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Gradually, I have come to the conclusion that a national test of the school voucher program may be what our country needs to inject vitality into our stagnating public school system.

I was initially skeptical of a program that would have provided public monies to cover, or offset, the cost of tuition fees for those families who would choose to send their children to private educational institutions. I bought into the fallacious argument that such a program would be a violation of our American tradition separating Church and State, which originates from the First Amendment clause stating that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." There are two problems with this argument. The first is the equivocation of the terms "Private" and "Parochial"; not all private schools are religious institutions. To believe this would be to deny the existence of such non-religious educational entities as Montessori Schools, Sylvan Learning Centers, The Riverdale Country School and The Horace Mann School to name a few. However, most private educational institutions are faith based, which leads to the second problem which I encountered with this argument: Vouchers would be available to people of all religions and beliefs, whether the educational institution is religious or not. The government would not place a caveat stating that qualification for a voucher would be contingent on subscribing to a specific religion or denomination. So out went that argument.

Another argument made against vouchers is that, if implemented, the public education system in America would collapse as parents remove their children from the public schools and place them in private schools, requiring more federal funds to be spent on vouchers thereby drying up the public schools' financial resources. But how sad and frightening a commentary is it that, like the former Soviet Bloc countries, public education harbors a frantic fear of a mass exodus of epic proportions if the "Boarders" are opened and free choice is allowed. Could this be a sign that public education is in a much more decrepit state than we perceive?

There is a bias from the other side which equivocates private education with "Better" education.

I have been fortunate enough to have had the benefit of receiving both a public education and a private, religious based, education. In public school, my history text books were 20 years behind the times. In private school, my history text books were 18 years behind. In private school, the water fountains were lead lined and plaster peeled from the walls. In public school, the rest rooms were locked and ceiling tiles were missing. In other words, it has been my experience that there is no significant difference between the two in terms of the quality of materials or conditions. As for curriculum, each state mandates requirements which must be met for the attainment of a diploma whether the student is in a public or private institution. In both types of institutions there have been those one or two teachers who served as an inspiration and the unfortunate others, hired for whatever reason, who have ranged from the burned out and unknowledgeable to the downright ignorant.

How would the voucher program help our public education system?

A time tested axiom in the business world is that providing high quality service will attract and retain customers for your product, and help you beat your competition. For the first time, public schools will have to compete for customers. They will be forced to be innovative in their service and disciplined in their practices, lest the consumers of education be placed elsewhere. Up to this point, public education has been mired in a stagnant swamp of mediocrity. Successive administrations at the federal, state and local levels have poured countless billions of dollars into the system to little or no positive result. Up to this point, the government which runs our nation's schools, and which maintains a monopoly on this service, has had no incentive to make education work well.

There are some, generally in the Democratic Party, who make much ado about such a test turning educational institutions into profit driven enterprise. But isn't that what they have done? They feed the stagnation, and in turn reap tremendous personal, political, profit. The fact is that many educators in private institutions are not members of a union. The teacher's unions in turn do not want a surge in non dues paying teachers to occur, as the number would surge if there were to be a dramatic increase in the number of new private educational enterprises due to such an experiment. So the unions contribute heavily, both in terms of funds raised and "in kind" campaign services, to Democratic candidates. They neglect to mention that almost all of their children attend exclusive private educational institutions; shouldn't the children of ordinary citizens have the same opportunities? To them, it's a game of garnering political capital at the expense America's children, and that is yet another reason as to why we desperately need campaign finance reform ... But that's another topic for another time.

If carried out in a proper manner, the voucher program can have a wide range of benefits for our nation's children. To be competitive, public schools would have to hire teachers who are qualified and knowledgeable in the subjects which they would be teaching. Likewise, businesses could reinvest a portion of their profits in education by banding together to open private charter schools dedicated to various fields such as physical science, engineering, health science, computer information systems, economics, communications, environmental science, et c.

With the Internet in the classroom, teachers in both public and private institutions would be able to rely more on primary source materials, rather than on text books. Students could be virtually transported to historic sites around the world in an instant. Every social studies class in America can have access to news reports from around the world the moment they are filed and watch our government in action via live feeds from the House and Senate floors.

As the old saying goes, "You never know until you try." All of the projections and studies, charts and graphs, sound bites and floor fights cannot tell you with any certainty what method will work. The only way to find out is if there is a national test of the school voucher program, and this is why I support such a measure. Action to improve America's educational system is neither a Republican nor a Democratic issue, it's about the future of our nation and its viability in the century to come.



Ari Adam Spett

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© Ari A. Spett, 2001.