Educational Vouchers Term paper
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Educational vouchers are designed to help students receive a better quality education. They are payments by the government that allow certain students to leave poor performing public schools to attend private schools. While this may sound attractive at first, the system is really a very unfavorable way of providing education, hurting more students than they are helping them by robbing needy public schools of their money. Vouchers not only take money away from public schools, neither do they allow parental choice or improve a students learning. Moreover, they prove to be very costly. Educational vouchers should not be used due to the fact that so many negative aspects have come about on account of the voucher system.
When vouchers are introduced, most people initially like the idea that payments by the government will allow a select amount of students to attend private schools. This statement misleads its audience because the government money is actually coming from the public schools themselves, taking needed resources away from already impoverished schools. Tuition vouchers are a means of channeling public dollars to private schools and thus undermining American public education, claims the National Education Association, a chief critic of educational vouchers ( How Vouchers Hurt 1). If this happens, children who do not receive vouchers will be left in these deprived public schools where their resources have been stripped away. Therefore, vouchers are essentially making it acceptable for the government to choose who deserves a good education and who does not.
Although the many parents of students enrolled in failing schools may be interested in applying for vouchers, they must realize that vouchers will not necessarily improve their child s learning. Critics argue for the case in San Francisco public schools where the average GPA for black middle school students is a 2.12, a C, similarly in high school, the average GPA is 1.81, also a C. The NAACP feels that these low grades are do to inferior education (Hubbard 33). A recent study on the academic performance of urban schoolchildren who had the opportunity to attend private schools represents the benefits of vouchers. Among black students who received vouchers out performed their peers in other schools. The standardized tests taken were improved by an average of 6.3 points ( Vouchers Pass a Test 8). However in the study, they failed to mention the effort put forth by the individual students, or the parent involvement in the students school life. A voucher system will not guarantee an improvement. For example, Milwaukee and Cleveland, two cities experimenting with voucher system, uncovered important information that has been documented, showing no rise in student academic achievement. According to annual evaluations in the Milwaukee area by an independent researcher, John White, the voucher system shows no achievement differences between voucher students and comparable Milwaukee Public School students (Gross 157). The same results were found in Cleveland after an official study was completed by Dr. Kim Metcalf ( Back to Vouchers 2).
Implementing the voucher system does not increase educational opportunity; on the contrary, opportunity is in fact reduced. On account of the admission process, the private schools would choose to educate the easiest and ablest students through the voucher system while the more difficult and expensive to educate children would be left in public schools with even fewer advocates and resources ( How Vouchers Hurt 1). This educational inequality would lead to the escalating education gap between affluent and destitute children. According to the NEA, educational inequality has increased in Britain, the Netherlands, and Chile as a result of prolonged educational voucher use, and has made schools more inequitable than they were previously (1).
Many parents support vouchers because of the assumption that they will obtain the opportunity to choose what school their child will attend. However, the private schools actually have the ultimate say regarding which school the students will attend, and furthermore, private schools are not required to accept every type of students, as are public schools. The National Education Association reports, private schools continue to choose students whose family backgrounds, past performance, and test scores indicate they are most likely to fit into the school and succeed ( How Voucher Hurt 1). Many people are fearful of the factor that vouchers will increase segregation due to the fact that vouchers will sort students by race, income, and religion. According to the NSBA, or the National School Board Association, schools accepting vouchers can discriminate and reject students based on academics, gender, disability, national origin, religion, discipline, parent participation, and a whole host of other issues ( Vouchers 2). This brings America back into history where so many people endured and fought for freedom from inequality, discrimination and segregation ( How Vouchers Hurt 1).
Not only are students, parents, and teachers affected by the voucher system, but also every tax-paying citizen is impinged upon by this system. Public schools, supported by citizens tax dollars, are to pay for the vouchers creating the need for an increase in the amount of taxes already paid for education to support the voucher system. Even more boggling is the fact that taxpayers would pay for vouchers of the 4.8 million children already attending private schools, many of them from affluent homes, as well as for children newly enrolling in private schools (2).
If vouchers are installed into our school systems citizens will face double taxation. To provide vouchers for students already attending public schools, it will cost taxpayers an additional 5.2 billion dollars each year ( How Vouchers Hurt 1-2). This tax increase will not even cover the cost of full tuition to private schools: At an average tuition rate of 3,116 dollars per student, the tax increase would be 15 billion dollars per year ( Vouchers 2). Simply speaking, the wealthier families who choose to send their children to private schools will get a tax break, while all other families will pay for those children to attend private schools.
Educational vouchers are a means of taxation without representation. For example, private schools, unlike public schools, are not accountable to publicly elected school boards and taxpayers. Therefore, taxpayers will be supporting private schools through the raise in taxes due to the voucher system, but private schools will not have to answer to the public ( Voucher Talking Points 1). This lack of accountability can lead to serious problems like the case in Cleveland when The Independent Auditor s Report found that nearly 2 million dollars were misspent, 1.4 million spent on taxicabs to take voucher students to school ( Vouchers 2). It was also found by the NSBA in Milwaukee, that several voucher schools were shut down because issues of corruption and criminal treachery formed (2). Shutting down private schools in Milwaukee explains one demonstration of what to expect when unregulated schools are given public dollars. After the schools had shut down, the students who attended there were left stranded, the school door closed in their faces...
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