The Education Omnibus Blog, Part II, Vouchers

As promised, I intend to cover all the varied issues in education that keep popping up in the newspapers, at least the ones that really tick me off. Did the charter schools thing last and I have to pat myself on the back for being fairly civil overall. Mind you that becomes difficult when the very point of charter schools is that America believes teachers are lazy do-nothing assholes, busy milking the system for their hard-earned taxpayer dollars. Somehow they convince themselves that privatizing the public schools and turning the system over to people who will do the same job I do, only for less money and fewer benefits is going to turn the system around. If only Mr. Spock were here now to inform them how grossly illogical they are being. But I digress. I did that argument already. It's time to take on the voucher nuts.

For quite some time now there has been a movement afoot in America to provide taxpayer dollars to parents so that they can send their kids to private schools. Are you with me here? Taxpayer dollars to send kids to private schools, any private school, schools for rich kids, schools for Catholic kids, schools for Baptist kids, schools for any old thing you could imagine. The proponents are pushing this issue in the name of "school choice" ostensibly to give ghetto kids the option of getting out of ghetto schools, get them into better schools so as to give them a better chance at success in America.

There are a couple of major flaws in this thinking. First of all, those rich kid college preparatory schools only have so many openings and I'm here to tell you that the boards of those schools are not taking boatloads of kids from the ghettos into their schools that are preparing rich kids for a life in the board rooms of America. Got that? They don't want their polished little princes and princesses hanging out with kids for whom "mother fucker" is a major word of choice. Those vouchers are not going to get very many kids an option in these schools. Furthermore, most of these schools have academic standards that a lot of the kids in question will not meet. Those who do will eschew "mother fucker" and will probably dress a little better and will be a bit more aware than many. They will be accepted. These are the elite, 1 in 100 or maybe 1 in 1000. So what happens to the other 99 or 999?

Now the other option for the many who will not get into the elite "rich kid schools" are the Catholic schools. This is just wrong in many ways. First of all I have to oppose this on Constitutional grounds. The U.S. Constitution guarantees us "separation of church and state" and paying for a kid's tuition to a Catholic school out of taxpayer dollars is a violation of that separation of church and state. It is using tax dollars to promote a particular religion. I use this example because the Catholic school system is the second largest school system in America behind the public schools. I know there are other church schools out there representing any number of Christian denominations and any number of other religions, monotheistic and otherwise. I do not favor supporting any of those religions with my taxes. I am one of those who is willing to take this to the Supreme Court. I am a card carrying ACLU member and this is just a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Furthermore, studies show that large Catholic school systems in the major cities do not do a whit better at educating kids than do the public schools. How is this judged? Why by the same criteria that public schools are judged, by standardized tests. And the Catholic schools have the option of kicking out the students who become a behavioral problem. The option? They regularly expel their problem students, who consequently become a part of the public school system.

And where do the problem students at public schools go? Duh! They go to public schools. There is nowhere else for them to go. And when our tax dollars go to pay tuition to Catholic schools, or Baptist schools, or Islamic schools, or Hindu schools, or rich kid schools, these are tax dollars that are not being put to use in the public schools to deal with those problem kids that kicked out of the other schools. They are also dollars that are not being put to use for good kids in the public schools who deserve all the resources they can get.

For the record, the Illinois General Assembly recently considered a bill to legalize school vouchers in the State of Illinois, a bill sponsored by State Senator James Meeks, an African-American activist from the Southside of Chicago. Senator Meeks's efforts were misguided. He is one of the people in Springfield who routinely deny the Chicago Public Schools the money they desperately need from the state while trying to find further ways to cut into the funding that they already receive. He seems convinced that the public schools are somehow cheating minority children of a decent education.

Having worked in schools on the Southside of Chicago for the last 15 years, I am here to tell you that the educators employed in those schools are hard-working, dedicated people and the communities they serve are dysfunctional. The children who attend the schools in many of the communities of the Southside are in serious need of more than the schools can offer. The issue is much larger than the schools. It is a social issue, not an educational one. Reverend, excuse me, Senator Meeks is either seriously misguided or is schilling for religious schools. And Steve Huntley, the resident right-wing voice of the Chicago Sun-Times, should really give it a rest. Mr. Huntley routinely argues for anything that could lead to the eventual dissolution of the public schools, to the dissolution of government in general, and for policies that might be called anywhere from right-wing Republican to Libertarian, to downright anarchic.

That, dear friends is my vouchers rant. The Education Omnibus Blog goes on yet. I still have to address teacher pension shortages, firings, budget shortfalls, and any number of ill-conceived plans thrust upon the public schools by numbskulls in government at the beck and call of an ill-informed public. Oh my gosh, I have just called government officials numbskulls and the American public as a whole a bunch of ill-informed persons who do things because they believe b.s. that somebody just made up. Woopsy. Gotta say it anyway. Have a nice day.

Much thanks to Bill Sanders and The Milwaukee Journal for the cartoon that I used for the illustration of my point, at the top of this blog entry.