A Professional: ideals perverted

What's Up Readers?

An important lesson to learn when making any types of reform is to be wary ( especially if it’s too good to be true ).  The idea of choosing one’s school for example can be liberating and powerful, but it can also show how ideals can be perverted.

In 1955 Milton Friedman outlined his belief that government should fund schools but not run them ( The Role of Government in Education ), so vouchers were born.  The Brown v. Board of Education, which ordered the desegregation of schools, continued to spotlight vouchers and choice.

Some citizens, who didn’t want their children to attend desegregated schools, took advantage of vouchers and choice to send their kids to “segregation academies.”  Technically these citizens weren’t breaking the law because they chose a school, which was 100% populated by their preferred race.

While these citizens’ choices were overlooked, others focused on vouchers for Catholic schools, which some believed shouldn’t get funding because of the clause “separation of church and state.”

There must be a solution, right? In 1988, Ray Budde proposed the idea of Charter schools.  Originally these schools were supposed to be managed by teachers, and these schools were a place for experimentation and innovation.  As a supplement to Public schools, research conducted by Charter schools were supposed to support Public schools in educating and motivating “disaffected students.”

Once again it seemed like the cure-all has been found in Charter schools.  They didn’t raise any constitutional issues, and they seem to be addressing the problem.  However, they started becoming more hostile to teacher unions, and since they didn’t want to lose funding, they tend to enroll motivated students leaving behind special education and English language learning students.  Others also used the façade of Charter schools to steal funding from the government.

In spite of this backlash, the 2002 decision from Zelman v. Simmons-Harris ruled that vouchers for Catholic schools were still constitutional "because the benefits of the program went to individuals to exercise free choice between secular and religious schools" ( Ravitch 120 ).  But by this time, Charter schools had contributed to the closing of most Catholic schools especially as Charter schools’ popularity in urban areas sky-rocketed.

What started out as empowering people by giving them choices and supplementing low-performing public schools using aides from Charter schools became a way for some citizens to promulgate racism and segregation, leave behind and ignore low-performing students, and ultimately curtail choice in closing down most public schools and Catholic schools.