Proposition 38. School Vouchers. State-Funded Private and Religious Education. Public School Funding.

So what does Prop 38 do? It gives each student (really their parents) a voucher worth $4000 or 1/2 the national or California per pupil spending average, whichever of the three is higher. Vouchers can only be used to attend a private school, furthermore it must be one which doesn't "advocate unlawful behavior" or discrimate on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, or national origin (note that Prop 38 says nothing about discriminating based on sex, religion or disabilities). If the private school charges less than $4000 a year, the extra money goes into a fund for that student, which can be used to pay for college or is forfeit if the student doesn't attend college by the age of 21.

There are some minor clauses in Prop 38. New laws affecting private schools must be passed by 3/4ths of the Legislature. Local health, safety, and land use laws for private schools must be passed by 2/3rds of the local governing body and a majority vote of the local populace. Scholarship redeeming private schools (ie those schools that accept vouchers, officially called scholarships) have to test students using the national standardized tests, with results published. Finally, the minimum funding for public schools changes from a flat rate (subject to inflation) to a per student rate based on the national average (which makes me comment, why should we be satisfied with funding our schools at the 50th percentile level?).

The Legislative Analyst points out that it costs the state $7000 per student per year, so a voucher is cheaper for the state. Federal funding will go down since most of that is based on the number of students at a school (one reason why taking roll is so important in classrooms). The current 650 000 children currently in private schools (about 10% of the total student population) have to be given vouchers which doesn't save the state any money. Less new state schools would be built in the long term. Depending on the percentage of public school students going to private schools (estimate of 5% to 25%), the state could end up paying $2 billion a year (5%) or saving $3.4 billion a year (25%).

In my mind, this is one of the most heated Propositions on the ballot. School vouchers were also up a few years ago but it was defeated then. The emotional argument is over whether our public schools are good enough to teach our students. If they're not then parents want to be able to put their kids in private schools that will hopefully be better than public schools. If public schools are just as good then having kids go to private schools would eventually cost our state's public education to start to crumble as funding drops.

In essence, the Pro argument is that our public schools are a mess, parents want the choice of putting their kids into quality private schools, it'll help public schools since the competition will force them to improve, it already works in Milwaukee (personally, I don't like using other places as examples, especially without comparing the whole situation because I bet Milwaukee is a lot different than California as a whole). The Con argument is that this is not the way to fix our schools, because they'll be getting less money this way. Voucher schools are not accountable to taxpayers, for the most part. There is no oversight for voucher schools. It's just a way for rich parents to get us to pay the tuition of students who already attend private schools.

My opinion is that vouchers won't work in the long run. We have to improve our public school system and Prop 38 won't do this. There is one argument that the competition is good, but since the public school system hasn't been able to become more efficient in the face of budget cuts and since they have to contend with a lot more regulations than private schools, I don't think the competition will have any effect. Although I agree that our public schools have many problems for many people (personally I had a fine time even though my high school is one of the worst in Sacramento, the desire to learn has to be instilled by parents, sending a student to a private school won't make them learn), vouchers are not the answer.