We're trying something new today: an occasional report card that offers a quick analysis of education reform news from around the country. Who gets a satisfactory? Who's in need of improvement? Read on.
The Huffington Post is a fair news outlet when it comes to offering a broad range of view on education reform. But sometimes it voluntarily repeats the same bizarre or weak criticisms of school choice. Joy Resmovits' most recent article on the DOJ suit against Louisiana vouchers gives added weight to bizarre, one-off criticisms while not giving enough weight to the evidence supporting vouchers.
Joy reports the "evidence on the value of vouchers is limited." I'm not sure how she means to use the word "limited." Results are "limited" in the sense that vouchers themselves are generally only available to a small group of highly disadvantaged students who then receive a relatively small scholarship to attend private schools. The value is usually around half the amount spent on a district public school. Even then, 11 of the 12 of the random assignment studies on the value of vouchers shows positive results for students using them.
In another instance, Joy references a private school which teaches that the Loch Ness monster is evidence in favor of the Young Earth Creationist theory. It's a point of criticism Joy has raised in at least three other articles on vouchers, but it really doesn't deserve the weight and attention she gives it. The use of the Loch Ness monster is so weird even other creationists make fun of it.
Using a rare and off-the-wall case in a private school to criticize an entire voucher system would be like me criticizing public education because a single district banned a lesbian girl from wearing a tuxedo for her senior portrait, or because a district has a high school named after one of the Ku Klux Klan founders, or because a district banned a book from the library - or any number of other examples of bad and/or discriminatory behavior in our nation's schools.
