By Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis
Will Louisiana's voucher program help or hinder education? School reformers have seized the initiative in Louisiana, with a new law that offers vouchers to more than half the state's public school students ― vouchers that let them use public funds to attend private, religious schools.
Critics say the plan is bad for both religious freedom and public education; reformers led by Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal say the plan lets students escape poorly performing public schools.
Will vouchers work? RedBlue America columnists Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk debate the issue.
MATHIS: Louisiana's voucher program is the educational equivalent of taking money from poorly performing hospitals and giving it to witch doctors. Students might get to leave bad schools under the new plan, but there are plenty of reasons to believe that the education they get in private schools will be even worse.
As Mother Jones magazine pointed out this week, 19 of the state's 119 private schools eligible for state voucher funds use textbooks to teach students Bible-based "facts" that have no basis in reality: A science text suggests dragons were real, for example.
The history texts may be even worse, prettying up the histories of both slavery in America and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War. The Klan, one textbook says, "in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross." An organization that was devoted to lynching black people has rarely been described in such friendly, glowing terms.
Louisianans are free to believe such poppycock; they're even free to teach it to their kids. But they don't deserve to use tax dollars to propagate such nonsense.
What's more, the Louisiana plan does little to incentivize excellence at private schools. Under the law, schools with 40 or fewer students can continue to receive state money even if they fail to show competency in math, reading and social studies.
In short, the Louisiana voucher program rewards schools that mislead their students, without requiring that the students learn basic skills. Is this really an improvement on failed public schools? There might be a good way to do a vouchers program. Certainly, students should have better options than to continue in failing schools. In Louisiana, however, the cure is probably worse than the disease. Call off the witch doctors.
BOYCHUK: Remember the "witch schools?" California voters in 1993 considered a ballot initiative to establish a statewide voucher program, broadly similar to what Louisiana adopted this year. The state would have provided parents up to $2,600 to send their children to the school of their choice.
That summer, the San Francisco Chronicle featured a story about a coven of witches that supposedly planned to open a school if the initiative passed.
"It gives us the chance for our children to not be exposed to things that we feel are detrimental, like Christian values or the Hollywood version of the bad witch," said a priestess with a northern California pagan group.
Opponents of the measure ― California's powerful teachers union, primarily ― seized on the "witch schools" story. Like magic, the voucher plan was crushed at the polls.
We've gone from "witch schools" to "creationist schools" in two decades, with both serving as convenient foils for voucher opponents.
But much has changed since 1993.
For starters, voucher programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Washington, D.C., have more than proved their worth. In each case, test scores in reading and math have increased, especially among low-income and minority students.
Louisiana has had its own success with school choice. Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans public schools in 2005, although in truth the schools were a disaster long before the levies broke. Seven years later, 75 percent of the city's students are enrolled in charter schools, and reading and math proficiency has improved dramatically across all grade levels.
Another key development: The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that Cleveland's voucher program did not violate the First Amendment because the aid went to parents, not schools.
Louisiana's program follows the Cleveland funding model. The state is supposed to approve and evaluate the pool of schools from which parents may choose, however. No doubt some bad actors will enter the mix, and some parents will make some poor choices.
But in a landscape of public education failure, a healthy infusion of competition is hardly witchcraft. Let's give the program a chance.
Ben Boychuk is associate editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal; bboychuk@city-journal.org. Joel Mathis is a writer in Philadelphia; joelmmathis@gmail.com.
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