School Voucher: More Choices, Fewer Achievements

Each American holds an American dream and the public schools are where the dream is supposed to start—they are the central institutions for bringing the dream into practice. The public expects their public schools to help them reach their potential and make them good citizens to maintain the nation's values and institutions. Americans wish that regardless of gender, race or class they could receive equal education and could compete equally at the point of graduation. However, the public education has long been criticized for its unequal funding in different districts and its dissatisfactory performance in urban areas. In response, several states initiated voucher programs to provide students (especially poor students) with more school choices. With vouchers, students could choose to attend any participating voucher schools including private and religious ones. But the questions are: can voucher schools solve the problems for which they are intended? Do more choices bring meaningful changes to the public school education?Based on the analysis of several pioneering voucher programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Florida, this thesis aims to assess the significance of voucher program in the following aspects: the academic performance of voucher students; the common good in public schools; the constitutionality of religious schooling with public funds; re-segregation trend in voucher schools; the real beneficiary of universal voucher plan.With in-depth discussion of the above facets of the voucher program, the author comes to a negative conclusion about the voucher schooling, pointing out that public education is first of all a common good that serves to bind the whole nation together. The common good hereby means the elevation of civic values and ideas above individual interests. Public schools take"common good"as their most important responsibility. These schools aim to cultivate the personal, moral and social developments of individual students, produce good citizens, and integrate different groups into one nation. In a word, public school is the backbone of American democracy and therefore Americans could not bear the consequences of its failure. By contrast, the voucher schools (mainly private ones) are primarily responsive to the needs of parents, serving the individual interest in the first place. As a result, parents'will, opinion, and religious belief would have a heavy influence on their choice of the children's education. As the late Albert Shanker of the American Federation of Teachers noted, with vouchers"you'll end up with kids of different religion, nationalities and languages going off to different schools to maintain their separateness and I think we'd have a terrible social price to pay for it."(Albert Shanker,1996) Based on the above arguments, this thesis concludes that the only reasonable option for the public is to stay with the public schools and make efforts to improve the schools instead of turning to the meaningless voucher plan.