Posted on 06/18/2008 6:35:43 AM PDT by Amelia
Students in the D.C. school voucher program, the first federal initiative to spend taxpayer dollars on private school tuition, generally did no better on reading and math tests after two years than public school peers, a U.S. Education Department report said yesterday.
The findings mirror those in previous studies of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
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WashPo covering for Barry Obama - again.
But did the customer service levels of the schools improve?
I wonder if those voucher students had lower rates of discipline problems, drug abuse, etc.
And even if it does nothing for urban students (which I doubt is the truth anyway) I think they should still be open to everyone in the US. I see no reason why parents who want to privately educate their children should have to pay for it twice.
Bad sign, but still far too early to can the program. Let vouchers run their course properly (five years should be the minimum), then make a decision about retaining it, refining it or abandoning it.
Whatever happened to a little patience and foresight?
You're telling me that private schools, when given $13,500 per student can't perform better??
The US Dept of Ed is lying.
From the article: “Students who previously attended struggling schools — a group the program is designed to help — showed no boost in test scores compared with their peers. Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, director of the institute, said one possible explanation is that those children lagged far behind academically and had trouble adjusting to what may be a more demanding classroom.”
This is probably quite accurate....that these students had some trouble adjusting to more academic demands. It is also important to note that they were looked at after only 2 years in the private schools. This is insufficient time to ascertain what is really taking place with their learning curves. It is equally obvious that the public schools want that $$$$ (as if it will bring any good results).
I can’t agree more - the whole concept is to find out where the “good” schools are and allow migration of the school populations to these better schools. The good schools get the funding, and must be allowed to be selective of their students. This is a thing called competition!
The worse schools see the students voting with their feet/vouchers. This doesn’t happen over night!
...The US Dept of Ed is lying...
I’M SHOCKED !!!
P.S.: How about we ask all these voucher parents if they want to return to their old school before we trash the program?
Five years is a much better time frame.
“Whatever happened to a little patience and foresight?”
Our popular culture promotes INSTANT everything. That’s why people want a perfect ending to a war almost immediately, or they want a house they cannot afford NOW.
The article and report said that the parents were happier and felt more comfortable with the voucher schools, and the students didn't care either way.
I’d like to run an elementary school with say 11,000 per student. 22-23 in a room. Teachers would be well paid and we’d have math and english tutors.
How can it be a waste...if you give the "same dollars" that we are spending/wasting now...to the individuals..who then decide where they go to school?
No matter the school..there will always be those that won't/don't learn.
Do you give any of this burden to the teachers, system, etc..?
“their children should have to pay for it twice.”
Why should people (senior citizens, grandparents) who have paid for their children’s education have to continue to pay for societies education?
.....Bob
I wonder how these lottery winners were REALLY picked. Rotten cherry picking?
Try getting the government out of public education. As in, we don’t need public education... the market will provide all the good, private schools we need.
What are you talking about? They didn’t pay for their children’s education. The cost of education has been socialized for generations.
Could be, but I'm not sure why they would be. This program was passed by the GOP congress specifically in hopes of proving that vouchers worked, and it's George W. Bush's education department studying it.
Why should anyone have to pay to educate anyone other than themselves or their own dependents? Private pay or private charity is the one fair way.
That does make quite a bit of sense...I had looked at some of the studies earlier and found that on the whole, although the most exclusive schools in D.C. claimed to be participating in the program, most of them didn't have any voucher students, because they said the voucher students couldn't meet their admission standards.
I look at George W. Bush's Education Dept, and I see the same thing.
Government employees Unions are likely to support the Teachers Unions. Why? Well, the teachers unions are also Government employee Unions. It would be bad form to start trashing such institutions.
I’m not so sure they should. I at least can see the idea that that helps all of society, but public education just ain’t cuttin’ it.
There was some of that, but perhaps not in the sense you intend...
Eleanor Holmes Norton (even a stopped clock...) is correct in saying that some of the voucher students were not "rescued" from failing public schools...some were already attending the private schools on private scholarships or other funds, and then received public funding to keep going to the private schools.
If you read the studies, they don't seem to have received as many applications as they'd hoped from the very worst schools, and they weren't sure why, except that there was a lot of paperwork & initiative involved to participate in the program - parents had to file (apparently complicated) applications, & research and apply to the private schools seperately. They also had to figure out transportation to & from the private schools, if their children were accepted. Lots of hurdles, especially for minimally educated parents in the inner city.
It would be interesting to see which schools had the voucher students and then to look at the scores of all the students in those schools. Of course, other factors SHOULD be looked at as well, such as parent involvement, overall motivation of the voucher students, behavior, etc.
I'm not saying it's not a better system than what most of the country uses. What I am saying is that I see fifth generation families on welfare who can't afford anything spending $200 on a pair of sneakers or $400 on an X-box, but there isn't a book or magazine in the house. To me, that says they don't value education very much and, as such, I'm not too inclined to spend more on them.
No matter the school..there will always be those that won't/don't learn.
Very true. Perhaps one solution is to let them take vocational education only, rather than traditional courses. Another solution is to encourage them to take advantage of the largest and best vocational training institution in the world: the military. They'd learn a skill and find self-worth along the way.
Do you give any of this burden to the teachers, system, etc..?
There's enough blame to go around for teachers, administrators, and parents. My experience, however, it that the parents should shoulder the largest share of the blame for their kids' failures.
I don't know about y'all, but my yearly property taxes (which are on the high side for where I live) wouldn't cover the tuition for even one child in a good (or even mediocre) private school in this area...
A great school can’t completely compensate for bad (or non existing) parents I guess.
I am against vouchers because they would destroy the private school system. Now private schools can pick the students they want to admit and those they want to allow to remain, while public schools must admit every one that applies . With vouchers they become public school with the same admission criteria. Ask any P.S, teacher how this works out.QED the present article.
barbra ann
The key here is that it is D.C. schools. In any other city you would see a difference.
An educated society is a vibrant growing society. The vast majority of parents would NOT educate their children without government mandates. Certainly higher education, both Government run Universities and private Universities would NOT be anything like they are today. Pure research would be nil, and society would be agriculture based.
So we give the vouchers program a two-year trial period? And how many years have we given public education to prove itself? Or insufficient immigration enforcement? Or welfare benefits? Or a whole host of other great society programs? Since when is any government program judged on just two years? Or, just Republican ones? Okay then.
That's true. If you look at the list of participating schools (especially looking at the schools that actually enrolled voucher students) most of them were Catholic schools and very small religious schools. Some of the smaller schools may not have had very rigorous academic standards to begin with, but Catholic schools usually do.
Even with the voucher program, many of the Catholic schools can't afford to stay in business, more's the pity.
Some of those in D.C. thought that there should have been less focus on vouchers and more on charter schools such as KIPP that were showing great results (although not all charter schools are doing well academically either).
A great education is important. So is safety in the schools. I’d rather my son get a “B” in a safe school as opposed to an “A” in an inner-city jungle where the inmates run the asylum...
Who is talking about giving "more"?
Very true. Perhaps one solution is to let them take vocational education only, rather than traditional courses. Another solution is to encourage them to take advantage of the largest and best vocational training institution in the world: the military. They'd learn a skill and find self-worth along the way.
I've no problem with either of those solutions. Maybe if we gave people those "choices" with vouchers they would take it.
There's enough blame to go around for teachers, administrators, and parents. My experience, however, it that the parents should shoulder the largest share of the blame for their kids' failures.
We can sling blame around 24/7...it doesn't solve the problem. The NEA has a ve$ted interest in keeping things like they are. And that is the FIRST obstacle, IMO. Why not tackle the things we are more likely to change?
The point, of course, is not how the children fare on tests etc, but should the parents have a choice. If we decided programs based on the scores of the kids on the tests many public schools would be closed and we would be looking for an alternative.
I agree. I’ve been a victim of inner city schools. They do not, and I mean DO NOT “teach”, they just make you repeat what the teacher’s doing.
I’m glad that my mother taught me while I was growing up because the schools would have made sure I would have fallen through the cracks due to my disability.
It would be worthwhile to collate the various methodologies and administrative policies at successful charter schools and at those Catholic schools....and publish the results.
Which “public schools”? DC or US public schools IN GENERAL? Seems like a flawed report.
If they did better than DC schools, then they are a success! The DC Public School system is a basket case. I doubt that the DC charters did no better than DC Public Schools.
They've done similar studies in Milwaukee, New York City, and I believe Cleveland, with rather mixed results.
I don't think any of the studies has shown a definite advantage for vouchers, but I do know that in Milwaukee, for instance, there was a lot of fraud in some of the private schools, which might have skewed the results.
On the other hand, if vouchers were used nationwide, I think there would continue to be lots of fraud in some of the private schools, so maybe that's not such a skew after all....
Now you’ve got me curious. What kind of fraud are you talking about in private schools?
You wrote:
“An educated society is a vibrant growing society.”
I agree. I never said anything against education in itself.
“The vast majority of parents would NOT educate their children without government mandates.”
Untrue. The vast majority of parents want good things for their children and want them to have better lives then they themselves had.
“Certainly higher education, both Government run Universities and private Universities would NOT be anything like they are today.”
You mean exalted vocational schools that don’t really educate men and women but prolong the adolescence of teens well into adulthood while training them to be clerks? Yeah, you’re right. They could be better than that.
“Pure research would be nil, and society would be agriculture based.”
No. The industrial revolution started in this country BEFORE mandatory education - it was in fact dependent upon the cheap labor of children. Sad to say, but true. Also, pure research would still have been carried out, but it would have been performed by wealthy scions from aristocratic or mercantile families.
I am all for education. I just don’t like my government involved in it since it isn’t part of the original constitutional mandate.
Unfortunately, in general, you are correct about the lack of any real teaching. There are some exceptions. In the few instances where you find some good teachers (and a supportive administration) you discover that inner city students actually respond well to a challenging curriculum. When things are too easy, it’s boring and creates a climate ripe for behavior problems.
I don’t know whether vouchers are working or not, but I do know for certain that home schooling is FAR better than public schools. I would NEVER send a child to a public school these days.
The entire concept of vouchers is to allow the free market to weed out the bad schools and encourage excellence.
If a student performs well in a school, then the school attracts more students. A poorly performing student would then use the freedom to choose a better school.
Two years????
This amount of time is entirely inadequate to assess the success of vouchers. Its not even enough time for a single student to assess whether or not a single school is good or not.
This is blatent propoganda by the WaPo. And people are smart enough to recognize that two years is not enough time to make any kind of judgement.
But then when the students get too smart, they’re accused of “acting white”. Also, when the inner city students see schoolwork that’s too challenging, they start complaining and they throw fits instead of trying to learn how to do the work. They’re really not used to hard work.
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