The voucher system proposes funding to allow parents school of choice for their children. Whether it be private, public or in some cases home schooling, the parents would either be partially reimbursed, or have the tuition fully paid. According to an article in the Journal of Education Finance, Richard King and Lenford Sutton wrote “proponents contend that open competition would place healthy pressure on both public and private schools” (244). While challengers argue this effort exists to benefit a small sector of the United States, its supporters have already studied success in certain areas of the country and charge that it may be the best strategy to repair the public schools in the speediest manner. Increasing evidence indicate the voucher system may be the answer to incentivizing the public school system therefore bettering results for all children.
At first examination of voucher policies, apprehension began to develop with regard to the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which is a law that prohibits the government from either proclaiming or adopting a national religion (web). Concerning this statute, many feel that using tax dollars for vouchers would muddle the line between church and state, furthermore, driving re-segregation of public schools (244). However, excluding faith-based organizations from the use of voucher plans that permit tax dollars to be allocated to private schools is an infringement of free exercise and equal protection, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provides that no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction “the equal protection of the laws” (web).
According to Derek Neal, author of How Vouchers Could Change the Market for Educat...
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The idea that vouchers give parents a choice of schools for their children is simply incorrect. The only people who have any real choice in the matter are the private...
She realized that choice and accountability were not the answer, but that curriculum and instruction were more viable solutions to America’s educational dilemma. Ravitch suggests that to abandon public schools is to abandon the institution that supports our concepts of democracy and citizenship and to the promise of American life (Ravitch, 2011, p. 12-14). The idea of school choice is rooted in Milton Friedman’s essay concerning the government’s role in education. Friedman asserted that society should support and contribute to the maximum freedom of the individual or the family. He maintained that the government should provide vouchers to help support parents financially on their children’s education, which parents could use at the school of their choosing; so long as the school met set standards. Therefore, this creation of choice would stimulate competition, which Friedman believed would increase the development and improvement of nonpublic schools, as well as, create a variety of school options (Ravitch, 2011, p. 115). As a result of the choice movement, the public received three versions of school choice: voucher schools, private schools, and charter schools. Each of these schools receives public funding, but do not operate as traditional public schools, and are not managed by a government agency (Ravitch, 2011, p. 121). Charter schools became the most popular choice of this new
Paramount of issues at hand is that of the constitutionality of voucher programs. The Establishment Clause prohibits a state religion and guarantees all the freedom to practice whatever religion they should desire. The Supreme Court, along with many lower courts, has held the Establishment Clause to mean also that neither federal, state, or local governments may support a religion, including financially. Voucher programs represent direct state financial support to private, often parochial schools. In fact, even the checks in Cleveland's program, while addressed to the parents, are currently mailed to the school first.
Vouchers have grown into an important and powerful tool that government can use to provide directed goods and services to specific groups. Voucher systems have become a highly effective tool that is not only used for food/nutritional and housing services, but secondary educational and child-care services, as well. Although voucher systems continue to remain a heated public and political debate, success stories, as the one mentioned in the case examined will only give rise to such systems in the provisioning of public education in years to come.
School Choice: Followed the ruling on compulsory education. Parents have a right to choose whether their children go to a private, parochial or public school, or they may choose to home-school. Parents must accept any responsibility for their choice.
Lately we have seen proposals for vouchers. These vouchers are public money given to low income family so they may send their kids to private schools. Most of the schools who use this program are religious. In the Cleveland voucher program we see there were 3,761 children are enrolled and 96 percent of those children are attending religious schools. Also 82 percent of the participating schools were sectarian. This voucher program was challenged in the 6th circuit court with the Simmons-Harris v. Zelman case. It was ruled the Cleveland voucher program “clearly has the impermissible effect on promoting sectarian schools”.
It is a growing debate in an area that American society cannot afford to ignore, as the discussion on voucher schools directly affects our youth, the very foundation of our country. Many cities across the United States have proposed school voucher programs in an effort to improve the education of inner-city children that come from low-income families. However, with this proposition arises certain questions that cannot be avoided. Although proponents of school vouchers argue differently, challengers of the system expressly state that the taxpayer-funded voucher system infringes upon our First Amendment rights. Additionally, opponents suggest that the money being used for vouchers be provided to failing public schools, as used to be, and should continue to be, the American way. At the same time, voucher advocates believe that the consequences of a full-scale voucher policy for our nation’s public schools would, in fact, be beneficial. Still, both sides of the argument agree: our nation must find a way to give every student in struggling schools the best education possible. The complex disagreement lies in the steps that must be taken in order to achieve this goal. Should the government adopt a taxpayer-funded voucher system or otherwise explore alternate routes that could more effectively ensure the success of the American educational system?
...whether or not voucher programs are benefiting the nations educational system it is clear that the benefits are not outweighing the risks. There is so much time and energy being spent on legal battles throughout the nation, when the federal Supreme Court has already declared that vouchers are within the rights of the Constitution (Garnet, 2005). It is pointless to waste so much time drawing attention to the legality of the school choice system and vouchers when you could be spending that time improving the implementation of the voucher programs across the nation, which would actually benefit the students (Manuel, 2006). In conclusion, voucher systems cannot be beneficial to students when they are not being effectively implemented and they cannot be effectively implemented when politicians and state leaders would rather argue than work together to improve the system.
If America is to become an equal society, then the direction of affirmative action must be changed. Rather than continuing to focus the brunt of our efforts on helping those individuals near the top succeed, we must implement policies designed to provide opportunities to those individuals at or near the bottom. Specifically, affirmative action must return to its original purpose--helping minorities move into the middle class through programs based upon equality of educational opportunity and job creation.
Vouchers redirect money that would have been spent on educating a child in the public school system to a private school of the parent’s choosing. Voucher use is based on two factors, student eligibility and school eligibility. Those students who would be eligible for vouchers are among those in low-income families. School eligibility widely varies state by state. In some states school eligibility is restricted only to nonsectarian private schools, where elsewhere any private school is eligible (Resnick, 1998). Those who support vouchers offer three reasons for their position. One reason being that most public schools are failing, secondly vouchers help the children who use them, and thirdly vouchers create competition that motivates public schools to improve (Resnick, 1998). However, opponents argue that funding should be put toward improving the current public school system for the masses instead of allowing a better education to an elite few. Research is largely opposed to vouchers. Vouchers imprudently use public funds to back religious education, degrade public education, and support elitism.
In the 1990’s the school choice movement gained momentum through John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe’s bold assumption that “school choice would make it possible to break the iron grip of the adult interest group, unleash the positive power of competition, and achieve academic excellence” (Ravitch 118). Many advocates for school choice share a similar belief in the positive effect school choice and competition create in schools. When comparing the statistics to this notion, however, one finds an opposite conclusion than the one proposed. The school choice approach and the importance of competition in schools generates a stress on both charter schools and district schools to feature high-achieving students and dismiss
The American people have a decline of confidence in the educational institutions in America. This has lead to theories behind how to improve the public schools' situation. The most recent argument has been over school vouchers, which allow students to use a determined sum of taxpayers' money to help in the tuition costs of private schools. This use of public funds for private education should not be allowed because it would discriminate against students who would be going to private schools for economic, political and social reasons. It will segregate the classes even more than they are today because in order for a voucher to be helpful to a family, they must have a substantial amount of money to begin with, resulting in a stratified society. Primarily however, school vouchers are a violation of the national constitution and most state constitutions.
Roberts, Nanette M. and Glenn, Charles L. “School Vouchers: Two Views.” Sojourners (January - February 1998): 22-25.
Despite the controversy surrounding vouchers, the private school choice movement may be gaining support. In June of 1999, The Florida legislature approved a plan to give children in the state's worst schools taxpayer-funded tuition payments to attend qualified public, private, or religious schools.
Strauss, Valerie. "Vouchers and the Future of Public Education." Web log post. Washington Post. The Washington Post, 05 June 2012. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.