REFLECTIONS
by James M. Dunn
School choice is the right name for a wrongheaded reform of public education. It is the private schools with the choice … they decide whether to accept a child or not.
I cannot vouch for vouchers. Such schemes are at least:
UNPREDICTABLE – running the risk of funding even Nazi, Ku Klux Klan ventures or worse;
UNFAIR – giving social sanction to schools that can reject the discipline problem, the deficient learner, the disabled, while public schools serve all children;
UNCONSTITUTIONAL – violating the no establishment clause since the courts have made it clear that it is illegal to do something indirectly that is directly forbidden, like laundering funds for faith-based schools by filtering them through parents;
UNWORTHY – blessing the secession of the successful from their social responsibility by providing welfare for the well-off (Nothing could be much more regressive.);
UNTHRIFTY – starting a new federal spending program with a multi-billion dollar expenditure, highlighting the hypocrisy of precisely the politicians who are so concerned over the deficit;
UNDEMOCRATIC – exempting elitist schools from public control, beyond the reach of the voter, unaccountable to the local electorate;
UNJUST – devising a discriminatory de facto windfall for the larger in-place parochial system, which belongs to one church;
UNETHICAL – destroying the public school system by siphoning off money, skimming strong students, draining parent power from public education, leaving two separate and unequal systems: private and pauper;
UNPRINCIPLED – subscribing to an odd principle of equity: "Since I`ve decided to send my child to a special school, you-all taxpayers-must subsidize me.
UNCALLED-FOR – ignoring voters who have turned down 16 of 17 tuition tax credit or voucher plans in state referenda and the 60 percent to 30 percent rejection of vouchers by the American people (Peter D. Hart survey, 1995);
UNECONOMICAL – inventing a new escalatory entitlement while slashing federal aid to public education from a high of 9 percent of the budget in 1949 to a proposed 1.4 percent next year;
UNSUCCESSFUL – playing like the Wisconsin experiment is a winner, though it has failed economically, educationally and politically;
UNSYMPATHETIC TO FREEDOM – inviting the inevitable government entanglement with regulations and guidelines that always follow public monies (He who pays the fiddler still calls the tune.);
UNWORKABLE – recognizing that there has not yet been a plan proposed that would cover tuition and transportation for the poorest children;
UNTRUTHFUL – shifting money from one pocket to another to claim that public funds would not benefit the sponsoring church or advance sectarian purposes; tad shady, eh?;
UNSUSTAINABLE – raising false hopes among poor people who will never with any such scheme be able to send their children to exclusive schools;
UN-AMERICAN – establishing a new sort of taxation without representation on the controlling boards of publicly funded private schools;
UNFAITHFUL – failing the biblical call for believers to be salt and light in the world, witnesses in the public square;
UN-CHRISTIAN – accusing those of us who don`t want our tax dollars to bankroll private causes of discriminating against Christians. Shame!
Other than all that, vouchers might be O.K.
