Remember when you hated school vouchers? Remember when you thought the rich, able kids would leave their old schools with their for better schools, at the expense of the poor, unable kids?
Bright, white lighting lit up the conference hall at my university.
Two pale-faced, hormonally challenged students from the Texas Freedom Network, - the university’s student chapter of the state’s progressive organization – climbed onto the lecture stage and sat in their plastic chairs.
Two other pale-faced, hormonally challenged students from The Young Conservatives of Texas also climbed onstage and assumed their positions.
And I, as part of a sparse group of 15-20 students, looked on from our seats in the audience.
We were here to see a good, old-fashioned debate – a debate about school vouchers.
I don’t remember much about that debate at all. But I do remember what people thought.
I remember folks who hated any voucher system simply because they feared if students and families were given the freedom to choose schools, all the good, rich students would leave and abandon the bad, poor students.
There would be a massive reorganization of school populations, and bad schools would be unable to benefit from the work ethic, test scores, and money of good students.
As though a bad school is entitled to such things from any child.
But it’s not just the bad schools that would be hurt from a student’s freedom to choose schools. The bad, poor students would also be hurt too. If all the good, rich students left, the bad, poor students would be unable to benefit from the money of the good, rich students.
And now the tides are turning towards school improvements, via distance learning, charter schools, decentralization of authority, the ability to fire bad teachers, and yes, school vouchers, to name a few methods.
The U.S. Department of Education found that the voucher kids read better than their government-school counterparts.
There’s no need to be conservative and keep things the way they are until there are a wall of facts pointing in another direction. Apparently the freedom to choose schools helps the kids receive better education in reading.
Should we just give school vouchers for reading programs and wait until there is data to support similar conclusions for math, social studies, and science?
Or can we just take a look at other industries, other services and understand the benefits of the freedom to choose?
It seems like before a problem is even discussed, there is a strange network of prejudices and disparagement at work, shaping our opinions before logic and facts can.
I see similarities between the anti-school vouchers voice and the pro-individual health care mandate voice. They both limit the freedom to choose. They both have admirable objectives, but advocate a means relying on forcing a person to spend money so that others can be subsidized.
They both are forms of representative democratic slavery.
Hopefully the tide continues to change.
