Vouchers and Parent Empowerment

* Re “Whoever Wins, Please Just Lift Up Our Ailing Schools,” Commentary, Aug. 22: Stanley Crouch understands very little about market economics. First, the fact that private schools are full is an indictment of the public school system in itself. Second, if parents had vouchers, two things would happen. Obviously, more private schools would open and existing schools would expand to meet the new demand, despite Crouch’s predictions to the contrary. Second, the public schools would have to reform to meet the demands of parents or cease to exist.

With vouchers, parents could demand more Knowledge Is Power Program academies rather than take the crumbs that the local school monopoly grudgingly provides to fend off criticism. But the key here is the empowerment of the parents. Gov. Gray Davis, in his anti-voucher ad, would have us believe that we need the state to monitor the performance of schools. No, thanks.

The problem with the current system is that the best and most dedicated monitoring system, parents, are cut out of the picture because they are powerless to effect reform. Our children have to attend the school to which they are assigned by the system.

JEFF McCOMBS

La Palma

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Shawn Walker (letter, Aug. 21) thinks it is strange that educators do not want to offer students options--that they seem more interested in keeping the government money flowing into the pockets of public education. All public school funding is government funding, and the voucher programs’ sole aim is to bleed the public school system. We should no more test vouchers than drive our own cars into walls to see how they survive a crash.

Yes, we want what is in the best interest of our children. To begin by taking $4,000 for every student in private education out of the public education budget is not in the interest of our children. To send our own students into a private education system that they can neither function in nor that will accept them is not in the interest of the children. Elaine Herold (letter, same day) is right. The scores go with the students. Private schools would not admit an overwhelming majority of the kids Proposition 38 purports to help.

NEIL BAREMBAUM

Burbank