Surrounded by housing projects in downtown Pensacola, Fla., A.A. Dixon Elementary School is ground zero in the growing national debate over school vouchers. If the “critically low-performing” school fails to shape up, parents should be given vouchers so their children can ship out, says Gov Jeb Bush.

In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Ridge, made a similar vow earlier this month We’ll help failing schools improve, but while that happens parents should receive vouchers good for any public or private school in the state.

Such voucher plans, now spreading nationally, often emerge lacking critical details. Vouchers to where, for instance?

At A.A. Dixon, most parents lack phones, let alone cats. Most couldn’t get their kids to private schools even if they found one to take them, according to Dixon’s principal, Judith Ladner. Dixon students already can pick another public school, but they can’t get to one. Many of her students haven’t even been to the beach, just 15 miles away.

Further, it’s not at all clear that kids most in need would ever be helped. Dixon’s 5-year-olds arrive for kindergarten with the school readiness of 3-year-olds. Single mothers barely edge single grandmothers as the dominant head of households. Traditional two-parent families make up about 8% of the population.

The education establishment and teachers unions regularly point to such difficulties as reasons to plead for more time, to put off radical alternatives such as vouchers. But as valid as their concerns about vouchers are, the broader reality is this: Few school districts have made progress of their own against those problems, and with Republican governors who favor vouchers increasingly taking over the education debate, they’re running out of time.

While the establishment’s criticism is loud, its record is mostly feeble. Since 1990, the gap separating white students from black and Latino students has only widened.

By the time those children reach eighth grade, nearly half can’t handle subtraction problems or any multiplication or division beyond simple one-digit calculations. Yet it’s not clear that urban school boards are getting the message. When urban residents are asked about their schools, only about half say the schools are succeeding. Ask the same question of urban school board members, and nearly three-fourths think they are succeeding, according to a poll released last week.

This is occurring even as public educators have arrows added to their quivers.

Public school choice is one, but as at Dixon, it often is not a real choice. Charter schools offer another promising tool, though one too new to fully assess. And in a few scattered areas, more familiar methods are bearing fruit.

In Houston and El Paso, for instance, state accountability laws, which demand that all students of all races make progress, are paying off. Some urban schools are turning in test scores that resemble suburban schools, and the I state has made fast progress in national tests.

But the simple fact that such success stories are scarce drives the voucher movement.

Vouchers still have much to prove. They risk leaving the most needy behind. They drain resources from public schools. And when used at religious schools, they raise difficult questions about separation of church and state.

They are not the first option to consider, But they have two virtues: They haven’t failed yet. And there are some encouraging signs that competition can improve public education.

Unless public educators grasp the power of that message and improve their record soon, it is they who will be left behind.