Vouchers aren’t the answer

One thing I have discovered over my many years of teaching, reading, and participating in the political and legislative process is that simple answers to complex problems are invariably wrong. So it was not a huge shock to read a letter to the editor of The Acorn last week, touting the simple answer of "vouchers" to the complex question of public education and the problem of inner cities.

All of this was couched in an attack on the Oak Park Unified School District Superintendent Gary Richards. And what act of degradation did Superintendent Richards do to warrant this verbal attack on his person? His crime was to state an oft-repeated complaint and a very justifiable one at that.

It was in fact that, despite stellar performances by Oak Park students, due to an inordinately high requirement for test participation (95 percent), the schools of Oak Park were labeled inadequate in some manner. This exact same scenario has occurred in Las Virgenes as well. Here are two districts that do everything very well and do everything correctly and get very little acclaim for their success.

On top of that, this letter of condemnation labels anyone who doesn’t buy into this panacea of vouchers "a blithering idiot." The facts are a bit more complicated than the vitriolic author of the earlier letter has indicated.

First of all, research on the successes of vouchers is decidedly mixed at best. The latest result from a nonpartisan and credible source, the University of Indiana study, called it "a mixed bag." If the University of Indiana, WestED, the Council on Policy Analysis and numerous other organizations can be believed, vouchers are hardly the answer to the question.

At the end of the day, what can be clearly stated about simple answers to complex problems is that they are exactly that—simple.

Paul Markowitz

Co-president,

Las Virgenes

Educators Association