Vouchers: Leaving Kids Behind

A report in the Washington Post indicates that voucher students show few gains the first year. Voucher supporters claim this is typical, and that voucher student eventually do better than students in public schools deemed to be failing. But, there is evidence that suggests this is not the case.

Students in the D.C. school voucher program, the first federal initiative to spend taxpayer dollars on private school tuition, generally performed no better on reading and math tests after one year in the program than their peers in public schools, the U.S. Education Department said yesterday. [...]

"Vouchers have received a failing grade," said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.). This just makes the voucher program even more irrelevant." [...]

A Republican-led Congress created the $14 million-a-year program in 2004. The five-year initiative provides $7,500 vouchers each year to 1,800 students, from kindergartners to high school seniors, who attend 58 private schools, most of them Catholic schools. Participants must live in the District and come from low-income families. Advocates say the program offers an alternative to the troubled D.C. public schools.

Most voucher programs are designed so that only private religious schools will accept them. Why should a private school with a tuition fee of $15,000 per year or more want to accept $7,500 or less as full tuition? Particularly when most have a waiting list to get in.

So taxpayers end up funding religious education that may be counter to their personal beliefs. And only a hand full of students get any relief from schools deemed failing.

Instead of promoting this Band aide solution to the challenges facing public schools why not just fix the so-called failing public school? That is where more than 90% of all students are educated.

Why save only a handful of students? And why force taxpayers to subsidize religious teaching?