CER In The News

VOUCHER SCHOOLS GET A 'BUM REP"
Union leader impressed by Bibbs, Dixon
By Erin Walsh
Pensacola News Journal, April 1, 2000

        When a slick Washington CEO or a farmer in Nebraska sees the latest national news reports on school vouchers, he'll probably hear about Pensacola's two failing schools.

        And the picture isn't pretty, said Reg Weaver, a Washington teachers union leader.

        "These schools are getting a bum rep that they don't deserve," said Weaver, national vice president of the National Education Association, which represents about 2.5 million teachers. Weaver visited four Pensacola schools Friday - including A.A. Dixon Elementary and Bibbs Academy, the only two schools labeled chronically failing by the state Department of Education.

        "When you hear the letter F, you think unsafe, dirty schools with discipline problems," he said. "You don't think of the orderly, enthusiastic schools that I saw here today."

        Under Gov. Jeb Bush's voucher law, some parents can opt out of the F schools and attend private schools on the taxpayers' tab.

        The Pensacola schools have been in the national spotlight since last year, when they failed standardized tests and became eligible for vouchers. In a decision that grabbed national headlines, the vouchers were struck down last month by a circuit judge but will still be available while that ruling is appealed.

        Teachers and students at one of the F schools were happy to know that amid all the negative attention the schools have received, someone in Washington is on their side.

        "They needed to know that there's somebody in a position of power who's not against them," Dixon principal Judy Ladner said of Weaver, a former middle school teacher in Illinois. "He's a teacher, so he knows when teachers are doing a good job."

        Weaver's union strongly opposes school rankings and vouchers.

        Washington groups who support vouchers said Weaver's visit was no more than political grandstanding.

        "No one has bashed those two schools," said Jeanne Allen, director of the Center for Education Reform, a national voucher advocacy group. "If the union spent as much time and money on getting a good reading program as they do on making visits and ads and lawsuits, we might not be having this discussion."

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