Statement by Edward J. McElroy,
President, American Federation of Teachers
On the Ohio State Legislature's Expansion of the Ineffective School Voucher Program
 

Washington, D.C. — The Ohio Legislature is poised to approve a budget that proves voucher supporters’ political goals take priority over students’ real needs. The Legislature is squeezing funding for hundreds of school districts in Ohio, including Cincinnati, Cleveland, Toledo and other cities where AFT members—teachers and other school staff—are making extraordinary efforts to educate Ohio’s children.  At the same time the Legislature is making cuts, it is throwing good money after bad to fund vouchers, which have been discredited as a means of reform by study after independent study. 

Politics, not good policy, is driving this rush to vouchers.  Most voucher supporters have never uttered a word of support for such highly successful programs as class-size reduction, which solid education research demonstrates has huge benefits for disadvantaged students.  They have been silent on the issue of the gross underfunding of poor children’s schools and the huge disparities in spending between advantaged and disadvantaged children.  And they have done nothing to promote early childhood education, even though research shows it makes a dramatic difference in boosting disadvantaged students’ achievement in school. 

There is good reason voters nationwide have rejected vouchers every time they have come to a vote.  The evidence simply is not there to support vouchers as a means of reform.  This is bad education policy and a bad investment, especially at a time when the Legislature is proposing a budget that will worsen the fiscal crisis facing urban school districts in Ohio. 

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