee, the most privileged
among us always want more for their own children and have the financial ability
to provide it. So they set up a private school system for their own children
and paid for it 100% themselves.
Fair enough, so far.
But the voucher program started confusing those two
systems. Suddenly, taxes from all of us were subsidizing private schools—many
of them religious—that were not open to everyone.
Even though we weren't putting as much tax money
into private schools for each student as the full cost of education in public
schools, we were still providing a nice, fat subsidy.
Remember, private schools previously had to raise
100% of their funds from among their own supporters. Anything they got from tax
vouchers was gravy.
Now it's become obvious that the promise that
private schools would provide a better education for low-income children was
just a ruse using poor children as pawns.
Not only have voucher schools failed to improve the
academic performance of those children, but in his next two-year budget, Gov.
Walker let the other boot drop.
Walker wants to start lifting income restrictions
for private school vouchers and ultimately abolish them entirely.
With taxpayers supporting two educational systems
instead of one, funds for public schools, where needs are the greatest, are
drastically reduced and, suddenly, a government program sold as a benefit to
the poor becomes just another tax giveaway to the wealthy.
First, Joel doesn't even address the wide spread cheating on standardized tests at MPS. How much did MPS spend on investigating cheating? My guess is none. Of course MPS kids are going to do well when you factor in cheating, they only test kids that show up for school, and a heavy Asian student population that is OCD for learning skewing the scores. Take away the cheating and take away the help the Asian kids are contributing. Then give zeros to the kids that don't show up. Voucher schools will blow MPS away. Forget the test scores. What counts are graduation rates, happy parents, and kids moving on to college. I was at a private school graduation ceremony last spring. They had 100% of the seniors graduatiing with 92% going to 4 year colleges. Plus this school got zero taxpayer funding.
Joel wants to punish hardworking parents who work hard to bring down six and seven figure incomes. Highly motivated harder working good people should not be punished by having to pay property taxes and private school tuition. Do you know what the tax is on a $700,000 house? Then MPS blows the tax money by paying teachers $50,000 a year more that their private school market rate. The result is the poorest and neediest kids don't learn anything, they are overweight from all the free breakfast and lunches, and we just saw how the valedictorian at Washington High is ending up.
Then you have to look at the maturity level and quality of teachers at MPS. They and their unions have stolen millions of dollars under the guise of salary, benefits and collective bargaining. Some have stooped so low as to call in sick to riot at the capitol over petty pay decreases while they make an average annualized salary of about $110,000 a year. The teachers I know at private schools make only about $30,000 or so, show up everyday, and are actually teaching. They are some of the most loved people at the church.
What's with being racist against Asians? If you can discount their scores, you can discount any ethnic group's scores that are stereotypically not focused on school. They're students just as any of the other kids.
I would not say that I am racist agaist Asians. But rather racist for them. I admire their academic work ethic in their cultures. Every time I see a Milwaukee spelling bee champ or valedictorian of Asian descent, I am in awe of them. Many who are poor and have parents that speak no English. This is facinating to me. I am also in awe of the fantastic work ethic among Asians, Indian-Asians, etc, they way they have accumulated hotels, gas, stations, beauty salons, restauarants, and convenience stores. They have put their public education to good use and I'm sure they would love the opportuntiy to get an even better education at a private school.
Joel,
You have once again done a great job of defining everything that is wrong with the public voucher program, but again make no suggestions on how to fix the problem. For the record, I am a conservative, but that does not mean that I am a republican. All of the undertone jibes that you make at "The Right" only makes you look as foolish as the people that you infer your are better than, i.e. intelligence, social acceptance, ect. The problem with the voucher program is that it takes kids out of the neighborhoods in which they live. In turn, there is no motivation to make those neighborhoods any better. You can put these kids into the best schools that you want, in the end, at the end of the day these kids are going right back into those neighborhoods where they are not getting the support from the parents to do home work and ensure that they are studying for tests. That is the big difference here, it is the communities in which they live. As you have pointed out, the schools are of little matter. There is nothing you are going to be able to do at a school level until communites come together to try to fix the problem. Is this a black issue, maybe? But right now as a nation the number of childern born to single mothers is 41% at a national level and the number of black children being born to single mothers is a stagering 73%. So all indications to me are that the numbers are going to become more disparaging before they get better. The hard truth is that, until individual ethinc groups take it upon themselves to change those mentalities that are leading them down those roads, nothing for those ethinic groups are going to get better. However Joel, I would still like to hear what your solutions to the current voucher program is. It is always easy to stir up the hornets nest.
Obviously we can't allow knuckleheads and trouble makers to attend the voucher schools. There will alway be a need to have a place for the worst students to go, if they do choose to attend school. But I'm guessing those kids would rather not attend anyway.
I can tell you that I know a lot of private school kids and parents. The very though of them sending kids to a public school is hateful and disgusting. Once kids are in private school, you don't want to go back. Teachers in private school could care less they make $50k less than public school teachers. They are surrounded by good kids and good parents and that is priceless.
We need to reward higher income parents for choosing to earn more money and being productive income producing citizen. Its only fair they be given financial incentives to assist their children in attending private school.
David, how do you live with yourself?