Essay on School Vouchers
The book of Exodus tells the story of the Israelites, who, losing hope as they waited for Moses to return from the mountaintop, began to worship for the golden calf (McDonald, 2002). For Americans, especially low-income Americans, this story provides an important context for one of our greatest challenges-the education of our children.
Too many low-income families have lived in communities where the public school system has been struggling for years. These families, unfortunately, have had no choice in deciding where to send their children for schooling. For a family of four in 2001, the national poverty level was at $17,650 (Caire, 2002). Many of them are at or below the level. What options do these families have when it come to their child’s education? Do they even have a choice?
Webster’s dictionary defines choices as selection, the right to choose. In a neighborhood of complete poverty and low achieving schools, most parents believe they don’t have the right to choose an education for their children. Many of them don’t realize that there may come a choice.
School choice is an up and coming movement. Broadly defined, it is any policy designed to break the link between the residential location and school attendance zones in order to reduce the geographic constraint inherent in traditional public schooling (Goldhaber & Eide, 2002). The choices can include magnet schools, open enrollment, and interdistrict choice programs. Charter school growth also represents a significant expansion of choice for the public (Goldhaber & Eide, 2002). Even still, the conversations about choice are evolving. Parents can now try to get school vouchers to help them choose the academic paths their children may go.
The concept of school vouchers was proposed 50 years ago by an economist, Milton Friedman (Viteritti, 2002). Friedman was condemning the public education system in the United States (Viteritti, 2002). With parents being given the option to choose, failing public schools would be forced to close. Friedman predicted that better run private schools would replace schools in a marketplace that would have little or no tolerance for academic failure (Viteritti, 2002). Read more…