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ARNOLD: The perils of a voucher-based school system

Trump’s voucher based education program will cripple public education

Last week, President-elect Donald Trump officially announced his choice for Secretary of Education: Betsy DeVos, a wealthy school-choice activist from Michigan. DeVos supports Trump’s proposed plan to aggressively expand charter schools and voucher programs. Though there are reasonable arguments to support increased school choice for kids in the nation’s worst schools, Trump’s plan is a dramatic overstep in the direction of vouchers, one that could have serious negative impacts on the public schools struggling the most.

School choice, broadly defined, allows parents to send their child to another school if the child’s original school is not performing well. Alternatives include other traditional public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, private schools and homeschooling. For poor students in low-performing school districts, school choice offers a way to break out of a broken system, empowering students and their parents to make their own decisions. Charter schools, or public schools that operate independently, are often designed specifically to accommodate these underserved kids, like KIPP schools and Success Academies in Harlem. Charter schools also serve as laboratories of innovation, where teachers have the freedom to test out certain practices to see what works and what does not. Successful techniques can then be integrated into traditional public schools.

One major criticism of school choice is when a student leaves his or her already struggling school, that school loses the funding that follows the child to his or her new school. This occurs because school funding is based on enrollment. “Per pupil funding” measures a school’s total funding divided by the number of students who attend. For instance, New York City spends $20,226 per student and Baltimore spends $15,287 per student. When students opt to leave resource-poor schools, those institutions lose valuable funds.

The philosophy behind Trump’s education plan is sound: He wants to close the achievement gap that persists between kids from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. In September, when Trump unveiled his policy plan, he stated unequivocally, “I want every single inner city child in America who is today trapped in a failing school to have the freedom — the civil right — to attend the school of their choice. This includes private schools, traditional public schools, magnet schools and charter schools which must be included in any definition of school choice.” Though the sentiment is respectable — no child should have to attend a failing school — Trump glosses over the fact his own voucher system would likely cripple those traditional public schools that are struggling rather than set them back on their feet. Despite Trump’s well-intentioned goals for education, his methods of ensuring that every child receives a quality education is deeply flawed.

The president-elect has promised to allocate $20 billion through a block grant in his first budget to create a voucher system for the nation’s poorest kids in the nation’s poorest schools. Trump also plans to ask for $110 billion from all 50 states to fund the rest of the voucher program. Trump hypothesizes this $130 billion will be enough to “provide $12,000 in school choice funds to every K-12 student who today lives in poverty.” Although Trump has not stated outright where these $20 billion will come from, analysts guess Trump will draw from Title I money — about $15 billion previously used to fund schools that serve the nation’s poorest kids. While Trump claims to be serving the nation’s poorest kids by creating a voucher system, the effort to do so could potentially drain the sum set aside specifically to provide the most underdeveloped schools with funding and resources.

For Trump to put his education policy plan into action, he needs to find the money for his block grant within the budget and successfully convince states to contribute their part. This already difficult task may be made even harder by DeVos, whose track record includes several school-choice related failures. In 2000, DeVos led a failed ballot initiative to create a voucher program in Michigan, and 20 years ago, she pushed hard for a state law that allowed for the creation of a large number of charter schools with such little oversight that even failing charter schools were allowed to expand and be continually funded.

School choice, though appealing on a surface level, is only a bandaid solution for meaningful public school reform. Trump should scale back his ambitious voucher program, which threatens to drain much needed funding from the nation’s poorest schools, and instead encourage the creation and expansion of successful charter schools without creating a complex and costly voucher system. While charter schools do divert some funding from traditional public schools, they also have the potential, when held properly accountable, to serve as laboratories of innovation and improve traditional public schools. It’s possible for Trump to remain committed to closing the achievement gap while also ensuring that traditional public schools, especially those that are struggling, remain appropriately funded and continue to improve outcomes for all kids.

Jordan Arnold is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at j.arnold@cavalierdaily.com.

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