Accountability?
This headline in the DC Examiner this morning caught my eye: “To save D.C. school vouchers, senators want accountability.” Well that sounds good- right? Yes, sure, we want ALL our schools to be accountable. So of course my next question was: “what about the (complete lack of) accountability in the DC public schools?” Humm… any of you guys want to give me an answer on that one? Accountability goes both ways.
Fortunately, the reporter gets it, and from the very beginning, she acknowledges that:
The call for more data to determine student success gets at the heart of the school choice debate: What determines the viability of a school: parental standards or government standards?
Sadly, it seems most politicians have lost all trust in the human race and our ability to do anything without the wise and wonderful hand of government telling us what to do and helping to make sure we know exactly how to live our lives.
I am ALL for accountability- especially when it comes to spending of taxpayer dollars. It is a good thing- but it must also be balanced. As we’ve argued here before- what should our education dollars be funding- education or schools? If we believe that education is the goal- let’s put accountability back in the hands of consumers. If parents have the ability to take their child out of a failing school- isn’t that accountability? If a parent has no options- and a school is failing their child- isn’t that a lack of accountability? Simply providing test scores and statistics to a government bureaucracy does not make a school accountable- does it?
Senator Dick Durbin and his cronies want us to believe that they are really looking out for the best interest of students with their empty talk about accountability for voucher students, when they have shown little genuine concern about the accountability of the DC public schools that are consistently failing students. Sure- maybe they have the enrollment numbers, the test scores, the drop-out rates- but when those public schools are consistently performing the worst in the entire nation- is there any real accountability?
I know that by now I shouldn’t be surprised, and that perhaps I shouldn’t let it get to me as much as it does, but our kids deserve better.
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