When 12-year-old Jamia Clark attended the African Children Advanced Learning Center in Oakland, California, she brought home honors in spelling and wrote weekly biographical essays about leaders like Rosa Parks. Most important, Jamia took pride in her work and in her school. But when her mother lost her job, Jamia's extended family could no longer pay the school's $175 monthly tuition. The family had no choice but to enroll Jamia in a public school in one of California's most beleaguered districts.
The change in Jamia was dramatic, says her grandmother, Nicole Williams. "She came home with spelling words she had learned in the third grade. She was so hurt. The look on her face just tore my heart."
Jamia's situation typifies the trap many low-income families find themselves in when seeking better educational opportunities for their children. Unable to move to better school districts in affluent neighborhoods, and often unable to afford private-school tuition, these families have nowhere to turn.
That could all change if an initiative giving parents school choice passes in California this month. Proposition 174, the Parental Choice in Education Initiative, would make vouchers worth about $2,600--half the amount currently spent per pupil on education in California--available to all children for use at any school, public, private, or parochial.
Discontent with the education system prompted nearly one million California residents to sign an initiative last year qualifying Proposition 174 for the ballot. Following decades of ineffectual reforms, the demand for school choice is growing, promising to fundamentally change public education. National attention is focused on California to watch what could spark a revolution in education across the country.
In at least 19 other states grass-roots efforts are under way to put school choice before the voters. California is especially fertile ground for a school-choice initiative. Dissatisfaction with public schools runs high, particularly in urban areas such as Los Angeles, where the drop-out rate in some schools exceeds 50 percent. Nationwide, California ranks 35th in SAT scores and 29th in mathematics for the eighth grade. Enrolling nearly 5.2 million children, its schools have one of the worst drop-out problems in the United States, trailing behind 41 other states in graduation rates.
"We have got to stop supporting institutions that are only going to be graduating students eligible for penal institutions, welfare, and jobs paying $5 an hour," insists Williams. "This has to stop. All children deserve better than this."
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