When Chemists Attack

Here’s a hypothetical situation.

Let’s say you’re a Republican-controlled Congress. You start a school voucher program in the capital of the United States. You decide to funnel federal tax dollars into private schools. Since you believe in the magical power of the free market, you don’t bother to worry much about what actually happens to the money. You simply take the word of people who claim to be running private schools that they’re doing what they are supposed to be doing – providing quality education to kids in acceptable facilities.

What could possibly go wrong?

Steve Benen fills us in:

Republican lawmakers crafted a policy whereby federal funds would flow to private schools with no checks to certify whether all of the participating schools had the required operating permits. The results put kids at risk.

What’s he talking about? The Washington Post reports that

A voucher program designed to send low-income children in the District to better-performing private schools has allowed some students to take classes in unsuitable learning environments and from teachers without bachelor’s degrees, according to a government report.

So, we’re spending tax dollars to send kids to schools that aren’t even hiring minimally-knowledgeable teachers? How’s that possible?  Part of the problem is that nobody bothered to check to see that the free money was even being sent to, well, actual schools.

In a random sample of 18 schools reviewed by the GAO, two lacked occupancy permits, and four lacked permits needed for buildings used for educational purposes. At least seven of the 18 schools were certified as child development centers but not as private schools. In one case, a school was operating in a space designed for a retail store, the report says.

“Child development centers”. In other words, day-care providers. Not schools. While I don’t think vouchers are a good idea, would it kill voucher proponents to recognize the need for some oversight on where taxpayer money actually goes? Ensuring the money actually goes to schools might be a good first step on the long road to accountability.

Kellie sent me a link today to a news story describing a new study comparing public and private schools.

Students at independent private schools and most parochial schools scored the same on 12th-grade achievement tests in core academic subjects as those in traditional public high schools when income and other family characteristics were taken into account, according to the study by the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy.

That’s probably not what the South Carolina voucher lobby wants to hear, but anyone with any education experience at all knows that there are simply lots of factors that go into student success.  Trashing schools because they’re “public” (and have a different mix of students than the top-tier private schools) isn’t useful.

Oddly enough, there actually was one kind of private school that outperformed others:

[…] the only kind of private schools that had a positive impact on student achievement were Catholic schools run by holy orders such as the Jesuits. Such schools have more autonomy from the church than most Catholic schools, which are typically run by a diocese and are overseen by a superintendent in the local bishop’s office.

Score one for the Jesuits?