Candidate A: Topic: School vouchers

As America rewards failure and poor judgment during this bailout frenzy, nothing is left for the student who wants to learn. Parents who dream of a first-rate education for their children are ignored. Need a little extra cash to give your child a better life? Too bad. You should have signed a mortgage with huge balloon payments.

Georgians can do better by supporting Sen. Eric Johnson’s landmark voucher bill, Senate Bill 90. The bill provides parents with up to $5,000 annually per child to help send the child to a private school.

This is not intended as an anti-public school screed. Many public schools are good, even great. My mother, for one, has devoted her life to public education as a teacher and principal. She and her co-workers have a real passion and talent for teaching children.

But facts are stubborn things. Many public schools, even in the Atlanta area, are failing their students. After 15 years of HOPE scholarships and increased government spending on education, Georgia still languishes near the bottom (41st out of 50 in a recent survey) in national education rankings. Thousands of talented kids are trapped in the backwaters of failing schools. These kids should be America’s future; instead they have no way out.

This is what Sen. John McCain and others mean when they speak of school choice as the civil rights issue of this century. Talented, hardworking children are not getting the education they deserve, and for no other reason than they live in a district with a bad school. Since failing schools are more likely to be found in poorer urban areas or poverty-riddled rural outposts, the damage falls disproportionately on students who have no means of escape.

Americans cannot address this problem in Washington. For one thing, education is best administered by state and local governments. For another, the Democrats in Congress show no interest in pushing an agenda that might help underprivileged children at the expense of teachers unions. (But if you can’t pay your risky adjustable rate mortgage, no problem. They’ll save you, and don’t forget to vote!)

It is up to states, our laboratories of democracy, to push for school choice and emancipate our students. Sen. Johnson’s bill is a worthwhile experiment. Studies by universities, think tanks and other organizations (Harvard, Princeton, the Urban Institute, the Manhattan Institute and the Federal Reserve, to name a few) have all reached the same conclusion: When public schools are exposed to vouchers they improve in response to increased competition. Put simply, vouchers work. We owe it to our children —- both those who make the leap to private schools and those who do not —- to support the bill and move education forward in Georgia.

While the rest of the country is mired in self-pity, awarding bailouts for failure, Georgians can strike a different path. We can encourage competition in education and reward success and hard work. We can support vouchers and Senate Bill 90.

columnist@ajc.com