With state governments burdened by multi-billion-dollar deficits, what is chance that you will see a voucher program in your neighbor-hood any time soon? It might not be wise for you to wait around for such a voucher miracle.

Another problem is that even if vouchers were more widespread, private religious and secular schools simply do not have room for all students who would like to transfer out of public schools, either with state vouchers or private scholarships. According to Nora Murphy, a spokeswoman for Archdiocese of New York, private Catholic schools in New York could accommodate only 3000 new students. Yet, in September, 2002, 240,000 New York students in failing public schools qualified to transfer to a “better” public school under "No Child Left Behind Act." If all these students’ parents instead wanted vouchers for private schools (if such a voucher program existed), you see problem.

For all above reasons, parents who want to give their children a decent education now, cannot and should not depend on vouchers coming to their local neighborhood anytime soon.

Parents, don’t wait around for another fifty years while voucher advocates fight drawn-out lawsuits and fierce opposition by teacher unions, public-school bureaucrats, and entrenched education establishment. Don’t pin your hopes on state governments with huge budget deficits to create vouchers for every child in your state. Don’t risk your children’s future on state and local politicians who get campaign con-tributions from teacher unions and consistently vote against voucher programs. Depending on government authorities to come to your rescue is an exercise in futility.

In 1990, three academics, Harold Stevenson, Chuansheng Chen, and David Uttal did a study of attitudes and academic achievement of black, white, and hispanic children in Chicago. They found a disturbing gap between what parents thought their children were learning and children’s actual performance. Teachers in high-poverty schools had given A’s to students for work that would have earned them C’s or D’s in affluent suburban schools. In study, black mothers of Chicago elementary school students rated their child’s skills and abilities quite high and thought their kids were doing well in reading and math. The children thought same thing.

Unfortunately, researchers found that parents’ and children’s self-evaluations of their math and reading skills were way above their actual achievement levels. There was a big gap between their optimistic self-evaluations and their dismal academic performance on independent tests. Public schools were giving these children a false idea of their academic skill levels. In other words, these children were heading towards failure and no one bothered to tell them.

Parents, it would not be wise to trust any claims by teachers or school authorities about your children’s alleged academic abilities, even in so-called “good” schools in suburban neighborhoods. To find out how your child is really doing, have an outside independent company test your child’s reading and math skills.

If you find that your child’s academic skills are far below what your local public-school led you to believe, you might want to take your child out of public school and look for better education alternatives. There is a complete Resource section in “Public Schools, Public Menace” that explores many of these quality, low-cost education alternatives.