Officials vie over voucher plans

Click on the headline to read the entire story.

What is happening in Milwaukee is a debate on school choice. In this plan, public school children can take money out of MPS and put it into a private school.

When the plan was started, I was all for it. Kids whose parents really cared could get into an already well-established, successful school. The kids could learn how to read, write and act.

Now, the program has attracted con artists from all over. On the north side of Milwaukee, where most poor minorities live, scam schools have opened up. Kids have very few or NO certified teachers, they don't take state assessment tests, and many times no disapline is enforced because principals do not want to lose money. These schools are even worse than the public schools.

The problem is that MPS tries to provide services for special ed. students, which cost much more to educate than regular students. When all this money is being taken out of the public school, these services can not be provided.

Both Dem's and Republicans want to increase how many kids can leave MPS. Both want there to be more accountability on these choice schools. Good.

The problem with making it unlimited is that when you have too many public school kids who have no reading, writing or behavior skills, they change the entire environment of a choice school, to the point that you basically haev another failing public school that is not accountable to the tax payers. You would think people on the Right would want accountability for all this money.

Solution: Make choice schools take all the state tests, and report those test to the media. You will find that many of them are worse than MPS. The ones that do well, can ask for more choice seats to be filled. Very simple.

The failure of public schools is in the entire community, not just the school building. Simply moving all these kids to choice schools does not solve the problem.

If I was a Republican who didn't work in the inner city every day, I would think what they do. That public schools suck and we need to get everyone out.

But since I actually know what goes on in MPS AND choice schools, I know it is not that simple. This choice program in current form is the educational scam of our time. Lets hope our public officials can fix it....because if it is done right, it can be a great thing.