Today I just want to talk about the simple idea of school vouchers for the state of California.
California is an odd state in the fact that the state pays for most of the schooling, as opposed to the local communities. This fact is hurting education all over the state in this time of recession, and the idea of how to fix it seems pretty clear. School voucher systems have worked in places like Washington D.C. Though they were revoked for political reason. John Stossel has a great piece about this in his 20/20 Special Report Stupid In America.
The voucher system would be cheaper, because it would cut much of the administration cost out of the schooling sector. It would also bring about competition in the school environments, which would allow for much better run schools.
The model I picture when I think of a well run school is St. Catherine’s. It was a K-8 Catholic school. The staff had one teacher for every grade as well as a PE teacher, music teacher, and computer teacher. The administration was very low, they carried a Principal, Vice Principal, and a Secretary. Because of this the tuition was less than what California pays per student for a public education.
With competition happening in schools the ones that are mismanaged would go away, and new ones would pop up. To solve the problem of some kids not being able to go to good schools it may be good to subsidize bus tickets for kids going to school. This would allow for much more flexibility on a child’s school than in the current system where you can only go to the school that you are zoned in.
Unions have lost their hold on almost everything in this country besides teaching and the car industry. Both of these unions are doing everything they can to hide their failure. Something will have to be done about the California education system. If the state can save money as well as improve education (and get the teachers union to no longer have any power at the state level), then it seems like it would have to be tried. California does some nut job things, but they also aren’t scared to try things and see if they work, my only hope is that someday California can admit that the current system is broken, and search for something new.
Stossel Links can be found at his website: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/
