Editorial: Not ready for school vouchers

Monday, Nov. 13, 2000 | 10:09 a.m.

It should be clear to politicians by now that the public is not ready for tax-supported school vouchers. California and Michigan defeated voucher proposals in their general elections last week, bringing to 10 the number of statewide voucher initiatives that have been rejected across the nation. A voucher bill also died during Nevada's 1999 legislative session.

Vouchers as currently proposed are a bad idea because proponents have never clearly explained how they can work without destroying public schools, particularly in the inner cities. Proponents argue that, because vouchers are intended to give parents a choice of schools, public education would actually improve because it would be forced to compete with private schools. We do not buy that argument.

The result will actually be a sharp division between educational haves and have-nots. The California proposal would have given parents the option of using $4,000 in state tax revenue per child to help defray the tuition of a private school. That is revenue that otherwise would have gone to fund public schools. The money, in essence, would have followed the child.

Such proposals would enable affluent families to supplement vouchers with their own money to send their children to the best private schools. But lower-income families would not have enough money of their own to supplement the vouchers and would be left behind in public schools forced to operate with even less funding.

The hallmark of public education is that it affords children equal opportunity to develop the building blocks needed to achieve the American Dream. But vouchers would create an uneven playing field. Instead of making public schools more competitive, the tax revenue allocated to finance vouchers would actually suck money out of those schools. There would be less money for teachers, buses, classroom computers, books and chalk. There also would be no public accountability for the way tax money is spent in private schools.

The more prudent idea is to continue to increase funding for public education, where we have already made a major investment. We cannot ignore the fact that there are problems in public schools, such as disappointing reading scores and dropout rates here in Nevada. But turning our backs on public education for the sake of gimmicks such as vouchers would not be wise.