Those who support school vouchers are selfishly choosing to ignore the facts. Reality check: vouchers do not have the positive impacts many claim they do.
“A key argument for school choice…is that school choice has the potential to benefit historically disadvantaged students… due to its ability to break up strong links between poor neighborhoods and underfunded local schools.” – Associate professor of Education Policy at the University of Southern California, Huriya Kanwal Jabbar
School vouchers fail to provide underprivileged students with improved education opportunities. A study done in North Carolina found that even with 8 in 10 NC students attending public schools, their voucher program would proceed to fund the tuition for the wealthy students already enrolled in private schools. This action diverts money from public schools without creating more opportunities for other students.
Instead of providing public schools with funding to continue to give students of all demographics a quality education, vouchers are redistributing money to wealthy individuals who are already attending private schools. In the state of North Carolina, it was calculated that over $625 million taxpayer dollars that went to private schools could have provided public schools students and educators with various benefits. With money steadily being directed toward wealthy students already attending private schools, vouchers continue to fail to address the students searching for better education opportunities.
“In conclusion, evidence generally indicates school voucher programs are associated with improved academic achievement and educational attainment.” – Cascade Policy Institute contributor Eric Fruits, Ph.D
If there are people who believe vouchers improve academic success, they are wrong. While a surface-level glance at the test scores and success of students attending private schools through a voucher program could support this idea, the reality is that school vouchers are doing the opposite.
According to a study by researchers at the University of Arkansas, the students who use vouchers to attend private schools performed worse on state assessments compared to public school students. The distribution of school vouchers across the country was intended to provide more individualized educational opportunities to enhance student success; however, the scary truth is that they have the opposite effect. Not only do school vouchers negatively affect the performance of the students in these programs, but they are also failing to encourage a more competitive mindset amongst public schools.
“Our goal is to have a system in which every family in the U.S. will be able to choose for itself the school to which its children go. We are far from that ultimate result. If we had that, a system of free choice, we would also have a system of competition, innovation, which would change the character of education.” – American economist and statistician, said to be the “grandfather of school vouchers”, Milton Friedman.
Another illusion of school vouchers is their supposed ability to foster a more competitive environment in education. The hope of using money originally intended for public schools towards voucher programs was to encourage public school students to work harder academically and drive public schools’ employees to create more effective education plans. However, a study of Louisiana’s private school voucher program showed that students who had originally been performing at the 50th percentile in math and reading in their public school were found to have dropped 24 percentage points from their previous score after attending a year of private school. As a result, there have been no changes towards a more competitive and innovative education system.
If voucher programs are not effectively encouraging public school students to improve their performance, the money being diverted away from public schools is being wasted to fund schools that are not only achieving at low levels but also doing this with little diversity amongst their student bodies.
“Empirical evidence finds school choice programs leads to more integrated schools than their public school counterparts” – U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos
To believe that giving money to support students looking to attend a private school would promote more diversity than is already present in the public school system is bizarre. A UCLA Civil Rights Project report found significant differences in the racial compositions of private and public schools. The report concluded that white students were overrepresented in private schools while Hispanic and African American students were left underrepresented. The evidence from studies done on school vouchers suggests that they do not promote integration in schools. For example, if a group of minority students in a public school chooses to use vouchers to attend a private school, this doesn’t promote integration. In fact, the public school that once had a diverse student body may now begin to segregate as the minority students are lost to schools participating in the voucher programs. Similarly, if a group of majority students leaves for private schools, this could also result in segregation and lead to majority and minority students unintentionally being separated into different schools.
Ultimately, school vouchers don’t lead to more integrated schools. Instead, vouchers are contributing to racial segregation in both public and private schools while also failing to meet the needs of all of their students
“My intent is to provide families with the opportunity to choose the best possible educational setting for their child.” – Republican Rep. Brad Buckley of Salado on the positive effects of school voucher programs in Texas
At best, school vouchers are a tool that private and charter schools use to support their own perspectives on what an education should value. Unlike public schools that are required to meet state-mandated standards for education, private and charter schools participating in voucher programs are not obligated to follow these same regulations.
Edweek conducted a survey between 29 states with private school voucher programs and found that very few private schools actually follow standard policies to ensure transparency and accountability like their public school counterparts. For example, public schools must follow the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), ensuring the needs of all students are met. However, voucher-funded private and charter schools are not required to follow these regulations. The IDEA is just one example of a state-mandated policy that voucher schools are not required to follow. As a result, initiating school voucher programs is hindering the ability for all students to be guaranteed an education that will support their individual needs. Voucher programs are wrongfully stealing valuable money away from public schools and failing to provide students with an individualized education. Vouchers will never provide parents with the opportunity to choose the best educational setting for their child when private and charter schools are not held to the same state-regulated educational standards.
Voucher programs drain the life out of the public schools in the particular areas they have been implemented. As a strong advocate for public schools and an example of someone who has received their 12 years of education in these schools, we need to protect them and end vouchers. School vouchers have not fulfilled their original purposes, and public schools are suffering. All education isn’t made equally, and public schools are the only places that understand the truth in this statement. The power to end this issue is up to those who care. Any person who believes in the power of public education shouldn’t be afraid to advocate against the implementation of school vouchers within their communities.
