Another successful school-choice program in jeopardy
Pete Chagnon - OneNewsNow - 6/10/2009 5:40:00 AM
According to The Wall Street Journal, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program currently provides vouchers to roughly 20,000 low-income students in order for them to attend better-performing schools -- public or private. The extremely popular program has been in existence for 20 years, but now -- thanks to Democratic lawmakers in the state -- the program is in jeopardy.
Lawmakers recently voted to cut payments to private schools by over $150 per student and increase public school funding by $400 per student. The Wall Street Journal also reports that taxpayer funding for the low-income minority students that attend private school through the voucher program is less than half the cost taxpayers spend on public school.
Andrew Campanella is with Alliance for School Choice.
"School-choice programs cost less money and get better results. If you were to go to a store and find a higher-quality product that costs less than a lower-quality product, chances are that you would go and buy that higher-quality, but low-cost product," he notes. "But the numbers and common sense and data and facts and research don't matter to people who don't support school choice."
The public school system, Campanella believes, is threatened by the facts and hostile to the idea of competition and accountability. Therefore he contends public school advocates will do anything to undermine parental choice in education. He says this is a continual uphill battle they face in education reform, and lawmakers should not be using regulations to strangle parental choice.
