Reading, Writing, Roulette (cont.)
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Georgia and Missouri. In California, voters might face a voucher initiative on November's ballot. (The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on the issue: programs in Ohio, Maine and Vermont were found to violate state or federal constitutions on the separation-of-church-and-state issue, while Florida's program violates a state "quality system of public schools" clause.)
Given this national debate, all eyes are on Milwaukee and its radical experiment. The majority of choice students attend elementary schools, so the Gordon household provides a good opportunity to see how choice works. Brenda uses vouchers to send two of her younger children to a new Christian elementary school affiliated with her church on the city's northwest side. Two other little ones attend their neighborhood elementary, four blocks from home. As it turns out, Brenda is as satisfied with her younger children's choice school as she is with their public school. But for every Brenda Gordon there are less fortunate parents--and their--kids who have found themselves at the mercy of a startup choice school that's untried and unproven. The lesson in Milwaukee is that while choice may mean different, it doesn't always mean better: With a free-market approach to school, the buyer had best beware.
A Black Church School
About 7:04 A.M. each school day, Brenda Gordon's Nefataria, a wide-eyed 8-year-old, and her younger brother Dempsey, who's thin like his mom, are scooped up by one of the hundreds of tiny school buses that shuttle across the city. After a 45-minute ride to the northwest edge of town, they're deposited in a well-kept neighborhood, where Christian Faith Fellowship Church, which is affiliated with the Church of God in Christ, beckons with a blue-and-red neon sign: Sinners Are Welcome Here.
The two attend DLH College Preparatory Academy of Excellence, a kindergarten-through-third-grade
school that's so new it smells new. "I sent them there because I wanted
them to have a Christ foundation," their mom says. Indeed, lessons
are steeped in biblical principles, says Barbara Horton, executive director
of DLH, which is attached to the church where Brenda worships on Sundays
with as many kids as she has bus fare for. "Our mission is to educate
the whole child," Horton adds as she gives a tour of the white hallways
lined with tiny orange lockers, pictures of African-American heroes and
Bible passages. "It's not enough to deal with the social, the physical
and the mental. We have to deal with spiritual growth as well." DLH
teachers use an educational method that encourages children to understand
the world and recognize their own potential as change agents. She believes
in this method so strongly that she's planning to have her second graders
take the public school's standardized third-grade reading test just for
practice--confident they will pass easily.