Wrong Kind of Help

The Reagan Administration will propose a $200-million increase in federal support for educating disadvantaged children next year--a welcome expansion of the program. But the Administration’s proposal is flawed by the inclusion of a most unwelcome addition to federal programs--a revised voucher plan that could weaken the public schools that most need strengthening.

Increased funding would permit the extending of services to an additional 400,000 children, according to the Department of Education estimate. That is impressive. But, as the department also pointed out, targeting is as important as the numbers are. Under the present program, 70% of the nation’s elementary schools share $3.9 billion a year. That may be spreading the money too thin. Obviously the neediest schools should have the first claim on the funds.

The Education Department’s remedy for weaknesses in the existing program seems a bad one to us. The department, modifying its earlier voucher proposals, now suggests that states be authorized in effect to punish schools with bad performances and to offer the parents in those schools vouchers that they could take to other schools, including private and religious schools, to pay for remedial work.

That sort of harsh competition can work with the tangibles of the marketplace, but it is a formula for weakening public education when it is applied to the intangibles of schooling. We remain convinced that public funds should be spent on public schools alone, and that any formula for moving tax money to private and parochial schools will certainly erode the public-school system.

There are, inevitably, differences in performance among schools. Education itself, particularly remedial education, is not a science. There is no simple answer to overcoming the handicaps that slow the schooling of the disadvantaged.

But in seeking improvements in such programs, and in helping schools do a more effective job, the course most likely to be productive is to bolster the local boards of education so that they have the resources to respond to the needs of the communities that they serve. Their shortcomings will only be worsened if, as the Education Department proposes, the state can declare “educational bankruptcy” in particular schools and encourage those parents to send their children elsewhere.