THE ABD'S OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

PRIVATE SCHOOLS MIGHT NOT BE BETTER AND MAY WELL BE WORSE



Janueri wun 2000
Deer Mista Bussh--
I gradiated frum wun
ov yur privat skools u made with
yur Amerika 2000 plan bak in
1991. Boy wuz it fun and did i
lurn a lot. Thanx fur ledin ma
foks uze tha vauchurz ta pik a
gud skool fur me.
Luv, Ronny

Welcome the future American high-school graduate, courtesy of the education
president's America 2000 school reform proposal. Devolutionary SF fantasy or
fact?

The skinny on Bush's scheme: Private schools are better than public ones, so
let's privatize. The cornerstone of this allegedly freemarket approach is to
deregulate the educational system by giving parents vouchers that pay for their
kids to attend whatever schools they want. The aim is to make all schools,
public or private, slug it out on the "level" playing field of the marketplace.
Hey, why not? Everyone knows that private schools are great and public ones
stink, right?

Wrong. Turns out that public schools do just about as well-or badly as private
institutions. Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers,
has been hammering this point home, armed with a new study showing a key flaw
present in virtually all previous research suggesting private schools do a
better job: twisted statistics. They don't compare similar kids. The most
important factor turns out to be the parents' education levels. Control for
that, by comparing kids whose parents have the same schooling, and you find no
significant differences on National Assessment of Educational Progress test
scores in math between students in public and private schools.

Let's assume the administration knows this by now. Why, then, push for choice
vouchersand the subsequent gutting of the public school system? Consider a few
possible explanations:

1. Public schools must by law teach a curriculum that contains politically
unpopular subjects in these cynical and divisive timestopics such as
desegregation, evolution, and safe sex, Private institutions can teach anything
they bloody well like.

A corporation-sponsored school can teach students just enough to make them good
little workers and nothing about the rights and duties of citizenship-like
speaking out against abuses of power, S & L ripoffs, and acts of corporate
malfeasance. Private schools can promote bogus separatist theories. They can
also be ripoffs, like so many vocational schools and diploma mills that
advertise on matchbooks.

2. Disadvantaged, difficult students can be dumped by corporate bottom-line
bean counters. Think the companies will show a little heart? Know anyone laid
off by a big company lately? This short-term thinking will make education cost
more, not less. Instead of paying about $4,500 a year to educate a kid, we the
taxpayers can look forward to assuming the hidden cost of a gutted public
system-the $25,000 a year per kid for incarceration. Jail, after all, is the
graduate program for school dropouts.

3. Privatizing schools is part of an administration shell game to reduce taxes
temporarily. The short-term benefit: Get reelected. We will end up with
thousands of mediocre schools lacking any quality assurance. The really good
schools will be oversubscribed.

Vouchers and privatization will effectively deregulate schools, exposing once
again the fallacy in the argument that free market policies are always better.
Remember how wonderfully laissez-faire worked for our banking system? Rewarding
public schools that show improved results is the better way. Vouchers and
privatization aren't the answers; they're the final nail in education's coffin.
If the President thinks this plan will work so well for education, why doesn't
he let us use vouchers and choice for the whole federal budget? In that case I
could choose to use my vouchers for education, not H-bombs.