John White when appointed Louisiana's Superintendent of Schools in May, 2011

Louisiana is about to embark on a radical change of its public school system, exceeding anything done in any other state. Children from poor and middle-income families will have the opportunity to take state-funded vouchers to private schools. However, enrollment at a private school reduces the money available at public schools.

Superintendent of Education John White said state officials have at one time or another visited all 120 schools in the voucher program and approved their curricula, including specific texts. He said the state plans more “due diligence” over the summer, including additional site visits to assess capacity.

In general, White said he will leave it to principals to be sure their curriculum covers all subjects kids need and leave it to parents to judge the quality of each private school on the list.

That infuriates the teachers union, which is weighing a lawsuit accusing the state of improperly diverting funds from public schools to private programs of questionable value.

“Because it’s private, it’s considered to be inherently better,” said Steve Monaghan, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers. “From a consumer perspective, it’s buyer beware.”

To date, private schools have not had to give their students state standardized tests, so there’s no straightforward way for parents to judge their performance. Starting next year, any student on a voucher will have to take the tests; each private school must report individual results to parents and aggregate results to the state.

While White said that the 120 schools in the program have had their curriculum approved, he goes onto say that it is being left to the schools and parents to decide what is best. There is a contradiction in that. At best, those are lax standards of approval.

It is also disturbing to see the voucher system initialized without even a baseline for future comparisons. Private schools should have been required to take the same standardized tests that public schools have taken so the impact of this experiment could adequately be evaluated in the years ahead.

That brings forth one of the biggest problems with private schools. They can take government money, but not the requirements that public schools must follow. This leads to multiple problems.

While there are private schools that will undoubtedly do a better job at educating their pupils, the argument has always been that private schools can pick and choose their students. That gives private schools an advantage by selecting the best students, while public schools must take everyone, even the worst and least motivated students.

As private schools grow in number, that possibility may decline. However, the disparity between really good private schools and the run-of-the-mill private schools may grow. The top-notch schools have limited openings, while those that have been less successful are fully embracing the monies from the public coffers by taking all the vouchers that they can.

The big problem will be the hastening of public schools’ decline. Public school districts will still need to maintain an infrastructure that was designed for more students. Much of that infrastructure costs the same whether a school is half-full or completely full. Closing the schools increases transportation costs for both schools and parents as the schools move further away from some of their pupils. Eventually, that may even hinder local control. In addition, the students that remain will increasingly come from families that do not care about education.

None of that bodes well for Louisiana’s public schools.

That the public schools are failing many students is obvious, as evidence by the rates of high school dropouts and those that graduate with sub-par abilities in reading and math. Clearly, something needs to be done. Unfortunately, allowing different standards of education, while providing the same voucher for both public and private instruction, is not the way.

The problem rests with schools that are devised more to make a profit than educate children and those that are motivated by a Bible-based education that ignores the basic concepts of science, history and literature.

Far more openings are available at smaller, less prestigious religious schools, including some that are just a few years old and others that have struggled to attract tuition-paying students.

The school willing to accept the most voucher students — 314 — is New Living Word in Ruston, which has a top-ranked basketball team but no library. Students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.

The Upperroom Bible Church Academy in New Orleans, a bunker-like building with no windows or playground, also has plenty of slots open. It seeks to bring in 214 voucher students, worth up to $1.8 million in state funding.

The Upperroom Bible Church Academy in New Orleans, a bunker-like building with no windows or playground, also has plenty of slots open. It seeks to bring in 214 voucher students, worth up to $1.8 million in state funding.

At Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, pastor-turned-principal Marie Carrier hopes to secure extra space to enroll 135 voucher students, though she now has room for just a few dozen. Her first- through eighth-grade students sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains “what God made” on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution.

“We try to stay away from all those things that might confuse our children,” Carrier said.

Confusing the children with science? I’m afraid that the Eternity Christian Acadamy has it backward. It is going to create scientifically illiterate children who will not understand biology, geology and many other subjects. That kind of ignorance is going to lead them to a life of confusion.

This kind of teaching almost has more in common with the madrassas of Pakistan where children are taught only from the Koran. That is not the way to prepare children for a modern, technological society.

Louisiana has some of the worst schools in the country. Maybe this will work out better than the current system, but it seems that it just might expand the current trend that is creating a two-class society between the educated and not educated. Vouchers probably have a place in educational reform. However, without significant reforms in the public school systems, the public schools are only going to get worse and a lot of students are going to suffer.