For most people, a lot of their beliefs are consumption goods. The irrational clustering of political beliefs--there is no logical reason that one's views on abortion should be so tightly correlated with one's view on business regulation or nationalized health care--indicate that there is a very strong social component to the formation of allegedly principled beliefs. The anger with which opposing views are met, and the in-group/out-group social dynamic of most political debate, suggest that for most of us, fitting in with our friends and feeling good about ourselves are at least as strong a component of belief formation as careful reasoning from first principles.
In most areas I'm okay with this (I'd better be; I have no reason to believe that I'm any better than anyone else on this score). But there are some areas in which I don't think it's okay, and the views held by wealthy suburbanites about vouchers are one of those areas. They are consuming a view of themselves as caring about a common public system that is the opposite of the truth; the gap between their kids schooling experience, and the experience of a kid growing up in Watts, is much much larger than the gap between their kids school, and Groton. They have demonstrated by their own choices that they think school choice is extremely important. They then proclaim that it doesn't work for poor kids, or that poor kids need to stay where they are for the sake of the system. They are consuming a view of themselves as egalitarians at a very cheap price . . . to them. The cost to the kids, unfortunately, it having their whole lives blighted.
That they proclaim to be doing this out of care for the communities that their exit (from the schools, the tax base, and the economic life of the city) is crushing, sends me over the edge.
Moreover, this is a good that they would not consume if there were any price at all to holding it. If being against vouchers meant their kid losing 30 points on their SATs, they'd do a 180.
Empirically, I may be wrong; vouchers may not work. But we know that the current system isn't working. And poor kids should not bear the burden of making affluent liberals feel better about themselves.
Ask them if they support unlimited inter-district transfers for all students with transportation costs paid for by the government.
Parents and kids who are willing to put up with the hassle of hour rides to a better school are well-motivated and likely to be successful even if they don't have the right color skin or large enough income. Sure, it may appear that it would cost the inner city school to lose a few good students, but it's not clear to me that all of those students would be continue to be good in an overwhelming environment of failure.
Um, ever think that maybe they oppose vouchers but support other ideas for fixing these horrible schools of which you speak?
Yeah, they mightn't not be evil. Who knew.
Ask them if they support unlimited inter-district transfers for all students with transportation costs paid for by the government.
Why, exactly, is free transportation a pre-requisite? I can see that the program that includes it may be beneficial to more students than the one that doesn't (at a price) but surely some percentage of parents will be willing to shoulder the transportation expense?
Um, ever think that maybe they oppose vouchers but support other ideas for fixing these horrible schools of which you speak?
And those ideas would be what?
Spending more money isn't an idea.
And it's been done.
You're way off here Megan. Parenting is, by necessity, hypocritical. Every decision a parent makes about their child fails scrutiny when extended to society at large, singling out education is illogical.
I will take actions harmful to society at large to give my children, not only better education, but healthcare, diet, shelter, clothing, etc. All good parents do.
The point of government funded programs is to safeguard against the inequalities that result from this natural and unavoidable behaviour. Vouchers make things worse, as far as inequality is concerned, not better.
I can feel good about giving my child the best opportunities if I believe that my government is at least giving all other children a shot. Vouchers destroy that. Vouchers are an agreement that there is a problem with public education that we are not going to try to solve.
And those ideas would be what?
Charter schools. Unlike vouchers, they work.
The anger with which opposing views are met, and the in-group/out-group social dynamic of most political debate, suggest that for most of us, fitting in with our friends and feeling good about ourselves are at least as strong a component of belief formation as careful reasoning from first principles.
At least as strong? Is that an understatement. :) For almost all people -- including or even especially educated people -- the formation of beliefs is due to the factor you mention, plus prejudice, bias, ineffable feelings, anecdotes, etc. The overwhelming majority of the reasoning that people pretend to do is just post hoc rationalization for what they've already decided to believe.
This post has been deleted because its author is under the impression that frequent references to excrement make for witty and convincing political argument.
"Um, ever think that maybe they oppose vouchers but support other ideas for fixing these horrible schools of which you speak?"
"And those ideas would be what?
Spending more money isn't an idea.
And it's been done."
Megan was attempting to call people immoral for being against vouchers. I don't need present alternative ideas for improving schools in order for us to be able to comprehend that perhaps those ideas may exist.
I know nothing of school vouchers or education in general. I just know that calling your opponents immoral is usually a poor way to go because they're prolly not.
Why not? Isn't the goal to give students a better education? If their parents cannot afford to send them on the bus to the suburban school, the promise that they could have enrolled in that school is pretty hollow. If you want the free transportation to be income-limited, fine, I have no objection.
It depends on what the money has been spent on. The increasing economic segregation of the United States is reflected in increased economic segregation in public schools. Yes, there are some children who really shouldn't be in class with everyone else and we need to deal with that by taking them out of those classrooms, but many children who are stuck in bad schools today would benefit from merely being in a classroom that has an adequate proportion of children who will succeed in life. Peer pressure for success works every bit as well as peer pressure in other directions.
I think what is being consumed isn't some general halo of "supporting public schools" as much as the righteous feeling of "sticking it to religious conservatives."
Religious conservatives like vouchers, so from the Volvo-driving suburban liberal point of view, they must be bad.
Cardinal Fang -- I guess I see charter schools as part of the same continuum. In educational discussions that don't involve libertarians, I generally get behind charter schools because they at least seem politically feasible.
But even charter schools face great hostility in various states (as does home schooling, another politically feasible idea). Some states have created charter regulations as to undermine their creation and unnecessarily create conflicts with existing schools.
I recommend the Manhattan Institute's "Educational Freedom Index" for an overview of the state-by-state view.
I'm not in favor of vouchers. I'm in favor of school choice and free transportation. I'm in favor of getting by on merit. I don't see how Vouchers are going to solve a large percentage of the problems you have with public education. I am in favor of school choice, much like the school choice of the public college system in this country.
You are guaranteed a quality education if you work hard and are smart enough and have potential. You get to go to SUNY Binghamton, or University of Michigan or UCLA at a much reduced (if not completely reduced) cost. If you don't do well, or aren't very smart, you end up a Kansas State, UC Irvine or SUNY Platsburgh (sp). If you do really badly you end up at Laguardia Community College or whatever the regional junior college is in your area. All of these are public institutions and, depending on how hard you work and how smart you are depends on where you go.
In NYC to a large extent we have school choice. We have schools that require testing to get in and gifted and talented programs and specialized programs on the high school level. And those do really well and get a wide range of students. We have Delta programs and gifted & talented programs and boutique junior high schools. At the elementary school level there are more gifted & talented programs and more school choice. One of my best friends as an adult spent her whole life going to school in public schools in Harlem. She was in a new pilot program for poor, urban, smart black kids. She ended up going to Dartmouth. There are more smaller schools focusing on more specific types of education. There are good head start programs.
And most private schools have programs where they subsidize a percentage of their student body. Riverdale states that they offer 20% of their students financial aid, and spend $4.6 million a year on it. I believe this is fairly standard.
As for those of us being hypocritical about vouchers, I don't think I am. I'm not opposed to them per se, I just think you're paying much too much attention to all the ways they're good and none to the ways in which they are bad. I don't think they're a solution in the long terms for a variety of reasons. I think all it does is move the population around without anyone receiving significant benefits and with significant issues attached such as price inflation for private schools and a situation where kids with lazy parents get punished because no education professional would ever want to suggest that you send your kid to a better, private school which would take money out of the pocket of the school and possibly cost the administrator his/her job.
Washington D.C.'s public education system is crazy because of the level of corruption. What makes you think that the voucher distribution system won't be equally as corrupt?
And, yes, I went to private school twice in my life before college. The first time was for nursery school and kindergarden (there was no head start, not that I would have qualified, and Kindergarden back then wasn't full time and my mother worked) and when I was in Junior High School I was accepted into a good PUBLIC junior high school but chose to go to a private school because the public junior high school was too small. Seriously. I probably would have gotten a better education at the public school.
I plan on sending my kids to public school if at all possible. Fortunately I have a lot of choices on where they're going to go.
So please stop calling me names.
"Ever think that maybe they oppose vouchers but support other ideas for fixing these horrible schools of which you speak?"
Ooh! Ooh! I know the answer to this one! Because by moving away/sending their own precious darlings to private school they've already stripped the school of the most concrete and meaningful support it could have gotten from them, and now by opposing vouchers they seek to deny the same choice to anyone less well off, so that any lip-service they give to "other ideas for fixing these horrible schools" doesn't amount to a hill of beans next to their demonstrated depraved indifference to the fate of the kids left behind?
What do I win?
As for Njorl, for some people the public part just seems to completely outweigh the education part. As long as the vouchers are publicly funded, I really don't see the logic to requiring the schools be run by the state particularly given the state's demonstrated inability over the past fifty years to do an adequate job. I wouldn't mind this insistence on doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results half so much if the people who backed the insanity didn't insist that they were doing it on behalf of the kids whose lives they're ruining.
"What do I win?"
A free course in remedial reading! You see, in your second paragraph you AGAIN assume that vouchers are the only way to make schools better! It's called begging the question!!!!!!! YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, and in paragraph one you assume that they adhere to your beliefs about what is and isn't supporting the school. This is called "lack of theory of mind" (actually, there's prolly a technical term for that too, but damned if I'm going to look it up for the sake of some person who honestly believes in and defends the position that 'my opponent is an unreasoning idiot').
In Milwaukee about 50 percent of public school teachers send their children to non-public schools. In Chicago it is 46 percent, Los Angeles 29 percent, Memphis 36 percent, and Atlanta 25 percent (1999 stats).
If public schools aren't good enough for the children of those who run them, why should the children of the poor be forced go to those schools?
Educational expenditures have skyrocketed (more than doubling every 20 years since 1960) and yet Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores plummet.
Don't try to save the Titanic, just let people get on the lifeboats. Vouchers seem to be the only real way to help SIGNIFICANT numbers of schoolchildren.
Another insightful post, Megan. You've been on a roll lately.
I've thought for quite some time that school vouchers is an idea liberals ought to take more seriously. I think the fact that it appears tied to both business interests and religious interests makes it pretty difficult to stomach. I'm hoping Brink Lindsey and Joshua Cohen will engage the issue in one of their bloggingheads segments.
Vouchers have been tried in the past for housing, as an alternative to municipal housing projects. How did that work out?
We subsidize some peolple's access to medical care but don't require them to use public health clinics.
We give families on welfare money in order to make their own purhcases, rather than providing them with food et al from government stocks.
So what's the big deal about providing some people with education vouchers? You can means test them, the fraud-waste-and-mismanagement accusation is probably true but also true about many other government programs we maintain, and if your concern for public school budgets is the nub, then you can fund the vouchers with new money (leaving more per capita for the students who stay behind in the public schools).
Sure everybody wants the best for their kids, I moved to a school district where I thought mine would have the best opportunities. I could do that because I got a good ticket in the choose-your-parents lottery. Why not extend that opportunity to more people?
Do vouchers have some unfortunate drawbacks? Sure. Are vouchers a panacea? No. But the sure would give some children a much improved shot at a better life, and yes I think it is hypocrisy for those who don't pay any price to oppose vouchers as a matter of principal. Frankly, it is quite analogous to the chickenhawk accusations made by neo-conservative keyboard commandos who preen about their valor as warriors in the war on terror while sitting safely 8000 miles from the war zone.
This is beside the point, but I had an enlightening conversation with an admissions director at my university once; basically, they put students' schools into three categories: shitty (I'm paraphrasing), okay-to-good, and awesome. The interesting part was that the difference between a good and an awesome school was in the quality of the bottom half of students. That is, they wanted to know whether or not to hold a really low class rank (i.e. bottom half) against a kid. My fiancee went to Groton, so I asked what category it falls in. His answer was that there are only 20 or so schools in the top category and that Groton surely wasn't one of them (rightfully so from what I know). If I had to guess, I'd say most of them are day schools, since they tend to be a little bit less dependent on prestige among blue-bloods.
The left is right to be suspicious of anything that involves a change from public to private.
Allow for partial privatization of social security and before long there will be calls for privatizing the whole pie. Allow for vouchers and cherished myths about human equality may be exposed.
The history of the human race has always been one of a ruling elite and a mythos by which the population at large can narrate a story by.
Let me say that I'm in favor of improving our public schools. However, it is obvious that in many places, they are not working. For these schools, the immediate solution is to assist parents in sending their children elsewhere.
As far as demanding that private schools be unionized, this is a mistake. If the teachers in the school opt to unionize, that's fine, but to force the teachers to be members of the union? That's putting the union ahead of the employees.
And I won't even start on putting them ahead of the students.
Megan McArdle inadvertently answers the question as to why people send their children to private school when she writes:
The core market for private schools is families earning $80-120,000 per year. The parents in these families send their children to private school because they want their children to mingle with a wealthier class of students and they want to socialize with a “nicer” bunch of parents. They do not want their children associating with ordinary Americans significantly less wealthy than them. Since these are not socially-acceptable statements in America they use instead the excuse that they are worried about the quality of the public education system.
Many of these parents would probably like to receive a voucher defraying part of the cost of their child’s education. They would not, however, like to receive with it the less wealthy families they entered the private education system to avoid. And frankly, private schools do not want them either other than perhaps a couple of good looking ones from stable families to demonstrate diversity in the school brochure. The simplest way these schools can preserve the status quo is to increase their fees by the amount of the voucher. Then, neither the schools nor their parents have to admit that they just do not want to mix with poor Americans.
The reality is that school vouchers are not about increasing educational opportunity for poor Americans but about giving a tax break to wealthy Americans. The American right, be it the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal or Megan McArdle, does not care about the poverty which is the root cause of failure in our educational system. Their use of poor Americans to buttress their case for a tax cut for wealthy Americans is as obscene as it is despicable
Vouchers, in theory: love’m. But I suspect vouchers in practice would turn off many of the people who now profess to support them.
Foodstamps are vouchers, too; we should expect to find all the same problems in a school voucher program as we find in foodstamps, and we should expect to have to police the program just as rigorously. So vouchers may be great for people who want to use them as designed. But we’d need to create systems to ensure that “schools” that receive vouchers were not merely shell operations that provided kickbacks to uncaring (or financially desperate) parents. Gee, has this been a problem where vouchers have been tested? Maybe not; and we never used to see iPods around, either. But it’s entirely foreseeable that his kind of fraud would arise, just as it has arisen in foodstamps.
But how can we guard against this fraud? In brief, states would need to specify in detail who could qualify to receive the vouchers. Now think about that. If you thought that state-level fights over textbooks were bad already, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. And then we’d need schools that agree to accept vouchers to agree to subject themselves to state scrutiny.
I question McArdle’s suggestion that we can maintain a separation of church and state by requiring vouchered schools permit kids to “opt out” of religious training. Again in theory, I have no problem with vouchered schools teaching religion, or politics, or “classics,” or “Afro-centrism,” or whatever. I don’t care what they include; I care about what they omit. For example, I have no problem with a vouchered school teaching that natural selection is bunk or satanic, provided the kids ALSO learn natural selection. But in practice, courts have concluded that government can’t avoid “undue entanglement” with religion under such circumstances. The political fight that would ensue in determining which schools qualify to receive vouchers would almost inevitably be influenced by the effort to ensure that vouchers were available to schools teaching popularly-held religious beliefs and unavailable to schools teaching minority religions.
In short, I think school vouchers is a great theory. But I question the practice.
Vouchers, in politics: Liberals tend to oppose vouchers in part because they would tend to undermine teachers unions, and teachers unions support liberal causes. It’s a “countervailing force” issue. In short, whatever the merits a voucher system may provide in isolation, they may degrade one of the few remaining bastions of liberal power and thereby do more harm than good. What profitith a man if he improves access to good schools, but the governmental authorities controlling the curriculum are then overrun by troglodytes?
The reality is that school vouchers are not about increasing educational opportunity for poor Americans but about giving a tax break to wealthy Americans.
What part of m-e-a-n-s t-e-s-t t-h-e-m you don't understand?
ndm's comment is exemplified by notorious right-wingers like 52% of the Congressional Black Caucus, 37 percent of House Democrats and Al Gore.
Stats from the Heritage Foundation.
The problem with vouchers is that they are at best a very partial response to the problem of public schools in places like DC. DC schools are poor because they have too high a percentage of students who have not been adequately prepared for school by their parents. Some students currently in DC schools likely would benefit from vouchers, but others (and in particular the inadequately prepared) likely would not.
Vouchers do nothing to solve the real problem, which is that there are too many kids being badly raised by their parents. I think people focus so much on vouchers because the real problem is too hard to fix.
What part of m-e-a-n-s t-e-s-t t-h-e-m you don't understand?>/i>
What part of simplify the tax code don't you understand?
On the broader question of beliefs and hypocrisy:
Yup, for most of us I suspect beliefs are a consumption good. Yup, I expect this is extraordinarily common. And nope, I’m not okay with this.
Does racism persist because it’s proven to be such a good predictor of behavior? Or because it tends to reinforce beliefs that are flattering to a majority of the population? I’m guessing the latter, and no, I’m not okay with this.
McArdle is right to question how long people would hold a belief if it actual cost something to hold it. How easy it is for the majority to oppose homosexuals, or abortion, or social safety nets, or ending the war; they bear no cost for their beliefs. But when Cheney’s daughter comes out as a lesbian, and just watch him flip. Now his wife tours the country talking like a libertarian. Most of the current administration claimed to have supported US involvement in Viet Nam, yet all of them found ways to avoid bearing any cost for their views. If Jenna Bush were in the Marines right now, how different would US policy be?
Take no action than could not be made universal. Hypocrisy is bad. Yes, we all engage in it. And we all -- even parents -- should stop.
What part of simplify the tax code don't you understand?
I'm totally with you on this, who told you otherwise? Single flat tax -- it doesn't get any simpler. Only one variable to work with.
And what exactly does it have to do with vouchers? They presumably aren't tax deductions or credits; they represent tax money already collected.
Come to think of it, it would be even simpler if they weren't collected to start off with and parents simply paid for their kids' schooling. And there would be a "safety net" for those who can't. Hmmm...
Megan, when you talk about vouchers, do you mean a set amount for any private school student? Two problems I see for vouchers are (1) they'll go to students presently in expensive yuppie private schools and (2) the amount won't be nearly enough for a school to consider taking a kid with disabilities, other than very minor ones.
The first objection could be easily dealt with by means testing, but the second is more difficult. If the amount of the voucher is dependent on how expensive it would be to educate the child, how would that be determined?
Inner city schools are terrible and this is a problem we should solve, but vouchers have not been a solution where they have been tried. The rare inner city schools that succeed do it with hard work, dedication, inspiring leadership, long hours for low-paid teachers and a lot of volunteers from outside the school community. Those things are not easy to replicate.
I'm all for means testing; I loved the Riverdale Country School, but I don't see why it should have gotten money from the government for educating rich kids.
Disability kids already work on a voucher system: the district gets money to pay for them, and if they can't provide the services, they have to send them to private school. To be sure, that system is immensely screwed up, and (quel surprise) usually operates to the benefit of affluent parents with the time, energy, money, and knowledge to fight the system. But it's a decent model for what we could do, on a less lawsuit-bound basis: figure out what's needed to educate those kids, and send them to a school that specializes in their problems.
"Don't try to save the Titanic, just let people get on the lifeboats. Vouchers seem to be the only real way to help SIGNIFICANT numbers of schoolchildren." - Posted by Fraggle Rock
There weren't enough lifeboats, remember.
You picked an odd word to capitalize. The problem with vouchers is that they will not help a significant number of students. I don't think voucher proponents even argue that. They will help a small number of students who can get into private schools, but who can't afford them. There are not that many empty spaces in private schools.
Vouchers may create a demand for new private schools. They will be attended by the last students to leave the public school system. They will be taught by teachers laid off by the public school system. I'm sure the improvement will be ... startling.
Ironically, I would have no problem with vouchers where public schools were working fine, provided the vouchers were an honest reflection of education costs, and were mindful of the first amendment. Admittedly, I am probably in the minority amongst the anti-voucher crowd on this.
Sorry, Nut, not going to take advice on remedial reading from someone who can't grasp the difference between "calling people immoral for being against vouchers" and Megan's actual position, which is that it's immoral to be against vouchers while simultaneously opting your own children out of the school system that you claim allowing people to opt out of would ruin.
Having a theory of mind doesn't mean you have to buy into their delusions and rationalizations. For instance, somebody might write "Yeah, they mightn't not (sic) be evil. Who knew" and then later on in the same thread castigate "somebody who honestly believes in and defends the position that 'my opponent is an unreasoning idiot'." It's entirely possible that person just doesn't see the contradiction there. Similarly, somebody might think that professing support for something in the abstract (say, higher teacher pay in a school district that they no longer pay taxes in because they've moved to a better school district) offsets the concrete harm their own theory says they've done by opting out. But so what? People sincerely believe a lot of wacky things, but the sincerity doesn't reduce the wackiness. You can not only have a theory of mind to explain that people have these beliefs, but an error theory (such as the one that Megan's offering about the costlessness of the belief) to explain why they have these beliefs...but the beliefs are still wacky.
For the record, lest anyone be confused by Nut's hyperventilating, while I don't think that vouchers are the only thing that could possibly work I think:
a) the status-quo manifestly doesn't work, so an argument against vouchers in favor of the status-quo is a non-starter. If you offer this, you're not serious about improving education and you should just admit that.
b) people who think the state must provide, and not just pay for, education should be forced explain why education must necessarily be handled more like the military, and not like food, shelter, or even medicine. (And if they think all those should be similarly run by the state, then they should admit it.)
c) people who offer theories about education and child-raising should be ignored (or perhaps viciously mocked) if they aren't willing to subject their own kids to the consequences of their theories. Having a double-standard where public action is concerned should be the unforgivable sin of political advocacy.
d) Complex systems can't work without valid feedback (where feedback is understood in the sense that it actually changes the behavior of the system and not in the sense "we'll solicit your feedback and carefully discard it"), and in order to get valid feedback there need to be self-regulating (in the sense of being an automatic outcome of the inputs, not in the sense of "let's all vote ourselves raises") consequences. If you construct a system where the interests of the various stake-holders are at odds and there's no consequence to failure to perform, you get the modern American public school system (or the IRS, or the DMV, or the prison system). Vouchers are one mechanism to try to better align the goals of the people actually running the system (administrators and teachers) and the people allocating the resources (politicians) with the people the system is supposed to serve (students and parent). Whatever their other problems might be, it's perfectly clear how vouchers would address the problems of log-rolling, self-dealing, and bad or missing incentives among the politicians, administrators, and teachers. It seems to me that if you're going to look at alternatives to vouchers, you need to look particularly carefully at how the alternative would address those same problems, and how you could tell if it was working. If it doesn't, then it's going to have to make a huge, huge difference in some other area to overcome the entrenched status-quo bias.
Megan, you're missing my point about the disabled kids. Do the math; it's simple enough. If a voucher is offered for the average cost of educating a kid, but no one will accept a voucher for an expensive-to-educate kid, then the only students who are using vouchers will be siphoning off more money from the public school than they cost when they were there. Then the expensive-to-educate kids will be stuck in failing schools that are even more underfunded.
The number of disabled kids in the public school system is huge- 10% or so of all students. The number of disabled kids sent at public school expense to special private schools is tiny, on the order of 0.1%.
ndm wrote: The reality is that school vouchers are not about increasing educational opportunity for poor Americans but about giving a tax break to wealthy Americans. The American right, be it the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal or Megan McArdle, does not care about the poverty which is the root cause of failure in our educational system. Their use of poor Americans to buttress their case for a tax cut for wealthy Americans is as obscene as it is despicable
You were making a pretty compelling argument until the flying cashews kicked in. As someone already noted, the argument included a willingness to engage means testing. Got a good income that allows you to readily make choices about housing type and location, and school type and location? Then no subsidy, whether it be vouchers or food stamps. Why is this hard to grasp, especially considering that in other programs to aid the low-income demographics, we already do it?
Easy enough to pay a bigger voucher for a disabled student, no?
"figure out what's needed to educate those kids, and send them to a school that specializes in their problems."
My own daughter benefits from such a program, and (no surprise) it is a voucher program I certainly agree with. By the way, the $56,000 per year it costs to educate her counts as part of public school education costs, not private school costs. Public school systems pay the vast majority of the costs for educating the severely disabled. That is part of why the per student cost is so high.
The problem isn't the easy to educate kids who are getting screwed by a school system catering to the least capable. It is a school system designed to educate the average kid, being overloaded with difficult to educate children.
Postulate a voucher program to create demand for good private schools designed to teach children with learning disabilities, significant emotional disturbances, poor home situations and other problems, and you will meet less resistance. Pulling the average kids out of public education makes it look like you are willing to leave a purgatory behind.
The latter also makes it look like you are setting up teacher's unions to fail. Pull out all of the easy to educate students, and public schools will continue to look worse and worse. Is it really so hard to see why teacher's unions oppose this?
The core market for private schools is families earning $80-120,000 per year. The parents in these families send their children to private school because they want their children to mingle with a wealthier class of students and they want to socialize with a “nicer” bunch of parents. They do not want their children associating with ordinary Americans significantly less wealthy than them. Since these are not socially-acceptable statements in America they use instead the excuse that they are worried about the quality of the public education system.
What secret cabal are you a part of that you are privy to the thoughts and motivations of all parents of private school kids? Or are you just surmising this based on your idealogical predilictions?
Could it be that parents just want their kids to get good educations, and are willing to pay tuition over and above their property taxes to make it happen?
"Sorry, Nut, not going to take advice on remedial reading from someone who can't grasp the difference between "calling people immoral for being against vouchers" and Megan's actual position, which is that it's immoral to be against vouchers while simultaneously opting your own children out of the school system that you claim allowing people to opt out of would ruin."
Sorry, Josh, but I'm not going to recant my call ror remedial reading nor read your long winded post if you think that I don't understand McArdle's point.
Again, by stating that admitting schools are bad (eg taking your children out) and being against vouchers (in McArdle's mind, being agains't improving schools) is BEGGING THE QUESTION. That is, your premise is that vouchers are the only way to improve schools, therefor your conclusion, that anyone against vouchers is secretly against poor children getting a good education, is meaningless.
So, for the third time, people may well be against vouchers because they think they are a bad idea and still also hold the belief that public schools are bad and would prefer to remove their children given the means. Your failure to accept that people have moral stances and came to a different conclusion about proper behavior is lacking a theory of mind.
Whether or not you agree with this stance, coming to the conclusion that large group of people that disagree with you are immoral is generally a bad one.
But don't listen to me, I'm evil!
Means testing destroys the primary political goal of school vouchers which is to give a tax break to affluent Americans. A school voucher system that was simultaneously generous enough to allow poor Americans to send their children to private school yet sufficiently means-tested as to be of no benefit to affluent Americans would destroy the primary social goal of private education which is to isolate affluent children from poor children.
Geographic boundaries do a perfectly fine job of isolating affluent children from poor children. No need for private schools for that purpose.
Geographic boundaries do a perfectly fine job of isolating affluent children from poor children.
Unless you live in a city with open enrollment to public schools which leads to white flight to private schools (and other school districts.) And then you understand that social exclusion is the primary goal of private education.
Means testing destroys the primary political goal of school vouchers which is to give a tax break to affluent Americans.
It's interesting how often this urban legend keeps popping up no matter how often or how recently it has been refuted. See here.
people may well be against vouchers because they think they are a bad idea and still also hold the belief that public schools are bad and would prefer to remove their children given the means
So, in other words, people may pursue one remedy for their own children while opposing the availablilty of that remedy for shildren whose parents lack the means. (for no better reason than they think it's "a bad idea.")
Yeah, people may well hold that position, but it's not particularly honorable. And we can determine that such a position is objectively immoral. You may not like the way that sounds, but it doesn't change it's accuracy.
Oh, good point. I had forgotten the challenge of financing education for special needs kids.
Government subsidizes local phone service, allegedly in proportion to the cost of providing the service. Small local phone companies have become quite adept at manipulating these formulas.
Similarly, any voucher system would need to allocate additional funds to education kids with special needs – and presumably the amount of the additional funds would need to be calibrated to the needs of each kid. But one rule of economics is that if you to pay for something, you can expect to get more of it. So if the state offers a larger voucher for students with special needs, I would expect to see an industry form to begin testing kids for all kinds of obscure special needs. The PTA would say, “Screw bake sales! Bring in your kids to get tested, and we can raise all the money we need! Remember how little Johnny’s disgraphia paid for the new playground?”
It happened during the draft. Why not now?
I don’t mean to be flip here. A lot of good might come from more aggressive testing for learning disabilities. But it’s a dynamic any voucher system should anticipate: if we pay people to declare themselves disabled, we should expect a growth in the number of people who do so, and therefore a growth in the cost of treating the disabilities.
ndm,
I'm not sure how exactly you can determine the direction of the causation arrow.
Yes "better schools for the children" sounds more noble than "classier friends," but its also true that children's peer groups can have an enormous impact on their lives. Parents looking for good peer groups for their children will look a lot like adults looking for classier friends for those inclined to think so.
But one rule of economics is that if you to pay for something, you can expect to get more of it. So if the state offers a larger voucher for students with special needs, I would expect to see an industry form to begin testing kids for all kinds of obscure special needs.
Are there states that pay for all of the added costs of special accomodation of needs for K-12 students? From the stories I hear, that isn't the case in Wisconsin where the smaller districts subtly and not-so-subtly encourage parents of children with special needs to move to Milwaukee or Madison because 'they can afford it'. Wouldn't it be nice if the Federal government actually paid for all of the educational mandates that it dumps on school districts?
ndm: you're constructing a circular argument. FWIW, I agree that voluntary segregation is part of the motivation behind the flight to both suburbs and to private schools but it appears to be more of an effect than a cause. Consider:
- Insofar as lower-income and predominantly minority children are more likely to disrupt school discipline, threaten safety (think fights and gangs) and hold back the curriculum, the quality of education in the open enrollment school may suffer. This will be less of a concern where open enrollment is combined with segregational zoning ordinances because it will require substantial effort to get into a different school and the parents willing to make such effort are likelier to have kids that are better, more disciplined learners
- If residential zoning is weak, then in addition to having your children suffer in slower paced, unruly and dangerous school environment you also have your quality of life (and property values!) degraded by presence of SOME potentially unruly and dangerous neighbors. A double whammy.
So the self-segregation process is quite natural and fighting it has got to be a lost cause. Yes, middle class flocks into suburbs to live among the people they find it easier to live among. Perhaps the very rich enroll their children to prestigious private schools for the same reason, I wouldn't know. Since the process appears to be working quite well for both middle class and rich, I don't see how supporting it can be the primary political goal of the vouchers.
I don’t mean to be flip here. A lot of good might come from more aggressive testing for learning disabilities. But it’s a dynamic any voucher system should anticipate: if we pay people to declare themselves disabled, we should expect a growth in the number of people who do so, and therefore a growth in the cost of treating the disabilities
But isn't that also a feature of the status quo, where parents can get additional services from their schools by having them diagnosed with a disability? And school districts can get more funding by demonstrating they have more kids with special needs?
The existence of special needs doesn't stop us from trying to educate all children. I don't see why it should stop us from offering parents a choice either.
I'm sorry, I thought it was obvious that special needs kids need bigger vouchers. Fair 'nough; they need bigger vouchers. The normal kids shouldn't get the average, but something less than that, to compensate for the average cost of running a school for normal kids.
I'm underwhelmed by the disability argument. Disability gets your kid extra services, but it can also get him sent to a class, or a school, with disabled kids, and no one wants that; they want their kid to be the one disabled kid in a class full of high performers. It has proven to be fairly self-limiting even in affluent districts, although I'm under the impression that they may be taking the extra time flag off the SAT, which might change a lot.
Stuart Buck writes:
A small-scale voucher experiment targetted specifically at very poor Americans tells us nothing about the primary goal of voucher advocates. It certainly does nothing to render as an "urban legend" the idea that the primary goal with school vouchers is to give a tax break to affluent Americans.
A small-scale voucher experiment targetted specifically at very poor Americans tells us nothing about the primary goal of voucher advocates.
Nor does your speculation about said primary goals.
But at least Stuart Buck's conclusion is based on evidence, however small a sample, rather than his personal dislike of a group of people.
"Ironically, I would have no problem with vouchers where public schools were working fine, provided the vouchers were an honest reflection of education costs, and were mindful of the first amendment. Admittedly, I am probably in the minority amongst the anti-voucher crowd on this."
-Posted by Njorl
You'd have no problem with a voucher system as long as a voucher system was unnecessary to improve our public school system. A system that even a more than a third of Democrat politicians won't send their children to.
The only sense I can make of your mention of the 1st amendment is that you would oppose vouchers allowing parents to choose Catholic schools or religious schools in general, since children don't have your typical free speech rights in school. Or do you want students to be able to petition the government for a redress of grievances?
"So, in other words, people may pursue one remedy for their own children while opposing the availablilty of that remedy for shildren whose parents lack the means. (for no better reason than they think it's "a bad idea.")"
Okie, one last time and then I give up.
In this statement is the assumption that vouchers are a remedy. This is arguable.
For the record, I am neither for nor against vouchers. Seems like they could work if done right or could fail if done wrong. I need to do more research.
The only point I'm trying to make, and god knows why it's so hard to get through, is that you can't claim that anyone who thinks public schools are bad and hence removes their kids from them is a hypocrite if they oppose vouchers. They might have their own reasons for not liking vouchers that simply don't jive with yours.
Therefor, you can't just dismiss your foes as immoral. Funny how that works.
Nut,
Repeating yourself wiht sarcasm is not a substitute for an argument, and I can dismiss anything I want to as immoral.
I'm not sure if your stumbling block is the word "voucher" or what.
I am not asserting that removing children from failing public schools is the best remedy, the parents have communicated that in the strongest way possible by removing their children from school. Their preferred remedy for the failing schools is not additional funding or improved certifications or any other improvement to the additional schools, their preferred remedy is to opt out.
It may still be arguable whether this is the best remedy. What is not arguable is that these parents have judged opting out to be the best remedy. So, for these same parents to then argue against vouchers, which is the only means by which less affluent parents may pursue the same remedy, is inconsistent with egalitarian values, which most would consider immoral.
By choosing to pull their students from failing public schools, these parents have relieved voucher proponents of the burden of proof that opting out is the best remedy for failing public schools -- they have indicated so themselves.
Now, one can pursue actions for himself that he would not advocate in general. One might smoke and advocate anti-smoking education, for example. But that requires a better explanation than vague generalities like they think it's "a bad idea" or "their own reasons ... that simply don't jive with yours." So there better be a good reason why opting out is a good remedy for their kids, but not poor kids, which neither you nor anyone else has provided.
If I always buy Kellog's Raisin Bran, that does not prove that Kellog's Raisin Bran is objectively the best Raisin Bran, but it positions me poorly to argue that it's not.
"I'm sorry, I thought it was obvious that special needs kids need bigger vouchers."
Start with them, and I'll believe you'll get to them. Otherwise, I suspect vouchers are a way to abandon special needs students. The programs you cite are small, and don't come close to meeting demand. This statement:
"Disability gets your kid extra services, but it can also get him sent to a class, or a school, with disabled kids, and no one wants that;"
is less true than you believe. Every parent of a child at my daughter's school fought to get them into a school with only disabled students. More are turned away than accepted. This was in Montgomery County, MD, one of the wealthiest and high performing public school systems in the country. They can not attract enough special education teachers to meet demand. The situation is even worse for emotionally disturbed students than mentally handicapped ones.
Good luck getting people to accept $40,000 vouchers for kids to attend private school because they have a disability, when that disability is a high likelihood that they will assault their teacher. I'm sure that's exactly what all of the pro-voucher people have in mind.
Good luck getting people to accept $40,000 vouchers for kids to attend private school because they have a disability, when that disability is a high likelihood that they will assault their teacher.
I wonder if it might be cheaper than paying for their subsequent stay in the penitentiary...
All school voucher programs in the country of which I'm aware are either limited to, or give priority to, kids who are poor or disabled. If the "primary goal" of vouchers is to "give a tax break to affluent Americans" --- well, it's been 17 years since the Milwaukee voucher program started, so voucher supporters are certainly taking a long time to get to their supposed goal (or even to propose any programs that would serve that goal).
In DC, families have to be within 175% of the poverty line. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/2007_dc_evaluation.pdf
In Cleveland, low income families have "priority" in the award of any vouchers. http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDetail.aspx?Page=3&TopicRelationID=672&Content=38154
Ohio also has a voucher program for students in public schools that have been rated as an "academic emergency" for two of three years. http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDetail.aspx?page=3&TopicRelationID=667&ContentID=12789&Content=33822 [Take a guess as to how often this happens in wealthy suburbs . . . .]
In Arizona, there is tax break for corporations that give money to "low-income" students for education. http://www.mohavedailynews.com/articles/2007/03/06/news/state/state3.txt
The voucher program in Arizona is for foster kids and disabled kids: http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/187378.php
In Milwaukee, students have to be under 175% of the poverty line, unless they have a sibling in the system already (then it's 220% of the poverty line). http://dpi.wi.gov/sms/doc/mpcfaq07.doc
Georgia and Florida have voucher programs for kids with disabilities. http://public.doe.k12.ga.us/sb10.aspx and
http://www.floridaschoolchoice.org/Information/McKay/files/Fast_Facts_McKay.pdf
The Utah "universal" voucher law gives a 100% voucher (that is, 100% of the $3,000 voucher) only to families who qualify for reduced-price school lunches under federal standards. The voucher is then phased downwards, and if your income is 250% of the school lunch income guideline, your maximum voucher is $500. http://www.livepublish.le.state.ut.us/lpBin22/lpext.dll/InfobaseUtahCode/title10506.htm/chapter10547.htm/section10600.htm?f=templates&fn=document-frame.htm&q=scholarship&x=Advanced&2.0#LPHit1
"I am not asserting that removing children from failing public schools is the best remedy, the parents have communicated that in the strongest way possible by removing their children from school."
Yes, because they can't change the current government system which they see as failing so they remove their children from it. Perhaps they wish to see changes other than vouchers implemented and then they will return their kids to public schools.
You make numerous assumptions about other people and their motives which are just baseless, and the definition of sarcasm is saying something when you mean the opposite. I don't see where I did that in my posts.
Well, I guess with "funny how that works" but given that ad hominem attacks are a fundamental flaw in arguing that just about anyone should be aware of, it's amazing to me how a paid writer could use them without anyone calling her on it. It's also amazing how many people fail to recognize that it is ad hominem. Seeing as how the only sarcastic remark in my entire post is the very last sentence, I don't see how you can dismiss the entire argument based on that. I'm tempted to call that ad hominem as well, since it seems more likely that you're arguing against me than my points by calling me sarcastic, but I could be wrong.
NOTE: I left a version of this comment with URLs to support every factual claim that I make here, but the comment got "held for approval," apparently on suspicion of being spam. If Megan lets it through, you'll see the URLs. If not, feel free to email me.
All school voucher programs in the country of which I'm aware are either limited to, or give priority to, kids who are poor or disabled. If the "primary goal" of vouchers is to "give a tax break to affluent Americans" --- well, it's been 17 years since the Milwaukee voucher program started, so voucher supporters are certainly taking a long time to get to their supposed goal (or even to propose any programs that would serve that goal).
SB:
You've missed the two oldest voucher systems, in Maine and Vermont. Here's a Cato Institute article about the Maine vouchers, in use since 1873 for towns that do not have public schools. Anyone who wants to claim that vouchers don't or can't or shouldn't work needs to do some research on actual functioning voucher systems in America. (Yes, I've mentioned them before, but to little effect.) The front page mentions that some parents have used their Maine vouchers at Philips Exeter and Choate.
Megan's argument seems to turn on the idea that I'm taking, for my child, a remedy that I won't offer to another child.
So, suppose I say, I'm not sending my child to a school in Newark, NJ. I'll move to Short Hills, NJ, instead, and put him in school there.
But how is Megan offering that same choice to another kid from Newark? The Short Hills school district isn't taking any $8000/year vouchers to teach kids from Newark. That voucher kid isn't going to my kid's school. He will take his voucher and go to a different school-- a school that won't be any better for him than his old school, if we judge by results so far. It'll have a better bunch of kids, because they'll all have parents who try to do right by their children, but they won't get a better education than they did at the old school.
This is the reason to oppose vouchers. They don't work, and they distract us from solutions that might work. Unfortunately, if you look at actual solutions to educating inner city kids, they all turn out to cost a lot of money and take a lot of effort on the part of both teachers and kids.
Stuart Buck writes:
The 2000 CA Proposition 38 was a universal voucher program that was not means tested. Had it passed it would have been far larger than any of the voucher programs mentioned by Stuart Buck and would have provided a $3.3B tax break to affluent Californians.
So what, ndm? All you've got is one failed voucher proposal, while I'm pointing to nearly every existing voucher program. Besides -- consistency point here -- you shouldn't call the California proposal a subsidy to affluent Californians unless you're also willing to call the existing public school system a subsidy to affluent Californians (you admit, don't you, that wealthy people tend to live in areas that have much better public schools than the typical inner-city?)
In the Milwaukee voucher experiment each voucher was worth $6501 in the 2006-2007 school year. A private school accepting the voucher is not allowed to charge additional tuition for instructional purposes.
The tuition at Megan McArdle's school is over $30,000 a year. I wonder what percentage of its student body her school would allow to use Milwaukee vouchers instead of cash for tuition.
I will leave a similar analysis of the other voucher experiments as an exercise for Stuart Buck.
Yes, because they can't change the current government system which they see as failing so they remove their children from it. Perhaps they wish to see changes other than vouchers implemented and then they will return their kids to public schools.
Well, bully for them, but what about the other kids who are stuck in the failing schools while we wait for these nebulous "changes" to magically "occur?"
Maybe they prefer other long term remedies, but in the short term, they have chosen to opt out. Yet they close that option to others. That's what's wrong about it.
That being said, I do think there is a non-hypcritical case to be made, though nobody here has made it, and I wouldn't buy it.
Many affluent couple opted out of poor school districts by moving to superior ones. Voucher recipients who choose to opt out would likely use them at parochial schools, most of which are religious.
If you are concerned about increasing religion (particularly Roman Catholicism)'s influence on public life, and think that curtailing its influence is a greater priority than improving the educational experience for kids in poor school districts, then one could non-hypocritically oppose school vouchers on that basis.
NDM -- is that supposed to be a response to anything I said?
The solution is to start feeding children lawn clippings. Don't you people get it! A perfectly renewable resource going to wastes! Feed the children grass and leaves!!!