School Voucher Reflection

The articles by Covaleskie and Coulson really got me thinking about the school voucher debate in the United States and my opinion on it. In high school I never really paid much attention to it because I figured nothing would have happened to drastically change the way I was being educated. And while I was right, I find this debate to be especially interesting now, probably because I am researching it with the mind set of a high school graduate. 

A little bit of a back story on the high school that I went to-- I live in a small rural area just south of Buffalo. My high school was awful. It wasn't awful in the "ghettoized" way that Covaleskie wrote about in his piece, but it was still bad. We had a beautiful, brand new library and gym, all the funding we could ever need, but our quality of education was atrocious. And by atrocious, I mean that when Business First Magazine rated the 100 high schools in Western New York, my high school came in 89. We were even considered worse than Buffalo City Schools who do not have adequate funding. When this ranking came out, school officials and teachers tried to brush it under the rug. 

However, I realized what such a poor education would do for my academics. Despite being at the top of my class, I knew that my high school was not properly preparing me for college. I applied to one of the most prestigious private schools in the area. However, I couldn't afford $10,000 a year in tuition and still have a prayer at being about to afford college tuition too. My family isn't poor, we live comfortably, but that was an added expense that we couldn't swing. So, I stayed at the awful public school, and when it came time to apply to colleges, I was told that as a graduate of my high school, community college would be my best option. There is nothing wrong with community college, but I aspired for more than that. I can say fairly certainly that my high school's poor reputation hurt me when applying to more prestigious universities such as Notre Dame and Cornell, but luckily enough, I did get into Ithaca. Ithaca's reputation helped me finally get into USC, my top choice, but it makes me wonder. 

If I had gone to a better high school and had the same grades, would I have gotten into more colleges? 

Probably. 

Would I have been better prepared for college once I got here?

Absolutely. 

So, while I think both systems have flaws, I wish I had had more of a choice when deciding where to go to high school. While there are great public schools out there, unfortunately, mine wasn't one of them. I don't think students should be judged on a financial basis when gaining admission to schools, but more on academics, involvement and willingness to work hard.