In many discussions these days about education, terms such as school choice, vouchers, charter schools and privatization often come up. Some voices contend these are strategies for improving schools. Others say they are all linked to plans that actually undermine educational opportunities for most children, particularly kids with special, physical or emotional language needs. Here is a look at these terms within the context of the public education system in Massachusetts.

"School choice" is very much part of the campaign message of Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush, who calls it a modern day civil right's issue. In Bush's world, parents would choose what school they wanted their child to attend and the government would pay all or part of the cost through a voucher. Bush favors the increased privatization of public schools. He would rely more on the private sector and less on the government to run our schools.

Standardized tests such as MCAS tie into Bush's proposal because he would use test results to define public schools as succeeding or failing. Schools with low test scores would, essentially, be punished by losing resources. Students could transfer to private schools at public expense. Ironically, these schools, being private, would not be required to give the standardized tests imposed on the public system.

While often claiming that private institutions are educationally superior, Bush fails to mention that private schools are often highly selective. Few private or religious schools show any interest in enrolling expensive to educate kids, preferring to leave them to the public system. There is hardly a private school in Massachusetts (apart from a few special programs) that employs a speech therapist or an occupational therapist or bilingual instructors. Secondly, many private schools are well beyond the financial reach of most families. Milton Academy, where the chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education, James Peyser, enrolls his daughter, charges $20,600 a year for day students in its high school. A $3,000 voucher would be a generous subsidy for affluent families but little help to low-income households. Further, Bush and other school choice advocates rarely talk about the full cost of a voucher program or explain where the money would come from. The reality is that vouchers would be taken from tax dollars allocated for public education, which in many communities is already under-funded. If just the Massachusetts students now in private school were to receive a $3,000 voucher next year, it would cost the state about $330 million dollars, or almost three times more than Governor Cellucci's proposed increase in education funding for all the public schools in the state. Vouchers would extract a huge toll from our public schools while relieving them of few, if any, educational or financial obligations.

The very term "school choice" is a clever misnomer. When it comes to paying for charter schools (or vouchers should they be approved) Massachusetts communities and public school families have no choice. Money is taken off the top of a school district's state education aid without the city or town having any meaningful say. Never mind if enrollment in the public schools increases, or the high school needs a new roof, or special education costs rise, charter schools get their money first. Guaranteed. The public schools must put together a budget with the remaining funds. For example, last year the state allocated about $22.7 million to Somerville for education, or about 40 percent of its public school budget. But before the money got to the public schools more than $5 million, or more than 20 percent of the entire allocation, was directed by the state to the Somerville Charter School, based on the number of students enrolled. Neither the city council, the mayor, the school committee, nor public school parents had any choice.

The Somerville Charter School is managed by a large transnational corporation called Sabis, which also runs charter schools in Springfield and Foxborough. The company charges handsomely for its services. In Somerville last year, the company's management and license fees and other charges came to more than $650,000. These are public funds diverted from the public schools to benefit a corporation over which the public has little or no oversight. Other for profit corporations manage charter schools in Worcester, Malden, Chelmsford, and Plymouth. Together, for profit schools enroll about half of all the children attending charter schools in Massachusetts.

Many parents and students are satisfied with the educational programs at these schools, in part because they are free to limit enrollment, which can keep class sizes relatively small. Further, as independent studies consistently show, charter schools serve fewer children from low-income families as well as fewer children with special physical, emotional or language needs. In fact not one charter school in the state offers a broad bilingual program. Public schools are required to be inclusive. By law they are charged with trying to find a place and a program for every child. Privatization in the form of charter schools and vouchers is marked by varying degrees of exclusivity. Charter schools face fewer mandates than district public schools. And private schools serving voucher students face fewer still. The charter schools and voucher movement represent not so much a wholesale retreat from the responsibilities placed on public schools as a way around them.

The public system and the expectations for that system are left in place, but money and students are diverted to institutions free to concentrate on narrower priorities. The implications are troubling for the thousands of children who like their public schools and want to remain in them. Unless the state regulations are changed to make charter schools more democratically accountable and to give communities more "choice" over their creation and their cost, children in public schools will have less political support and steadily fewer resources. As a society we can ill-afford to let this happen.