Vouchers would lead to excellence in education

I am a licensed government and history teacher, and I hope voucher or tuition tax credit legislation passes this session. I taught English in the former Soviet Union and can compare their economic and education systems with ours. Our products and services were unbelievably better than theirs, but our education systems were run the same and had similar outcomes. From my experience, I realized that we needed to apply American economic principles to our education system if we were going to get the same level of excellence that we have with our other products and services.

The American system of competition leads to excellence — whether it is our technology, medicine, higher education, or other products and services. It is time to apply that system to our pre-college education system. If parents are unhappy with the academics, behavior, morals or philosophy in their children's public schools, they should have the option to transfer them to a better school.

For example, the per-pupil cost of educating a child in Utah's public schools is about the same as the tuition at Challenger School, which has about the best standardized test scores in the state (go to utahschools.org). Challenger also has high behavioral standards and teaches important values.

I see and hear what goes on in the public schools. I wish parents could see what their children are exposed to on a daily basis. The language, bullying, drugs and immorality are out of control. If it costs the same, why shouldn't parents have the option to transfer their children? We do pay the taxes, after all. The rich already have the option of transferring their children to the best schools, whether public or private. A need-based voucher would give that option to every parent and save district money to increase teacher pay, decrease class sizes, etc.

Some say that competition would hurt the public schools. I disagree. It would give them an incentive to improve, just as competition on the university level has caused both public and private universities to improve. As a result, our university system is the envy of the world. However, the U.S. pre-college education system is producing low international test scores (to mention just one problem). Vouchers would lead to healthy competition and excellence in our public and private schools. (Go to edexutah.org or friedmanfoundation.org to learn more.)

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Joshua Mordecai lives in Orem.