School choice, specifically in the form of private school vouchers, has increasingly been a highly debated topic within education. School choice is when public education funds are allocated to students in order for them to attend different schools or use different school services other than the ones they are provided with. Vouchers are a form of school choice where public school funds are used to send children to private schools that participate in such programs. There are many other methods of school choice, some of which have been proven to be very effective: charter and magnet schools, customized learning, and open enrollment (Interactive Guide). However, the current most hotly debated form of school choice is private school vouchers. Private school vouchers negatively impact the U.S. public school system by diverting public school funds to private schools with little to no improvement amongst voucher students and their public school counterparts to show for it. Multiple case studies and extensive research have confirmed the idea that voucher programs do not improve students’ academic success, negatively impact the public education system, and are unconstitutional, thus enforcing the argument that they should no longer be in place (Mills and Wolf 1; Waddington and Berends 1).

A 2011-2015 study on the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) studied the overall effects of students transferring from public to private schools through the voucher scholarship program. The study looked specifically at the English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics scores of the students from before they entered the program through their third year participating. Students that qualified for the program were from moderate to low-income families, districted to low-grade public schools. After the first year transitioning into the private schools, the study concluded that the voucher students’ ELA and math achievement was significantly lower than their counterparts in public school. The next two years, their performance improved, but nowhere near exceeding the public school students’ scores (Mills and Wolf 4). These results are consistent with results from the 2007-2010 Ohio EdChoice Scholarship Program study, the 2011-2015 Indiana Choice Scholarship Program study, and a decade long study (2000-2010) by the Center on Education Policy. The Indiana study found that ELA scores did improve more than what was discovered in the Louisiana or Ohio studies, however, the improvement was only marginally statistically significant (Waddington and Berends 24). These are the results from four different studies in different states. The District of Columbia, along with fourteen of the fifty states, currently all have their own voucher programs in place. When voucher programs in over 1/5 of the states that allow them are unsuccessful, it makes no sense to continue allowing public education funds to be depleted in order to fund a method of school choice that is failing.

The U.S. public education system has been in a continual decline for years and the government has yet to find a way to improve it. Attempts at improvement, like George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, have only managed to make it worse. No Child Left Behind was enacted in 2002 by the Bush administration and essentially required states to implement a much stronger emphasis on standardized testing in an effort to set statewide standards for academic success. However, the program actually hurt the system because it caused students, including those with disabilities and in special education programs, to all have to fit under one kind of learning and testing as a measurement of public schools’ success. This caused methods of school choice, like voucher programs, to become more popular because schools that did not meet the national measurement for student success were required to grant eligible students the opportunities to use these programs to transfer to higher performing schools (Kolodziej 1).

The controversy over voucher programs has continued to increase due to current push by the Trump administration’s Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos’, push for increased voucher funding. In fact, the proposed budget for 2018 includes the allocation of millions of dollars towards voucher initiatives (Weyrauch). This poor use of the education budget is another example of how the government has failed to find a way to improve public education. If voucher programs were discontinued, the funds that public schools are losing, when participating students transfer to private schools, would no longer be lost. Putting money back into public schools is a step in the right direction for the betterment of the system.

The Trump administration has made it clear they believe that students and parents deserve more opportunities to “choose” through vouchers, despite overwhelming research proving the lack of betterment from them. Not only is lack of betterment an issue, but many opponents argue that vouchers are a violation of the first amendment clause that separates the church from the state. Many private schools that participate in voucher programs have some sort of religious affiliation, therefore, when public school funds are allocated to private schools in order for students to attend, the line between the church and the state becomes blurred (Eckes and Mead 1). Court cases such as Duncan v. Nevada and Larue v. Douglas County School District, petitioned by the American Civil Liberties Union and other allied organizations, all ruled in favor of the petitioner, henceforth, repealing the programs that put states’ public school funds into religious private schools through voucher incentives (School Vouchers). When programs and policies violate first amendment rights, they should be stripped or renegotiated to prevent controversy similar to what has arisen through vouchers.

Proponents of private school vouchers argue that giving parents the option to choose where their kids go to school allows children to be placed in the option that best fits their needs, resulting in greater academic achievement. However, research from multiple case studies proves that voucher students performed only slightly higher, if not worse, after transferring from a public to private school on a voucher scholarship (Mills and Wolf 4; Waddington and Berends 24). Public schools are losing money while their funds are being used to send children to private schools in the area. Some say that this creates a healthy competition between public and private, forcing the public schools to improve (Peterson). However, public schools cannot compete if they continue losing funds through voucher programs.

People also argue that voucher programs have seen great success in other countries, therefore, they should continue to be explored in the states. However, it makes no sense to compare one country to another when each one is at a different level of wealth, has a different political structure, and more specifically, has a different public education system. The U.S. needs to focus on its own education policies rather than those of other countries and do what best fits the needs of the American citizens. While voucher programs may be successful in a small impoverished village in India, the schools, students, and programs themselves are very different from those in the U.S. and cannot be a basis for continuance in the states (Tooley 1).

If the 2018 proposed budget passes, millions of public funds will be directed towards voucher programs, resulting in millions being taken out of public schools. This situation calls for a “sacrifice the few (who have succeeded in voucher programs) for the good of the many” outlook, because continuing and expanding voucher programs will have a very little pay off at the expense of public schools. Not all methods of school choice are ineffective and those that produce success should continue to be implemented. Methods such as charter and magnet schools, customized learning, and open enrollment all provide school choice for children, but without sacrificing public school funds or violating amendment rights like vouchers. The U.S. public education system is broken and needs reform, but a problem cannot be fixed by being ignored. Vouchers help the government ignore the problems within public education instead of encouraging the administration to fix them. Private school vouchers simply take the children out of the schools with problems rather than taking the problems out of the schools. Stripping or renegotiating voucher programs will kick-start the improvement process for schools in D.C. and the fourteen other states that participate in these programs, thus leading the reform of the public education system as a whole.

 