Guest Post by Morbo
Three years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Ohio’s voucher program, ruling that the plan, limited to the city of Cleveland, does not violate the separation of church and state even though most of the private schools taking part are religious in nature.
Because that case drew so much national attention, people tend to forget that Wisconsin was actually the first state to establish a voucher plan. That program was launched in 1990, and to mark its 15-year anniversary, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently ran a seven-part series examining voucher schools.
I found part two, headlined “A question of accountability,” to be very interesting. The Milwaukee program is essentially unregulated. Private schools are not required to hire certified teachers or meet serious educational performance standards.
This came about in part because independent evaluators kept releasing studies finding that voucher school students were doing no better academically than their public school counterparts. State legislators, too embarrassed to admit that the program had failed, ended mandated testing of voucher students and radically deregulated the system.
The result is that anyone with some space in a building can open a school and start getting checks from the state. As the newspaper reported:
You don’t need any credentials to open a voucher school. Your teachers don’t need any, either. You don’t need to meet any detailed standards of educational progress or performance…. Basically, all you need to run a voucher school is a building, parents who are willing to enroll their kids and the ability to meet the administrative rules of the state Department of Public Instruction.
Milwaukee now has 115 voucher schools. The Journal Sentinel was able to visit 106. (Nine refused to let reporters in.) Reporters Alan Borsuk and Sarah Carr noted that of the schools they visited “some of them are very good, some of them mediocre.”
But, they reported, “it was also clear that there were about 10 to 15 schools where professionalism appeared lacking, facilities were not good, and the overall operation appeared alarming when it came to the basic matter of educating children. And the quality of the nine schools that did not allow visits has been questioned by voucher school experts familiar with their operations.”
Even voucher proponents concede that at least 10 schools in the program ought to be shut down. Robert Pavlik, director of the School Design and Development Center at Marquette University, a pro-voucher group, admitted that only about 30 schools in the program consistently offer a quality education.
One of the schools that fails to measure up is the Upper Excellerated Academy, run by a former security guard and his partner, an ex-teacher’s aide. “Upper” in the school’s unusual name refers to the Upper Room, where Jesus allegedly hosted the last supper. “Excellerated” is a made-up word combining accelerated and excellent.
It’s an odd combo of words, as the school appears to be neither accelerated nor excellent. As the Journal Sentinel reported, “On an afternoon in March, fewer than 50 students appeared to be present. There were almost no signs of student work in any classroom or in the hallways. Most rooms had few textbooks or other reading material.”
The newspaper reported seeing students subjected to hours of mind-numbing drills and students turning in “reports” that were copied word for word from newspaper articles.
This year, the “excellerated” academy received $414,524 in taxpayer support.
In another school, Carter’s Christian Academy, which serves kindergartners, owner James Carter boasted to the paper, “The curriculum that we have is so basic that someone with just a plain high school diploma is able to teach it.” Reported the Journal Sentinel, “There are no toys in sight, and few books or other educational materials.”
I disagree with the Supreme Court ruling of 2002. I see vouchers as an obvious church-state violation. In Washington, D.C., which now has a voucher plan, a dying Catholic school system has received new life thanks to an infusion of public funding through vouchers.
Call me old-fashioned, but I call that a church tax. If Catholic institutions are experiencing financial difficulties, it’s up to Catholics to save them, not the taxpayer at large.
But the Supreme Court disagrees. I don’t like it, but that’s how it is. The high court, however, did not address the issue of regulation in its decision. Wisconsin lawmakers retain the ability to exercise oversight of taxpayer-funded private religious schools. Their failure to do so is nothing short of a scandal.
Some private religious schools are eager for our tax money. The Supreme Court says they can have it. Fine. Let’s give them something else, too. Let’s impose the same standardized tests on them that public schools are now saddled with. Let’s make these private institutions answerable to democratically elected boards and require them to meet the host of regulations that are imposed on public schools.
In short, let’s impose a little accountability. Until that day comes, Wisconsin and the other states experimenting with “no-strings” vouchers are merely shifting kids from bad public schools to bad private ones. That’s not right. After all, no child should be left behind — especially in an “excellerated” academy.