Why I'm Opposed to School Vouchers

School Vouchers has been a topic of conversation at my house ever since my friend Steve Urquhart ramrodded this legislation through the Utah congress in spite of my attempts to talk him out of it. So, if I may, I’d like to state why I’m opposed to this bill and why I have gotten all of my neighbors to sign the petition to take this issue to a public vote.

I believe that we all can agree that our American political system of a democratic republic has proved to be an unparalleled success – no other government in the world has enjoyed the success that we have. Some may point to our vast natural resources as the source of our success; but many other countries have as much or more resources than we have and they’re less well off than we are, politically and economically (the two seem to go hand-in-hand.) I believe that our success with a democratic republic, where so many others have failed with various forms of democracy, is due to the foresight and vision of our founding fathers who built a very robust system based on the foundation of an educated populace. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” I know that John Adams agreed to universal suffrage (not counting women or minorities) only after the promise of universal education. I don’t have time to look up the particular citations – that’s an exercise for some evening at home on the internet.

Anyway, this particular bill, as passed by our legislature, has several major flaws. Following is a list that I can compose off the top of my head (and I’m an electrical engineer, not an educator):

1. It takes money out of public education. Even though the bill promises to match money given to private schools and give the same amount to public schools for a few years, ultimately that parallel funding stops and the public schools, already seriously underfunded, end up with even less. I am embarrassed that in Utah we spend less per pupil on education than in any other state, including Washington DC. We’re #51. Given that fact I shouldn’t have been surprised at the news this morning that Utah has the lowest rate in the country of students that go on to college after high school – I really would have thought that Mississippi or Arkansas would have held that distinction. Anyway, if you take a school system that is already underfunded and cut their funding even more, then you end up with either a joke of a public school system, like that I observed in Bolivia (where I lived with my family for four years) or a non-existent public school system, like that I observed in Bangladesh (where I lived with my family for three years.) Both of those countries had outstanding private schools for rich people, like where my children attended, but nothing for the common citizen. Accordingly, the ignorant populace who could only hold menial, minimum wage jobs, consistently democratically elected horrific candidates to office, who then pillaged and plundered at will. Is that the future we want for ourselves? Even if I’m rich enough to send my children to private schools (but I don’t, except when living overseas) I want the unwashed masses in my own country to be properly educated so that we can enjoy a functional society. Bolivia and Bangladesh are just two examples of an ignorant populace creating a dysfunctional democratic society – I’m sure we could come up with at least 100 more examples from around the world.

2. It raises costs to all of the taxpayers in the State. The parallel funding provision of this bill, even though it lasts for only a few years, will raise costs to all of us as taxpayers with no added value. It’s like investing in two parallel power lines where only one is needed to serve the load – it costs twice as much with no added value which is why power companies are regulated by a public service commission which designates a specific and exclusive service territory and then regulates the outcome as well as the costs.

3. It gives public money to private schools without any conditions. The argument about giving “public money to a private institution” like highway funds to a private contractor is a straw-man argument – that’s not the point. The point is that public schools are accountable to the funding agency, as are the highway paving contractors, whereas these private schools would not be. Read the bill and check it out. There are no provisions to ensure that our tax money would be spent on actual education, as opposed to a Caribbean vacation for the principal; there are no requirements for certified teachers, standardized test scores, “No Child Left Behind”, or any other standard to which we hold our public schools. If these private schools really could do a better job than our existing public school system, then our tax money should come with a host of conditions that have to be met. I’ve executed many US-government funded projects overseas worth many millions of dollars, and ALL of them came with a host of requirements – required outcomes, spending limitations, employee qualifications, salary caps, etc.

4. It only benefits the relatively wealthy. This bill doesn’t contemplate a “full-ride scholarship” for anyone, just a voucher for a fraction of the cost of private school tuition. That means that only rich people like myself can afford to jump ship and send our kids to subsidized private schools, leaving the rabble behind at the public schools, where they can fend for themselves. Since we know that the less wealthy in our society are over represented in the delinquency in our schools, this migration of the wealthy and motivated will ultimately lead to a downward spiral in our average education level that will take us down to the level of Bangladesh and Bolivia.

5. It doesn’t create any space in our private schools, which are already full. But, of course, the private sector will respond by building more private schools, which, not being regulated in any way, will be of dubious quality. I’ve seen this first-hand when my own family and friends have flocked to private schools to get away from the violent minorities flooding the public schools. These new private schools don’t attract certified teachers – here again I’ve seen myself when people, without so much as a college degree, jump from their jobs as night watchman to history teacher. I’ve seen kids who had a 5.0 GPA in their private schools not get admitted to a major university because their ACT or SAT scores were too low. That tells me something about the quality of education that they’re getting.

Now, all this isn’t to say that we DON’T need to fix our education system – I think it’s obvious that we do. Everyone knows that our schools are top-heavy with overpaid and underworked “administrators” – that needs to change and someone needs to do the hard job of deciding how to do it. I have a process for evaluating the administration of electric utilities that I’ve used in many countries around the world – someone in the education department could surely develop a similar process for a school district. Our teachers need to be valued and compensated at a level commensurate with their contribution to society – it’s an embarrassment that Utah values their teachers, and therefore education, lower than any other state in the Union. We need to find a legitimate way to evaluate teachers and weed out the gristle while retaining the meat. And most importantly of all, how do we make parents get involved in their children’s’ education? Talk to any school teacher and I’m confident that you’ll hear them tell you that their biggest problem with their students is absentee parents. I’m opposed to legislating parental involvement, just as I was opposed to legislating seat belts (although I wear mine faithfully), but we have to realize that parents relegating their parental responsibilities are a much bigger problem with our educational system than anything else.

Anyway, I’m not an education specialist so I haven’t formed a plan to solve all of these problems, but it’s obvious to me that something as simplistic as throwing our hands in the air and giving the private sector a shot at our money is not only wasteful, it’s lazy. For once, I’d like our elected officials to tackle a problem head-on instead of spending their time on the fluffy stuff (like declaring national peanut month or extending Daylight Savings Time – I wonder how long that took.)

As always, I’m open to suggestions and further discussion.

By the way, lacking a photo that pertains to school vouchers, I'm posting a photo of The Wave that I took on our last excursion out there.

Our Family Trip to Disneyland

Annie writes:

Day One: getting there just as the park opened, we were able to hear, though not see, the opening "ceremonies" to the park. First off we all ran to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. The line was relatively short and we were able to go through twice in a row. There were new additions of movie elements, including several Captain Jack Sparrows. After, we went on the Haunted Mansion ride with a new room (for us) with a psychotic bride who went around murdering her husbands. After that we went to Little Thunder Railroad where we learned some very interesting, and helpful information regarding fast-passes that we continued to use throughout the trip. We got in line behind a mother (from Tucson, Arizona) with her two small children and we got to chatting. Apparently she had gone to Disneyland several times with school groups, and Disneyland employees are a bit more helpful to large groups. Apparently, even though there is a recommended time for fast-pass use, you don't actually have to use them during this time. Lines are still long with fast-passes, but certainly shorter than trying to go through the other way, so this was very valuable information indeed. Speaking of lines, in a vague sort of way, going through the Indiana Jones line became surprisingly entertaining. On our way in we noticed a great deal of writing on the walls in several places. At one point, when the line was particularly troublesome, CJ and Mom noticed that the writing somehow resembled regular English characters and, being the strange people we are, proceeded to decipher it. We pretty much translated that portion, but some of the characters were pretty ambiguous and we didn't complete the alphabet on the first run through. Second time round, however, I managed to notice something. One paragraph of hieroglyphics particularly stood out on the way into the ride, being painted on the wall instead of chiseled into the stone, and slightly set apart from the main text, but given its own light. On the way out there was another sign painted on a wooden sign in English, and from what we had been able to translate from that they were the same message. So now we had a key. After that we pretty much were able to translate any messages we came across, which made standing in the long line into the line relatively enjoyable. On the other hand it became slightly difficult to exit the ride without running into a paragraph of text we just had to translate. We tried just about every ride that first day and stayed pretty late and saw the Princess Parade at the end of the day. We left the park and ate a very late supper at Denny's and decided that it wasn’t any cheaper than just eating in the park itself.

Day Two: On day two we had planned on getting up early, but were just too worn out. Instead we got there at the normal time and did a couple of quick rounds on Pirates and Haunted Mansion. Over the course of the day we caught all of the rides we’d missed the day before and took another round on our favorites. When it got dark, the park started emptying out, and lines started getting shorter, particularly in Fantasyland. In fact, except for Peter Pan, the rides were actually short! At the very end of the day we caught the last ride of the night on It's a Small World – we walked right on. Plus we got our own boat. As we rode from room to room, we amused ourselves with “Been there. Been there. Need to go there.” When we got out we were treated to a special sight, the giant clock on the front of the ride opened up as it struck eleven, and representatives from around the world all came out and paraded to the theme song.

Day Three: On our last day at Disneyland we finally managed to get up early. Unfortunately the only land that was open at that point was Tomorrowland. So we split up – the kids taking a spin on Space Mountain and the folks going on Buzz Lightyear. Over the course of the day we hit our favorite rides one last time. Since we had a long drive home, we left the park early – while the sun was still up. On our way out of the park, I decided I really wanted to stop by Snow White’s wishing well. At the well I dropped in two pennies that I had picked up around. After the second penny hit bottom something clicked, and the Snow Whites statue on the left sang a duet with the well – they went on to sing the whole duet that Snow White sings in the movie. After that my Disneyland experience was complete. In our drive home we hit the infamous LA traffic – it took us twice as long to get home as it did to drive down in the first place. We arrived home a little after 1:00 AM.

Dad's thoughts: Disneyland has changed a bit in the five years since we were last there. In fact, my favorite ride was the new (to me) Buzz Lightyear Astro Blaster ride where you get to steer your own little vehicle and shoot a laser blaster and rack up points by hitting targets – we got up to level 4 and it didn’t make me motion sick even once (unlike Space Mountain or California Screamin’.) Also, just for something new, our resident cryptographer (Mom, who does the daily newspaper Cryptoquote, Sudoku, and crossword puzzle) and her two assistants (CJ & Annie) deciphered the exotic “language” on the walls of the Indiana Jones Adventure ride. For our three day stay there in Anaheim, we lodged at a one star hotel just across the street – we were in our rooms for less than 8 hours a night, so we felt no need to spend more money on a place to sleep.