Emily Miller: Another side to the school choice question

There is another side to the question of school choice. How does this fit in with our system of self-governance? How does this work with taxation and representation?

Our system of self-governance, conceived by our Founding Fathers, is a constitutional republic in which, at each level — local, state and national — we elect from amongst ourselves representatives to make decisions regarding policies, bills, taxation, etc. We have a duty to keep tabs on our representatives by reading and paying attention to the policies and bills being discussed, as well as on how our representatives voted.

We can discuss with our representatives our stance on these policies and bills, and, on how our taxes, our hard-earned money, are being used. We can vote for other people to represent us, if need be.

None of this happens with school choice. Parents, who are not elected, take their neighbors’ school tax dollars to use at whatever charter school they choose, and this money is used the way a charter school wishes — taxpayers do not have a say in this.

The members of charter school boards are selected rather than elected. Even if a publicly elected school director is eventually required by law to sit on a charter school board (which has been proposed) that will still not provide taxpayers recourse, since none of the other charter school board members are elected.

Wastefulness by charter schools cannot be checked by taxpayers since there is no elected representation. Pennsylvania cyber charter schools alone recently spent $35 million in tax dollars on advertising over a two-year period.

If a charter school fails, tax dollars are simply lost — taxpayers do not have an opportunity to try to rectify the problems at the school by demanding improvements in curriculum or pedagogy or anything.

So, the function of charter schools amounts to private gain, public loss. And, taxation without representation.

Parents and taxpayers have the responsibility to make sure their local public schools and their elected representatives on public school boards are educating students to effectively shoulder the responsibilities of adulthood and citizenship as well as making wise use of tax dollars. How can taxpayers keep track of the possibly 15 or so charter schools operating in their local school districts?

Further, the data on charter schools indicates that most charter schools in Pennsylvania are not doing any better than public schools at educating students, and, actually, quite a few of them are doing worse, particularly cyber charter schools. According to Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes 2019 report, over 80% of Pennsylvania charter schools perform below the 50th percentile in both reading and math achievement.

I have great sympathy for parents whose kids are in districts where the education is not as good as it could be. Improving a school’s education can take years of hard work. But, eroding our system of self-governance and taxing our citizenry, all the while without representation, is not the answer. There are certainly many problems in public education coming from many directions.

But when everyone pays close attention to our local public school districts — to the quality of the curriculum and their dedication to excellence — as well as to the Departments of Education — whether or not we have or had kids enrolled, education can be improved. Our republic depends upon it.

Emily Miller is a Greensburg Salem School Board member.