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Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Why vouchers are a bad idea

Every year there seems to be an increasing call for school vouchers despite the fact every year there is more and more evidence showing that students that receive vouchers don’t improve and many slide back.

Vouchers or what the education deformers like to call school choice are one of those ideas that admittedly sound good. Why shouldn’t a parent be able to choose? But like charter schools and merit pay do, they fail to improve education. Shouldn’t our reforms be based on things that work rather than what sounds good?

Parents do have many choices by the way, they can sacrifice and send their children to private school, they can home school, they can get involved in their child’s school and hope to improve it that way or they can get involved in the political process and demand their representatives enact reforms and policies that benefit education and their children and if they don’t help vote them out.

The parent of a student attending a struggling school might not want to hear it but the education system is bigger than one student. That is why all of society is asked to chip in for education not just the parents of school aged kids. Think about it millions of people without kids also pay taxes that fund education. Taking much needed funds away from public schools is not the avenue we should be traveling down. Instead we should be investing in our schools and not just with money but with top notch leadership and realistic curriculums and policies that serve all our children as well. Then we will see education improve and do dramatically. Right now the powers that be are killing education one small cut at a time and society is letting them.

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