Kevin Drum, who is opposed to vouchers, says of my post:
. . . it somehow fails to address the single biggest problem with school vouchers: oversight. If you're going to receive taxpayer dollars, then you have to agree to taxpayer oversight. That means that NCLB applies to you. It means that minimum state curriculum requirements apply to you. It means that teacher union rules apply to you. It means you have a lot less authority to pick and choose which kids you're willing to accept. And, yes, it means you can't use taxpayer money to proselytize for whichever religion your board of directors happens to favor. Like it or not, that's a no-no for public funds, especially when kids are involved.But as near as I can tell, this is anathema to people who run private schools. They won't accept any oversight, let alone the level of oversight that's inevitable with any widespread voucher program. Taxpayers simply aren't willing to shower money on anything that calls itself a school without having some say in how the money is used. And rightly so.
Roughly speaking, this is why I tentatively favor charter schools but not voucher schemes. Charter schools allow for experimentation, which is good, but also accept state oversight. I don't really see how things can work any other way.
For one thing, if this is in fact true, then what do voucher opponents have to worry about? No one will accept the vouchers? Problem solved: the public schools will be saved!
For another, the state regulations are part of the problem with the schools, and no, it is not necessary to port them all over, which I agree would make vouchers useless. You can set basic curricular requirements and test kids to see how many are making the cut (and how far they've come since the previous year) without, for example, importing the ludicrous credentialing system most schools currently use, or the 97 layers of administration. We manage to pay college tuitions just fine without deciding who can teach what subject and how.
For third, Kevin seems to be under the misimpression that you cannot use federal dollars to get prosletyzed. The many students attending our nations' christian colleges on federal student loans and Pell grants would be very surprised to hear that. You can use federal education dollars to study anything you want, including, AFAIK, for the ministry. The federal government, it seems, will not only pay to get you prosleytized, it will pay to teach you how to do it to others, provided only that the payment is viewpoint neutral: i.e., you, not the government, decide what you want to study. There's very clear case law on this from the Supreme Court.
And weirdly, the taxpayer has done all of these things, even though Kevin says they won't. If Kevin, a taxpayer, were to join us in advocating for vouchers, perhaps more taxpayers would see their way clear to doing so again at the secondary level.
I agree it's an uphill fight . . . but it's clearly not impossible, because we've already done it.
Aren't you kind of ignoring the major point, though? Look it's a fact that a) private schools have enormous financial incentive to game the system and fudge the numbers, and b)the oversight against them doing so amounts to the honor system. Doesn't that worry you? I mean what good is any voucher system if you can't trust the data that demonstrates efficacy? And please... don't say that private schools are just such a bastion of morality and honor that their integrity is unquestionable. You sound more and more zealous every day, and not in a good way.
Why not just clean up credentially and regulations in public schools? You seem to have found a point of reform, but why do the reform on the margins? Why not do it right for everyone?
The Supreme Court and the Circuits have been quite pragmatically consistent in saying that people can choose to attend any qualified college that they want, but that funding for parochial schools is not acceptable. You may consider this to be inconsistent on some theoretical level, but it's been the case for years, much like tax breaks for churches.
I thought the point of vouchers was to delegate the provision of oversight to parents.
wow, libertarians and liberals clearly have two distinct ways of looking at the world.
the whole purpose of vouchers is to avoid centralized regulations (also the whole purpose of free markets). hilarious.
You left out the key word: "direct" funding. AFAIK, using vouchers for parochial schools is fine, though may also be permissibly limited by the various Know-Nothing amendments in state constitutions, provided that they go through the parents. Again, we give tax dollars to parochial schools: Pell Grants to religious colleges.
I don't understand what freddie is talking about. fudge what numbers?
Schools develop good reputations from many sources. But there isn't an official stat book that the government will force parents to look through before they choose their kids school.
In colleges there are a number of tools, all controversial, to help you guess whether you are applying to a good school (and one that is good for you). In K-12 there is nothing even that good. The best most people have available is the sales pitch from the Realtor telling you what a wonderful district the house is in.
No, Megan, that's different. Pell Grants are for COLLEGE. Vouchers would be for HIGH SCHOOL. [/low-IQ response]
Eh, I'd say it's easier to assess educational quality the earlier it takes place. A second grader can either read, or can't. But does a college student really understand Proust?
I don't understand what freddie is talking about. fudge what numbers?
Parents investigating individual private schools are routinely given a sales pitch involving standardized testing data, grades, graduation rates, acceptance post-graduation into college, etc.
I suppose you could say that private schools on voucher systems shouldn't have to provide any data showing efficacy at all. But then, who's hindering accountability?
Drum goes wrong in the tacit assumption that "oversight" is boolean. Either you have it, and you get all the problems it causes for public schools, or you don't, and you've got Whites-only KKK Nazi Christian Military academies on the dole.
No, oversight comes in degrees. It is possible to have some rules regulating schools which accept vouchers, but not all of the rules the state schools have.
The question of whether taxpayer money may legally go to schools that teach religion is a different one from whether or not the money ought to go to such schools. I don't think there's any argument to be made that mixing religious or moral instruction with, say, math and English harms the teaching of the latter. Certainly it would be news to most educators in the Western World for the past, oh, thirty centuries or so that separating the two is a good idea likely to produce smarter students.
I've always thought that as long as it's entirely voluntary, it's no skin off my nose if my neighbor uses his kid's portable education funding to send his Jr. to, say, a Methodist school, and my other neighbor opts for a Jewish school, and I choose a secular school, so long as the three schools in question do a good job at producing educated, economically productive citizens. Seriously, why should anybody care if the child down the street happens to pick up the finer points of Hinduism from the teachers who also do a great job teaching him Shakespeare and calculus and US civics? It's when said teachers don't do a good job with the latter that we've got a problem.
Still, as Megan points out, federal tax money does go to finance the religious education of college students, and it seems to be doing the republic little harm, and it seems to be constitutionally permissible, so I fail to see why it couldn't be permissible for K-12 if the polity (state) in question chose to allow it.
As to Drum's contention about the issue of oversight, well, I see no reason why K-12 schools should be any less amenable to regulation than universities. There are creative ways the various problems could be worked out, if one were serious about injecting market forces into K-12 education. The problem is we're not very serious about doing this. But I could imagine, for example, a regulation that required any school accepting voucher money to reserve, say, 10% of its slots for placement of students by the state, and another 10% for placement by blind lottery. And states that embrace school choice could still maintain a number of robustly funded state-owned and operated schools to deal with disadvantaged pupils to insure they don't get short shrift.
Finally, while I think the supposed difficulty in regulating and overseeing a voucherized educational system is a major red herring, I believe one key point to remember is that, even if oversight is more challenging with vouchers, the role of oversight becomes less critical, because parents and children can vote with their feet. Under the status quo in America, this is almost always extremely difficult for the non-rich.
The genius of the free market is that private schools that don't provide any data showing efficacy (and can back it up) are put out of business by ones that do.
Under the gov't system, no such accountability.
Freddie:
Parents investigating individual private schools are routinely given a sales pitch involving standardized testing data, grades, graduation rates, acceptance post-graduation into college, etc.
And over time, through said process, it has shaken out which are the best private schools, in which areas, and which are at the next level, etc.
Funny, that. Are you just upset because it's not a science? Because public schools are on the verge of making failure into a science.
Your boogeyman is the uninformed choices parents will make regarding private schools - a problem that is by and large nonexistent among private schools currently. I guess that's different from the involuntary or otherwise limited options based on gerrymandered maps of cities that public school parents currently have.
So, to (boorishly) paraphrase you one more time, the nonexistent problem with private schools is more of a fear than the present and overwhelming problem with public school systems.
It is possible to have some rules regulating schools which accept vouchers, but not all of the rules the state schools have.
This is the sort of thing that makes me not want to talk about 'vouchers' in vague, general terms. I can envision a whole lot of ways in which 'vouchers' leave poor kids worse off. I'm not ruling out the possibility that a system could be designed in which they'd be useful. But I can't see advocating 'vouchers' without a very, very specific idea of exactly what sort of program I was talking about.
Something where a school that accepted vouchers wasn't allowed to take payment beyond the value of the voucher, and had to take any kid that signed up? I could see that not doing any damage. Other than that, I'd need to be sold on a program, not a concept.
Two comments.
(1) The parochial schools in New York State are funded by the public schools to the extent of (a) transportation and (b) textbooks. The U.S. Supreme Court says this is legal.
(2) Charter schools in NYS are based on the notion that some schools should be exempt from the usual state bureaucracy. My question is this--if it's good enough for charter schools, why isn't it good enough for ALL schools? Complying with state and federal regs is pricy enough without the paperwork to show compliance too. There's roughly a 10% increase in needed administrators in NYS school districts just to coordinate and handle the reporting paperwork. I'm not sure this is necessary--I suspect that teams of state/federal inspectors/auditors hitting each school district every 4-5 years would be just as effective and cost a lot less.
So Megan's rebuttal to Kevin Drum is....something like 'vouchers' work for colleges, therefore it will work for k-12? Really? This is an argument?
So Megan's rebuttal to Kevin Drum is....something like 'vouchers' work for colleges, therefore it will work for k-12? Really? This is an argument?
Rickm: I think it's very likely the single most powerful argument in favor of injecting market forces into K-12. After all, the one area of American education where competition and choice are widespread also happens to double as the one area of American education that is indisputably the best such system on the planet. Can you say this about American K-12?
There are obviously differences between high school and college students, but are these differences so great as to obviate the obvious benefits of competition and choice?
Just think, for a moment, if American K-12 held the same lofty perch in global rankings as American post K-12, what this would imply for addressing one of the country's most serious problems: the weakening of social mobility and increasing class stratification.
So Rickm's rebuttal to Megan is... a strawman?
you, not the government, decide what you want to study.
Ooooh! The Montisori approach to vouchers. How very touchy-feely.
Let's be honest here Meg. You want to get rid of the teachers unions and the government regulation because you don't see the value in government decreeing what needs to be studied and why. I disagree with that, and while I think there are significant flaws with the current educational system I think it's important that we have standards. In the eighth grad a kid should be able to do X and in the eleventh grade a kid should be able to do Y. I know you don't like any union on principle and nothing I can say about that subject is liable to make you change your mind.
But don't tell me your motives are pure and "for the kids" whereas I am a hypocritcal beast for disagreeing with you. You have your own motives which have nothing to do with the "best thing for the child."
And speaking of the teachers unions what makes you think they won't still exist. What makes you think they won't unionize these new shops because otherwise it will be impossible to find enough qualified teachers to teach all of these kids who have been pulled out of public school. It will be worth the while of the teachers union to unionize the private schools and private schools will need them or they won't get the almighty dollar.
What this really comes down to though is that you seem to believe that with vouchers come magical fairies who braid our hair and tell us how pretty we are. There seems to be no understanding of all of the things that will surely go wrong and how awful the system will be when it's all over and the experiment fails.
You don't think it could be any worse than it is now? Then you're not nearly as creative as I am because I can think of a dozen ways, right off the top of my head.
I'm not saying we shouldn't try to fix the problem. I am saying that your solutions are over the top and you're not looking at substantive changes that could be made that don't have the potential of destroying the system.
But what can I say, I'm clearly a conservative on this issue.
I am saying that your solutions are over the top and you're not looking at substantive changes that could be made that don't have the potential of destroying the system.
What substantive changes are you talking about here Kate? I'm open to suggestions, but then I live in California where the public schools are guaranteed 40% of the state budget no matter what, the teachers unions have controlled most of the local school districts for a generation, no measurable improvement in drop-out rates or achievement has occured and even the most minor attempts at "reform" have been fought tooth and nail.
If a Muslim madrassa that advocates establishment of a Muslim thoecracy wants to accept voucher money, as long as they meet "basic curricular requirements and test kids to see how many are making the cut," then every thing is swell? And if it isn't, why not? Will we also deny vouchers to Christian schools that teach theocracy? (And trust me, there are plenty of parents who are far more concerned that their children are properly indoctrinated Christians than they are about their children's math or science literacy.)
Also, if a school has to meet some set of (state-set) curricular requiremtns and has to complete some (state-chosen) set of tests, that sounds to me like a cross between the charter school Drum is referring to and a true "free market" voucher some of the commenters here seem to envision.
Lastly, the notion of schools "competing" is only real if they have the same set of rules. Public schools have to accomodate everyone, with physical disabilities, learning disabilities, etc. If voucher schools get to pick and choose who they accept, that isn't really a competition. If they don't get to pick and choose, that will require additional oversight.
There seems to be no understanding of all of the things that will surely go wrong and how awful the system will be when it's all over and the experiment fails.
Kate: Why do you think in the US school choice would be so sure to fail when it's employed with success by the Dutch, Swedes, Japanese, Canadians and Australians? Do these bastions of right wingnuttery also share Megan's impure motives for wanting to bring market forces into education?
You have your own motives which have nothing to do with the "best thing for the child."
Where I pick up some of the mind reading pills you apparently possess?
There are obviously differences between high school and college students, but are these differences so great as to obviate the obvious benefits of competition and choice?
Quite possibly. The goal of providing a K12 education to everyone that wants one (and many kids, frankly, who sometimes don't) is not compatible with the college mission -- to educate those willing to pay, and who's attendance is purely voluntary.
LizardBreath has it exactly right: it's nearly impossible to discuss the topic without addressing some particulars. One person thinks vouchers are a way out of (all or most) regulation, another may be skeptical that such money wouldn't come with regulation. I might be fine with "whole tuition" vouchers, but not with partial subsidies. And the ever-present discussion of unwanted/expensive students needs to be addressed.
On a slight tangent, how do the rules of the teachers union become part of taxpayer oversight? Unions are not part of the government, and they do not even profess to represent the interests of taxpayers.
I cannot help but think that Mr. Drum has a great affection for rules in general.
Kevin Drum is presumably familiar with Proposition 38 from the California 2000 ballot. This was a voucher initiative that would have provided a $4,000 voucher to each student, regardless of family income, attending a private or religious school. Furthermore, the proposition would have required a 75% super-majority for any future state laws and regulations regarding private schools. Voucher advocates wanted private and religious institutions to receive billions of dollars in public funds without any state oversight of the money or its use - or even the future possibility of state oversight.
Why prohibit parents from making a payment in addition to the voucher? How does that help poor kids?
It prevents the voucher schools from stratifying by income. (Under the assumption that whatever the means test, the vouchers aren't limited to people with literally no additional resources for tuition).
If the kids with a little extra money end up going to different schools than the really poor kids, the really poor kids are likely to end up in worse schools than they're in now.
I paid for my Masters with help from a federal voucher system known as the GI Bill. Somehow the federal government has arrived at a pretty workable solution based on 60 plus years of experience so I suspect that we could make a go of it at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. And as Jaspe points out above, a number of other countries that we normally don't think of as right-wing in their general orientation also have what appear to be workable systems.
Why prohibit parents from making a payment in addition to the voucher? How does that help poor kids?
Because
a) the tuitions will rise to cover much (almost all) of the [direct subsidy + current tuition]. There should be an impact on the margin, where some parents that can almost afford private schools now can. Those students would benefit.
b) that huge pile of money now going to private schools is no longer available to the public schools.
The money has flooded out, but the students haven't. This creates an even wider gap, and more poorly served students, until the market sorts itself out.
Essentially, we will start paying a whole bunch of schools/parents to do what they are already doing (and I doubt this would be a trivial hit on an overall education budget), but not bringing private schools much closer to the reach of poor kids.
If a Muslim madrassa that advocates establishment of a Muslim thoecracy wants to accept voucher money, as long as they meet "basic curricular requirements and test kids to see how many are making the cut," then every thing is swell?
alwsdad: I personally have no problem with Islam or any other faith being taught with the use of taxpayer money as long as the Islamic (or Hindu or Mormon or Zoroastrian or Congregationalist) school in question is ably carrying out its mission to produce well-educated, economically productive citizens.
However, the Constitution is not a suicide pact, after all, and it ought not to be mandatory to fund the teaching of the violent overthrow of the government.
Again, you could make your rather weak argument with respect to post K-12 education funding, as well: a) I doubt the federal government allows taxpayer money to pay for college instructors who teach their students they should engage in jihad against the United States; b) If the federal government does allow this, they should stop forthwith; c) But in any event it seems to matter very little, because the vast majority of college students apparently are more interested in getting a good education and landing a good job than they are in being taught how to become suicide bombers. I doubt it would be any different at the K-12 level.
I mean, heck, maybe injecting market forces into K-12 wouldn't work so hot in France or Britain or Pakistan, but we're not them.
There are obviously differences between high school and college students, but are these differences so great as to obviate the obvious benefits of competition and choice?
Yes, of course they are.
I agree with henry evans. I would think that people most concerned with the oversight would be the parents sending their kids to the school. And they would have direct oversight of the school by being able to direct their voucher money elsewhere.
To Freddie: I think that the equivalent of Consumer Reports for schools would emerge. There are private rating systems available for tons of privately provisioned goods and services. Consumer Reports is kinda generic in that it applies to a lot of different goods/services. But if you want more in depth detail, about (for example) digital photography, see dpreview.com. If you want to learn about cars, there are tons of private magazine reviews of cars. How about cooking utensils? Yep, got those, too (www.3luxe.com). But of course, those are really larger scale than a school. Schools are a bit more local. Angie's list does a good job of covering local reviews.
I think there's plenty of precedent to think that local quality assessments of school systems would emerge.
Since when are the “teacher union rules” equated with “taxpayer oversight”? It seems to me that in many ways, the two are arguably at odds.
But what if they aren't producing "well-educated, economically productive citizens"? It'll take government oversight to determine that. (I'm guessing parents who would send their sons to a madarassa aren't going to be the ones to complain.) Yes, it's an extreme example, but the point is that plenty of schools will pop up that do not serve students well, albeit for different reasons than some of the current failing schools. (I'm actually not opposed to a voucher system IF proper oversight and reasonable accomodations for all students can be made.)
The 2000 CA Proposition 38 voucher initiative proposed giving $4,000 dollar vouchers to students. This nominally saved the state $3,000 since the state spent $7,000 per public school student.
The Legislative Analyst’s report for the 2000 CA Proposition 38 voucher initiative estimated that a 5% movement of existing students to private schools would cost the state $2B. A 25% movement would save the state $3.34 comprising a $6.7B saving from students moving from public schools and a $3.3B expense from money going to students already in private school.
The voucher initiative was essentially a $3.3B tax break to parents who could already afford to send their children to private schools.
...the tuitions will rise to cover much (almost all) of the [direct subsidy + current tuition]. There should be an impact on the margin, where some parents that can almost afford private schools now can. Those students would benefit...that huge pile of money now going to private schools is no longer available to the public schools.
BradL: I think your comments dovetail somewhat with Lizardbreath's thoughts about lack of specificity: it's true, we're only talking hypotheticals or possibilities here -- we're not really talking about concrete plans.
Still, your contention that a "huge pile of money" would be diverted to private schools is a bit of a red herring. While it may be true that voucher plans that have been tried out in the US have had this effect, there's no reason voucher plans ought to be structured in this manner, and every reason why they shouldn't.
Ideally, a true school choice plan would utilize a centralized funding mechanism that gives every student in a given state a voucher of equal spending power. Under such a system, there effectively would no longer be any substantive difference between "public" and "private" schools. The government, in other words, would largely be getting out of the business of owning and operating schools in favor of a funding-only (and oversight) role. This is similar to how Medicare works. Unlike in Britain, America's national government mostly doesn't own and operate healthcare facilities. It wisely limits its role to funding.
I live in Massachusetts, for instance, and in my state an average (at least last time I looked) of around $10k is spent on each public school student's education. If education in my state became voucherized, and every Massachusetts student thereby had a $10,000 portable scholarship to spend (that's a pool of around $10 billion according to my math), it's hard to imagine that a significant number of new schools wouldn't be founded by educators attracted to this pool of money. And that, in turn, would limit the ability of existing private schools to raise tuition. So I doubt your theory that vouchers would completely be absorbed by price increases is valid, unless you assume the voucher program is poorly and illogically structured. Of course, many -- I would say nearly all -- voucher programs in the United States to date have been thusly structured. But that's more an argument about political will: the American polity to date hasn't really been serious about injecting choice and competition into K-12 education, so we've normally had plans where only a portion of the normal per capita education dollar is allowed to be portable. Understandably, such milquetoast reforms have produced underwhelming results.
But what if they aren't producing "well-educated, economically productive citizens"? It'll take government oversight to determine that.
I have no problem with government oversight, and fail to see how any use of taxpayer money in education is plausible without it. If a given school doesn't meet government standards, it will no longer be eligible for taxpayer money. What's so complicated about this? Moreover, hopefully it never gets to that point, because, again, students would be free to vote with their feet and leave poorly performing schools.
The 2000 CA Proposition 38 voucher initiative proposed giving $4,000 dollar vouchers to students. This nominally saved the state $3,000 since the state spent $7,000 per public school student.
ndm: Your citation of this fact doesn't support the notion that injecting competition into public K-12 is bad. Rather, it supports the notion that voucher programs introduced in the US have typically been poorly structured, parsimoniously funded, and lacking in boldness. Or, to put it another way, the California proposition in question should have made the value of each voucher $7,000.00, and not $4,000.000. Why not make the whole enchilada portable? Answer: because doing so would risk shattering the calcified foundations of the status quo, and we can't have that.
Does Kevin Drum really think that "taxpayer oversight" and "minimum state curriculum requirements" don't already apply to private schools? Private schools in my state (N.C.) are already visited by fire inspectors who check the exstinguishers and the placement of exit signs and time the fire drills. I believe there are also health inspectors taking a look at the kitchens and bathrooms. There are strict requirements on immunization. Academically, there are specific state rules on required courses that must be passed before a student can be given a high school diploma: biology, 4 years of English, world history, 3 years of math, 3 years of foreign languages, of which 2 have to be the same language, and so on (I may be off on some of the details). The school must give a standardized test to all 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 11th-graders and keep the results on file for state inspection. I'm sure there's more, and I have no objection to any of these, but if I'm required to join a union or take some stupid 'education' courses to continue teaching in private and charter schools, I'll move to another state or another line of business.
By the way, my previous school was not accredited, but graduates have had little trouble getting into decent colleges. (When the accreditors came around, they said it would be very difficult to get accredited as a high school, given the lack of 'education' credentials in the faculty, but accreditation as a college would be easy, since most of the faculty had Ph.D.s in their fields, and just about all the rest had a Masters. They weren't joking.)
jasper writes:"ndm: Your citation of this fact doesn't support the notion that injecting competition into public K-12 is bad."
I never said it did so that's a lame start to an argument with me.
jasper continues: "Or, to put it another way, the California proposition in question should have made the value of each voucher $7,000.00, and not $4,000.000."
So much for all that backtracking into means-testing earlier today. One reason why the whole enchilada was not made portable was that with 650,000 students in private schools doing so would have cost the state an additional $4.5B. So which programs do you want to cut and which taxes do you want to raise to find that $4.5B?
People do not oppose voucher programs because they "risk shattering the calcified foundations of the status quo" they oppose voucher programs because large-scale voucher programs are not practical within current education funding levels.
In most US States, the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel currently occupies an exclusive position in receipt of the taxpayers' K-12 education subsidy. While tuition vouchers would be a big step up from the current policy, I prefer a policy I call Parent Performance Contracting (PPC). The idea is quite simple: your legislature mandates that all schools which receive taxpayer subsidies must hire parents on personal service contracts to provide for their children's education, if the parents apply for the contract. Make payment equal to some fraction between 50% and 100% of the school's regular-ed per pupil budget. Make payment contingent on performance at or above age-level expectations on commercially available standardized tests of reading vocabulary, reading comprehension (any language) and Math. Parents could then homeschool, hire tutors, extend daycare to age 18, or supplement the contract fee and send their kids to independent or parochial schools. PPC provides financial and performance oversight of parents' escape options without State intrusion into the operation of independent schools.
Freelunch is incorrect. The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that vouchers that can be used for parochial schools pass constitutional muster.
David, thanks for the correction. I was thinking of the direct subsidy line of cases at the time and I did know that both the Cleveland and Milwaukee voucher cases had passed muster. Yes, the Court allows subsidies of parochial schools as long as the subsidies are supposedly channeled through the parents.
Zelman V. Simmons-Harris (00-1751) 536 U.S. 639 (2002)