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Show Volume XIV Issue XVIII The Ogden Valley news Page 3 July 1, 2007 Guest Commentary How Scary are Vouchers, Really? With all the talk about vouchers in the news today, how much do we really know about them? A few states have experimented with vouchers and met with a measure of success. We hear of a single mother from a large inner city extolling the virtues of the voucher that her child received. We now hear on television how every child in Utah can qualify for a voucher and give the parents the choice they need for their child’s quality education. How scary can this be? The voucher bills passed by the Utah Legislature will allow parents to spend a varied amount of returned tax dollars on a private school. It’s true that this money will come out of the general fund—used for such needs as roads and law enforcement—instead of the education fund. It’s true that a large portion of that money will stay in the public schools. And it is also true that classroom sizes could be lowered for awhile. So, how scary can this be? The scary part comes when we look deeper into the roots of the voucher movement. Where does it come from? Why has it been pushed so hard and what will be the final outcome? A small group of very wealthy and powerful people from across the United States has found that by creating a voucher system in every state they will be able to pull money out of public education and start their own private schools. There is a lot of money in education and they would be able to tap into that money. These people are powerful and pervasive. They have offered large sums of money to candidates across the country if they will back vouchers. Once they have converted all the states to the voucher system the way will be opened for them to create their systems of private schools. This money comes only from a few sources. In 2004, for instance, Wal-Mart gave this group $6 million to further the cause. Seeing the impoverished, single mother sending her child off to a private school partly funded by vouchers brings a ray of sunshine to the soul, until you realize that most impoverished or at-risk families will not be able to pay the balance of the tuition money, or be able to obtain travel for their child unless they live in an urban area where public transportation is readily available. Among Utah’s 29 counties, 21 do not have private schools. Is it any wonder that those in Utah’s rural areas are reluctant to let go of their tax dollars knowing their children will never see any of that money? I am not afraid of vouchers. They may help some students and, used in a limited area where schools are literally falling apart, one can see a need. However, what was the Legislature thinking when we went from no vouchers at all to the most liberal voucher system in the entire country? Was the Legislature really thinking of the rural areas, the at-risk families that can’t afford the extras that private schools demand, the nonexistent transportation that the child will need? As for the idea that schools are falling apart, no school in Utah is ill managed or could be considered as such. Even in our schools that have the most difficult situations there is an abundance of good happening to help promote student achievement. They are not needy schools; they are schools with needy children who have many of their needs met by quality teachers and staff. There have been past occasions when Utah has gone with the rest of the country and implemented educational tactics promoted as the answer to public education worries. One specific movement that Utah bought into was the open classroom of the 1970’s. Schools that built open classrooms have spent the last 30 years dealing with the problems that idea caused. Other states’ ideas won’t always work in Utah. We need to use Utah ideas to address Utah problems. Let’s reverse the situation and say we have always been in the “voucher mode”. Each year parents had to seek out the “perfect school” for their child, find transportation, and come up with the extra money for the tuition bill. How then would it look if the Legislature passed a bill promoting schools that offered a comprehensive curriculum, competent staff and certified teachers, free transportation, free speech therapy, free lunch, free tutoring, free after school programs, free summer school—not to mention neighborhood schools where the parents are welcomed and encouraged to sit on governing boards and a system where the schools are held accountable for the money that is spent. We do not know the long-range effect of the voucher idea—that is the really scary part. By peeling off scarce resources to blindly support vouchers across the state we could be looking at the beginning of the end for one of the most successful school systems in America. Cheryl Ferrin, Eden July: 1 8 15, 22, 29 August: 5 12 13 14 September: 2 3 4 5 30 Monthly Trek– Beaver Dams/Maple Grove Plant Identification and Collection Wild Flowers Monthly Trek– A Basin Disturbed Using TOPO Maps and GPS Tree Rings Forest Health Monthly Trek– Circle of Cirques Geology Plant Seeds, Fruits and Berries Fall Colors Wild Life |