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Show System At Fault, Not Parents Or Teachers Governor Bangerter and State School Superintendent Jay Taggart are wrong in blaming Utah parents for the failures of Utah public schools, according to Howard Stephenson, president of the Utah Taxpayers Association. "It's the system that's at fault, not parents," Stephenson said. On Monday, Governor Bangerter gave Utah parents an "F" in his education ed-ucation report card. Superintendent Taggart said he's tired of parents beating him up for not doing a good job. "Utah has the most dedicated parents of any state in the nation and for Governor Bangerter to give them an "F" shows that he's out of touch with reality," Stephenson said. "When parents are given freedom free-dom of choice in determining how and where their children are educated, educa-ted, then they will deserve the praise or blame for how well their children are educated. Our present monopolistic, centrally-planned educational ed-ucational system has disenfranchised disenfran-chised parents and families from the educational process. Parents have little control over which school their children attend or which teacher they get. Only the wealthy can afford to make those kinds of choices and even they have to pay twice for education: once through taxes and again through tuition to a private school." Stephenson said parents of school-age children should be given educational choice through a voucher system where the dollars we now spend would follow each student to whatever school the parents par-ents selected. Schools would then have to compete for students in order to obtain funding. Schools that failed to respond to the education educa-tion marketplace would not survive unless they improved. "We're talking about the things that have made the American economy econ-omy work: freedom of choice and competition," Stephenson said. "If we weren't allowed to choose where we buy groceries, we'd be up in arms. Surely, our children's education educa-tion is even more important than groceries," he said. Stephenson likened the American Ameri-can public educational system to the Soviet agricultural system. "The incentives are the same, the lack of control by the consumer is the same, even our school reform movements are similar to the failed Soviet economic reforms of 10 and 15 years ago," he said. "Giving Utah parents an "F" for the failure of public schools is like giving Soviet consumers an "F" for the failure of the Soviet economic system," Stephenson pointed out. Utah teachers shouldn't get an "F" either. That would be like blaming the Soviet workers for the failure of the Soviet system. It is the system that is at fault, not the people. We have an educational system where consumers of our educational product have very little say in what is done. Even our teachers have little control over how they teach those children, most of the decisions are made by a central planning bureaucracy. Stephenson maintains Utahns don't have freedom of choice in education edu-cation because those presently in control of the educational monopoly mono-poly - the educational bureaucrats, the union leaders, and state PTA officials - don't want to give up the power they have enjoyed as bureaucratic bureau-cratic insiders for so many decades. "These 'hardliners' are the ones who deserve the failing grade." |