Recent newspaper articles and editorials have outlined the debate for vouchers, which use public funds for private school tuition.
Voucher proponents argue that unhappy parents need options when, in reality, parental choice is already a fact. Parents in Utah can make choices about their children's education and no law prevents that. Many east-side schools wouldn't exist otherwise.
It seems the issue isn't about parental choice per se, but rather an attempt by some people to justify the use of public money for private purposes.
Talk at the water cooler of professional stagnation, lack of accountability, achievement gaps, drop-out rates and grossly uncivil behavior, demonstrates without question that the public schools need to do a better job of teaching who some may label as unteachable. Therein rests the challenge of teaching.
But the answers to this worthwhile challenge lie far beyond the simplistic business metaphors and economic concepts such as competition touted by voucher advocates. Public education is a social institution, not a factory.
In education we deal with people, not units of production. No matter the eventual outcome, every student is a valued individual. Teachers do not achieve greater results by cutting losses or survival of the fittest. There is no shareholder equity to dominate decision making and certainly no need to show a profit.
The process of education is not about winners and losers. It involves the lives of growing, changing individuals each with their own unique potential for success or failure.
While private schools are a rational alternative for many students, they are not the solution for the challenges facing the public's educational system. It is more than likely that a private school wouldn't bother with difficult, low-achieving or differently challenged students in the first place. Being private, they simply don't have to.
Quite simply, some students are not as cost-efficient to educate as others, but that is not a business challenge. That is a social challenge.
It is beyond the scope of this opinion piece to lay out a detailed plan for school reform, but anything that increases the number of adults involved in a student's life, stronger alternatives for non-mainstream students and sufficient funding to support mandated objectives is headed in the right direction.
Most important, in our society, the public school system provides access to a free and appropriate education for all students regardless of ability, race or economic background, despite funding concerns and without profit motive.
People make personal choices every day that affect their lives, but an important boundary is crossed when taxpayers are asked to pick up the tab for the private choices of others. Let's not waste time whining about what the rich can afford.
They will always be able to take care of themselves, but the rest of us need to work together to figure out how we all will take care of each other.
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* KEITH HOMER, Midvale, teaches Spanish, Foreign Language Exploration, government and English as a second language at a public charter school, the Academy for Math, Engineering, and Sciences.
