Nonprofit, teachers’ union duel about $25K grant for foster kids
Originally published in the Baltimore Examiner
By Tawanda W. Johnson
Published on Tuesday, May 16, 2006
MPPI IN THE NEWS
GERMANTOWN, Md. - A nonprofit wants to promote school choice as the best way to help foster children. But the state teachers’ union sees this initiative as diverting funds from public to private schools.
Maryland Public Policy Institute received a $25,000 grant from the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation to promote school choice for the state’s 11,500 foster care children.
“We want to be able to create stability within the lives of foster care children,” said Christopher Summers, president of the nonprofit public policy research organization based in Germantown.
The proposal is outlined in a report, developed by the nonprofit, titled “School Choice for Maryland’s Foster Care Children: Fostering Stability, Satisfaction, and Achievement.”
The initiative calls for a scholarship voucher program that would use state funds to award each of the state’s foster care children $8,000 for their education.
“It’s reallocating resources being spent on these students in public education,” said Summers, who added that about 7,000 of the state’s foster care children are in Baltimore.
But the Maryland State Teachers Association, the 64,000-member union representing education employees statewide, have stated on its Web site, mstanea.org, that it does not favor school voucher programs.
The union states on the site that voucher programs divert money from public schools toward religious and private ones.
“We’re not taking away money from public schools,” Summers said. “It’s about introducing competition. Research has shown that it actually improves schools.”
He said helping the foster children at an early age would prevent them from going down a “slippery slope,” of crime and other vices.
The nonprofit plans to use the grant for promotional efforts like creating a handbook, hosting events that encourage school choice and organizing focus groups to research the issue.
Voucher grad rate
In Milwaukee, 64 percent of low-income students using vouchers to enroll at 10 private high schools in 1999 graduated, but only 36 percent of their peers at public schools graduated.
Source: “School Choice for Maryland’s Foster Care Children”
tjohnson@baltimoreexaminer.com
Examiner
