Public School Teachers Send Their Kids to Private Schools

No one knows the con­di­tions and qual­i­ty of U.S. gov­ern­ment schools bet­ter than those who teach in them.

And pub­lic-school teach­ers are putting their kids in pri­vate schools at rates far high­er than the gen­er­al pub­lic, accord­ing to a new study by the Thomas B. Ford­ham Insti­tute, based upon 2000 cen­sus data. 

21.2 per­cent of urban pub­lic-school teach­ers send their chil­dren to non-gov­ern­ment (pri­vate) schools. That’s almost 75 per­cent high­er than the nation­al aver­age of 12.2 per­cent of fam­i­lies. That’s also much high­er than the nation­al urban fam­i­ly rate of 17.5 percent.

But that’s just the start. Where gov­ern­ment schools are worst, far larg­er num­bers of teach­ers send their kids to pri­vate schools. An incred­i­ble 44 per­cent of pub­lic-school teach­ers in Philadel­phia sent their chil­dren to pri­vate schools. Oth­er fig­ures: Chica­go, 39 per­cent; Bal­ti­more, 35 per­cent; San Francisco/Oakland, 34 per­cent; New York/Northeastern New Jer­sey, 33 per­cent; Boston, 28 per­cent; and 27 per­cent in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

The study also found that “even when the finan­cial sac­ri­fice required for pri­vate edu­ca­tion is greater, urban pub­lic-school teach­ers still choose pri­vate schools for their chil­dren at high­er rates than urban fam­i­lies with sim­i­lar incomes.” 

Teach­ers and oth­ers may be able to afford alter­na­tives to gov­ern­ment schools, but those with low­er incomes or less resources don’t have that same free­dom of choice. They’re pris­on­ers of fail­ing gov­ern­ment schools, thanks to anti-school-choice laws — laws strong­ly pushed by the labor union a major­i­ty of teach­ers belong to.

The 2.7 mil­lion-mem­ber Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion (NEA) — the nation’s largest labor union — says it oppos­es “tuition tax cred­its for ele­men­tary and sec­ondary schools; the use of vouch­ers or cer­tifi­cates in edu­ca­tion; [and] fed­er­al­ly man­dat­ed parental option or ‘choice’ in edu­ca­tion programs.”

What­ev­er the NEA’s inten­tion, the result is that, while most NEA mem­bers can escape fail­ing gov­ern­ment schools, a large enough num­ber of less for­tu­nate chil­dren are kept as cap­tives in those same schools to sup­ply jobs for teach­ers who would nev­er send their own chil­dren there.

Source: Wash­ing­ton Times
http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20041002–102019-6379r.htm