Solution or Problem?
Using vouchers to allow parents to select what appears to them to be
the best school alternative for their children is not a good means for
achieving school reform. It is more a part of the problem with public
education in our country than of the solution. I come to this
conclusion as one who has spent a significant part of his life roaming
the classrooms and hallways of our local public schools: as an
organizer of an alternative school for 9th grade potential dropouts
while a young college teacher in the 1960s; as a substitute teacher,
observer, negotiator, and part-time administrator; but most
intensively—over 20 years—as an active elected school board
member. I have dealt with school finances, with administrator
evaluations and searches (including no fewer than seven superintendent
selections), and with a wide variety of curricular issues. Although I
brought to this position an academic background, with a special
interest in student learning (which is probably why I stuck with it for
so long), I saw my role as a board member as a representative role. I
strove to become a window through which I encouraged the school to see
the community and the community to see the school.
My most challenging, certainly the most engaging, moments as a school board member have occurred when what I saw happening in the schools was the acting out of issues and concerns not of education, but of society's values and expectations of itself. In so many ways, schools are arenas in which the contradictions, ambiguities, and conflicts of society as a whole are played out. These include issues of class rank, of ability grouping of students (sometimes called "leveling" to avoid the pejorative connotation of tracking), of condom-dispensing machines, of many kinds of violence, from bomb threats to date rape, all of which have found their way into the rarefied confines of school board meetings for anguished deliberation. All such issues are complex, and have a great deal to say about what we want to be happening in our schools. But in each instance, I found myself pondering the image of the community that was being expressed, indeed, being imposed, by the community on to the school.
This experience and perspective inform my response to vouchers, presently advocated as an option in response to the widely held impression in our society that the public school system is not working. My contention is essentially this: The voucher system is a manifestation of a prevalent conviction that the free operation of market forces, of economic competitiveness, is the most effective means of achieving success in most essential sectors of our society. But the free exercise of these market forces, when allowed to function in our schools, is actually counterproductive—even potentially destructive—to achieving the most vital objectives needed to educate our children for creative and responsible lives...
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