Jane Harman: “parents across America are rightly concerned about the continued viability of our system of public elementary and…”

“parents across America are rightly concerned about the continued viability of our system of public elementary and secondary education. Public schools are great equalizers, the entities we've created to help socialize all children and give them the skills necessary to take advantage of the social and economic opportunities our country affords them. When schools fail to do their job, it's our children who suffer. To fix them we certainly need more resources, particularly textbooks, for children and teachers. But we also need standards and merit pay for teachers, the end of social promotion, the setting of goals for children, and most importantly, holding parents, teachers and administrators accountable for the performance of our school system. And until we begin looking seriously at these and other reforms, proposals like vouchers will continue to look attractive though, in my view, they are panaceas, if not anathema to public education itself.”