Myth #1: Providing tax credits for those parents who want to seek out alternative schools for their children will weaken the public schools.
South Carolina’s schools are not under-funded. Half of all state spending is dedicated to education, with 35.5% dedicated to K-12 schooling, and approximately $10,000 spent for each South Carolina student. According to a 2004 study conducted by Dr. Daniel R. Varat, less than half of this funding makes it to the classroom. More than half of all education spending pays for bloated state and district bureaucracies whose regulations often prevent dedicated teachers and principals from implementing innovative and effective strategies to improve student achievement. Because many school districts have a “captive audience” and dissatisfied parents do not have the means to pull their children out of the local public school, district authorities have no incentive to please parents by doing anything differently.
The proposed South Carolina Educational Opportunity Scholarship Act will increase per-student spending in the public schools, while allowing smaller classes and more personalized attention. With every child that transfers from a public to a private school, the school district retains a portion of state funds provided for the child and all the local school property tax and federal education monies.
Education researcher John E. Chubb predicts that a school choice system will place an emphasis on results, not compliance with bureaucratic rules. Chubb states “there is every reason to believe that the administrative structure of a choice system would be less bureaucratized than today’s public school systems, and look more like private educational systems, where competition compels decentralization and administrative savings.” This focus on results, instead of compliance with rules, will free up even more money for teacher salaries and quality programs in the classroom.
Myth #2: School Choice will lead to racial and economic segregation of students in South Carolina schools.
Many public schools in South Carolina are segregated by race and economics. Contrary to the frequently repeated claim that public schools must accept everybody, public schools only accept those who can afford to buy or rent a home in a given school’s service zone. Because public school districts are organized geographically, the schools reflect the social, economic and racial makeup of the zone. According to U. S. Department of Education data, 55% of public school 12th graders nationwide are in racially segregated classrooms, compared to 41% of private school 12th graders.
South Carolina’s Clarendon 1 School District is 90 black, Allendale county schools are almost 95% black, and Jasper County schools are 86% black. All three districts have failed to make adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind, and a high percentage of schools in these districts have also been identified as failing to make adequate yearly progress.
School choice removes or reduces the importance of geography and political boundaries and allows parents trapped in failing districts to seek out the best school for their child regardless of where it is located or who happens to manage it. No one runs away from schools that are successful, and where school choice has been implemented, it has resulted in more diverse schools with students drawn from larger geographic areas and more varied backgrounds.
Myth #3: School Choice violates the separation of church and state.
While many people claim that the “separation of church and state” prohibits school choice, the phrase does not even exist in any founding document of the United States. In fact, U. S. Supreme Court decisions have consistently upheld the right of parents to direct the education of their children. In such decisions as Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) the Court ruled that:
The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.
In the Zelman v. Simmons-Harris decision, the U. S. Supreme Court determined that a school program must not have the “purpose” or “effect” of advancing or inhibiting religion. Thus, it ruled that the Cleveland, Ohio program is constitutional and that public money can flow to religious schools as a result of a person’s individual choice.
Myth #4: Private schools are unaccountable to the public.
Public schools may be accountable to politicians and state bureaucrats for compliance with rules and regulations, but with nearly half of all students who enter high school dropping out, and South Carolina’s last place SAT scores for those who remain, they most assuredly are not accountable to those who should matter most – the parents, students and taxpayers of South Carolina.
Competition creates true accountability because with choice parents have the opportunity to remove their children from a poorly performing school. Furthermore, nonpublic schools already comply with government regulations on fire and safety, compulsory attendance, and core curriculum. Under the South Carolina Educational Opportunity Scholarship Act, participating schools will administer either state tests or nationally recognized norm-reference tests in math and language arts to each student in the program. Also, participating schools will publicly disclose aggregate test results by grade level and provide each parent with a copy of the results.
According to Charles O’Malley, Executive Director of the National Council for Private School Accreditation, approximately 96% of all private school students attend schools that are accredited or evaluated by national, regional, or state private organizations. Many private schools subject themselves to dual accreditation procedures of government and private school agencies, while also having to satisfy their paying consumers.
Myth #5: School choice allows only private schools to do the choosing, and will allow them to “cream” the best students from the public schools.
Public schools turn away many children with severe disabilities, out-placing them to private schools at public expense. No one school can serve every child, with every need and learning style. A system of school choice recognizes this fact and permits parents who know their children better than any school district bureaucrat, to seek out the best school for their child, regardless of who happens to manage it.
Experience with private school choice and charter schools makes clear that the “best” students are the most likely to remain in the school where they are succeeding, while students most in need of help are the likeliest to seek alternatives. Former Secretary of Education Rod Paige has noted that school choice is especially beneficial for the “vast majority of students who are disadvantaged or low-income.”
Myth #6: Parents will use the wrong criteria in choosing schools and make bad decisions for their children.
This condescending assumption ignores evidence that poor or uneducated parents are just as capable of distinguishing between good and bad schools as anyone else.
The Children’s Scholarship Fund (CSF), a private organization that offers financial assistance to lower-income students, received over 1.25 million applicants for their four-year, $1000 student scholarship. The average income of applying families was under $22,000 per year, showing that parents are willing to make significant financial sacrifices even for scholarships that only pay part of their children’s tuition. CSF founder and co-chairman Ted Forstmann remarked, “Think of it: 1.25 million applicants asking to pay $1000 a year over four years. That’s $5 billion that poor families were willing to spend simply to escape the schools where their children have been relegated and to secure a decent education.”
Competition among the public and private school sectors, and among individual schools, will increase the amount of information available about all schools, so that parents can become better-informed consumers.
Myth #7: School choice will encourage the creation of radical or fraudulent schools.
Existing state and federal laws prohibit all institutions from discrimination and illegal activities. In South Carolina approximately 129,000 students are compelled to attend failing schools. What could be a worse fraud on the consumers of education and on South Carolina taxpayers than the failure of these public schools?
In the few cases where charter schools and private schools have acted illegally, they have been prosecuted and the schools have been closed. No matter how ineffective and unscrupulous public schools often are, they are never closed because of poor performance or the illegal activity of administrators. Some ineffective schools even get more money because of the mistaken belief that money is the answer to their problems.
Myth #8: There is no evidence that school choice will improve public education.
A study conducted by researchers from the University of Wisconsin, Georgetown, and Harvard found that Black students participating in school choice programs in Dayton, Ohio, New York City, and Washington, D.C. performed significantly better on tests after two years in private schools than did the students who remained in public school. In addition, participating students narrowed the gap between their scores and white students by one-third.
New York City students outscored their peers on the combined reading and math sections of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills by 6.1, 4.2, and 8.4 National Percentile Rank (NPR) points at the end of their first, second and third years, respectively.
Children from low-income families who participated in the privately funded Children’s Scholarship Fund in Charlotte, North Carolina, improved their performance on standardized math tests significantly. The children in the private schools were almost three times more likely to want to go to school and feel safe in school than their public school peers.
After a decade in operation, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program showed that low-income students in the program made significant gains in math and reading after three years.
Research studies consistently find that private schools, even after adjusting for the socio-economic backgrounds of their students, do a better job overall of educating students than the public schools.
Myth #9: School choice is just a tax break for the rich.
School choice already exists for families who can afford to buy homes in areas with the most desirable public schools, home school their children, or pay tuition at private schools. The South Carolina Educational Opportunity Scholarship Act is particularly important for those poor families who currently have no choice and are stuck with the state’s poorest performing schools.
Families living at or below 200% of the federal poverty level and who are zoned for a failing school are eligible for a scholarship up to $4500. These families need and want better alternatives for their children, and American ideals of equality and opportunity for all require that we level the playing field to ensure that no South Carolina child is denied the opportunity to achieve to the best of his or her ability.
Myth #10: School choice will not help those in poor, rural areas.
Families in South Carolina’s most rural areas are within a reasonable drive of population centers, and many people in the state’s most rural areas make considerable sacrifices now to ensure the best possible educational opportunities for their children. It is precisely because poor, rural parents have the fewest choices and are often trapped in failing schools that public policy should attempt to level the playing field and assist desperate parents who want something better for their children.
Many of these parents, unwilling to subject their children to inadequate schools, decide to home school, others have established charter schools, while still others find ways to get their children to quality public and private schools. Even if there are some students in the state’s most rural areas who are not able to utilize school choice, that is not an adequate reason for not helping many. In fact, school choice has worked in rural states like Minnesota, Arizona and Colorado, where students often must travel far greater distances than would any child in South Carolina
All kinds of goods and services are available to residents of our most rural counties. There is no reason to assume that education providers would be any less willing to respond to every parent’s ambition to do what is best for their child. Many for-profit and non-profit organizations will recognize a need and provide alternatives to those parents trapped in the state’s poorest performing schools and districts. Many churches in rural areas are eager to provide quality educational alternatives and would be able to do so under the proposed South Carolina Educational Opportunity Scholarship Act.
Myth #11: Private schools do not have the capacity to accommodate the influx of new students under a school choice plan.
School choice opponents often contradict themselves by arguing on one hand that the public school system is doing well, while arguing on the other hand that public schools will be hurt by the mass exodus associated with offering school choice.
The reality is different. School choice is helping tens of thousands of children who are stuck in a system that is not working for them, but the amount of transfers have not been detrimental to the public system. Private schools currently have the capacity to handle many more students, and if other areas are any indication, there is every reason to believe that faith-based organizations, community organizations and concerned individuals will meet any demand by creating new, quality schools where they are most needed.
Myth #12: Providing tax credits to parents choosing nonpublic schools will make private schools vulnerable to intrusive government regulation.
The South Carolina Educational Opportunity Scholarship Act has been carefully crafted to protect the freedom and identity of private schools. School choice programs in other states have not led to excessive or intrusive regulations. In fact, many new private schools have been founded in those places that have laws that respect the rights of parents to seek out the best school for their child.