By Greg Forster
05/06/2005
Hispanic students in the District’s public schools are in a
state of emergency. Pouring tons of additional money into the system
hasn’t helped. The District’s new school voucher program
is the only serious hope to save at least some of the city’s
Hispanic students from educational disaster. Other reforms would take
years to work, if they work at all; vouchers are a proven reform that’s
helping Hispanics now, not years from now.
First, there’s the state of emergency. Few people outside the
District’s Hispanic neighborhoods fully appreciate how bad things
are. In 2003, a shocking 71% of the District’s Hispanic 4th
graders failed in reading and 61% failed in math on the Nation’s
Report Card, a nationally respected test of basic skills.
Some people will dismiss this as just a result of the language barrier;
once the kids learn English, they’ll catch up. Never mind that
the language barrier has been used for decades as an excuse to avoid
giving Hispanic students the education they deserve. The fact is that
black students in the District scored just as badly as Hispanics –
73% failed in reading and 67% failed in math. So the language barrier
isn’t the problem.
And don’t listen to anyone who tells you that money is the problem.
The District spends a massive $15,000 per student. The city’s
spending per student has roughly tripled since 1970, adjusting for
inflation. If more money were going to help, it would have helped
by now.
People have lots of different ideas for fixing the District’s
public schools: smaller classes, smaller schools, more testing, stricter
credential requirements for teachers. Some of these ideas have some
evidence showing they might help; others have none. But they all have
one thing in common: it will be years before they make a serious difference.
They may or may not save tomorrow’s Hispanic kids; they definitely
won’t save today’s.
School vouchers, on the other hand, are a proven reform. Vouchers
pay for students’ tuition at private schools, allowing parents
to choose the school that is right for their children.
Seven studies of vouchers using the “random assignment”
method – the gold standard for research, the method used in
medical trials – have all found that students using vouchers
have better reading and math skills than comparable students who stay
in public schools. No other education reform even comes close to being
that well proven.
Vouchers are already helping Hispanic students in the District. This
year, 7% of the students who got school vouchers this past year through
the District’s new voucher program are Hispanic.
The Washington Scholarship Fund, which administers the program, has
done an outstanding job of getting the word out – bilingually
– in Hispanic neighborhoods. Given that the District’s
public school students are 10% Hispanic, achieving 7% representation
in the program’s first year is an impressive accomplishment,
especially since the Fund was given so little time to prepare before
the year started. It says it expects Hispanic representation to rise
in the coming year.
And the program is definitely reaching the families that need it most.
The average family income for all program participants is just $18,652,
and only 25% of the mothers in participating families have high school
diplomas. So much for the phony charge that vouchers only help rich
kids.
Lots of politicians and interest group spokesmen are telling the District’s
Hispanics that they don’t need vouchers. Just hang on for a
few more decades, they say, and we’ll fix the public schools
– and we swear that this time it will really work, even though
all our previous efforts have failed.
After decades of abysmal schools, the District’s Hispanic families
could be forgiven for thinking that these promises are never going
to be fulfilled. But it doesn’t matter – they don’t
have that kind of time anyway. Each child gets only one shot at a
good education; they need help today, not years down the road when
they can’t get a decent job because they can’t read.
Vouchers work, and they’re helping Hispanic students now. The
real question that the District’s Hispanic families should be
asking is: why won’t Congress expand the program and save more
of our kids?.
Greg Forster is a senior fellow at the Milton
and Rose D. Friedman Foundation. |
