Striking at vouchers

NEA Today, Jan 1999

"The Voucher Myth," by Sadanand Dhume, A. Magazine: Inside Asian America, October/ November 1998.

Vouchers strike at the heart of public education. Their proponents argue that vouchers are about choice. [But] the right to choose a private school already exists. The argument here is whether the government ought to subsidize that choice.

School vouchers erode the sense of social cohesion provided by an extensive public school education system.

Middle-class flight will only ensure that a public education becomes synonymous with a shoddy education. The acceptance of such a philosophy effectively kills the uniquely American idea that anyone with the right amount of perseverance and brains can overcome the inequalities at birth.

The choice, then, is not between parental control and governmental control. It is a question of preserving a system that offers a child from an ordinary background the chance to get the same higher education, and with it the same life chances, as a child born to wealth."