One Brick Short

The concept of the school voucher, a tool originally developed as part of the massive resistance to integrated schools so that white kids wouldn’t have to go to school with black kids, is making a comeback.

On Monday, a national school choice movement announced an aggressive campaign to recruit 10,000 new activists to promote the benefits of school vouchers and tax credit scholarship programs. The effort will coincide with the start of 2009 state legislative sessions and will include lots of glitz in a blitz of on-line advertising and radio promotions.

“America’s hardworking families should have the right to choose the schools that work best for their children,“ said School Choice Works Campaign Director Andrew Campanella. “Special interests have long dominated the public debate over vouchers, but our campaign will present the true life-changing stories of the families who have benefited from school choice programs. We also look forward to providing new ways for our supporters to help advance this important cause.“

Supporters of vouchers originally came from those who didn’t want their kids to attend desegregated schools. When Virginia shut the doors to its public schools to protest court-ordered mixing of the races, new private schools arose to keep the white kids educated. To pay for the tuition, the idea of tax dollars paying for schools of choice through vouchers, arose.

Some things have changed since those days, however. Now the voucher program is seen as a way to get kids, minority as well as white, out of substandard schools and into schools with better academics. Still, one has to wonder how it would be implemented, its fairness and the impact it will have on some schools.

Will vouchers really help kids from Mallside attend St. Anne’s-Belfield? Will it help kids interested in strings and woodwinds play in the Charlottesville High School Orchestra or will it simply take high-performing white kids out of public schools and into the privates?

“How to improve schools is not a mystery,“ said Alliance President Charles Hokanson. “It simply requires the will to make the necessary changes.“

What those necessary changes are, Mr. Hokanson didn’t say. Throwing money at the problem, however, is not a necessary change, he said. Taking students out of the schools, and thereby decreasing the funding available to the school itself, apparently is one way.

“If we are truly serious about improving graduation rates and preparing our children to compete in the 21st century global economy—expanded parental choice must be a readily available option.“