No support here for school vouchers

Alaska and the Mat-Su aren’t strangers to contentious issues. Some of the same issues that divide the public — like coal mining and the proposed Knik Arm bridge — also spark serious debate among Frontiersman staff.

But when it comes to one of the most divisive issues facing the Alaska Legislature this year, we find ourselves unified. Simply stated, school vouchers are a bad idea.

We don’t arrive at this opinion lightly. Certain members of our legislative delegation can testify to long meetings at which the case for vouchers has been stated. We have heard the sales pitch, and we’re not buying it.

Perhaps there is some bias here. We are all — save one who attend both private and public schools — products of the public education system and feel the experience served us well. Some of us have children in those schools, and most of us believe our children also are being well-served.

We also are not in a high-paying profession and recognize that in making a choice to send our children to a private or even a charter school, a family needs to have a certain degree of financial freedom. Like many in the Valley, we don’t work jobs that allow us to transport our children to these schools.

We don’t begrudge people who do. We are happy for them.

But there’s a good reason our state constitution specifically forbids the spending of public money on private school education.

Public education is the bedrock of a thriving democracy because of the equality of opportunity it provides. Diverting public money to private schools, as Governor Parnell and the Mat-Su legislative delegation support doing, will only widen the divide between families that can afford private schools and families that cannot.

We also haven’t heard an honest discussion of the issues facing our public school system, just anecdotal generalities and cherry-picked data, much of which comes from Outside interests that have nothing to do with what’s best for Alaskans.

That’s why we applaud a recent study commissioned by the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce. The statewide survey of teachers and families reveals some interesting data that has been absent from any discussion in the halls of the Capitol.

Chamber president Andrew Halcro, a former lawmaker and gubernatorial candidate, hit the nail on the head, in our opinion, when he spoke of what the study showed.

“If we really want to improve public school outcomes,” he said, “policy-makers need to consider the relevant data and finally understand public schools before rushing to make the biggest changes to our education system in the history of Alaska.”

The Anchorage Chamber of Commerce study is not alone. Multiple surveys and statistics point to poverty and home environment as the core reasons students are failing. For the most part, public schools that struggle academically are in poor neighborhoods.

In Alaska, where the bulk of education funding comes from the state, it’s not a matter of rich neighborhoods getting more tax money. It is a matter of children having parents with time to invest in their upbringing.

Vouchers will never address this problem.