Mar

26

Vouchers: Strickland Calls It Undemocratic

March 26, 2007 |

The very comment is untrue and by nature a great example of double speak. Vouchers are about the ability of parents to make a choice so that their children have the greatest opportunity available. Vouchers voted on and approved due to meeting an important right of the parents to have control of their children’s education is anything but undemocratic. Shame on you Governor.

On March 16, Gov. Ted Strickland lashed out against educational alternatives for Ohio’s schoolchildren, saying charter schools have been a “dismal failure” and that vouchers are “undemocratic.”

But the dismal failure he should have talked about is the one that continues in so many conventional public schools. After all, this is the original sin that led to the creation of charter schools and voucher programs. The Cleveland Municipal School District met none of the 25 state measures of performance in the 2005-06 district report card. Columbus Public Schools met just five; Dayton City Schools, one.

Like others who want to end choice in education, the governor seeks to portray the conventional public-education system as a victim of charters and vouchers. This is accusing the treatment of causing the disease. The focus should be on how public schools have been victimizing tens of thousands of students in urban Ohio districts for years.

The parents of Ohio’s 8,700 voucher students and 76,000 charter-school students do not consider these educational alternatives dismal failures; they see them as a way out of something worse.

As for undemocratic, consider the circumstances that existed before charters and vouchers offered choice: Parents paid taxes to send their children to schools that were chosen for them by district officials. If the schools were awful, too bad. Yes, parents were free to send their children to private schools, but only if they were affluent enough to pay school taxes and private-school tuition. That financial double-whammy puts this option out of reach for most parents, especially for poor ones whose kids are most likely to be stuck in failing schools.

Right Angle clips this comment from the Dispatch.

If Strickland wants to save money and improve education for Ohioans, he should follow the lead of other Democratic governors and expand school choice by creating a highimpact, low-cost education-tax-credit program, like the ones that are saving money in other states.

These programs allow businesses or individuals to take dollar-for-dollar credits on donations to scholarship-granting organizations that help lower-income families pay for a school of their choice. If a business owed the city $5,000 in taxes and donated $5,000 for scholarships, it would pay nothing in taxes. Individual credits allow taxpayers to take the same kind of credit on education expenses for their own children, and even for the children of relatives and friends.

Ohio, you voted for this. What were you thinking.


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