Private School Access

While channel surfing, I passed a little interview with author Mona Charen on C-SPAN 2. She was going on about school choice and how liberals were denying access to quality education to people whose only hope of getting ahead in the world is a "good education." Mind you, she didn't bother to say overtly what she implied: students attending public schools aren't getting a good education. Really? Wow! I should just sue my parents and Bellevue Public School District 405. They must be why I have not gone back for my PhD yet.

It's one thing to say that some private schools will provide a higher level of education than some public schools, but to suggest that opposition to voucher programs actively harms people is a little bit of a stretch. True, English schools are better than American schools, and their "public schools" are privately run, have tuition, and are subsidized by the government at the same per-student rate as the government schools. That almost equates to a voucher system. Almost.

Voucher systems allow people to send their students to private schools while receiving a government subsidy equal to what would be paid to a public school for having that student. Sounds good so far, and I like it. Wait, though; it changes. In England, public schools may not turn away students who wish to attend. Oops. Find a voucher program that will support that stipulation here in the U.S.

I am a product, in part, of the British public schools. My father's job for Boeing took my family to The Netherlands in late 1970 and England in 1973. There, at the age of three, I entered kindergarten at Little Saint Mary's school. I proceeded through Prep 1 and Prep 2, finishing before we returned to the U.S. in the summer of 1976. Was I ahead? Well, let's do the math: I started two years earlier than my American counterparts and spent more days in school every year. Yes, I was ahead. They ask more of their students than we do. They don't coddle their students as we do. They don't squabble over different forms of sex education, dragging the curriculum into the courtroom; we're masters of litigating education.

I have no problem with—wait, I want to rephrase that—I would endorse a voucher program, but it must be one that allows any student to attend any school accepting the vouchers, with no other test but means. Tuition could not be based upon whether or not a student or his or her family attended or identified with a given religious group (Cathloics and non-Catholics would have to pay the same at a Catholic school, for instance). And the state would have to retaain the right to audit the fairness of any decision to remove a student.

It's not that difficult to write the law. It's not that easy to get the schools to sign off on it. Of course, any school could simply choose not to accept vouchers, though I would want a provision guaranteeing that any student accepted under a voucher program would be allowed to stay until he or she was legitimately removed (does not require a school shooting, mind you) or finished the highest grade offered (assuming we are not talking about repeating a grade five times or some such nonsense). Who's with me?