Empowering the Poor: Why Justice Requires School Choice

Do vouchers offer real hope for economically disadvantaged students in American schools? David Van Heemst contends that school choice will give every parent, including poor ones, a voucher to select schools. Poor children will have the opportunity to attend the finest schools, and will have a major hurdle in their path, a poor education, removed.

Building on a twenty-year tradition of jurisprudence, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in July 2002 that there is no Establishment Clause violation in a well-designed system of school choice. The evidence from the small scale choice programs in Milwaukee and Cleveland suggests that not only do poor children benefit by maintaining or increasing their standardized test scores but also that families become empowered. Many polls demonstrate that not only poor parents favor school choice but that many middle and upper class Americans do too. As more parents get the opportunity to select their children's schools, other parents will demand the same opportunity.

Poor children will be the primary beneficiaries in a system of school choice. Schools and teachers will have the freedom to design curricula and methods targeted to meet the needs of every child. Not one child will be required to attend a substandard school merely due to economic status.

Justice requires that we evaluate systems and societies based upon how the least of us is treated. Justice demands that our K-12 system be transformed to make it similar to our university system so that a child's parent may select any accredited school with a voucher. The educational challenges of poor children have been well-documented in this book and Van Heemst offers a tangible solution.