Middle Cities Education Association
ORGANIZATIONAL STATEMENT AGAINST VOUCHERS

The Middle Cities Education Association, a consortium of 34 urban school districts across the state of Michigan, was formed out of a shared commitment to improving educational opportunities for all students. MCEA continues its longstanding opposition to vouchers for the following reasons.

1. Vouchers are a diversion. They take time and energy away from needed reforms in public schools. Vouchers have political appeal because they give public officials an easy way out of having to deal with costly, comprehensive school reform. Vouchers do nothing to improve education for those remaining in the public system. In theory, they are supposed to cause bad schools to reform themselves by threatening them with market competition. In fact, they make reform harder, if not impossible, by siphoning away resources and skimming off good students, leaving the most troubled children and the most apathetic families behind.
2. Vouchers are taxation without representation. Vouchers funnel public dollars to private and parochial schools, yet taxpayers have no say in how these schools are run. Public schools have always been accountable for how they spend their tax dollars. There is no such accountability under the ballot language Michigan's voucher advocates have submitted to rewrite the Michigan Constitution. If private and parochial schools are going to take state tax dollars, they need to be held accountable in the same manner required by public and charter schools. It's the only fair approach.
3. Vouchers siphon money from financially strapped public schools and public education programs. An exodus of thousands of students could drain tens of millions of dollars from local school districts, leaving distressed institutions even worse off. On the basis of the argument that what the public schools lack is competition, we are asked to weaken the single best hope we have for meeting the massive needs of our "at risk" students. The voucher plan, in the long run, will weaken the ability of the only mechanism we have to change the lot of the great mass of students by reducing the support available to help the public schools meet the extraordinary challenges they face.
4. Voucher schools can pick and choose their students, unlike public schools. Public schools exist to serve every child and the public good. The country is showing improvement on a whole range of indices of social distress-unemployment, violence, teen pregnancy, abortion and school achievement. Public schools are the best opportunity to change the patterns left by this country's history of race and class conflict. Vouchers do not advance this process. In the end, vouchers will provide fewer options, not more, and weakened public schools will be left with the most needy children with fewer resources to meet their needs. Vouchers will undermine our public schools, leaving those least able to demand change in the public system. While some children will opt out, the great majority will be left in classrooms that offer them even less of a chance of a decent education.
5. Educational leaders know a good deal about what works. Attracting qualified, experienced teachers to failing schools is a crucial step. Likewise, longer school days, extended school year, smaller class sizes and access to quality preschool programs can improve achievement among disadvantaged children. Vouchers do none of these things. Instead, they undermine our public school efforts, weakening the ability of the only mechanism we have to change the lot of the great mass of students.