Vouchers
Wow.  74% rejection rate for vouchers in Salt Lake City!  It reminds me of those new chemistry.com commercials where the person says a few salacious things and gets a large REJECTED stamp marked across their body in reply.  The only difference is that there is no alternative website for the pro-voucher group to go to seek comfort and understanding.  Not even the Republican Legislative leadership is offering extended arms for respite and hugs for the battle weary Parents for Choice.  I suppose they could all convene down at Overstock.com and see if they can find some other way to insult the intelligence of Utah voters and sneak tax dollars into private companies under the label “choice.” Much has been written on the subject of vouchers by others far more well-versed in the issue than I, but I want to add the following for discussion of the future of education in our state: our schools can and should do better.  What frustrates me often in politics is that we spend SO MUCH time, energy, and resources fighting over what kind of band-aid to use to cover over a problem instead of getting at the heart of the matter and finding common ground to build workable solutions.  We argue over the propriety of abortions rather than preventing unwanted pregnancies and we argue over how to get our kids out of a failing public school system rather than focusing on how to make it not fail.  I understand the propensity to want to draw a line in the stand and make a stand somewhere, but the fact is, no matter how you spin it, Utah’s public education system needs help.   To draw a bad analogy, it would be like taking your kid who can’t read to another school and blaming his/her failure on the school rather than looking at why the kid can’t read in the first place. 

I don’t think that a change in venue to a private provider is the panacea the pro-voucher camp would have us believe.  My twelve-year-old little brother has been in public schools for the past eight years, and I can tell you, he isn’t getting a top notch education.  He is an articulate little kid (who likes salmon and sushi and has used words like although and interesting since he was five;  I guess that’s what happens when your big brothers and sisters are in their twenties—can you say caboose?).   But when he was in the third grade, his teacher came to us and said, Matt is not reading at grade level, you’re going to have to teach him.  What??  We couldn’t even imagine.  Wasn’t that why he was in school?  Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic?  Why was this bright, intelligent and thoughtful (ok, I may be big-sister bragging a little) not reading at grade level? 

So I understand why parents are attracted to options and alternatives that provide more choice in education, but subsidizing an entire new school system is not the answer. 

By the way, have you ever asked yourself why conservatives were pushing vouchers?  A conservative philosophy would naturally support smaller, more efficient government.  So it boggles my mind why Republicans would be pushing to create to dual school systems that require a critical mass of resources to build infrastructure that would largely be duplicative, and certainly inefficient.  Its like paying for two mortgages so half your family lives in one house, while the other half lives in another, all while one house would fit the whole family quite nicely, except that the other house has a swimming pool and cool uniforms! 

The Legislature has been given a mandate by the People to fix the public school system rather than create a private one.  Clearly Utahns want to stick with public education, so lets sit down at the drawing board and come up with a master plan that includes benchmarks and deadlines for implementation.  The University of Utah’s Center for Public Policy and Administration would be a great candidate to prepare such a report and can be entrusted to provide a robust, objective report similar to the one produced on the voucher issue. 

The way I see it, we can and should do better for public education.  Hiding behind the “we have too many children and not enough tax base” simply doesn’t cut it anymore.  For years, Republican administrations have given back big tax surpluses that add up to mere dollars when refunded to individual taxpayers, but in aggregate could have made a significant impact on class size, for example.