Choice won't solve the problems in our public schools

e-mail this story discuss this issue in our forums Guest column • Lee Cory: Proposed lottery match program is a wise investment (05/05/04) • Gerald Owens: There's good news hidden in bad air-quality report (05/04/04) • Charlie Condon: America must hold China accountable in the war on terror (05/04/04) • Don Herriott: Pathways program doesn't exclude the arts (05/02/04) • Andrew Sorensen and Frank Pinckney: Partnership will improve health, drive economy (05/02/04) More details Paul Thomas, who taught high school English in the Upstate for 18 years, is an assistant professor of education at Furman University. He is currently completing a book, "Numbers Games," concerning politics, numbers, the media and education, for Lang USA. He can be reached at paul.thomas@furman.edu.

Public schools today have many weaknesses, as they have throughout the past century, as they will forever, since they are a human endeavor. Failures of our public schools — evident in Greenville County and across this state and the nation — fall under two categories: societal givens and programmatic decisions.

Virtually every weakness in our schools can be traced to poverty — especially pockets of poverty. Recent research on math and science instruction highlights decades of research showing that impoverished students funneled into low- and middle-tracked classes receive the least qualified and experienced teachers, the least effective instruction and the most crowded classrooms. These failures are the result of poor educational decisions made to address problems that enter our schools and are beyond the scope of teachers to address.

In other words, when our schools are dealing with the most capable students, we implement best practice and succeed; when a community hands its schools students who come from impoverished backgrounds, we fail to do those things that would be most effective — even considering that schools cannot address the legitimate and powerful forces that negatively impact any child's ability to succeed in school.

Vouchers represent one of a few solutions to those problems. Steeped in assumptions about the power of competition, vouchers do not and cannot address the problems mentioned above. Free market ideology is an amazing thing in the business world, but schools are not businesses, students are not raw materials and parents are not merely consumers.

Other than their blind allegiance to free market forces, voucher proponents are driven by several false assumptions about students and teachers. The greatest of those is that students and teachers are simply not working hard enough since the stakes are not high enough. Simply increase accountability and threaten educators with the prospect of losing their clients and all will be well.

I have been an educator in the Upstate for 20 years and have taught Upstate teachers for a decade. The assumption that teachers are not trying hard enough is simply a lie. Business people and pundits who have never been in front of a group of students have no frame of reference for their assumptions, and if we are honest, they essentially do not respect the profession.

A second assumption is that private schools — which appear to function under free-market forces — are superior to public schools. Again, this is a false assumption. No private schools — either at K-12 or at the college level — deal with the diverse populations that public schools address. When research adjusts for the student populations, private schools do not outperform public schools.

Briefly, vouchers fail as an inappropriate business solution for educational problems. First, no one solution will address our school needs. Second, the shuffling of students and teachers among schools cannot possible accomplish anything and will surely make accountability nearly impossible. And a voucher will never cover the hidden costs — in time and money — of school choice.

How does one choose a different school without proper transportation or the time to drive students to schools? What do we do with existing school buildings as they become overcrowded when they are in favor or abandoned when scores look weak?

Choice would lower our cable costs in the area, but that does not make choice a panacea. As noted earlier, we know what our problems in education are. The truth is that educators do not have the voice or the power to do what is best for students.

Students from impoverished backgrounds deserve the best teachers, the least crowded rooms and a commitment from everyone that they will receive from their first day of school the best literacy instruction possible.

Gov. Sanford should recommit his efforts to our public schools, allowing educators to address the problems that we face — not with threats of accountability, not with threats of being replaced. If we made programmatic changes tomorrow in South Carolina schools, everyone would choose the schools we have.