http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_5420669...

Rosen: Public school bondage

March 16, 2007

The state of Utah has just passed a landmark educational voucher program
under which every family, depending on its income, will be reimbursed
between $500 and $3,000 per child for annual tuition paid to the private
school of their choice.

This will now give parents of modest means options that the well-to-do
have long enjoyed. Their school-age children will no longer be a captive
audience. Parents will be empowered as educational consumers, giving them
choices and leverage consumers enjoy in all other spheres of our market
economy. They'll be free to choose the educational model they believe best
fits the unique needs of their children, and will be freed from the
bureaucracy and politics of government-delivered education.

Predictably, the educratic establishment is in full counterattack. The
Utah teachers' union has launched a campaign to repeal the new law. If
that fails, they'll try their luck in court. Their resistance is bred of
desperation.

First, the union's survival is at stake. Under a voucher system, education
is still publicly financed through taxpayer dollars. That doesn't change.
But what does is the union's monopoly to deliver publicly funded education
exclusively in government schools. Under a voucher system, competition
would bloom.

Second, there's the ideological opposition to competition and free choice
in education. The educratic establishment - from administrators, to the
teachers' colleges that staff the schools, to the unions that run them and
the school boards they elect - is liberal to its core.

They covet their power to set the agenda, to dictate subject matter and
educational techniques, to influence impressionable young minds and mold
the next generation of liberal activists. They've turned their government
schools into laboratories for social engineering, downgrading basic
academics and old-fashioned notions of American exceptionalism, patriotism
and individualism in favor of collectivism, political correctness,
diversity, environmentalism, feminism, and delusional self-esteem. They
have a death grip on these schools that they're loath to release.

As the United States falls further behind other nations in the math and
science proficiency of students, and as the customer service rep on the
other end of your telephone - somewhere in India - speaks better English
than millions of American high school graduates, it's increasingly obvious
that something's terribly wrong with public education in this country.

Yet educrats circle their wagons around the status quo. Tanya Clay House
of the ultra-liberal People for the American Way recently declared, "We've
never seen a shred of credible evidence that shows school vouchers
actually help students learn. While all public schools must demonstrate
success under No Child Left Behind, private schools are not held to the
same level of accountability for their performance."

Nonsense. Private schools are held to account in the most effective way
possible - they're accountable to their customers who are free to take
their business elsewhere if they're not satisfied. All the evidence you
need for vouchers is that parents who have used them to escape the
government school monopoly fight to keep them.

Then, Clay House added this gem: "Every child deserves an excellent
education, not just those who can get admitted to a private school." I
wonder if she realizes how self-contradictory that statement is. She's
acknowledging that private schools provide educational excellence and that
kids who are stuck in government schools are denied that! Does she suppose
that wealthy parents who pay a premium to send their kids to private
schools (without "a shred of evidence that they help students learn") are
stupid?

Celebrating passage of the Utah voucher law, Andrew Coulsen of The
American Spectator wrote, "Salt Lake City's legislation could very well
become the domino that tips all other states into the camp of educational
freedom." Wouldn't it be great if Colorado had the wisdom and courage to
be next?

Mike Rosen's radio show airs daily from 9 a.m. to noon on 850 KOA. He can
be reached by e-mail at mikerosen@850koa.com.