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Friday, July 13, 2007
School options are lesson in common sense
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The pent-up demand for alternatives to traditional public schools erupted in Georgia last week.
That’s right. Erupted.
Some 3,300 families of children with special needs applied for vouchers to cover or supplement the purchase of services they want for their children elsewhere. And most will have real options. The State Board of Education on Thursday approved 115 private schools. Both the number of families and the number of schools certified as voucher-eligible top the start of a similar program in Florida. “With well over 100 schools, we will have the fastest start-up in the country,” said state Sen. Eric Johnson (R-Savannah), who sponsored the legislation in this year’s General Assembly.
On the same day the state board certified the 115 eligible service providers, which include such top-of-the-line schools as Woodward Academy in College Park and Paideia School in Druid Hills, emotional parents from Greene County who want the option of attending a new charter school near Lake Oconee expressed their frustration to board members. The 10-year charter, approved Thursday, has attendance boundaries parents want expanded.
The charter school is not for special-education children. It’s an alternative to underperforming public schools. Black parents in the Greensboro area wanted the charter option for their children. “We should be remaking every school like a charter school,” state School Supt. Kathy Cox was quoted by the AJC’s Bridget Gutierrez as telling one group. “Look at the history of Greene County schools. They haven’t had a good track record of raising student achievement.”
When parents are near tears because they want alternatives they don’t have to traditional public schools, and when 3,300 families step forward to take responsibility for the education of their special-needs children, the public and policy-makers should take note. The world has changed.
The truly significant lesson from the week’s education news is that the marketplace has shown a willingness to embrace concepts that educrats think radical and that their interest groups and unions have resisted forever.
A successful introduction is not, however, success. Johnson and other supporters managed to resist attempts to saddle potential competitors with all the rules and regulations that cover traditional public schools. Critics note, for example, that private schools aren’t required to have curriculums tailored to special-needs children, or to hire certified teachers or those trained in special education. True enough.
They note, too, that competitiors are free to accept or reject applicants. True enough.
And hallelujah.
What’s happening here is that the locus of authority is tranferring from government to parents. For the first time in well over a century, the earth is moving in a direction that empowers parents — all parents, not just those with money.
For choice to be real, providers of education services should never, ever, be required to take every applicant. If they can’t serve a child’s particular needs — either because he’s disruptive, not up to grade, or deemed to have problems the school’s not equipped to address — they should be free to reject him.
When enough like-needs children exist, creative educators and entrepreneurs in the free market will create new schools.
Those schools should be free to employ anybody they see fit and to configure themselves in any model they choose, so long as fully informed parents are satisfied with the results and academic performance is no worse than the average of traditional public schools in the county.
Despite the successful start of the special-needs scholarship/voucher program, opponents have not given up. And won’t. Here’s a prediction: Within a year, the experiment will have been declared an utter failure. Along the way, the evidence will mount that parents really are too dumb or distracted to make responsible choices and that some of these 115 schools are failing.
Be prepared.
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