King of the World: School Vouchers
I’m sure it will come as no surprise to friends of mine that I’m in favor of school vouchers. For those who don’t know for whatever reason, I taught High School for three years before moving into IT. Yes, this was over a decade ago now, but I still try and keep up with things in the education field and I’ve considered going back to teaching High School a time or two (but likely Math and History instead of English this time).
One of the things I’ve kept up with is the success of voucher programs. Milwaukee and Washington, DC, both have run very successful voucher programs that improved the quality of education for a large number of students. Unfortunately, this hasn’t spread as it should have due to the push from the Teachers’ Unions.
Vouchers inject school choice and competition into the public school market. Don’t like how your current school is performing? Move your kids to another school using your vouchers. Things are going south or the school is pushing an agenda of which you don’t approved? Move your kids to another school.
The Teachers’ Unions, however, take exception to this. As well, the “establishment” among teachers don’t like this idea either. Competition means teachers have to do more than show up and babysit students to get their paycheck. It means, in many cases, parents would take a more active part in their children’s education since they have more of a say in what happens.
Now, I do fully realize that things are outside of a teacher’s control at times. A teacher can’t force a parent to take an active part in the education of their child. I still remember being disappointed at how few parents actually showed up for open house to meet the people teaching their kids. Far too often when a parent did show up, it was to enable negative behavior in their kids because, after all, their little baby couldn’t possibly have done anything wrong.
As is no surprise at this point, I’m a big fan of the free market economy. It’s more than time the education system was injected with a healthy dose of the free market. Vouchers would go a long way to pushing this and giving parents much more of a say in the education of their children in a positive fashion.