ARGUMENT AGAINST PROPOSITION 38

By Gregory R. "Greg" Bentall

PROP 38 IS DESIGNED TO DISMANTLE 200 YEARS OF FREE, COMPREHENSIVE AND UNIVERSAL PUBLIC EDUCATION

The wealth and greatness of the United States has been largely the result of 200 years of a free system of public education. It has provided us with a skilled workforce and an educated citizenry, capable of self-governance. And even more than that, the common experience of public education has created a sense of community that would have been difficult to create in any other way.

Now, all of that is at risk from the proponents of Prop 38. This voucher system will have the effect of dismantling public education as we know it, and replacing it with a system of private, mostly sectarian, schools of uneven quality and a total lack of regulation.

It will be easy for the private schools to succeed simply by selecting the best students and those students without any special educational needs. This "cream skimming" will have a snowball effect, with private schools showing high test scores and other signs of "success" while the public schools sink in all quality measurements. But this apparent "failure" of the public school system will be the direct result of this shift in student populations, and not from any decline in educational quality. As this snowball effect continues, more and more parents will seek to place their children in private schools, thus accelerating the demise of public education.

When the "cream skimming" is accomplished and the snowball effect has run its course, the only students left in public education are likely to be those with the most educational difficulties, and the lease possibility of educational success. Public schools will be populated by children with physical disabilities, cognitive impairments, and severe behavioral disorders. Also, public schools will be the dumping ground for children who do not speak English, children from shattered homes, children of poverty, and those children whose parents are either unable or unwilling to be actively involved in their child's education.

These private voucher schools, fat with taxpayer money, will be totally unregulated under Prop 38. Parents will need to select these schools and to monitor their children's educational progress. Proponents of the Voucher System speak of "free market" forces that will magically create and sustain only the best private schools. And yet how prepared are parents to really make such critical choices? Will such selections be made on the basis of the overall quality of the educational experience? Or is it more likely that such choices will be bade on the basis of slick sales presentations?

Also, it will take years to truly assess the quality of any educational program. By the time that the parents discover that their children's education has been sorely lacking too much time will have been lost, and there will be no opportunity to make up the lost ground.

If Prop 38 is adopted, we may be left with a public education system that is the dumping ground for students that require special services. The lack of any regulatory oversight may create a legion of new publicly funded private schools that over an education that is mediocre at best and down right scary at worst.

The losers under Prop 38 will be the children, the parents, the economy, the community, and the nation as a whole.