A Victory For Vouchers
February 5, 2007 on 12:45 pm | In Education, Main |Our old friend John Fund wrote an eye-opening piece today in OpinionJournal.com about a recently passed school voucher program in Utah. In justifying their votes, Utah legislators stated what I have believed for some time:
Far from harming our public schools, school choice and its resulting competition will actually improve them. And to make the concept even more attractive, the vouchers will be awarded on a sliding scale based on family income.
The voucher will only be good for a portion of the state aid, which means public school districts in Utah will actually see an increase in aid per pupil when the student migrates to a private school.
Some of the legislators who voted for the bill are current or former public school officials. Now, tell me again voucher opponents, how will choice harm public schools under this plan?
3 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Powered by WordPress with Pool theme design by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^
One of the more interesting things about the protracted effort to get the law passed was how they got people (and you know who I’m talking about) to stop demagoguing the issue. The pro voucher group put up a web site and challenged anyone who opposed the legislation to give a reasoned argument against it. It turned out no one could do so and, as a result, the Utah House didn’t have to confront a bunch of silly, made for headlines arguments against the legislation.
I think we can all learn a lot from such an innovative approach.
Congratulations Utah. Now we have the city of Milwaukee, parts of DC and a “not quite vouchers” program in Florida. Maybe this will start to break the back of the teacher’s unions and bring competition and quality to secondary public education.
Comment by jake — February 5, 2007 #
This is the best argument for school vouchers I’ve seen. It really makes the case that vouchers can help to level the playing field, so students from all economic backgrounds can benefit from a voucher program and receive better educations. It’s very encouraging, and we should keep track of how Utah manages the repercussions of this bill long-term.
Comment by Janet Manko — February 5, 2007 #
Better Idea:
Why wait? Let’s emulate. CT is fast becoming the “me, too” state in things political (gun control, energy “reform” that bankrupts the state, spending money to attract business to an unfriendly environment, etc).
Now, it’s time to do SOMETHING FOR THE CHILDREN!!
God! How I love that phrase!!
Comment by PaulBartomioli — February 5, 2007 #