« The Least Scary Attack on Traditional Marriage Ever | Main | I Love This Ad »
April 29, 2008
Repeat After Me
Alright, folks. We all need to say this together: Vouchers don't help kids learn.
Go ahead; say it again. Good.
The Washington Post today published a fantastically boneheaded editorial in support of the federally funded school voucher program in the District.
I can tell by the look on your face that you're already worried about how this discussion is going. "But Drew," I can hear you saying, "kids shouldn't be trapped in a failing school system."
Of course they shouldn't. Now take a deep breath and say it again: Vouchers. Don't. Help. Kids. Learn.
Study after study has shown that test scores of kids with vouchers aren't better than their peers in public schools. A congressionally mandated study by the Bureau of Education Statistics at the Department of Education is just the most recent in a series of reports that all come back to the same premise.
Don't get me wrong; there's a crisis in the American educational system that desperately needs to be addressed. And no one should hesitate to take on the entrenched interests that help to perpetuate the status quo; but vouchers are and always have been a distraction from the real problem at hand. It kills me that people as intelligent as the editorial board of the WaPo are incapable of seeing past the quick-fix allure of vouchers.
It's tempting to reach out for a silver bullet to fix public schools, but, alas, there isn't one. No child should be trapped in a failing school, but in virtually every case the only long term solution is to fix the school, not remove the children. I'll leave it to smarter people than myself to determine exactly how one does it, but it's fallacy to believe that it can be done without a reasonable amount of funding and and extraordinary amount of hard work.
Posted by Drew at April 29, 2008 10:04 PM