Educators in the financially strapped Catholic schools of Chicago found great promise in President George W. Bush’s education plan announced Tuesday with its proposal for tuition vouchers.
Public school officials, on the other hand, generally lamented that the plan could drain vital money from city schools.
And so the two sides of the long-running school voucher debate took positions that are familiar, though suddenly infused with currency as the new president takes the first steps to implement his education plan.
Bush’s plan–largely a restatement of his campaign pledges and not yet formalized in proposed legislation–includes such other initiatives as funding to boost reading scores and to administer standardized testing. But it is the voucher debate that inspires hope and fear in the school community.
Sixty Catholic schools in Chicago are now unable to function without direct financial support from the archdiocese, but an influx of students could help turn that around, said Catholic schools officials.
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“We welcome the day when public funds will support all schools that serve the public good and allow parents to make the best choices for their children,” said Sister Judith Cauley, the system’s interim co-superintendent.
In cities such as Milwaukee, the site of the nation’s oldest experiment with vouchers, the vast majority of children who left underperforming public schools enrolled in parochial schools, such as the Catholic system.
But Chicago schools chief Paul Vallas said $1,500 vouchers as proposed by the president wouldn’t be enough to trigger an exodus from the public schools.
“This isn’t going to have much of an impact,” Vallas said. “I really question whether someone will look at a $1,500 voucher as a reason to leave.”
Mayor Richard Daley said Tuesday, however, that any voucher proposal means long delays for meaningful education reform.
“We’re going to get into fighting about vouchers and are going to waste months and months,” he said. “If we get into the voucher thing, everybody is going to position themselves, and they are going to scream and yell for the cameras and nothing is going to get done.”
Daley has a different list of reforms he would like to see: preschool programs; mandatory all-day kindergarten; federal block grants with flexibility for local school districts; federal funding for school construction and renovation; and vouchers or tax credits for families who send children to afterschool programs offering instruction in subjects ranging from the arts to reading.
The Bush plan calls for standardized tests to be used to measure a school’s academic achievement. School systems could take corrective action against schools that don’t post three consecutive years of improved scores.
The tests would be a requirement for schools to get a portion of new federal money to bolster reading programs.
In Chicago, that kind of testing would be nothing new: public school students are already among the most tested in the nation. Because of that, Vallas believes city schools would easily qualify for a chunk of the reading money.
In a written statement, Glenn W. “Max” McGee, state superintendent of schools, praised Bush’s education plan, saying it “establishes a strong emphasis on helping all students succeed.”
Privately, though, some Chicago schools officials worry that while administrators try to reinvigorate underperforming schools–using the powers of school reform–vouchers will make it too easy for students with the means to leave the system instead of waiting around for improvements.
That’s exactly what happened in Milwaukee, where vouchers have been in use for a decade. About 8,000 students bypassed Milwaukee’s public schools last year alone, using $5,000 publiclyfinanced vouchers.
Though the program in Milwaukee remains popular among minority parents, it has been riddled with problems. For instance, most private or parochial schools will not take children with severe disabilities because the schools do not have the means to offer services.
Many of the most prestigious schools there are full and have long waiting lists.
Thus, most children turn to the Catholic system.
“What (Bush’s plan) amounts to is a transfer of public money into the Catholic Church,” said Gerald Bracey, a researcher and author who has written extensively about the nation’s public schools.
“These are the same schools that pay teachers less,” he added.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to the success of a voucher program centers on the cost of private or parochial tuition, which often exceeds $1,500. Making up the difference can place a hardship on some parents.
For instance, at Elgin Academy, a private college preparatory school for children from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade, tuition ranges from $8,000 to $12,000 annually.
“For families that choose private schools, they have no access to tax dollars if they want an alternative to public school education,” said John Cooper, headmaster. “From our point of view, proposals like vouchers and tax credits are first and foremost a matter of justice for these families.”
At the same time, private schools like Elgin Academy worry that vouchers may come with rigid government regulations.
“We have to worry about the strings attached to those dollars,” Cooper said.
Marvin Edwards, superintendent of Elgin-based Unit School District 46, said Bush’s plan places too much emphasis on blaming schools rather than seeking ways to improve learning.
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“I’m not ready to indict a school or a system just on someone’s generalization,” Edwards said.
“When you have many youngsters who perform poorly in the same school, they call it a failing school. But it’s not the school, it’s the youngsters. Taking money away from schools is not solving the problem, it’s making it worse,” Edwards said.
Suburban public school administrators are just as opposed to vouchers as their urban counterparts. They also suggest great care must be taken when assessing whether a school is failing.
“As a public educator I am against any form of vouchers,” said Gary Catalani, superintendent of Wheaton Warrenville Community Unit School District 200, which has 14,400 students.
“I also don’t believe that the schools in suburban Chicagoland are failing,” he said. “But for those schools that are failing, I would like to know the definition of failing,” he said.