The growing interest in school choice nationwide shouldn't surprise anyone. By some estimates, 58 percent of the fourth-graders in the nation's inner cities can't read. The more privileged students don't do much better. Fully one-third of all college freshman have to enroll in some sort of remedial courses. Naturally, parents want their children to do better. They want alternatives to public schools.
The New York Times this week cataloged how many states are debating whether to begin voucher programs, which allow parents under certain circumstances to use the money they pay in school taxes to enroll their children in a private school. New Mexico is considering the nation's most ambitious voucher plan. Other cities and states already have implemented voucher plans of various kinds. Arizona, the closest state to experiment with choice, has set up "student tuition organizations" to help needy families afford private school tuitions. People who donate to these organizations can deduct the expense from their taxes. In all, 25 states are considering some type of system to allow for school choice.
In Utah, the Legislature has a 13-member task force in place studying ways to make public schools more accountable. This group has come up with several good ideas. So far, however, no one of influence has yet dared to mention the v-word, but clearly the system won't change significantly until it is pressured by competitive forces.
By definition, accountability implies a system of rewards and punishments. But as long as the public is held captive by an education monopoly, it has to rely on that monopoly to measure itself absent any real comparisons. Accountability and performance become relative and, often, nebulous terms.
Teachers unions tend to stand in the way of educational choice, but, really, the teachers are the ones with the most to gain. Utah's school system is chock full of dedicated, quality teachers, but they are locked in a system that does little to reward their efforts and that gives them little freedom to be as effective as possible. This is a system that does not allow a teacher to flunk a student or to hold him or her back a grade. It limits what a teacher can do to discipline a child and has many teachers worried that administrators will not back them up in a confrontation with a parent. Unions make much of the parents' responsibilities in education, but some parents won't respond unless teachers are empowered to compel students to perform.
Utah's schools would have little to fear from a voucher system. The state has fewer private schools per capita than most, and even the most ambitious estimates put the number of students who would take advantage of such a program at a small percentage of the total. But parents would have much to gain.
A voucher system may not be the best plan. It could be used to pay tuition at a parochial school, which raises some church-state issues that may not survive a court challenge. Perhaps a tuition tax credit, in which parents pay tuition and then are credited on their taxes, would be better. Regardless, state lawmakers ought to begin making choice a part of their dialogue when discussing accountability in education.