Posted on 09/17/2002 4:55:28 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
A revolution has just been launched in Georgia. Before it's over, parents will have control of their children's education. The genie is out.
Across Georgia, 70,000 children in poorer neighborhoods attend schools that U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige has identified as nonperforming. Under President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, those children have the option of transferring to other public schools. So far, fewer than 500 metro Atlanta parents have switched their children.
The number would have been far greater, but the act was signed in January and it was summer before the nonperforming schools were officially designated. Local systems had to scramble to work out the details for the start of school. The usual assortment of bureaucratic snafus frustrated and angered many parents trying to get their children into better schools.
It's a shame that reform was left to Congress, which should have essentially no role in local schools. The downside of the No Child Left Behind Act is that federal intervention grows into local affairs. The upside, though, is that it launches a revolution.
Listen to Felicia Culbreath, a DeKalb County parent quoted by Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Jen Sansbury. Culbreath's daughter, Gabrielle Stroud, attended one of Georgia's 625 nonperforming schools. Unbeknownst to Culbreath, the school to which her daughter was offered a transfer is one of seven DeKalb schools on temporary reprieve and next year will probably be declared non-performing.
"I'm at wits' end," said Culbreath. "I can't afford private school and . . . I really don't have good options."
What has been set in motion here is the great hope of education reformers. A parent who previously had no meaningful choices for her child, as with the rest of us, accepted the neighborhood school, good or not.
But when parents are given information, they start to become savvy shoppers for their children. And once that happens, they begin to take control. That's the process that has to occur. That's what No Child Left Behind has unleashed.
Parents, regardless of income, really are capable of gathering information and acting as responsible purchasers of education services for their children. The state should give parents a portion of the money allocated for their children's education, to be spent as they see fit. When parents get sufficiently frustrated, vouchers of an amount based on children's needs will become a reality.
When reading stories such as the one in Monday's paper about Gov. Roy Barnes' "emergency" grant of $7,000 to the DeKalb County school system for a pilot program to teach dining etiquette, the need for true parental choice becomes clearer.
Without question, schools are required to perform parental roles for many children. Teaching which fork to use may be more vital to some children than knowing the capital of Alaska. But parents should be the ones making that choice. The parents who teach dining etiquette at home shouldn't be required to submit their children to life-skills learning.
With No Child Left Behind, parents in low-income school districts who previously had no option but to accept what was offered are now empowered. They are rewarded for being responsible. That is the absolute key to improving education.
Once parents taste choice, as Felicia Culbreath has done, there's no going back.
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