Education: USA: Vouchers for alternative schooling achieve gains, suffer setbacks

At Stateline, news source for the 50 US states, Pauline Vu reports "Vouchers see mixed success this session" (Apr10,2k7), with the graphic tag "StA+es debate school choice."

This year the school choice movement reached a milestone – Utah became the first state to sign a universal voucher law. Unlike other voucher programs, Utah’s would allow every child – regardless of income or geography – to receive public money to attend private school.

But a drive is under way to dismantle that plan before it can get off the ground this fall. Utahns for Public Schools, a coalition including the state’s teachers union and school boards association, is trying to take the voucher decision out of lawmakers’ hands and give it to voters.

“This is something that the voter ought to have the right to give his opinion on,” said Marilyn Kofford, the education commissioner of the state Parent Teacher Association, part of the coalition.

Midway through the legislative season, school choice proponents, who say vouchers can give disadvantaged public school students a chance to attend better schools, have had mixed [political] results.

Rarely does the voucher system produce bad educational results; rather, noticeably good educational results is the main trend for students living in poverty. The results referred to, are distinctly political in character, because of all the vested interests in admin, teacher, and union incompetence combined with a penchant within these forces for promoting educational inequality to favour govt-determined schooling. Thee forces hover to scuttle the vouchers and other programs toward educational equality as slowly these alternatives to govt ed keep on arising across the USA.