Everyone wins by allowing parents to use their education taxes for school choice, including charters, parochial, private, home and public schools. Teacher unions and the school boards they control have badly damaged the U.S. education quality. Many U.S. cities have found improved education quality by ending the association with teacher unions and public school boards, through approval of vouchers and charter school funding. No one loses because the funding for vouchers or charter schools is always less than the public school costs.
It was heartening to read that Inspire charter school will share facilities with Chico High School. Most school boards and their teacher union sponsors, will fight tooth and nail to prevent parents from forming a more academic fulfilling charter or a voucher school. Indiana is an example of an enlightened state with voucher and charter schools.
Two sets of grandchildren live in neighborhoods with failing and overfunded public schools, one set in Indianapolis and another in San Jose. The inner city Catholic school attended by three grandkids has a 100 percent grade school and 99 percent high school graduation rate. That compares to a 60 percent public high school dropout rate in the inner city neighborhood. The San Jose charter school grandkids parents faced the same challenge as most California charter schools. They are underfunded and have second-class facilities, but outstanding academic success.
All taxpayers would win if any parent could use a $5,000 voucher or a charter school slot, at half the taxpayer cost of a public school child.
— Joseph J. Neff, Corning