Bryan Dahl needs to do his homework before criticizing teachers' unions and advocating school vouchers and charter schools ("Teacher's unions are to blame for lax improvement in public schools" SN 12/1). In 2000, 69 percent of Michigan voters convincingly defeated a ballot proposal that would have allowed school vouchers. The voters knew that private schools did not have to admit public students with vouchers and many public school families would have a difficult time paying private schools the thousands of tuition dollars the vouchers would not cover. They also did not feel it was fair for a child already enrolled in private schools to rake in $6,700 of public funds to pay for their private education.

As for charter schools, in the 2003-04 school year, the Lansing School District offered more co-curricular programs than every charter school in the greater Lansing area and outperformed all of these charter schools on the MEAP test except one small charter school in Leslie. Moreover, suburban public schools including Haslett, Okemos and Leslie strongly outperformed these charter schools. Public citizens should be praised for recognizing the unfairness of vouchers and public school teachers should be praised for outperforming charter schools.

Chris Hansen
2000 graduate