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Show Turn off TV instead of changing schools Two Bountiful legislators are being be-ing criticized by some school ad ministrators. The legislators' crime is simple: They voted with the majority of the Utah House last week to allow parents a choice in where their children attend public school. Cyclops i f by Brian I J J Grav "I can't believe that Rep. Kim Burning ham and Rep. Nancy Lyon actually voted for that bill," said one Davis County principal. "With overcrowded schools, don't they realize the chaotic situation that could occur when parents start picking pick-ing and choosing and transferring their kids?" The principal is partially correct Many schools, of course, are overcrowded. over-crowded. Only three counties in the entire United States have a higher percentage of teen-agers in their population than Davis County has, and the county's penchant for child-bearing child-bearing is its biggest industry. But the principal is wrong when he thinks the parental choice bill will topple the local school system. And gubernatorial candidate Richard Eyre is also hazy when he thinks his school voucher plan will significantly change education. Parents like the idea of being able to choose their children's school-but, school-but, given the option, they rarely choose change. Parental choice may empower parents...but it's like empowering em-powering a homeless waif with the ability to purchase a steak when, with only 50 cents in his pocket, he'll end up ordering a fast-food hamburger. The reason parental choice legislation has little effect is that students are social animals. They wish to attend school with their friends, and familiarity with Little League basketball boundaries is a more stirring draw than a magnet program at a different school. Sure, parents will ask for a school change. In Minnesota, about one percent of students switched schoolsBut adding 15 students to Bountiful or Viewmont High will not throw the system into a tailspin. And there's no reason to believe that Davis County parents are dissatisfied with their schools. Several years ago, students were given the option to leave Layton High and attend Bountiful or Woods Cross High. Only a handful of students accepted the challenge, and few of those ever graduated from their new school When faced with transportation problems, even disgruntled parents think twice before requesting a change. Furthermore, Fur-thermore, the Utah bill only allows change if a school has room for more students. So Rep. Lyon and Rep. Burning-ham Burning-ham have made parents feel good by giving them a freedom they'll never exercise. The same thing can be said for candidate Eyre's lofty voucher plan which some maintain will lead to a proliferation of private schools. It won't The public school notion no-tion is ingrained in the Utah tradition, tra-dition, and there's no proof that a great influx of former public school students would lead to greater educational edu-cational skills. Currently, private schools work for one basic reason: The students come from highly-motivated families. In a national study released releas-ed earlier this year, the families of private school students were three times more likely to have a college degree and more than twice as likely like-ly to earn $50,000 or more in annual income than public school parents. Since successful parents generally churn out successful offspring, the private schools have a distinct advantagethe ad-vantagethe same academic advantage advan-tage Bountiful High has over a Keams High or a West High. Using a voucher to send students to "highly-rated" public or private schools won't make Utah an educational educa-tional mecca. In a Milwaukee, Wise, experiment, for instance, low-income students were sent to high-income private schools and they suffered the same achievement lag in their new setting. The schools are not the problem. If there's a problem, it rests with the family. If the Utah Legislature really wanted to increase learning, it would have to do something more dramatic than allow a few parents to leap-frog over existing school boundaries. It would have to outlaw the use of television sets, forcing kids to turn off MTV and acquire a library card. And if that happened, every single school in Utah would become a center for excellence. |