With the financial crisis, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and consistent lack of an even halfway sufficient health care system, discussion of education has been, for the most part, left by the wayside. While the issue may not hold the excitement of the other issues, it is something we should be talking about.

Of exceptional importance is the debate over school vouchers granted to parents by the government for redemption at private schools or schools outside their zoning. Though McCain supports school vouchers as a means to bring free-market competition into the realm of education, in reality they erode constitutional barriers between church and state, accentuate class divides and regress educational reform.

Proponents of school vouchers argue that they make private education more accessible to low-income families, allow students a way out of failing schools and inject competition into a system believed to coddle teachers.

They, and John McCain, couldn’t be more wrong. Studies of the longest running school voucher system in Milwaukee have shown that voucher students perform the at same level as their non-voucher peers. While vouchers claim to make private education available to low-income children, the amounts they usually offer — around $5000 to $6000 for a year — wouldn’t pay for half the yearly tuition at most private schools.

The voucher system would also promise greater systemic harm. If we begin to treat educational challenges as things that will be cured by sending low income children to private schools, not only will we be focusing in the entirely wrong direction, but we will be undermining the foundations of our schools.

The answer to struggling schools is not to make it possible for some students to go elsewhere. Rather, we must address the root causes of these struggles and recognize the problems in education programs as manifestations of a variety of causes — not least of which includes children’s living environments and inadequate teacher pay.

To expect a child being raised in a violent neighborhood, by a single parent working two jobs, to require the equal amount of teacher attention in school as a more affluent child in a two-parent household is absurd.

Likewise, we can’t blame the struggles of the public school system on teachers or their unions. If public teaching is going to be made an attractive occupation that draws the best and brightest to teach America’s youth, teachers need to be paid decent salaries.

Perhaps of greatest concern, school vouchers brashly cross the divide between church and state. Vouchers, in essence, provide state funding for the attendance of religious schools. In a democracy where an unbiased and comprehensive education is a critical component of becoming an informed citizen, it is both negligent and unconstitutional for the government to fund private religious schools.

A crucial clarification must be made on the subject of funding: Obama does not, as McCain has suggested, advocate increased funding as a panacea for educational woes. The education system, as it now stands, needs drastic overhauling to retain and reward teachers, to decrease the drop-out rate and to encourage college attendance and financial support.

However, this will require more than the unfunded mandates of No Child Left Behind or the free-market ideology proposed by John McCain.

The 21st century is progressing quickly, and America’s youth are being left in the dust. By adopting a comprehensive approach to these complex problems, hopefully we can confront these challenges with real solutions and not blind insistence on a free market cure-all.

Reach columnist Sarah Gaither at opinion@dailyuw.com.