Monday, June 14, 2010

Are School Vouchers the Solution to New Britain’s School Budget Woes?

FRANKSMITHSAYSNB EDITORIAL:


Washington DC had one of the nation’s most successful school voucher programs. 1,700 students, 99% of them black or Hispanic, were able to take advantage of the program which provided them with vouchers to attend private schools such as the very same school that the Obama children attend--that is until the Obama administration killed the program. This is just one more example of the Democrats holding their thumb over minorities to keep them down and preventing them from succeeding, and all for an allegiance to the unholy money they receive from union coffers.

Could the program work here? Let’s look at 2 more success stories:

NEW YORK CITY:

The New York Experiment

The New York City results show solid success in a voucher experiment that involved 1,300 lower-income students, principally minorities, in the fourth and fifth grade, chosen by lottery. Harvard’s Paul Peterson is co-author of the recently published An Evaluation of the New York City School Choice Scholarships Program: The First Year. He reports that students in the program gained 4 percentile points in reading and 6 percentile points in math, compared with a control group of students who had applied for, but did not win, a spot in the program.

Moreover, the schools have smaller class sizes, are more integrated, and have less disruption, less fighting, less cheating, less tardiness, and less racial conflict. There is more communication with parents. Students do more homework. Mr. Peterson, like Mr. Norquist, is a Democrat! (American Enterprise Institute For Public Policy Research: “Score One for School Vouchers”)

MILWAUKEE:

Milwaukee and Its Mayor

No one senses the political situation better than John Norquist, the hard-driving mayor of Milwaukee. The city is Ground Zero of the voucher movement, starting with 1,500 publicly funded private school scholarships made available for low-income inner-city children in 1991. Milwaukee now has about 7,000 students on vouchers, with more than 10,000 expected next year, and 15,000 slots authorized.

Mr. Norquist, who has a sense of humor, thinks that elementary and high school vouchers are a valid and valuable program, just as the G.I. Bill is for college education: "Under the G.I. Bill right now . . . you could go to any public, private, or parochial school you want. You could go to Yeshiva University and become a rabbi. You could go to a theological seminary and become a Catholic priest. Or you could go to the University of Wisconsin and become a communist."

Several points about the outspoken Norquist are of political relevance:
(1) although vouchers have become a talisman for Republicans, he is a Democrat; (2) he’d like to be governor of Wisconsin one day; and (3) he has received 65 percent and 60 percent of the vote in a heavily Democratic city in his last two runs for mayor.

Mr. Norquist believes that other Democrats ought to get with the program, even though usually friendly teachers unions and the liberal People for the American Way vigorously oppose the idea. He gets particularly vehement with one argument coming from antivoucher forces, who claim that vouchers will "cream" the best students to private schools, leaving the inner-city public schools in worse shape than they are now. Mr. Norquist replies: "The creaming has already occurred under the public school choice system that we’ve had in America for the last 35 to 40 years. . . . If you have money and kids and you’re white, you leave town. And that’s school choice that you never hear the defenders of the public school monopoly bring up. Creaming? Anyone care about creaming? No. Because they’re still in a government-run school." (the bold type was added to draw your attention to this paragragh) (American Enterprise Institute For Public Policy Research: “Score One for School Vouchers”)

Back to New Britain.

Instead of spending our tax money producing sales videos to lure the parents into keeping their children in our under-performing schools, perhaps the money the school board is spending on such failed efforts would be put to better use making vouchers available to children and allowing their parents freedom of choice over what schools their children attend. Through this sales video effort, it appears that the Superintendent of Schools is spending our money to protect the union interests when she is being paid with our tax dollars to represent the children and their parents who are paying her salary. This is simply wrong. Isn’t it about time our elected officials started putting the best interests of the children and the taxpayers who are footing the bills ahead of the demands of the unions that they seem to care so much about? At least that is how the Democratic Mayor of Milwaukee seemed to feel.

16 comments:

  1. School vouchers have been a huge success everywhere they have been tried, but the Democrats oppose them vehemently because the vouchers empower minorities to succeed and that gets them out from under the repression of the Democratic Party and then they don't have to reelect Democrats to keep their entitlements coming! After more than 100 years, Democrats continue to be the oppressors while Republicans are the liberators! This is why Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was so proud to be a Republican--just like his father and grandfather.

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  2. Maybe Obama just didn't want his daughters to have to go to school with the common folk? Ending vouchers made sure their classmates were only the cream of the crop.

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  3. A recent report from School Choice Wisconsin presented an analysis of the number of calls made to 911 from schools in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee School Safety report found that choice schools appeared to be relatively safer than Milwaukee’s traditional public schools.

    Taking into account enrollment differences, police calls to [Milwaukee public schools] occur at a notably higher rate than at independent charter schools6 or at schools in the [Milwaukee parental choice program]. The [Milwaukee Public School] call rate per pupil in 2007 is more than three times that at schools in the [Milwaukee Parental Choice Program].

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  4. Nothing will get done until the RTC and the DTC nominate candidates for the BOE who are intelligent, knowledgable, caring people who have vision and the courage of their convictions.

    They must understand that their responsibilities are to act on what is in the best interests of the students, oversee the administrators, speak out or against when necessary and vote against the choices made by the superintendent of schools.

    Kurtz made some terrible choices for positions and everyone else got stuck with her choices. They are still in the system.

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  5. Frank:
    At last week's meeting between the BOE and the Common Council, it was pointed out that the City pays $4000 for every student that NB sends to Magnet schools, plus Special Ed. costs and plus transportation costs for some.
    If we had a voucher system in New Britain and offered vouchers to the families of our students that attend equal to the costs that the city incurs to send students to the Magnets, parochial or other private schools, perhaps our schools would be in better shape.

    If students dropped out of these Magnets after getting the vouchers their parents would have to pay back the cost of the voucher.

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  6. Anonymous said...

    Maybe Obama just didn't want his daughters to have to go to school with the common folk? Ending vouchers made sure their classmates were only the cream of the crop....

    Of course an elitist like this would never want his kids going to school with regular black folk!

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  7. If union run public schools are so wonderful, Obama should be the first one to sign his kids up. More hypocrisy from the left!

    For those of you who attended union run public schools, hypocrisy means to be a hypocrite.

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  8. They must understand that their responsibilities are to act on what is in the best interests of the students, oversee the administrators, speak out or against when necessary and vote against the choices made by the superintendent of schools.


    You mean the BOE is there to be the mouthpieces for the unions?

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  9. giving people a choice goes against everything democrats stand for. you are supposed to be completely under their control for every aspect of your life from the cradle to the grave.

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  10. Intelligent BOE members know that the teachers' unions have been destroying education for a very long time.

    Their unions deliver huge amounts of money to Democratic candidates and the winners, namely Obama cave into them, regardless of the effect on the students. All he cares about is 'pay back" to those who supported him and those who will vote for him next time around.

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  11. It all sounds good, but with these Democrats giving the union more and more is all they care about and to heck with the students!

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  12. Hey Frank, if we had a voucher system wouldn't Mrs. Sherwood be able to send her kids to an out of town school without having to move out of town!

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  13. GREAT EDITORIAL!

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  14. Because vouchers are a proven success, we will never see such a program here. These liberals oppose anything that works.

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  15. wasn't that a clearly one sided story about the budget meeting last night that appeared in the New Britain Pravda?

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  16. The big fight is over the charter schools. Most charter schools have proven to be far more successful than the regular public schools but charter schools are under constant attack by the education establishment. They aren’t under attack because of problems or failures to teach, but over the very fact that they are better than regular public schools and the union hacks that control the public schools don't like the fact that non-union private schools do a better job than unionized schools were teachers are protected no matter how incompetent or lazy they may be.

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