[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.However,they severely underfunded the law from the first year of its pas-sage.According to the National Education Association (NEA),funding for NCLB was shortchanged by $32 billion as early as2003, with the result that 5 million (or 60 percent) of the na-tion s eligible disadvantaged children did not receive servicesthat year.In fact, the federal mandates of NCLB were so seri-ously underfunded that the NEA filed a legal challenge thatwas supported by six states and the District of Columbia in2006.If the Bush administration sincerely believed NCLB wasthe solution to America s educational problems, you wouldthink that these leaders would have supported it with appropri-ate funding." Similarly, the Bush administration proposed or carried out theelimination or reduction of funding to the following programs atvarious times: the Even Start family literacy program for non-English-speaking immigrants, Head Start, teacher preparationinitiatives, after-school programs, arts education, and the Eisen-hower math and science initiatives, as well as social programs toimprove rural and urban housing and juvenile crime prevention.Although federal educational funding for programs for handi-capped students has never matched the promise in 1975 that itwould amount to at least 40 percent of the total cost of specialeducation, the Bush administration kept that funding at approx-imately 20 percent, even as it increased the pressure on handi-capped children to perform as if they had no disabilities.Thesecuts and reductions just don t reflect the policies of an adminis-tration deeply concerned about the welfare of disadvantagedchildren." Privatization was one of the central political themes of the Bushadministration, as evidenced by the president s efforts to privatizeSocial Security." The concept of vouchers has been especially appealing to somewealthy Americans and evangelical Christians.Not only werethese two groups a solid part of President Bush s political base, 114 CHAPTER SEVENbut they have also been strong supporters of private and religiousschools.Because so many of them do not send their children topublic schools now, vouchers would be for them a kind of edu-cational rebate." Especially revealing is that President Bush s original proposal forNCLB called for vouchers to provide students with the fundingto attend private schools.Congress did not include this provi-sion, in part because voters in California and Michigan demon-strated the political liability of that strategy by soundly defeatingvoucher proposals in the 2000 election (Bracey, 2003c).When we consider all of the evidence, it is hard not to concludethat NCLB is a backdoor approach to legitimizing vouchers.Sup-porters of privatization argue that this approach will provide citizenswith choice and will improve academic performance by bringing freemarket pressures to our educational system.They say that publicschools will perform more effectively in order to compete with privateschools and that students using vouchers to attend private schoolswill be better served in those settings.However, there are four com-pelling reasons why we should reject these unproven assertions.One, the existing research simply does not support the sugges-tion that voucher initiatives force public schools to improve or thatstudents using vouchers to attend private schools perform betterthan their counterparts in public schools.In fact, the few availablestudies suggest just the opposite (Pons, 2002).Two, voters have consistently and overwhelmingly opposedvouchers.Seven states have had referendums on vouchers since1972, and every initiative has failed.Only the 1972 referendum inMaryland, with 45 percent in favor and 55 percent opposed, waseven reasonably close.Since that time, no vote in favor of vouchershas been higher than 36 percent and, in the most recent referen-dums in 2000, only 30 percent of the citizens in Michigan and Cal-ifornia voted for them.If public education is supposed to serve thepublic, we should acknowledge the public s adamant rejection ofvouchers (Pons, 2002).Three, the few voucher experiments that have been tried havenot been cost effective and have often been plagued by misman- THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT 115agement and scandal.For example, four of eighteen voucherschools in Milwaukee were closed in 1995 1996 because of mis-management and fraud, and an audit of vouchers in Cleveland re-vealed almost $2 million in questionable expenses, includingcharges from a taxi company for transporting students who were ac-tually absent from school.In fact, almost two thirds of the studentswho received vouchers in Cleveland had never attended publicschools: vouchers were essentially rebates for parents who had al-ways sent their children to private schools (Pons, 2002).Four, vouchers have not resulted in equality of opportunity, asadvocates have argued they would.In Milwaukee some privateschools have refused to accept students with vouchers, and othershave excluded students on the basis of ability, gender, religion, andrace (Pons, 2002).It is also important to note that voucher programs have beenruled unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court and the Col-orado Supreme Court.In spite of this fact and the problems justcited, conservative politicians continue to aggressively promote theview that this type of choice will improve education.As disastrous asvoucher experiments have been, we have to wonder if Americanswill one day weaken in their opposition to this ideology and ifmembers of the judicial branch will also change their perspectivesif they continue to hear the fraudulent claims of voucher advocatesand persistent reports that our public schools are failing miserably.In fact, a fairly substantial number of Americans have a vestedinterest in the privatization of our educational system and are likelyto continue pushing for that change so long as there are elected of-ficials who promise to pursue it
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
