A long post on education

If you don't care about how education is funded, you may want to stop reading now.

My friend's mom, who lives in a small town in northern Ohio, recently sent an angry letter to a local radio talk show host, lambasting him for his on-air statements about the local school levy. As a teacher, it was great to read a letter supporting public education. With her permission, I'm reprinting it here.

Mr. Patrick:

I hold you partially responsible for the defeat of the Northwest School Levy. Thanks to your biased blathering, many voters were convinced that the financial problems in the district could be resolved without additional financing. You gave voice to numerous malcontents who are simply selfish and tone-deaf to the realities of the financial crises faced by many local school districts - not just Northwest. Waiting for the State of Ohio to change the way Ohio schools are funded is not a viable alternative at this point in time for districts like Northwest. And in the meantime, the Northwest schools - which were once rated "Excellent" - will continue to decline.

Furthermore, I resent your audacity in trying to speak to the situation in the Northwest School District according to your own biases, since you don't live here and don't have children in our school system. I do live in the district, have for 35 years and have an adult child who benefited from the excellent education that the Northwest Schools used to be able to offer. I'm appreciative of the fact that there were people who lived in the district at the time my daughter was in school who understood the importance of supporting the schools, whether they still had children in school or not. According to your bio, you and your family live in Hudson. How nice for you that you can live in such a well-funded school district and make your living in part from throwing stones at school districts which have a completely different funding base and are in the sort of financial crises faced by Northwest and others.

For the record, my husband and I are both retired and voted "Yes" for the Northwest levy. It's the least we could do to assure that our community continues to be a great place to raise a family, as it has been since we raised our own family.

I'm a daily listener to most of the programming on WHLO. However, I turn to WNIR when your show is airing. Although I've found your show worthwhile at times, your stand against school districts and school boards - which are just doing their best to find a way to provide a good education with the resources available - has made me decide that, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 12 p.m., my time could be better spent elsewhere.

So hooray! In responding to her email, I made a joke that he was probably the kind of guy who believed in vouchers, to which she told me that SHE believed in vouchers. Which inspired the following rant on the evils of vouchers. Which I will post here, because it is the most organized my thoughts have ever been on the topic.

The reason why I don't believe in vouchers is two-fold.

One, voucher money will never be enough to send poor kids to private schools. The tuition is too high if the parents can't pay part of it. So with vouchers, the middle class will be bleeding money out of the public schools, leaving behind the poor kids in increasingly poor schools that will have more and more difficulty attracting talented teachers.

And two - charter schools and many private schools (except for the exclusive ones) have lower standards for teachers than public schools, and are not subject to the same equality requirements. You do not have to be a certified teacher to teach in a Catholic school or a charter school, and private schools have their own guidelines. And because they are private, these schools can chose the students they want to
accept, so they don't have to accept students with disabilities, or lower IQs - so of course they have higher test scores!

If you have a child with autism or dyslexia, there is no law the requires the private schools to provide services to your child, which the ADA and IDEA acts require of public schools - and most of them don't provide them. The public school I've been working at provides aides for students with Down's Syndrome or other excessive learning
disabilities, all at no cost to the parents. Deaf students get special classes, and interpreters. Students with speech or physical problems get therapy. Students with behavioral problems or minor learning disabilities have special programs designed by counselors, therapists, teachers and parents to meet their needs. You won't find any of that in your typical private school. And what do vouchers do? Kids who
don't need those services bleed out the voucher money, and go to private schools, and kids who can't get into private schools, or who can't get the services they need at them, get left behind in schools that can no longer find the money to help them. So, of course public schools are going to have lower test scores - they are required by law to accept all students.

On top of that - private schools have to meet a basic set of standards, but they can teach any ideology they want. With vouchers,state and federal money is going to support those schools - such as religious schools that teach that evolution isn't real, or white supremacists schools that teach that black people are inferior. (Both
of which actually exist)

Vouchers sound great in theory, but in reality, they will destroy a fundamental part of the American promise - to provide an equal education to all.