Voucher schools have the same advantages a charter
schools do, including picking who they accept and get rid of. If they are not
doing better than public schools and the info says they are not then I submit
they are failures. If the reason we started vouchers was to provide better
education outcomes then it’s time we stopped provided vouchers.
My friend’s daughter worked at a local private
school that operated out of an abandoned strip mall. The school advertizes that
it takes vouchers on their site. There she taught high school math with her AA
degree in elementary education. I know she worked hard and tried her best but
every kid there was shortchanged.
From Politico: Matthew Chingos, an education policy analyst at the
Brookings Institution, sums up the research this way: Kids don’t make big gains
when the state pays their way through private schools — but at least “there’s
no evidence that people are being harmed.”
In his view, that means the programs should continue: “If their children are at least doing no worse … it seems reasonable that it’s OK to let people make these choices,” Chingos said.
That logic infuriates voucher
opponents, who argue that it would be far wiser to use public money to improve
public schools for everyone, rather than to send select families to private
schools of uncertain quality.
As someone across the political aisle from Chris let me agree with him and amplify. One unintended consequence with vouchers is that it becomes difficult to schedule students with teachers. Because of vouchers student numbers fluctuate wildly from school to school. My school was down several hundred students this year because of vouchers. This means we have gone through three complete separate schedule changes and they're still not finished. Class loads have to be balanced, teachers have to be added or surplussed, money has to be shifted and much more that doesn't come to mind. The upshot is we don't have the students firmly in class or subject or even physically settled until well into October. Even then, as students drift back in to the public schools through the year classroom sizes fluctuate upward. Sometimes drastically. Vouchers as they re currently implemented are a complete and utter disaster.
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