Grading Vouchers: Ranking America's School Choice Programs
Robert C. Enlow, Milton & Rose Friedman FoundationMarch 2004
Robert C. Enlow, Milton & Rose Friedman FoundationMarch 2004
Lewis C. Solmon, Human Resources Policy Corporation, and Pete Goldschmidt, Center for the Study of Evaluation, UCLAMarch 2004
This week, headlines lit up with the news that "one school [in Milwaukee, Wisconsin] that received millions of dollars through the nation's oldest and largest voucher program, was founded by a convicted rapist" and that "another school reportedly entertained kids with Monopoly while cashing $330,000 in tuition checks for hundreds of no-show students." Voucher critics were quick to charge that "
The Bush administration has recently come under fire for insufficient education spending.
Lately, it seems that just about everyone has a bone to pick with No Child Left Behind. Critics on right and left complain that the law's provisions are causing too many headaches, and schools, districts, and legislators are vowing to reject federal funding so as to avoid some of its tricky accountability provisions.
More high praise for the Defense Department's school system, where last year black and Hispanic 8th graders outperformed their peers in every single state. To be sure, the DoD system has built-in advantages, such as a unified command structure and ability to enforce parental involvement that other schools can't match.
The latest issue of American Educator has a fantastic series of stories urging high school teachers and counselors to level with students about a basic truth: if you don't do well in high school, you won't do well in college or in the labor market.
Juvenal said, "Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and circuses." Even that famously cynical Roman poet might have been taken aback by some quarters of American K-12 education.
It's apparent by now that Congress is not going to follow most of the excellent recommendations of the Bush administration's commission on the reform of IDEA, least of all its suggestion that federal funds be able to be used by states for special-ed vouchers a la Florida's "McKay Scholarships." (See