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For Immediate Release
October 26, 2011
Contact: David Atkinson
717-787-6535

Floor Remarks - Senate Bill 1/School Choice/EITC/Charter Schools

From the start, my view has been to support education wherever it takes place: public schools, private schools, religious schools, charter schools, home-schools. Results – student achievement, parental satisfaction, instructional effectiveness – matter more than the system.

My three kids are in public schools. We are quite satisfied with their educational experience.  So my perspective is not that of someone disenchanted with public schools. Mine is the perspective of someone firmly convinced of the virtues of competition and choice.

Since joining the Senate, I have spent an extensive amount of time visiting education facilities and discussing education issues with individuals and professionals inside and outside the public schools. Learned a lot, and found more positives than the headlines suggest. Yet, everyone concedes there are monumental challenges in the day-to-day operations of our schools. Given that reality, it is hard to understand the time and resources and emotional intensity poured into stopping school choice.

When you engage educators in a discussion that goes beyond the standard arguments, they acknowledge that changes are coming. Because of advances in technology, and advances in its application in the classroom or through distance learning. Because of continuing research into how kids learn and how to better reach struggling students.  Because of the limitations the rough economy has imposed on traditional approaches to spending.  We appropriately give educators a lot of control over how schools operate. However, they do not have exclusive power to determine which changes are acceptable and which are not.

With an increasingly diverse student population, and with the economic stakes of a good education rising, we should be about finding ways to match students with programs that improve their prospects for success.

No single educational approach is going to fit all kids. Choice gives families of lesser means the opportunity to send their kids to a different school, an option currently available only to wealthier families or those who make incredible sacrifices. Opponents argue that choice is unfair. Where is the fairness in pushing for funding for all sorts of new and expanded programs inside public schools, but contending we cannot afford to do anything outside public schools?

Right now, the vast majority of students attend public schools. If we pass this bill, or something similar, the vast majority of students will still attend public schools. The rhetoric about privatizing education or abandoning public schools has no basis in the numbers.

There is one thing both sides agree on. Three provisions in the state Constitution make it difficult to put together a permissible program.  But those provisions are not rooted in noble principle. Their origin was in the prevalent anti-Catholic bias of more than a century ago. Is that really the bedrock on which we want to structure our education policy today?

One of Pennsylvania's greatest assets and advantages is our diversity of public and private colleges and universities. At the post-secondary level, we have school choice. Impossible to explain why it works well there, but would not at the primary or secondary level.

Anti-choice groups wave opinion polls indicating that a majority of Pennsylvanians oppose using tax dollars to support non-public education. No doubt the questioners plumb forgot to point out that tax dollars have been supporting non-public education for decades, for textbooks and for transportation.

Many in education are insisting on something called a level playing field. For twenty-five years, I owned a construction business.  That world was highly competitive. No two firms are the same. The differences provided the competition.  If different types of schools are made to look the same, competition has been squeezed from the equation.  The answer here is not to impose all sorts of requirements on non-public schools; rather, it is to loosen the straitjacket of excessive mandates with which public education is bound.

There is another misconception in this debate.  Defenders of the status quo assume the kids denied the opportunity to change schools are guaranteed to stay in failing or unsafe schools. The real risk is they may become dropouts.  That comes at a much higher cost than any choice program.

Being pro-competition does not equal being anti-public education.  Whatever benefits we hope to derive from our public schools, we depend on good teachers to deliver. The teacher bashing so prevalent these days is really counterproductive, for it discourages dedicated instructors from staying on and discourages emerging talent from entering the profession.

This bill is not the final answer for failing schools, for education options, for charter school accountability, or for any other education issue. The push for education improvement never concludes.  This bill has important purpose – opening the doors of opportunity for families who feel their kids are not well-served by their public school.  Giving a kid a fresh chance to learn, giving parents a fresh reason to become involved in the schools, surely is good policy and a worthy outcome.