School Vouchers: Kryptonite to Public Schools

This past week I read an article in the Philadelphia Daily News entitled “Pennsylvania: Voucher Ground Zero; Will they kill public schools?” and a lot of the content provided by reporter Will Bunch surprised me. The basis of the article is the push for school vouchers and voucher advocates (mainly the tea party) is to use the state of Pennsylvania as the primary marketing location for this, what I call a bias idea. The whole point of the school vouchers is to provide tax dollars to low-income families in order to fund their children who would transfer out of the failing public schools and have the choice for their children to attend a private or parochial school.

So the question lies, where does this leave public schools? Is this another way for school voucher advocates, to push for the elimination of public education?

Just think about it for a minute. These vouchers are provided to low-income families to send their children to a non-public educational institution. Meaning more money is being put into the private sector and this helps increasing enrollment in these schools. With increased enrollment, that means larger classrooms. Which could cause for private schools to place a “cap” on how many children should be enrolled in their schools in order to prevent large classrooms. If this idea was to go into effect, then public school students are then left with few options. Who is to say that non-public sector are willing to accept every enrollment application of these under-privilege students?

Not all students are able to make this transition; meaning they would be left behind. Therefore public schools would lack funding and be left out in the cold without any monetary resources to remain sustainable or to be reconstructed. Can we honestly say that all families would be given the opportunity to receive these funds? Also, what about the educational perspectives of the parents? We can’t say every parent agrees enrollment  into a non-public institution is the best way they would like to educate their child.

The article mentions the anti-voucher Education Law Center analyzed the current voucher bill and estimated that “over the first four years of the program, only 7.6 percent of the dollars would go to kids now the state’s 144 failing schools. Nearly two-thirds of the money would go to kids already enrolled in private or parochial schools.” So you tell me, how is this supposed to help the children that are suffering in these inadequate institutions? On PSEA’s (Pennsylvania State Education Association) website it discusses its disagreement with vouchers,” Vouchers do not save tax dollars. They increase costs to taxpayers, while draining resources from the students who need them most.”

What the tea party and these wealth investors need to understand, if Philadelphia public schools as well as other state public schools were funded properly and were provided the resources needed to operate efficiently, we wouldn’t be discussing vouchers. Why not put those monies into the public school system? It seems to me, the privileged is vouched for while the low-income students, once again, are forgotten.

Here is a video from a couple years ago about school vouchers. The debate continues...