Letters to the Editor

Why Fear School Vouchers?

To the Editor:

There have been a couple of letters concerning school vouchers recently. Personally, I see no problem with options for school choice given what’s happening in schools these days. Why shouldn’t parents have the option to choose where their children go to school?

One cannot argue that public schools are being inundated with teachings that are not about learning what is necessary to succeed in the world. Schools are forcing other teachings that are not reading, writing, history, and math on students without parental knowledge or consent. One is the books being pushed into schools. Let me state that I don’t agree with banning books. That is a slippery and dangerous slope to go down. That being said, I do believe that children should be allowed to be children, without undue influence from those with a particular agenda who provide books and other teachings that push that agenda. In addition, school boards are having parents thrown out of meetings or even arrested. Schools, school boards, and teachers are hiding things about their children from their parents. These things more than justify school choice. And let’s not forget the Department of Justice’s move to consider parents domestic terrorists because they disagreed with what was happening in schools.

I know there are many, many great teachers in Texas schools. However, they are bound to teach what the agencies (the Commissioner of Education, the State Board of Education (SBOE), or the Texas Education Agency (TEA)) say they are to teach. So parents should have options. If public schools are providing what parents want for their children, then they will keep their children in public schools. If parents determine that what their children are being taught does not meet their expectations, then they should have the right to use their tax dollars to find a school that does meet their expectations. The bottom line is it’s about the children; people seem to forget that. People also forget that parents, not schools nor the government, are responsible for their children.

There is one big difference between public schools and private schools. Public schools are run by one or all of the agencies listed above and teachers answer to them, not the parents. In private schools, there is not a lot of interfering from government agencies so the schools report directly to the parents. While private schools do get grants and donations, the majority of their funding depends on tuition paid by parents. So parents have much more control over what their children are being taught. Why exactly is that a bad thing?