DaytonDailyNews.com

'Vouchers are undemocratic'

"To me, vouchers are inherently undemocratic because they allow public dollars to be used in ways and in settings where the public has little or no oversight.

"Those who are paying those tax dollars have no ability to vote for a board of education or to make determinations regarding curriculum, or discipline or admission policies or a whole range of things.

"Ohio's implementation of the charter school movement has been a dismal, dismal failure. Some states have done it rather well with apparently positive results. In Ohio, it's been a story of mismanagement, fiscal and educational failure, and it's turned into a for-profit operation for certain individuals."

— Gov. Ted Strickland, in an interview with the Associated Press

'Strengthen system that serves the most'

"Critics see the (governor's charter school and voucher) proposals as a blatant sop to a special interest group, the Democratic governor returning a favor to teachers unions for their electoral support. The criticism discounts long-standing and valid concerns about the voucher and charter programs.

"The proposals point clearly to the intention of the new administration: To focus the state's efforts more on improving the quality of traditional public schools, where the vast majority of Ohio's children are educated, than on supporting an alternate system that has shown even less satisfactory results.

"(Gov. Ted) Strickland contends the charter and voucher experiments have been a diversion — and wasteful, too — from the fundamental challenge to maintain a school system that meets the needs of the larger public. That's not to say hundreds of students have not benefited from the options. Or that there have been no outstanding schools. It is to argue that the better public policy is to spend public money to strengthen the system that serves the most students.

"The rapid expansion of charter schools has been a detriment to the goal legislators espoused, which was to create models of exceptional education, free of bureaucracy and, preferably, cheap.

"The proposed freeze on new charter schools is overdue. It would provide the breathing room needed to create a consistent system of state oversight and evaluation of performance and management. That should help separate the outstanding schools from the frauds and nonperformers."

— From a March 19 Akron Beacon Journal editorial