OPINION & EDITORIAL
Both sides now: Religion takes center place in Milwaukee voucher debate
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Also by Elizabeth Sanger:
- Bill banning intelligent design right for state (February 23, 2006)
- New law does little to help (March 9, 2006)
- Kumar brings true student voice (March 30, 2006)
- Referendum fair gauge of opinion (March 30, 2006)
- Affirmative action right for UW (April 13, 2006)
Related Stories:
- Both sides now: Religion takes center place in Milwaukee voucher debate (January 27, 2006)
- A choice to expand opportunity (November 24, 2003)
- Letters to the editor -- 2/22/02 (February 22, 2002)
- School Choice hurts public schools (November 7, 2001)
- Vouchers don't solve MPS woes, but incentives can (October 31, 2007)
by Elizabeth Sanger
Friday, January 27, 2006
School choice — sounds promising, doesn't it? Don't hold your breath — "school choice" is nothing more than a misleading label for a radical right policy that seeks to supplant public education with privatized, unregulated, and in a fair number of cases, religious instruction. The Milwaukee school choice program, which provides state-funded vouchers of up to $6,351 per student for low-income kids to attend private schools, is at a critical point in its sixteen-year run: Wisconsin state law caps the number of participants in Milwaukee at about 14,500, and this year the district has reached the limit. Next school year promises to bring more applicants than the system can lawfully admit.
Rather than address Milwaukee's public school problem, officials have used the voucher system to provide themselves cover while Milwaukee's public schools continue to deteriorate. Unfortunately, it looks like the voucher program isn't going away anytime soon. The problem remains, then, what to do about the enrollment situation for next school year. The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has proposed a temporary fix — a rationing system that would keep enrollment in the program under the state regulated limit. Governor Doyle and the Republican-controlled state legislature are coming under increasing pressure from voucher supporters to amend state law to lift the enrollment cap. Lifting the cap is absolutely the wrong choice; more vouchers are not the answer to Milwaukee's public school problem.
My conservative counterpart and I agree that more accountability should be required of the private schools that participate in the voucher program. For example, it's ridiculous that students at schools receiving state-funded vouchers do not have to take the same standardized tests that are required of their public school peers. However, she and I differ as to which parts of the current voucher program we think are worth protecting. It's clear to me that a better temporary fix to the enrollment problem than DPI's rationing system would be to eliminate religious schools from the program. It's ludicrous that taxpayer dollars are currently being spent to fund religious education.
I'm not declaring a war on religion, but if ever there has been an inappropriate mixing of church and state, this is it. The recent landmark judicial ruling against the teaching of "intelligent design" in Pennsylvania public school science classes helps demonstrate why it's a bad idea to transfer our duty to provide our kids with a quality education to religious institutions. "Intelligent design," an invention seeking to provide a religious alternative to evolution, fails to meet the standards of a sound public education, but how can we be sure that this pseudo-science isn't taught to kids attending private religious schools that receive public funds? Under the current voucher system in Milwaukee, we can't. Taxpayer money should not be spent endorsing unfounded, unscientific ideas like "intelligent design."
Make no mistake, I find my alternative to DPI's temporary enrollment fix less than exciting. When it comes to education, however, the means are just as important as the achieved ends. Taxpayers must be vigilant about how public money is being spent on education. If public funding must be applied to private education, public funds in private schools should only be awarded when accountability standards are met — including reasonable standards of curriculum content in science classes.
The voucher debate is larger than enrollment caps, of course; the whole voucher system is really just a temporary fix to Milwaukee's public school problem. Rather than diverting funds and a handful of students away from public schools, Milwaukee's education leaders should reexamine how public education in the city is managed and administered. Efforts to improve the Milwaukee Public School system should take priority over funding private school education for a select few — it's the only way to be fair to all. Education reform should be enacted with a sustainable future in mind — one in which kids will receive a superior education at any Milwaukee public school.
For now, however, let's make sure that the information kids are coming home from school with is accurate, consistent, and valid. As long as public funds are being applied toward private education, public standards of education should also be upheld.
Anonymous (January 27, 2006 @ 10:40am):
By unregulated do you mean not controlled by the Teachers Union. The state could easily provide vouchers that affix the dollars spent educating a child to the child and not the school or school district. At the same time they could set standards that demand that all teachers met a standard of a bachelors degree and pass tests that prove they are capable of teaching a certain subject.
My wife is an alternatively certified teacher who has a Masters in German Linguistics from the UW. She was teaching German I and II at a community college part time prior to our son starting kindergarten. After which she applied and recieved a full time position at a High School. In order for the school to offer her the position she had to take a month long 8 hour a day 5 day a week course on how to teach and then pass a test that demonstrated she was proficient in German. The fact that she was already teaching at a community college and had a masters degree in the subject matter was not important to the teachers unions that control the hiring and firing behaviour of school districts. The teacher she replaced had an Education degree and 18 college credit hours of German, but because this women had an education degree she did not have to prove she was proficient in German. Now if a business had a choice between a Masters Degree and not quite a Minor in subject matter and got to pay the person roughly the same which would they choose....
The article above is a paper tiger, the State could change how money is assigned to students and regulate private enterprise schools at the same time. The only difference would be that Private Schools do not feel compelled to hire Education majors which the Teachers Unions so strongly protect. After all we all know how hard it is to graduate with an education degree. As in not very. The State does not have to allow vouchers to go to a school set up by a janitor with teachers who can barely read. But for some reason Milwaukee allows this as long as the charter school is being setup by a person of color.
