We haven't covered voucher programs much here, because there isn't one that I know of in Lake County, But there are Charter Schools which are similar. However, Charter schools in Florida are subject to some reviews and quality criteria.
But, in the article below, it describes how a school voucher system was set up in Milwaukee in the 1990's and became a huge failure. One big reason is that ANYONE could set up a private school using voucher income without any quality or professional standards, and numerous schools became funding programs for the leaders, and not the kids education. Read on - I don't think this can be an indictment of all voucher programs, but an indicator how government can set up a voucher program WITHOUT any oversight, controls or standards, and it becomes a failure. You might say it resulted from a complete lack of government fiscal management, which is the point of this website. It is time that taxpayers get the same quality of fiscal management from elected politicians for government programs that private businesses practice all the time.
vj
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from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at:
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=684457
Some bad choices were made regarding school choice
By WALTER C. FARRELL JR.
Posted: Nov. 10, 2007
The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute's recent study documenting that school choice "isn't a powerful tool for driving educational improvement in Milwaukee Public Schools" is a welcome finding from a conservative think tank that has long championed publicly funded, private school choice.
This report provides profound insight into the obvious.
The institute also acknowledges that the social circumstances of today's parents are significant contributors to the lack of expected, positive academic outcomes pursuant to parents' opportunity to choose the schools that their children attend.
Milwaukee, along with other large urban centers, has experienced significant decline in labor force participation among black men, as compared to their white and Hispanic counterparts, as recently documented by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Center for Economic Development.
It has also been victimized by the outsourcing of family-supporting, low-skilled jobs to developing countries, a crack epidemic in the central city and a stark rise in teen parents who are the offspring of teen parents.
This situation has created an expanding group of what can be best termed as biological parents rather than the traditional parents.
The latter provided support for their children at school, at home and in their neighborhoods, and they collectively formed the extended families that the contemporary black community so proudly trumpets as one of its core strengths.
But the sad reality is that the traditional black family, whether single- or two-parent, is a vanishing species in Milwaukee and in other distressed urban areas.
It is within this context that the silver bullet of parental choice has been offered as the salvation for public schools. Meanwhile, there has been no substantial, long-term successful effort to address the grave aforementioned challenges faced by MPS parents and students alike.
First, public school choice was created to generate support for school desegregation and to reduce white flight from the public schools. This practice achieved some success in its initial phase until it was overwhelmed by worsening socioeconomic conditions in Milwaukee's central city.
To its credit, public school choice was transparent and provided parents with objective information on which to make a decision. However, many of those parents eligible to make such choices were of a biological rather than traditional orientation and lacked the personal initiative or understanding to make wise choices.
In an earlier period, when work opportunities were more evenly spread across all of Milwaukee's racial and ethnic communities, MPS was aided in its mission by an abundance of low-skill, decent wage manufacturing and service jobs for its graduates as well as its drop-outs.
In addition, black single- and two-parent traditional, poor, working- and middle-class families produced an extraordinary group of high achievers, especially among black males: Howard Fuller, Acquine Jackson, R. Mack Pumphrey, Sherry Pattillo, Mary Pattillo and Catherine Pattillo (sisters), Jackolyn Mathews (and her seven siblings, who all hold college degrees or own businesses), Cecelia Gore, Richard Porter, Andre Townsend, Rev. John McVickers and Rev. Steve McVickers (brothers), John Daniels, Bishop Sedgwick Daniels, Valerie Daniels and Hattie Daniels (siblings), Judge Joseph Donald and a host of others.
These families were the bedrock for the stable elements of the black community that exist today. The valiant attempt of public school choice could not and cannot stem the rising tide of social and economic dislocations in the central city from where it draws the majority of its student population.
Second, the proponents of publicly funded, private school choice (vouchers) stepped into this breach of failure, and like a medicine show promised a cure-all for the ills of public education if only they could be relieved of government oversight.
With the financial backing of the Bradley Foundation, they lobbied the state Legislature in the mid-1980s and finally achieved passage of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program in March 1990.
This first choice legislation included some academic requirements and was limited to non-sectarian schools and to students already enrolled in MPS. In 1995, the legislation was revised to include religious schools and expanded to include any student "who was eligible to attend a public school," picking up a large contingent of students who were already enrolled in private and religious schools. (It was affirmed by the Wisconsin and U.S. Supreme Courts in 1998).
That legislation, with even less government oversight, opened up opportunities for hustlers, felons and those with educational skills that were only marginally above those of the students for whom they were taking money to educate.
Choice/voucher schools such as Alex's Academics of Excellence (headed by a convicted rapist), Exito, Medgar Evers, Harambee and Mandela Academy (whose leaders and/or administrators were sentenced to jail) and Learning Enterprise Academy, Tucker Institute of Learning, Sarai Excellerated (sic) Academy and Academic Solutions were all dismissed for fraud.
Nonetheless, there are dozens of private choice/voucher schools that have continued to operate while their owners legally spent tens of thousands of voucher dollars on luxury cars, paternity suits and on other high-end personal items.
There is no accountability for how they spend choice/voucher money, unlike public schools, as long as they do not commit fraud. Several voucher schools, primarily those in the central city, hire teachers who only possess a high school diploma (the minimum educational requirement under existing state law), pay them a minimum wage and devote a disproportionate amount of the school day to having their students watch videos and play games.
Parents have been recruited to these schools with wild promises of academic success for their children, although these schools are not required to release academic data comparable to MPS or to follow any of the mandates of No Child Left Behind.
More than 100 have closed since 1990 and dozens have been cited for fraudulent practices.
Thus, this purest version of school choice has frequently resulted in the victimization of low-income parents who chose them as a result of high pressure marketing tactics, believing they would receive something better for their children than what MPS has to offer.
I was severely criticized on a 1987 Milwaukee Forum (and later in a book) for stating that the proposed choice/voucher program would subject low-income parents to a slick marketing campaign since the private choice schools could operate in secret without any requirement that they provide objective information.
When it comes to private school choice, "the chickens have come home to roost."
Neither public school choice nor publicly funded private school choice has had any meaningful impact on academic achievement in MPS, irrespective of the latter proponents' contrary claims.
Choice is not the answer to the social and economic crisis enveloping the parents of MPS students. As noted by the author of the WPRI study, in order to fix MPS, "the question is whether the district, its schools, and its supporters in Madison are prepared to embrace more radical reforms."
But those reforms must include strategies and programs that considerably improve employment opportunities in Milwaukee's central city and equip the escalating cadres of biological parents with the skills they need to move themselves and to nurture their children into the social and economic mainstream.
This effort must be spearheaded by the leadership of the black community.
Walter C. Farrell Jr. is professor of management in the school of social work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a former professor of educational policy and community studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
