By BARRY FOSBERG

The decision by the United States Supreme Court on school vouchers has the nation focused on the issue of public versus private schools. But what does the decision mean for Louisiana?

Proponents of vouchers claim that school vouchers will increase school choice and create new sources of funds for education.

But once the myths are separated from the reality, it’s obvious that school vouchers will do the opposite of what its proponents claim. Vouchers will take time, money and attention away from reforming public education while enriching a few at the public expense.

Often, the school voucher case is argued in terms of classic capitalism. Vouchers are supposed to give all citizens the rights of consumers to make free-market choices.

To the degree that vouchers create new demand for non-public schools, costs to attend these schools will increase.

Middle-class parents who were counting on vouchers to relieve the cost of private-school attendance will see this relief as a chimera. Vouchers will act as price support to ensure that tuition costs can only go up. Impoverished parents who have been recruited to support vouchers on the belief that they will get the same choices that middle-class parents already have will continue to see real choice elude them as the possible schools of choice remain too expensive.

More than three in four new businesses fail in their first five years. In the marketplace, this may be a good thing but students cannot be conceived of in market terms.

Among the schools that will take advantage of voucher money will be those founded by: well-meaning educators with no business skills, well-meaning business people with no educational skills and those with no intention of educating children.

Louisiana communities have already suffered from diploma mills and phony charter schools. These failed attempts have drained funds with little to show except incomplete or destroyed student records.

In the end, it will be the public schools that will have no choice. They will have to accept back into the classroom any students who must re-enter the system at random times when their school of “choice” fails.

Proponents of voucher systems also promise the benefits of parental choice. What are they not telling us is that most often choice is for the schools, not the parents.

Non-public schools are usually free to reject students based on religion, background, IQ tests or grades. Even schools that promise to accept any student generally retain the power to suspend him or her for any reason.

Many neighborhood public schools are already under the disadvantage of having their success or failure determined solely by test scores, test scores that already reflect the fact that scores of average or above-average children have been creamed off to attend private schools.

With more students leaving the public schools and the predictable loss in funding, any successes of the public schools will be truly miraculous.

Meanwhile, private schools need only rely on their public relations skills when describing their successes. Remember, private schools need not test, or report test results.

Given their ability to hand-pick their student body, their success may only be a measure of the student body and not the staff.

What is the predictable result of these same institutions after they take on new students? Many of these schools will see classrooms become crowded, teaching staff quality diluted and the campus generally compromised in the name of profit.

Nationwide, the average public school building is 50 years old. In Louisiana, the average is closer to 60 years. Vouchers cannot increase funding for capital needs.

Curricular needs for technology, for special education, for career training programs and for high-stakes testing all require new funding.

Vouchers cannot create new funding. Nationwide, we are short more than 220,000 teachers. Orleans Parish schools needs hundreds of certified teachers.

For-profit schools cannot increase the short-term availability of teachers. The need to keep salaries low and profits high may have adverse long-term effects on the desirability of teaching as a profession.

Reforming schools is hard work. For some people, vouchers mean that they can avoid or at least delay the hard work.

As parents, as a community and as a nation, we have to face the truth: Our public schools have to be our focus if our children are to be educated.

Education is work. Education requires an everyday effort. Reducing education to a mere business and our children as profit centers will not, and cannot fulfill the promise of an equitable, educated society.

BARRY FOSBERG conducts research on educational issues for Louisiana Forum.