Wealthy families can send their children to the best of private schools, religious schools or academy schools while poor whites and black children don't have that option. If a public school is underperforming, these poor children's families should also have some choices and options to send their children to an alternate school that can produce results, and that alone should be the parent's decision.

If school vouchers were made available to these poor families in Massachusetts, they could take their children out of an underperforming school and put them into a school that was up to par so their children could receive a sound, high-quality education.

If Massachusetts had a school voucher program, poor working-class white and black parents could use vouchers to have some school choice, like many wealthy families have.

There are many positive effects of having a school voucher program that offers school choice that are far-reaching upon parents and children, especially those parents who seek choice. Parents become more involved with their children's education and school, and children tend to learn faster, according to school reform news.

However, because of bureaucrats and the bureaucratic structure of public schools, they don't want non-wealthy families to have access to choices because they look upon any kind of improvement in education as a threat to public schools, which is not the case. That is why there is so much opposition to Julia Sigalovsky's charter school proposal for the advanced math and science academy (A rigorous way to teach: Russian-born educator angers some with charter school plan, by Suzanne Sataline, Boston Globe, Jan. 13) when these parents and educators should welcome this potential alternative to traditional learning.

Since there is so much resistance in Massachusetts to the concept of a school voucher program, Massachusetts officials should do like others have done, such as Denver and Milwaukee; that is, to create a new program under education and call it Opportunity Grant Program and make this program available to poor and middle-class families who are seeking choices for their children so they may receive a high-quality education in a public school, a charter school, a private school or a religious school.

Public educators should open up their minds and souls to all forms of creative education, creative learning and strategic thinking, otherwise, they themselves will lose their competitive thinking and become obsolete.

Althea Garrison is a former state representative.

Outsourcing has and is destroying America's economy and should be outlawed. Too many Americans are losing their good-paying jobs to the Third World economies because many unscrupulous corporations are too greedy and want more profits at the expense of damaging America's economy.

There's only one way that America's economy will improve; that is to pass legislation that will put an end to outsourcing of America's jobs overseas, especially technology jobs and manufacturing jobs. As was reported recently in various newspapers, high-tech executives were outsourcing Americans jobs to consulting firms overseas which pay lower wages, these greedy executives are seeking more profits so they can manipulate their companies more.

Congress should pass legislation that bans outsourcing. Are these elected officials more concerned for the economy in Third World countries or for the citizenry that are Americans? Since these corporations started outsourcing of American jobs, many hi-tech and manufacturing jobs have left the United States for a Third World country, and American jobs have vanished to overseas.

Our elected officials should make it impossible to outsource Americans jobs and tougher for corporations to set up off-shore businesses to avoid paying taxes in America because both of these two entities hurt America's economy.

America's economy is sagging. Americans are losing their good-paying jobs to outsourcing overseas, and it's time for our legislators to outright ban outsourcing of America's good-paying jobs for cheaper labor overseas for the good of America's economy and its citizenry.

Furthermore, when I read and see how some corrupt corporate officials such as former chairman and chief executive Dennis Kozlowski abused his authority at Tyco International Ltd., I say it's time to get tough on white collar corporate criminals who pay themselves outrageous salaries in comparison to their employees' salaries and use the system to benefit their own interest because this hurts America's economy.

As one article stated that I read, the corporate thief Dennis Kozlowski used a program that was designed to help its employees, but Kozlowski manipulated this loan program and used it to buy his wife a $5 million diamond ring, and now he should be forced to pay for this egregious white-collar crime. Because of so much manipulation and crooked business deals going on with many of these corporations, they have damaged America's economy very badly and caused it to be almost in shambles, with high paying high-tech and manufacturing jobs going overseas.

Many corporations outsource and have off-shore corporations to avoid paying American workers a decent salary and to avoid paying taxes to America's economy.

Some of these corporations' philosophy is to take from the neediest and give to the greediest. It's time to re-examine capitalism.

I am a firm believer of free markets; however, many of these free marketers abuse the economy, abuse their employees and abuse good-will of American citizenry. These corporations should have good morals and ethical values, not immoral and unethical practices.

It's time to pass legislation that bans outsourcing of America's good-paying jobs and stop corporations from setting up businesses off-shore to avoid taxes because this hurts America's economy and hurts the citizenry and denies them the opportunity to jobs. In addition, let's hold corporations that are corrupt accountable to the American public and force them to respect their employees.