The Quadrangle

Issue date: 3/23/05 Section: Perspectives

Education has always been a hot topic, with teachers and parents wanting the best for their children and students

As you may know, one of the most contentious issues dividing the Elite Northeastern Liberals like Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Texan Compassionate Conservatives like Pres. George W. Bush is the critically valuable issue of educating America's youth and education reform in general. On one hand, Liberals believe in a massive government bureaucracy managing and controlling the schools reminiscent of communism. While on the other hand, Conservatives believe in the value of private/parochial education in our free-market capitalist system that has lasted for nearly 225 years. In other words, Democrats believe that the best way to ensure, that "every American child should be able to read, write and do arithmetic" (President Bush) is for the government to raise taxes on poor working families in order to dole out a blank check to the Department of Education and public school bureaucracy. However, Republicans, including Republican-leaning Independents, believe that we can accomplish that same goal by giving those taxpayer-dollars directly to the parents via vouchers so that they could exercise their right to choose to send their children to a private or parochial school of their choice. The Republican plan, to be frank, is essentially similar in nature to the Federal government dispensing Pell Grants to us here at Manhattan College.

However, the voucher movement has failed to gain any steam, particularly in NYC, because of the virulent opposition by the public school teachers' union: The United Federation of Teachers. Of course, the teachers' union is naturally supposed to be against any so-called voucher movement because they're jobs are on the line; jobs which should be respected 100%. Unfortunately, to the dismay of thousands of poor-working families stuck in failing public schools because they did not have the privilege of being provided with a decent private education, our young people are stuck in the crossfire of ideological partisan politics. Therefore, I urgently demand that Liberals and Conservatives come together in a bi-partisan fashion to compromise on reasonable education reform for the thousands of poor-working families in NYC.

This compromise plan would simply (1) unite public and private schools by having the public schools join the voucher movement, (2) guarantee that parents by maintaining the accountability of the school system via a consumer comes first mentality, and (3) ensure that the teachers directly control the education bureaucracy while being self-employed. First, according to the current education budget, New York State spends an unbelievable 10,000 of taxpayer money per-pupil within the public school system, while inner-city schools are still disgraceful. Therefore, I propose that the people of New York mobilize to demand that the bureaucrats in Albany grant a $5000 (the avg. price of private elementary/secondary school tuition, and the amount that the Federal Government gives us via Pell Grants) grant to every single parent to send their children for a private school of their choice. Not only will this plan enhance parental control of the system, it will automatically slash the education budget in half.

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