Vouchers Needed to Keep Kids Safe
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 By Beth LearA “small blast” exploded in the cafeteria of a central Ohio middle school yesterday…a bomb threat was phoned in to Pickerington Central on May 16th…the FBI was called in to investigate on-line threats against an Upper Arlington school in May…several bomb threats resulted in the evacuation of Thomas Worthington High School in October…and then there’s the infamous incident where several boys sexually and physically assaulted a disabled girl at Mifflin High School, an assault which was then covered up by the school administration.
Those are just a few of central Ohio’s statistics on school violence.
Cleveland Public schools experienced 74 assaults, 102 threats, 2 cases of menacing and 2 shootings last year, and all these offenses were just against teachers! I wonder how the students survive in that environment. One of the Cleveland teachers said this, “10 percent of the students are making the other 90 percent afraid to come to school.” No doubt. And the teachers’ union in Cleveland claimed, “About 3 out of 4 teachers said they felt safe in their schools.” That means more than 25% of the teachers are afraid to be there.
Then there’s Cincinnati. Not only is there an unacceptable level of violence in some of the Cincinnati public schools, but the school system has, whether intentionlly or not, denied students the opportunity to use EdChoice vouchers for schools that are in academic failure or watch. This new trick is accomplished by combining poorly performing schools into new schools that haven’t been open long enough to meet the eligibility requirements of the program. Well, Hays-Porter Elementary may be “too new” to be judged academically, but it can certainly be judged too violent. The newly created school has been in the news lately, and the news is not good. The Cincinnati Enquirer found numerous incidents of intimidation and bullying. One student had to go to the hospital after a fight, another needed surgery to fix a “severe” eye injury after being punched in the face, and a third student suffered the partial amputation of her finger. A brawl erupted in the main office, a teacher was hit with a belt, and the security team leader claimed the school was in a constant state of disarray.
Here in Ohio we have vouchers for Autistic students and vouchers for students stuck in school buildings that perform poorly academically. The Ohio House is considering a bill to provide a limited number of scholarships to students with disabilities. What about the students who are afraid to set foot in their neighborhood school? What about the students who are afraid to get on the bus?
The Federal Government recognized this problem and in the No Child Left Behind law “allows students in schools that have been designated as “persistently dangerous” to transfer to another public school in the same district, or a charter school. The catch of the Unsafe School Choice Option, however, is that each state has been allowed to define for itself what a “chronically unsafe” school is. As a result, only six states reported having even one dangerous school in the 2005-06 school year.”
A report by the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services on violent crime in Ohio’s primary and secondary schools claimed, “The presence of violent crime in a school setting can have a dramatic impact on the ability of our children to achieve in school.” That is a colossal understatement. It can also have a dramatic impact on their physical and emotional health and safety. Our children deserve the fundamental right of a safe environment in which to learn. Is that too much to ask?
June 5th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
I must be missing the point. What is Buckeye proposing?
Should the “dangerous” kids get vouchers so they go off to a charter school, presumably one that specializes in dangerous kids. Wouldn’t they be just as dangerous in their new surroundings?
Should the non-dangerous kids get the vouchers leaving just the dangerous kids in the public schools?
Or is there something inherent in the public schools that make kids who are predisposed to not be dangerous turn into thugs when they set foot through the door.
There are a lot of good arguments for vouchers. This isn’t one of them.
June 8th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
The Federal Government, as noted in the blog, has already noticed that violence in schools is a problem and that students have the right to a safe and secure education environment. If the Feds have picked up on this, we are much too far behind.
Teachers have long complained that they do not have enough options for disciplining poorly behaved students. They are right.
But until this problem is resolved, if it ever is, parents should be given the right to send their children to an environment where they do not have to worry that their child will be raped, assaulted or brutalized. Special Needs Scholarships are an answer to this problem for a small number of parents, whose learning and physically disabled children suffer abuse by other students at six times the rate of their non-disabled peers. Are you suggesting that all parents who fear for the safety of their kids don’t deserve the same option of removing their children from unsafe schools? I can’t think of a more important reason for a voucher.
June 9th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Beth is 100 percent correct. People who oppose vouchers on the grounds that the good or in this case well behaved kids will leave and only the bad students and misbehavers will remain have lost sight of the job of publicly funded edcuation. And that is to provide the means of edcuation. If parents of bad students and violent students cannot control them, too bad, it is not the taxpayers’ job. Parents need to know their kids are safe and receiving some education when they send them out the door each morning.
Where there is mayhem and lack of order, every nickel spent is being wasted. Seems like a strong argument for vouchers to me.