Tuition tax credits for private schools a bad idea

e-mail this story discuss this issue in our forums Guest column • Doug Kondra: Upstate has reached out to tsunami victims (01/22/05) • Douglas Stevens: Sister cities program gives Greenville worldly profile (01/19/05) • Alex Martin: Career and technology education opens doors to opportunity (01/18/05) • Reggie Ecarma: King's vision did not see special preferences for anyone (01/17/05) • Rhett Jackson< and Lonnie Randolph Jr.: Legislature must make school funding adequate, equitable (01/16/05) More details Roger Owens of Mauldin is president of Save Our Sons, a Greenville-based non-profit that mentors young males. A retired insurance executive and Air Force aviator, Owens is a native of Clemson, where he once served on the City Council.

The Alliance for Quality Education and the South Carolina Board of Economic Advisers estimates that the proposed law, when fully implemented, will reduce state revenues by more than $200 million a year. This will be catastrophic to a public school system which is already underfunded.

The Alliance has published 10 reasons for rejecting the tax-credit proposal. Some of them are:

* Every state with a tuition tax credit program loses millions of dollars for public education;

* Research has shown that parental control is equal or greater in public schools;

* Tuition tax credit programs do not improve student achievement, and they do not cause public schools to improve;

* Those who already possess the means to pay for private education will benefit most from a tax-credit program;

* Schools accepting tax credit students will be able to choose whom they accept and reject, despite receiving public tax dollars;

* And schools accepting tax credit students will not have to meet state education standards, and will not have to be accountable to the public for tax dollars. Therefore, children will suffer from being educated in unregulated schools created solely to receive tax-credit funding.

Only those families who can afford to pay the difference between the cost of a private elementary or secondary education and the voucher/tax-credit subsidy will be able to take advantage of the plan. That means middle- and upper-class families, who are disproportionately Caucasian.

The net result will be a more segregated system, which now consists of approximately 42 percent African-American students, from a population that is 32 percent African-American. When the system comes to be perceived as majority/minority (and the tax credit plan could easily close the 8-point gap from 42 percent to 50 percent), the exodus will increase, and support will wane.

A strong public school system is in the best interests of the state. Such a system will provide the largest supply of well-trained citizens for an increasingly technologically oriented business/economic environment. Conversely, a weak public school system will be a negative incentive for businesses to locate in South Carolina, and South Carolina will become the victim of a "brain drain" to neighboring states, as the highly qualified teachers and other well-trained job-seekers will opt for a more education-friendly environment.

The objective of supporters of the proposal is not to improve public schools, but to provide funding for middle-class families who wish to abandon the public schools. If the objective were to improve the public schools, the push would be to provide additional funding, resources, and support for public schools.

The amorphous, unsupported claim that public education will be improved by "competition" is bogus. How do you improve something by draining it of resources, financial and political support? Furthermore, what empirical evidence is there that an abstract concept such as "competition" between schools for supremacy will be more effective than the traditional motives of professionalism, pride, and a desire to teach and educate children, and to develop them to their fullest potential? I submit there is none.

If our educators are not in the business of education for the above reasons, no amount of "competition," or resources, will matter.

I understand that challenges and problems exist within the educational system — some systemic, some cultural, some otherwise. However, strong, responsible leadership demands that the problems be confronted and solved, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Our public school system is too important to the educational and economic health of our state to severely weaken it by using tax dollars to subsidize those who wish to opt out, and we have come too far in progressing toward integrated education to allow a dedicated and determined group of citizens to turn the clock back.

Citizens have a right to send their children to private schools, or home-school them, if they wish. They should not have a right to use public tax funds for that purpose, without public accountability for the students they accept and serve. Such a policy will only accelerate expansion of the privileged class, at the expense of the public school system, and at the expense of the less well-off.