Here’s an interesting letter penned by Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association — the largest union in the country (hat tip to Cato’s own Neal McCluskey). It reads, in part (boldface added, ALL CAPS “shouting” in the original):
Letter to the Democrats in the House and Senate on DC Vouchers
March 05, 2009
Dear Senator:
The National Education Association strongly opposes any extension of the District of Columbia private school voucher (“DC Opportunity Scholarship”) program. We expect that Members of Congress who support public education, and whom we have supported, will stand firm against any proposal to extend the pilot program. Actions associated with these issues WILL be included in the NEA Legislative Report Card for the 111th Congress.
Vouchers are not real education reform. Pulling 1,200 children out of a system that serves 65,000 doesn’t solve problems — it ignores them. Real reform will put a qualified teacher in every classroom, keep their skills up to date with continuing education, and raise pay to attract and retain the best teachers. Rather than offering a chance for a few, we should be ensuring that every child has access to a great public school.
Opposition to vouchers is a top priority for NEA. Throughout its history, NEA has strongly opposed any diversion of limited public funds to private schools.…
According to his bio, president Van Roekel used to teach high school math, so I assume he is an able number cruncher. But as someone who used to be a computer software engineer, I think an old comp. sci. adage is apropos: “Garbage‐in, Garbage‐out.” It doesn’t matter how good your number crunching is if the numbers you crunch are nonsense.
As I have previously pointed out, enrollment in DC this year is nearly 20,000 students lower than Van Roekel imagines. The “limited public funds” he seems to think are allocated to k‐12 education in DC amount to $26,555 per pupil. The DC voucher program’s enabling legislation actually increases funding to DC public schools by $13 million per year, and the average tuition charged by voucher‐accepting private schools was $5,928 last year.
So the DC voucher program is 4 times more efficient than DCPS, and gets far more positive reviews from parents in the bargain, according to the Dept. of Education’s own study of the program. If it were expanded to serve every student in the district, it would save on the order of half a billion dollars, even allowing for a higher average tuition.
Now let’s see… what other reasons might president Van Roekel have for wanting to kick 1,700 poor kids in DC out of schools they love?