What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
|
|
by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
Vouchers Revisited
Although the US puts more money into education than any other country in the world it is not achieving satisfactory results. US 8th grade students are 19th of 38 countries in mathematics and 18th in science. In these subjects they lag students from the Slovak Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Australia, Finland, Czech Republic, Malaysia, and Bulgaria. It is disconcerting that we are also behind Latvia in mathematics but just ahead of them in science.
When US students are assessed on the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), nearly 50% of all whites and close to 40% of Asians in the 12th grade rank in the top two NAEP categories—Proficient and Advanced—in reading. That is nothing to boast about. When it comes to other minorities, principally blacks and Hispanics, the picture is bleaker. According to the NAEP the typical black or Hispanic student at age 17 is scoring lower than at least 80% of his or her white classmates. On average they are four years behind whites and Asians. They graduate from high school with the equivalent of a junior high education. A mere 3% of blacks and 4-7% of Hispanics display Proficient or Advanced knowledge and skills at the end of high school. Only 0.2% of black students perform at the Advanced level in mathematics. Although two-thirds of black and Hispanic students enter college they are unprepared for true college-level work. Issuing diplomas attesting that students have achieved a 12th grade mastery of education when they have mastered only a 7th or 8th grade level is a fraud committed annually by public schools.
Students who have not mastered mathematics will find themselves hermetically sealed for life from high paying careers such as engineering, medicine and computer technology. That will aggravate racial tensions and divide the nation into haves and have-nots along racial lines.
Proposed solutions—additional funding, smaller classes, more racial and ethnic integration, national curricula, and more teachers with masters degrees in education—are not working. The research literature provides no basis for believing that these familiar remedies will work. In the last decade educational outlays have doubled while performance has declined. The District of Columbia Public Schools spent $13,078 per-pupil in 2000-2001 versus a $7,463 US average. That bought it a 40% dropout rate. DC’s private schools averaged 1,195 points out of 1,600 on the 2002 SAT. The US average was 1,020 but the DCPS averaged 796, down from 822 in 2000.
One solution that does show promise is giving educational vouchers to parents to help their children escape from failing schools and let them attend public or private schools of their choice. Education needs the benefits of a free marketplace, and vouchers would allow all families to participate in that marketplace. Sociologist James Coleman claims that Catholic schools boast success in raising the academic achievement of population groups that do poorly in public schools, including blacks, Hispanics and those from poor socio-economic backgrounds. Brookings scholars Chubb and Moe found that after controlling for all variables used to explain away the superior performance of private schools such as selection criteria, socio-economic status, and student ability private schools still outperform public schools. Many studies have shown consistent test-score improvements for minority students allowed the option of school choice. In Washington, D.C. one Harvard study found improvements of 8 percentile points in reading and 10 percentile points in mathematics for black students who received vouchers. Derek Neal of the University of Chicago reported that the probability that inner-city students would graduate from high school increased from 62% to 88% when those students were placed in a Catholic secondary school.
Although the evidence favors educational vouchers that allow escape from failing public schools they are fought bitterly by such groups as the National Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU opposes vouchers for ideological reasons. There is not likely to be a program in a parochial school encouraging students to explore homosexuality, that justifies homosexual “marriages,” or that teaches children how to put condoms on cucumbers. Given options, parents will not send children to a school that offends their value system.
The NEA will not willingly give up its monopoly nor is it likely to make the adjustments necessary to save public education from the dismal failure it has been for minorities in inner-city schools. Recent history is proof of this. In 1983 a study appeared entitled “A Nation at Risk” from which came two enduring statements: we are being engulfed by “a rising tide of mediocrity,” and “if another nation did to us what we are doing to ourselves we would consider it an act of war.” The study was issued by the National Commission on Excellence appointed by Secretary of Education Terrel Bell, himself an educator by no means opposed to public schools. Conclusions of the report were based on 40 studies. There were five additional national studies which documented problems in basic education. Despite the impressive array of critics and evidence improvements since then have been essentially nil. Twenty years and a couple of trillion dollars later Congress, no enemy of public education, found as follows: “A majority of public schools in the United States are failing to prepare students to achieve the National Educational Goals.” Also: “The rate of decline in our urban schools is escalating at a rapid pace. Student performance in most inner city schools grows worse each year.”
Critics of vouchers say that they will destroy public schools. Not a shred of evidence has been adduced for that. Usually the competition introduced by voucher programs actually improves all schools. Voucher programs empower families and introduce consumer accountability into education. Vouchers do not reintroduce segregation as critics charge. Public schools are already segregated both racially and economically particularly in inner-city, minority communities. Private schools do not accept only the best students. The fact is that parents with higher aspirations for their children are the largest consumers of vouchers. Vouchers would not increase tuitions at private schools taking advantage of voucher income. In a competitive system any school that acted like the public schools, demanding increased funds in the face of plummeting academic standards, would quickly lose customers to an efficiently-run and results-oriented school.
Vouchers will not impoverish public schools. Public school expenditures have increased from $162 billion in 1982 to nearly $300 billion in 1998. Spending on K-12 education represented 2.8% of GNP in 1960, 3.6% in 1980 and 1990, and nearly 4% in 1998. Public schools do not have a money problem but a management problem. Academic failure and deterioration of public education occurred while it was spending more per pupil than any other nation in the world.
Vouchers are not, as critics maintain, unconstitutional. Federal Pell grants already provide funds to students at private, religiously affiliated colleges. The GI bill even covers tuition at seminaries. As long as funds are put into the hands of parents or students they are likely to pass Constitutional muster.
Support voucher programs. When the public school fortress is breached by vouchers education in the US will be improved for all. Then perhaps we will not be humiliated in comparisons with other nations. Be afraid, Latvia.
(Printed January, 2004)
St. Mary's Church Pastor & Vicar
