Guest commentary: Pro-voucher columns fail to sway Ogden voter
Friday, October 12, 2007
By Telitha Greiner
Guest commentary
Click here for the rest of the story!Paul Mero's Sept. 6 guest commentary ("School vouchers have worked for those who have needed them most") attempted to create the illusion that voucher programs work and that Utah students will, across the board, benefit from a voucher program here. Mr. Mero and his friends would also have you and I believe that vouchers, being funded by General Fund taxpayer dollars, are about parental choice.
* Vouchers create choice for private schools, not for disadvantaged parents and students. Private schools can and will discriminate with their student enrollment. Vouchers are public dollars that will pay for partial tuition at private schools. The majority of private schools in Utah are of a secular or religious origin. Vouchers are not new to the educational environment; they have been around at least since 1991. They are, at best, a social experiment mixed with a sense of improvement by competition with government. The potential winner or loser would be the gamble created with the education of our youth and the financial cost of trying.
* The Utah Constitution Article 1, Section 4 of 1896 says, "No public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship exercise or instruction or for the support of any ecclesiastical establishment." By omission, Mero also failed to inform voters about the Florida voucher program that he claims has worked. In fact, most of the Florida voucher program no longer exists, as it was deemed unconstitutional by the state's Supreme Court (2006), as were similar cases in Colorado and other states.
Unfortunately for Mr. Mero, the few truly objective studies that have been done reach an entirely different conclusion. In fact, independent studies of Milwaukee, Cleveland and Florida demonstrate that students using vouchers to attend private schools do not do better academically than their peers in public school.
Greiner is president-elect and an executive board member of the Ogden City School Foundation. She lives in Ogden, and is married to Sen. Jon Greiner [R], who represents Senate District 18 in the Legislature.
Post edited by Rob
