School vouchers at the top of educational news charts
Daniel Downs
April 13, 2007
School vouchers are at the top of the educational news charts in April. From Florida to Utah, liberals and professional educators continue waging war against parental freedom and choice. In Georgia, parents won legislation giving disabled kids the opportunity to attend private schools, according to The Associated Press State & Local Wire.
Utah recently passed a great bill called the Parent Choice in Education Act. This bill will give parents sending their kids to private schools tuition money based on financial need. The poorest will receive $3,000 and the richest only $500. Utah Education Association declared this bill unconstitutional because religious schools may receive tax paid vouchers, according to a report from the Institute for Justice. Instead of fighting the bill in court, opponents are seeking to get the bill repealed by putting it on the next ballot for voters to decide. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, they have already collected more than the 92,000 of the required signatures. I wonder how many of those are public school educators.
The Institute for Justice claims the opponents of Parent Choice in Education Act are wrong about its constitutionality. If the bill violated Utah’s Constitution other choice funding measures would never have remained. The fact is all tuition vouchers given directly to parents do not violate the Constitution. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that vouchers do not violate the First Amendment in any way. Because tax dollars are given directly to parents rather to any parochial or other private school, vouchers do not advance the establishment of religion.
The only way around the constitutionality of vouchers is the hope voters will believe the deceptive rhetoric of education opponents and their liberal politicians by repealing it.
In Florida, lawmakers are seeking to pass a bill that will allow foster children and juvenile delinquents the right to choose a private school using tuition vouchers. The goal is to give these troubled kids the right to the stability of attending a single school no matter were they might move. The economic benefit of the bill is still being debated, but Florida’s teacher union claims such programs will empty schools of students. Their legal counsel, Ron Meyer, says polls have shown that the public does not support the use of public money to pay for private education, according to the Miami Herald.
It is true a majority of Americans say they oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense, according to the most recent Phi Delta Kappa (PDK)/Gallup Polls. A study published in Education Next proves those results have been engineered. According to the author Terry Moe,
“From the 1970s until 1991, PDK measured voucher support with a survey item that defined vouchers as a government-funded program allowing parents to choose among public, private, and parochial schools. After support rose to 50 percent (with 39 percent opposed) in 1991, PDK abruptly dropped this item in favor of a new one. The new question read: “Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense?” This question, first asked in 1993, gave results that were strikingly more negative: only 24 percent expressed support. Indeed, it indicated that even private school parents were opposed to vouchers, a result no expert would be prepared to believe.”
As evil as that is, an even greater evil is the ‘stealth’ tactic employed by liberal educators and their politicians; they accuse others of doing what they do to deflect criticism of their lies. They seek to counter the criticism of researchers like Moe from dissuading public engineered opinion. One of their favorite terms, stealth, is actually what best describes their typical strategies.
More important than polling results is the criticism that private school damage public school quality of education. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland believes “there is no evidence that the education that students receive” in private schools funded by EdChoice or in charter schools “is better than what they would have received otherwise. The results of national and state proficiency tests used in my series on Virtual Schools proves otherwise. Although I only compared public, charter and virtual schools, proficiency test results show private school students exceed public school students by 10 to 20 points on most tests. Virtual charter schools outperform public schools as do military schools. Charters in other states also outperform public schools. The reason they do not in Michigan and Ohio is because public policy permits mostly urban low-income underachievers to attend. It is because minority students are over-represented that public school standardized test results appear a little better. In reality, the achievement of many charter students demonstrates how well many charters are doing. Besides parents tend to be more satisfied with them than the public schools their children had attended.
Utah recently passed a great bill called the Parent Choice in Education Act. This bill will give parents sending their kids to private schools tuition money based on financial need. The poorest will receive $3,000 and the richest only $500. Utah Education Association declared this bill unconstitutional because religious schools may receive tax paid vouchers, according to a report from the Institute for Justice. Instead of fighting the bill in court, opponents are seeking to get the bill repealed by putting it on the next ballot for voters to decide. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, they have already collected more than the 92,000 of the required signatures. I wonder how many of those are public school educators.
The Institute for Justice claims the opponents of Parent Choice in Education Act are wrong about its constitutionality. If the bill violated Utah’s Constitution other choice funding measures would never have remained. The fact is all tuition vouchers given directly to parents do not violate the Constitution. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that vouchers do not violate the First Amendment in any way. Because tax dollars are given directly to parents rather to any parochial or other private school, vouchers do not advance the establishment of religion.
The only way around the constitutionality of vouchers is the hope voters will believe the deceptive rhetoric of education opponents and their liberal politicians by repealing it.
In Florida, lawmakers are seeking to pass a bill that will allow foster children and juvenile delinquents the right to choose a private school using tuition vouchers. The goal is to give these troubled kids the right to the stability of attending a single school no matter were they might move. The economic benefit of the bill is still being debated, but Florida’s teacher union claims such programs will empty schools of students. Their legal counsel, Ron Meyer, says polls have shown that the public does not support the use of public money to pay for private education, according to the Miami Herald.
It is true a majority of Americans say they oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense, according to the most recent Phi Delta Kappa (PDK)/Gallup Polls. A study published in Education Next proves those results have been engineered. According to the author Terry Moe,
“From the 1970s until 1991, PDK measured voucher support with a survey item that defined vouchers as a government-funded program allowing parents to choose among public, private, and parochial schools. After support rose to 50 percent (with 39 percent opposed) in 1991, PDK abruptly dropped this item in favor of a new one. The new question read: “Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense?” This question, first asked in 1993, gave results that were strikingly more negative: only 24 percent expressed support. Indeed, it indicated that even private school parents were opposed to vouchers, a result no expert would be prepared to believe.”
As evil as that is, an even greater evil is the ‘stealth’ tactic employed by liberal educators and their politicians; they accuse others of doing what they do to deflect criticism of their lies. They seek to counter the criticism of researchers like Moe from dissuading public engineered opinion. One of their favorite terms, stealth, is actually what best describes their typical strategies.
More important than polling results is the criticism that private school damage public school quality of education. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland believes “there is no evidence that the education that students receive” in private schools funded by EdChoice or in charter schools “is better than what they would have received otherwise. The results of national and state proficiency tests used in my series on Virtual Schools proves otherwise. Although I only compared public, charter and virtual schools, proficiency test results show private school students exceed public school students by 10 to 20 points on most tests. Virtual charter schools outperform public schools as do military schools. Charters in other states also outperform public schools. The reason they do not in Michigan and Ohio is because public policy permits mostly urban low-income underachievers to attend. It is because minority students are over-represented that public school standardized test results appear a little better. In reality, the achievement of many charter students demonstrates how well many charters are doing. Besides parents tend to be more satisfied with them than the public schools their children had attended.
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