LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Vouchers, removal of leaders not in best interest of education

By: Dear Editor, | SCNOW
Published: November 19, 2009

I would like to outline several ideas that are being pushed by our want to be Governors and point out the pitfall of their positions.

First, Mr. Jim Rex is all for charters schools and removing principals and teachers from failing schools. Others call for vouchers as the magic pill for education.

A national study has found that charter schools are not the great cure that one would have you think.

Only 50 percent of charter schools nation wide see any improvement in student performance. Some would see this as good, so let’s just make all public schools charter schools instead of spending millions to build new charter schools. Won’t work and I will tell you why after we explore Rex’s second want to say idea, but as he pointed out state law that would remove principals and teachers from failing schools.

Principals and teachers are not the problem. Why? Logic dictates that if principals and teachers are the problem then not only should they be removed but fired. But this does not happen, they are only transferred to other schools in the district. They fill the positions that are vacated by the principals and teachers who are transferred to the failing school. Guess what, that doesn’t fix the problem in the failing school, it just gives the politicians breathing room.

What the politicians are afraid to tell the general public is that the problem is the students, parents, and their cultural expectations. This is not easy to fix, does not fit into a 30-second sound bite, nor relieve a person from the personal responsibility for their own failure.

See, in our feel good culture you aren’t suppose to make people responsible for their own actions because it must be someone else’s fault, not mine. Besides you might hurt their feelings.

Vouchers are a bad idea for several reasons. The first is that turning over public money for independent educational institutions to racial groups like Muslims extremists, white supremacy groups, Black Power groups or just plain frauds is not in the interest of America.

The second problem is that vouchers allow private schools to use public money without accountability for standards in curriculum, teachers certification and student performance. We already allow our Congress to operated without accountability. Let’s not do it to our children’s education.

Bill Harrison
Darlington