House Bill 944, which would create a school voucher program in North Carolina, looks set to sail through the House and on to the Senate. Supporters, which include Rep. Marcus Brandon (D) of High Point, are calling it “Opportunity Scholarships” but the only opportunity that's being offered is for our tax dollars to pay for private schools. Thanks, but no thanks.
Brandon joined Darrell Allison, president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, and others last week at a school voucher rally held at War Memorial Auditorium. Parents and students from religiously affiliated schools from across North Carolina were in the audience but voucher advocates seem to be targeting High Point residents in particular with their rhetoric, including a recent guest column in the High Point Enterprise written by Allison.
In the column, which you can read here, Allison makes the same tired arguments we've heard for decades. “Private schools will save the day! Just don't ask how,” is a good summary of the column.
For example, Allison uses misleading data to make it appear low-income students are performing worse than they actually are in Guilford County public schools. Allison cites a five-year average for low-income student performance on end-of-grade tests. That makes it appear that less than half of those students pass their EOGs.
The numbers Allison doesn't cite are 2012 EOG scores, which show across the board improvement for low-income students, with 63 percent of students passing. And he certainly doesn't talk about the academic growth that those students experienced.
Every year many of our students, low-income and otherwise, begin school well behind their peers academically. And each year trained, licensed, professional public school teachers begin their work with students where they are and have success moving them forward. Growth is charted and measured. Learning happens. Not all of those students will catch up to their peers within the school year but that's an argument for funding more time with those teachers, not sending them to a private school with almost no oversight or mandates.
Also, note that Allison doesn't explain how private schools manage better results for low-income students. Maybe he left that out because the data shows they don't. In fact, studies have found students do worse than they did in their public schools.
What a voucher system will do is pull money away from public schools, giving it to private schools, some of which will no doubt pop up overnight. Those private schools will then spend our tax money with little to no oversight, teaching whatever they like. Simply put, vouchers will create chaos, an unaccountable mess and leave children behind. Our children deserve better than that.
