Vouchers,+education+reform+plan+needs+details,+debate

=//By Matthew Major//= =//Published by Public Opinion Online//= =//10/12/11//=

=The next assault on public education in Pennsylvania begins today with our governor's highly-anticipated unveiling of an education reform plan that seems mostly intended to reform public education by driving people away from it.= =Let's consider its four main components:= =-- Expansion of the $75 million educational improvement tax credit;= =-- Asking taxpayers to take on the huge cost of sending other peoples' children to private schools;= =-- An overhaul of the state's charter school law; and= =-- A requirement that teachers be evaluated in part by the school performance of children who cannot be reached.= =Consider that these goals -- both individually and taken together -- place little to no emphasis on reforming the public school model we already have. They seem designed to enable student migration away from public schools.= =To that end, making taxpayers subsidize private school educations for other families is the key. Publicly-funded private school vouchers are opposed by a big majority of Pennsylvanians, but privately-owned charter schools are going to need students to come from somewhere.= =Plus, if we evaluate teacher performance according to student performance -- right before federal education performance benchmarks increase to their tightest tolerances yet -- we make a more powerful case against public schools.= =Do not forget: Our governor dealt with a huge revenue deficit last year by massively cutting school funding instead of taxing the natural gas drillers who financed his campaign.= = = =If Corbett wants to embark on such a radical reshaping of public schools, he should have been talking about specific policy long before today.= =As such, we recommend -- for the benefit of taxpayers and voters -- that these four alleged reforms be put forward in separate pieces of legislation. Omnibus bills that pass multiple pieces of legislation at once tend to obscure their components' crucial details.= =If they're great ideas taken together, after all, they're also great ideas standing on their own. Surely our lawmakers can find the time to prepare and consider each one, individually, according to its own merits.= =//-- By Matthew Major, opinion editor and member of Public Opinion's editorial board//=

= = =News= =home=