Like hell it doesn't. Rana is absolutely correct. Vouchers undermine public schools so that the prosperous can send their kids to private schools that working class people still can't afford even with vouchers and then syphon off that much needed revenue to private schools that don't need it and all to often are religious perochial schools that aren't even up to the standards of our public schools. Vouchers in no way shape of form increase competition. To the contrary, all they do is increase the gap between haves and have nots while substantially lowering the over all quality of education available.
When private schools will open their doors for all students who wish to attend and can meet all the necessary standards for providing a quality education then we can talk. Until then it's an education ponzi scheme that lowers the cost of private education for the children of the well to do at the expense of tax payers who's children won't have equal or fair access to enrollment in those schools.
Yea....we know you think were stupid we just didn't realize you thought were were Dixie kind of stupid.
Wide spread vouchers have never been made available so you have absolutely no grounds to base your statements.
What we do know, is that in the majority of programs where charter and vouchers have been used, there has been much success.
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WHAT IS KNOWN AND UNKNOWN The authors find that many of the important empirical questions about voucher and charter schools have not been answered, and because most of these programs have been operating for only a short time, none of these questions has been answered definitively. Current findings include the following:
Academic achievement. Small experimental, privately funded voucher programs suggest that African-American students may receive a modest achievement benefit after one or two years in the programs (Figure 1). The exact reasons for this benefit, however, remain unknown. Children of other racial groups in voucher schools have shown no consistent evidence of academic benefit or harm.
Charter-school achievement results are mixed. In Arizona, charter schools seem to be outperforming conventional public schools in reading and possibly in math. In Texas, charter schools that focus specifically on students at risk for poor academic performance show an achievement advantage over conventional public schools, but other charter schools perform slightly worse than conventional public schools. An examination of newly opened charter schools in Michigan indicates no difference from conventional public schools in terms of achievement effects in one tested grade (grade 7), while conventional public schools outperform charters in the other tested grade (grade 4). Meanwhile, the studies in both Arizona and Texas suggest that achievement effects in charter schools improve after the first year of operation.
The long-term effects of voucher and charter programs remain unknown. And perhaps the most important unknown is how voucher and charter programs will affect the achievement of the large majority of students who remain in conventional public schools. Either positive or negative effects are theoretically possible, but to date there is no good evidence on this crucial issue.
Choice. For a variety of reasons, of which academic achievement is but one, large numbers of parents want the choices that voucher and charter programs afford. In virtually all the voucher and charter programs studied, parents report high satisfaction with their children's schools (Figure 2 shows voucher results). It is unknown, however, whether voucher and charter programs can be scaled up to provide a range of desirable choices for large numbers of families.
Access. Some targeted programs with income qualifications have placed low-income, low-achieving, and minority students in voucher schools. Most choice programs, however, whether voucher or charter, have done less well in extending access to students with disabilities or with poorly educated parents. Programs that subsidize private-school tuition via income-tax benefits favor middle- and upper-income families.
Integration. In highly segregated communities, targeted voucher programs may modestly increase racial integration by placing minority children into voucher schools that have a smaller proportion of minority students. Limited evidence suggests that most charter schools have racial distributions that fall within the range of distributions of local public schools. Evidence from other nations, however, suggests that large-scale unregulated choice programs would likely lead to greater stratification. Studies of existing U.S. voucher and charter programs (which are usually regulated rather than unregulated) have lacked sufficient data to provide definitive answers about the effects of the programs on integration. Dynamic analyses that consider both the schools students attend and the schools they would likely attend in the absence of such programs are needed.
Civic socialization. Almost no research has investigated the effects of voucher and charter schools on civic socialization. The few studies that compare civic socialization in public and private schools provide limited evidence that is suggestive of what might be achieved in voucher and charter programs, namely, that existing private schools are not, on average, any worse than public schools at socializing citizens.
