On November 3, Californians will vote on an amendment to the state constitution that would authorize using taxpayers' money to send K-12 students to private and parochial schools. Supporters of this voucher scheme claim it's the medicine California education needs and that it would, among other things, help save the public schools. But it is more likely to be the coup de grace.
The fiscal crisis that California faces has already led to a $2.6 billion cut in education funding, causing problems and hardships in California schools--for example, Los Angeles teachers recently took a 10 percent pay cut. If the voucher scheme passes, public schools would suffer additional big hits.
Here's how the law would work. Each of the 550,000 students already in private schools would be eligible for a voucher worth half the average per-pupil expenditure for a public school student, which is now $5,200. This $2,600 per private school student would come out of the funding now allocated for public education. But that's not all. The law also says that the public education budget must be reduced by another $2,600 for every student already in private school who redeems a voucher; that's called "savings." Let's say only 500,000 private school kids redeem vouchers. At $5,200 per private school student, this means that before a single student transferred out of a public school, public schools would lose $2.6 billion, or 10 percent of the current state education budget.
The hit public schools would take if students moved to private schools is even more devastating. For every public school student who transfers to a private school, the public school not only loses the $5,200 average expenditure for that student, but the public education budget must be reduced another $2,600 for the voucher plus another $2,600 for "savings" for a total of $10,400. In other words, every time one student transfers to a private school, the public schools would lose funding for two students. How's that for a way of helping public schools!
Voucher supporters talk about how "voucher schools" would bring excellence and change. But the law would allow anyone who could recruit 25 students to use taxpayer dollars to start a voucher school and run it with virtually no oversight or accountability. And taxpayers would have no way of finding out whether these schools were doing a good job or how they were spending public money.
There was a recent story about the Contra Costa Pagan Association's desire to use voucher funds to start a school for the children of witches. Some people are asking whether the story is a hoax. But it's a fact that if the association recruits 25 students, it can open its school at public expense. And California law would allow youngsters there to study beginning, intermediate and advanced magic even if they got only the sketchiest education in the normal curriculum. It's a fact, too, that under the voucher scheme, if David Koresh had been a California resident, he would have been free to open a school for the 40 kids in his compound. And he would have gotten $100,000 of taxpayer money a year to support it--while the public schools lost as much as $400,000. Maybe there would be few Koresh schools, but there are many groups around that would be glad to use public money for schools where youngsters could get a good dose of indoctrination along with a little education.
Voucher schools would also be free to discriminate in their admissions policies. The voucher initiative allows schools to exclude a youngster because of sex or religion or IQ or because of a physical or mental disability--or just because they don't like the family or think the youngster wouldn't "fit in." Voucher schools will also be free to decide they made a wrong choice and expel virtually any student they no longer want without giving any reason. This is the way private schools now operate in California and elsewhere in the country and, as long as the money has been put up by parents of the kids who go there, most people do not have a problem with it. But do taxpayers want their money to go to schools where discriminating against some kids is a matter of course?
We can't pretend that students in California public schools or anywhere in the U.S. are doing well. But starving public schools is not the answer. And neither is writing a blank check for private schools that are not accountable to taxpayers and are free to teach what they want and admit--or tum down--whomever they please. California has recently instituted an excellent curriculum in language arts, history and mathematics. If Californians are interested in improving student achievement, they should give these reforms the support they need and deserve instead of going with anything goes.