Daily Herald on Vouchers
On Friday morning, The Daily Herald offered this perspective to the voucher discussion (we bolded a few parts):
 When more than 25 percent of high school seniors in the public schools fail a basic academic competency test, it seems fair to ask whether the school system is failing Utah. With a number like that, it's hard to defend it as a roaring success.
A quarter of students tested failed at least one of the three parts of the Utah Basic Skills Competency Test, whose results were released earlier this month. State law requires students to pass all three basic skills sections, and they get up to five attempts, starting as sophomores. Of 36,545 seniors enrolled last October, 22.4 percent failed math, 20 percent failed writing and 15.8 percent failed reading. That's a shabby showing.
But here's the kicker: Vouchers are available to pay for the tutoring of students who fail the test -- in short, for a better education -- and Utah's anti-voucher voices are not to be heard. In fact, the more times a student fails, the more tutoring money is available from the state. The Legislature appropriated $7.5 million for the program.
Yes, you read correctly. Vouchers are available for students who need a better brand of education. The vouchers are worth $500, $1,000 or $1,500, depending on how bad the student is. Students with the lowest competency scores are eligible for the most money, which can be used to pay for a private -- yes, private -- tutoring program, or for a program sponsored by a public school district.
Strangely, the teachers union and others in the public education lobby who are vehemently opposed to vouchers for school choice do not seem to object to these tutoring vouchers, which are clearly aimed at providing the education that the public school system failed to deliver.
This is identical in principle, in our view, to helping students get a better education through school choice. If the public school system is failing a child, as determined by the most interested party, the parent, then state money should also help that child attain a better education through a long-term tutoring program known as a private school.
If you're not complaining about the tutoring program, you shouldn't complain about school choice.
While Utah's public schools deserve credit for the good work they do, it remains a painful truth that some of our best and brightest students are slowed by large classes, limited resources and government mandates.
School choice vouchers are a philosophically sound answer for some of them. After all, when the politics are stripped away, the system is supposed to work for the students. Tax-funded education is not primarily about creating government employees. It's about creating an educated generation of Americans.
Opponents to vouchers frequently claim that using tax dollars to pay a private entity to accomplish a public purpose is wrong. In fact, this is done all the time. Highways, for example, are built by private contractors; trash is collected by others; state-funded mental health services are provided by others.
And now we find that public money is being made available -- stunningly without objection from the anti-voucher crowd -- to help failing students acquire a remedial education that is made necessary by a weak public school system.
Their silence signals their assent in principle to the use of vouchers for education.
Voucher opponents miss the mark when they say that private education is the sole financial responsibility of parents. This might hold water if education were not imposed by force of law, or if public education were proved generally superior to private, or if the voucher program as passed by the Legislature was going to hurt school finances.
None of these is the case. The Legislature provided bridge money to protect the public school system during the initial transition years, and a windfall remains behind as a bonus to the public system. Of the $5,000 to $7,500 of taxpayer dollars that go to support a single student annually in public school, vouchers would drain only $500 to $3,000, depending on the recipient's income. The entire cost of that student goes away, except for some costs that can be temporarily assigned to capital infrastructure. That leaves a substantial surplus for fewer remaining students per taxpayer in the public system.
Thus, on the financial merits alone, vouchers present a winning argument.
But, of course, much more is at stake than money. Parents have a moral obligation to see that their children rise to their full potential. If the public system is failing, they have a duty to try something else.
So long as education remains compulsory under the law, the state should help them do it.
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7 Comments:
This is the second time in recent memory the Daily Herald has opined on Utah’s Voucher Program .
Of course, we appreciate the candlepower and candor. We also appreciate that people who are certainly not fans of the state legislature can see past the short term . . . whatever it is . . . and value the strength this program can provide to our education system.
Surely senate site, you were there to hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth from us educrats when HB 181 passed which among many other things included this mini voucher program. Maybe there has been more silence than expected because the tutoring money wasn't being utilized as expected. At least that's what I gathered from Rep. Urquhart's fussy response when he found out during an education committee meeting that students weren't accessing the money.
Yes, I understand the mitigation money concept but that money is coming from somewhere and not going to general fund needs.
And yes, I'm morally obligated to make sure my children reach their full potential. Am I also morally obligated to make sure every other parent's children reach their full potential by paying above and beyond what I'm already paying in taxes that provide all of our kids with a fine Utah public education? There are plenty of private and personal alternatives, it just takes some personal responsibility.
Utah can hardly be called a compulsory education state when parents can sign away their child's right to an education with a promise to homeschool.
Why wail and gnash teeth on a program that can help students who need it?
The baby boomers are retiring at the same time a new generation of students will hit the system. Seems to me like all options should be on the table.
The Daily Herald is incorrect. There was significant opposition to Rep. Urquhart's bill. It does pale by comparison, though, to the voucher egg the legislature laid this year.
I disagree that privatization of our public schools is the answer. It is an excuse to ignore the real concerns of chronic underfunding and legislative overstepping of the education process. The increase this year was great and was unanimously approved by both Democrats and Republicans. But it was not a bribe or a handout to soften the blow of a divisive voucher experiment (at least it wasn't sold that way). PCE tried to connect the dots, calling "educrats" a bunch of greedy control freaks. But this turned out to be a non-starter and they later backed off such nasty rhetoric.
True fiscal conservatives are rightly shocked that partisans such as Rep. Urquhart are pushing for their own government entitlement program, unprecedented in the United States. Not long ago these same lawmakers used their power in the rules committee to cut off a measly $2M in healthcare funding for blind and disabled people. They were thrilled when private donations later made up the difference for their neglect.
Yet with vouchers they have done an about-face. They want to force taxpayers to short-circuit the democratic process and prop up private business interests because they don't trust our own choices of elected school board members. And if that wasn't enough, they now want to change that process, too, and cede control of school board candidate selection to partisan delegates in political conventions.
Our elected school boards are one of the last vestiges of true democracy in our state. Fortunately, Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike are seeing through these partisan power grabs by saying NO to fringe political experiments and protecting our right to accountability of taxpayer money through the open, democratic process led by our elected, constitutionally-sanctioned school boards.
Thanks...Craig.
There was a lot of opposition to the remediation vouchers. The education establishment argued that only it should be able to remediate students that were failing in the system.
The first anonymous commenter has its facts wrong. My complaint concerned a separate part of HB 181 -- $7.5 million appropriated for a math initiative. The legislation clearly stated that half of the money should go to inputs (like teacher credentials) and the other half should go to outputs (like improved test scores) – hybrids of the two approaches also being allowed. The State Office of Education ignored that clear directive and did what it wanted (put all but a sliver of the money toward inputs).
It is hard to fund programs (as opposed to money being put in a block for local school boards to divide up as they see fit). The intent of the initiative was to create data upon which a broader program could be based. I think it was appropriate to point out that it was very short-sighted for the State Office of Education to intentionally botch the experiment and thereby jeopardize the future chances of establishing a broad math program just so it could have a rather smallish win on its preferred use of the math initiative money.
Very fine editorial.
Encouraging lawlessness
Article Last Updated: 06/25/2007 12:04:07 AM MDT
It is perhaps not well enough known by the general public that when the Legislature passes a law, the bureaucracy has some autonomy in deciding how it will implement it.
That does not mean that agencies have the right to veto legislation. Unbelievably, The Tribune's editorial board was apparently condoning exactly that in its June 20 editorial. The editorial accuses members of the Legislature of being “control freaks” with “bruised egos” because they may want to punish the State Board of Education for refusing to implement the school voucher program.
In fact, the Legislature makes laws, and the bureaucracy implements them. The Utah Supreme Court should have stood by the Legislature instead of encouraging lawlessness. Just because the Board of Education is nonpolitical does not mean it operates under a different set of rules. It is not its own Legislature. The Utah Legislature would be correct to punish the board in order to ensure order in government.
The general public needs to realize that the more discretionary power bureaucracies have, the less power the public has to change anything. We elect legislatures, not bureaucracies.
Bethany Conner
Provo
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