Trivial Solutions Don't Help
Another point of disagreement in the great voucher debate concerns what, exactly, counts as parental involvement. Eve Tushnet writes:
What vouchers do offer is the ability (and therefore the responsibility) to make a choice. Parents who are content with the public schools can choose to keep sending their kids there; many will. But the fact that they can choose to a) use their voucher money to attend a cheap private school for free, or b) use the voucher money, plus savings of their own, to attend a less cheap private school they couldn't afford before, means that parents will be able to be more involved in directing their children's education, not less.
The key point of confusion here is that, while choosing a school and writing the checks are important, they're not the sort of parental involvement I was talking about in my earlier comments. I'm talking about a daily involvement-- making sure that the kids do their homework, encouraging them to read books rather than watching tv and playing video games, taking an interest in their school activities, and supporting any academic goals they may have. Education is about more than just getting into a good private school-- there are no end of chuckleheads with Andover diplomas. Education, real education, requires an active interest in learning on the part of the student, the sort of interest that can easily be crushed by parental disinterest.
Private school doesn't necessarily provide that sort of parental support. Sure, having to shell out for the tuition provides some incentive for parents to take a more active interest in their children's education. But then, shelling out for a gym membership theoretically provides the same sort of incentive to actually exercise, and there are plenty of fat slugs out there having their credit cards dinged monthly by Gold's Gym. (I speak from experience, here...)
Private school without the sort of parental support I'm talking about is probably better than public school without parental support. But public school with active parental support is probably better than private school without.
Again, I'm just arrogant enough to think of myself as anecdotal evidence in favor of that claim-- I went to public school in the back end of nowhere, but thanks in large part to the efforts my parents made to encourage and support me, I was able to go to one of the very best colleges in the nation, side by side with kids from the very best private schools in the country, and I never felt intellectually or educationally inferior to them. In fact, the few people there who did strike me as much better prepared than I was were all public school products, while the biggest clowns I knew had diplomas from prestigious private schools.
Having to choose where to send the kids to school may be a net increase in the involvement of many parents, but it's not a particularly useful increase. And to the degree that it is an increase in parental involvement, it's also a tragedy.
Posted at 11:55 PM | link | follow-ups |