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Evidence Shows Voucher Programs Help

Opinion by Robert Enlow
Lebanon Daily News
November 22, 2011

Landing a job is tough enough in this economy. For those without a high school diploma, it is even tougher. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for dropouts is 13.8 percent, or 50 percent higher than the national average.

Unless we erase the myth that K-12 education in Pennsylvania is doing a good enough job preparing our children for the work force, too many kids will join the ranks of the unemployed. In a global economy where jobs are outsourced to places like India and Singapore, we have to train children with a skill set that will ensure they are ready for a highly competitive marketplace.

That’s why Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, the father of the school-choice concept, would laud the effort by Gov. Tom Corbett and state lawmakers to move forth a bold education-reform package this year that includes education vouchers.

If Pennsylvania does not embrace school choice, then it will just be more of the same for far too many children in the Keystone State. And that is just not good enough.

When monopolies continue unchecked without choice and competition, they will do what all monopolies do – offer their customers an inferior product at a higher cost.

But unlike other monopolies, the education monopoly produces results that are far more disastrous for all of us. Children drop out and end up unemployed and on state and federal assistance programs. Competition – through school choice – is the only real force to improve learning.

If we shop for a mobile phone, we have ample, ever-improving providers and a variety of plans to choose from. We usually select the plan that provides us the highest quality service at the best price. The same would happen for Pennsylvania parents if they are given more options through charter schools, vouchers and an expanded tuition tax-credit program.

The state Senate adopted education-reform legislation in late October that would expand the tax-credit program from $75 million to $100 million annually. In this program, businesses can donate to scholarship organizations and earn a tax credit toward state taxes due. The scholarship organizations then offer children scholarships for private schools.

But the sticking point of the legislation, now before the House, is a voucher plan. The voucher proposal would allow parents of children in 143 public schools in Pennsylvania to use their own tax dollars via a voucher to send their child to a school that works best for that child.

Just as the government doesn’t tell us where to buy groceries or what mechanic to use to repair our car, it shouldn’t tell parents what school is most appropriate for their children, particularly if that school is failing. Despite what critics claim, a new report released earlier this year by research scholar Greg Forster showed that of the 10 “gold standard” studies that evaluated school-choice programs during the past 20 years, nine of those contributed to the academic improvements for most students. One found no effect, and one showed vouchers did not harm students.

Eighteen other studies reviewed by the report “A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on School Vouchers” – and another study released this summer – also found that vouchers have a positive effect on public schools. The research was conducted by prestigious scholars at Harvard University, Stanford University, Cornell University, Princeton University and the Federal Reserve Bank among others. No study concluded vouchers harmed public schools.

There have been eight new and 11 expansions of school choice programs this year including one created by the Douglas County, Colo., school board and a sweeping voucher program in the state of Indiana. It has been the most active year for school choice since the first voucher program was enacted in Milwaukee in 1991.

In his 1980 book “Free to Choose,” Friedman wrote, “Support for free choice schools has been growing rapidly and cannot be held back indefinitely by the vested interests of the educational bureaucracy.”

With so many young people unemployed, on foods stamps and facing poverty, school choice in any form cannot be held back any more. Our nation’s economy, and certainly the lives of young people, may just depend on it.

Enlow is president and CEO of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the legacy foundation of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose.