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Good Money after Bad?

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According to a Tribune Review report this morning the Pittsburgh school district needs $44 million dollars in order to receive all of the $40 million in the Gates Foundation grant. All the money is to go to yet another remaking of education in the district.

Here’s the untold story. The Pittsburgh district spent $525 million in the last school year to educate 26,123 students. That amounts to over $20,000 per pupil. And that does not count all the money being doled out by the Promise Program to district graduates to help with college costs. Despite all the spending and programs, enrollment continues to plunge at the rate of a thousand students a year. Does anyone think this new effort and additional spending will succeed in the Pittsburgh environment?

Pittsburgh schools have engaged in countless reforms over the years and still have dismally performing high school students. One very important reform has never been tried nor is it likely to be-the establishment of a voucher program to allow students to opt out of poorly performing public schools. It is always the same argument: vouchers would allow the best students to escape and undermine the public schools. Never has it been considered that the public owes students the best opportunity to learn and it is morally reprehensible to force them to attend grotesquely inadequate public schools. Schools that administration after administration have failed to improve in any meaningful way.

Moreover, competition might actually force the worst schools to try to get better at delivering education. But the denial of opportunity of a good education to kids and parents who want and value quality education reflects a seriously distorted moral compass.

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