Forgive me--I'm about to get testy again--but this thread on 11D really does seem to me to showcase in stunning technocolor the moral bankruptcy of voucher opponents who have pulled their own kids out of failing inner city schools. They have no good answer for why their choice is morally worthy, but vouchers are horrifying; their response to the deep need of kids in failing schools is a slightly gussied up version of "screw you, I've got mine." Their children's future, you see, is an infinitely precious resource that trumps their principles of distributional justice and community solidarity, but they cannot imagine putting the futures of poorer, darker skinned children ahead of sacred principles such as "Thou shalt not allow children to attend schools run by the Catholic Church" and "Supporting the public schools (even when they suck)". I could do a better job arguing against school vouchers.
Indeed, I shall, though of course largely for the purpose of illustrating why I find these arguments unconvincing:
1) Vouchers don't work This is the best argument against school vouchers. But it's still not very strong. For one thing, the studies that show this are small, and often funded by the teacher's unions. For another, the worst those studies purport to show is that vouchers don't make a difference in educational outcomes; the parents are still happier, and the vouchers cost less than the existing school system.
However, it's also not really all that clear that the vouchers had no effect; one effect school choice seems to have is that it forces schools that want to keep their doors open to improve.
But most tellingly, this argument is incompatible with removing your own children from failing schools. Either the school makes a difference, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, why are you moving to the suburbs in search of a better school district for your kids?
It is indeed true that poor kids have a huge number of problems that are resistant to change; even relocating the whole family to the suburbs seems to have little to no impact on outcomes. Vouchers are no panacea, and they may not work at all. But we know that what we're doing now isn't working, and moreover, hasn't worked for going on fifty years. Unless you've got compelling evidence that your plan will overcome all the barriers that have doomed urban school reform for decades, and actually succeed in educating more children (rather than enriching the lives of teachers, administrators, and curriculum salesmen, who certainly have been helped by the many failed educational overhauls), why not let a thousand points of light bloom?
2) Voucher advocates are total hypocrites too, because why don't they start private vouchers, huh? Bet you never thought of that! Actually, we did, my love, and thanks for giving me an opening to plug the Children's Scholarship Fund, my charity of choice. If you support vouchers, you should be supporting their amazing work.
3) The community doesn't want vouchers. Awesome. Then the community won't take vouchers, and you'll win by default. If what you mean is that some people claiming to speak for the community, want other people who are members of that community not to be able to have vouchers, then I'm less than interested in your argument.
4) Vouchers are a subsidy to rich people. Then means test them, by all means. Anyone who makes more than $100K a year can't have them.
5) Vouchers destroy the public school system So? Having a public school system seems like a dumb goal to me, but even assuming that the very existence of such a system is somehow a worthy thing to aim for, surely it's achievement should be a second-order priority. The primary goal, it seems to me, should be educating America's children to reach their fullest potential; after that goal has been achieved, we can turn our attention to things like having teacher's unions and public schools.
There's something very odd about the way that a lot of people treat health care and schooling--as if they were special, magical goods that can only be provided by the government. Yes, these are vital goods that people are ill-equipped to evaluate. But food, shelter, and clothing are even more vital, yet few of us believe that this means we should all get our produce from giant collective farms, or move into public housing projects. We recognize that the way to ensure that everyone has what they need is to give them the money to buy it . . . and, arguably, to have building codes, the FDA, the USDA, and so forth to ensure that consumers are protected from hidden dangers.
Why don't we want to have giant collective farms? After all, the government could realize marvelous economies of scale and huge cost savings from its enormous purchasing power. The administrative costs would fall too--after all, almost all of the money you pay for food goes, not to the farmer, but to the various middlemen who purchase, process, store, ship, and distribute it. We could probably cut our national food bill in half!
Somehow, we recognize the factors in production of food and clothing that make the government a less attractive provider than the market. And even most of the left has recognized that Section 8 vouchers are better than housing projects--they didn't yank people out of poverty, or magically solve all the problems attendant upon being poor, but they did improve peoples' lives by giving them some of the control over where they live that the rest of us enjoy as of right.
But honestly, there's no reason that vouchers will destroy the public school system provided that the public school system is doing a decent job of educating our kids. This argument sounds to me like an implicit confession that public schools can't compete with private ones.
6) There aren't enough private schools Right. Do you realize that in 1995, not a single iPod had been manufactured? That must mean that the iPod I am currently holding in my hand doesn't actually exist! I'm living a lie . . .
The fact that there are not now enough private schools to educate kids doesn't mean that there won't be, if we offer to pay private schools to educate kids.
7) Public education is vital to creating a common identity as American citizens I would find this a slightly more compelling argument if it weren't made mostly by people who live in affluent communities where their fellow citizens are strongly discouraged from moving by zoning and other ordinances that bar the construction of cheap housing. You think some kid growing up in East New York, looking at the crumbling walls as an inexperienced teacher fumbles the lesson plan, thinks to himself "But at least I share a common identity with the kids in Bronxville's public school system whose cars I will someday have the privilege of parking"?
Actually, this makes me think that a lot of the opposition to vouchers is about that affluent suburbanite's need to maintain the delusion that they care about inner city public schools. Memo to suburban voucher opponents who "support public education": you're already sending your kid to private school. You're just confused because your tuition fees came bundled with granite countertops and hardwood floors.
8) Vouchers don't make things any better; they just give the appearance of working by pulling the successful away from the unsuccessful, in the process dooming the latter to failure As I said before, you can't have it both ways. Either the school environment matters--in which case, this argument is false--or they don't matter, in which case it can't harm the unsuccessful kids to lose the successful ones.
Or perhaps you think peer effects are the only thing that matters--in which case, we should close the damn schools and let the kids go to work, where at least they'll get some money in exchange for not learning much.
And morally, as I said in my earlier post, unless you have chosen to live in the inner city and allow your kids to bring up the tone of the place, you have no [expletive deleted] right to say that someone else's kids should be left in a failing school for the benefit of a third set of kids.
9) I don't want my tax dollars used to pay for religious education Waaaaaaah. The fundamentalist down the block doesn't want his tax dollars used to pay for teaching evolution. I don't want my tax dollars used for 97% of the things my tax dollars are used for; welcome to representative democracy. And in Catholic schools, where most of the vouchers would be used, the religious education is voluntary; lots of non-Catholic kids go there without being proselytized. If this bothers you that much, we can discuss requiring schools that accept vouchers to make religious education optional. But let's go back to why we're debating this policy in the first place: the kids. This is about the kids, right? And which is worse: that junior might hear, once a week, some sort of religious message which, to judge by the people I know who went to parochial school, has a fairly dim chance of sticking; or that junior won't be able to read and write and will spend the rest of his life moving heavy things from one place to another?
10) Vouchers wouldn't pay the tuition at a top-notch private school Okay, I went to the school that is now vying with Matt Yglesias' alma mater for the title of "Most expensive private school in New York City". It gave me a terrific education, better than that received by any of the kids from expensive suburban public schools with whom I went to college. But talk about making the perfect the enemy of the good! A private school doesn't need to be Groton in order to make it worthwhile sending needy kids there; it just needs to be better than the hell-hole they currently attend. And frankly, that's a really, really low bar. There are a lot of kids for whom a trip to Chuck E. Cheese would be safer and more educational than a day at their district school. I could just as easily turn around and use this argument to prove that we oughtn't to have public schools unless every last one can be Dallas's Talented and Gifted magnet school.
11) There's no way to assure the quality of private schools Ha. Ha. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Seriously? The problem with private schools is that they can't match the same level of quality we've come to expect from our urban public school system? And what else have you learned in your visit to our planet?
Have you ever told us where you went to school? That's what your fans really want to hear.
Your best posting. Nothing more to say. Congratulations.
My argument against vouchers:
They punish smart kids who have lazy/uneducated parents.
Think about it. When you were a kid you went to the school your parents sent you to. There was no reason to question it. Meg and I both went to public schools for elementary. Why my parents liked PS 75 over PS 166 I don't know, but they did. By having vouchers you essentially punish those kids whose parents don't understand, know, or care about the choice.
AHA! I hear you argue! But you went to a specialized high school! You had to take a test to get in! How is school choice any different than vouchers? Easy. Because teachers as encouraged to send smart kids to the best schools so they succeed. So my friend Bernadette who went to a terrible school in Staten Island had an English teacher in the 8th grade who said, "you're really smart, you should try to take the test for specialized high schools". But if there were vouchers that teacher would have no incentive to make sure Bernadette when to the best school. She would presumably be told that, in order to keep the voucher money at her school she should make sure Burnadette stayed right were she was.
In addition I think when you start viewing the education of children as nothing more than a way to make money and profit, you are setting yourself up for failure.
Riverdale Country School; Matt went to Dalton.
Given that none of your listed points highlight any of the objects that I've made to vouchers -- specifically that they end up being a subsidy for private schools who will almost certainly raise their rates as demand goes up thus defeating the entire point of having a voucher system -- and given that you continue to insist that any opposition to vouchers stems from "moral bankruptcy", I don't really see the point of trying to have a dialog with you on this subject.
I'm particularly flabbergasted by the way you miss the point on item 5. Unless you think that it's really possible to get every child into a private school -- a proposition that borders on magical thinking -- public schooling will remain a reality. I have no objection to anyone getting the best education for their child that they can but we still have to take care of the remaining children. If an argument can be made that vouchers diminish the educational qualify for those children who will remain in public schools, it strikes me that anyone who says "so what" doesn't have the luxury of accusing her opponents of moral failure.
Great post Megan, but let me just add two arguments from the other side against vouchers:
1) We’ve already experimented with voucher-like programs in the form of financial aid for post-secondary education and it seems to have the effect of causing the cost of post-secondary education to increase at multiples of the rates of inflation. The effect of a voucher program for K-12 could lead to an artificial increase in the tuition for private schools.
2) Any vouchers should be in the form of existing rather than additional funds spent on education where the dollars follow the student rather than accrue automatically to the government schools with the “extra” following the students. As you correctly pointed out, public education was a rather foolish idea insofar as it puts the welfare of the teachers union and institutional schools ahead of actually educating the students. The only way to break this up is to cut off the school’s entitlement to funding.
Andrew:
1) Tuition inflation is a reality now. Have you looked at the cost figures on American secondary education? When the government pays for something, it costs too much--whether the government provides it, or buys it. Of the two, government purchase generally seems to be cheaper.
2) First of all, I don't see why it's particularly magical; Section 8 vouchers have magically housed tons of former residents of housing projects, even in areas like New York with extraordinarily low vacancy rates. Supply generally grows to meet demand.
Second of all, you're confusing individual public schools with public schooling qua public schooling. Obviously, the public schools will not be destroyed unless and until there is no need for them because every kid is in a better, cheaper private school. What voucher opponents are saying is that competition from private schools will make public schools unviable, much as the post office ran into trouble when FedEx came on the scene. My answer is that I have no interest in preserving the public school system as a concept; I have an interest in securing every child a good education. Public schools may be the best way to attain that goal, but if so, a voucher program will attract little interest and die on the vine.
Just to address Andrew's point, if Private schools continue to raise their tuition in relation to the voucher's worth (hey, didn't we see this with colleges & universities . . .), I'm confident that someone will notice the large $$$ being spent and try to get in on the action. In fact, they may even compete on price, requiring competitors to lower their prices. I know, this is something entirely foreign to the world of secondary education, where falling enrollment necessitates jacking up tuition, but it is entirely possible that some business sense might creep into the running of private education for the wee'uns of society.
And, for those (private) schools that actually do a good job of teaching their wards, they might even expand, whether it be through relocation (ie, at a closed public school), building on (went to a public school that had an obvious 50-s era addition to a wonderful, classic-style original) or even opening new campuses.
In short, the number of private school seats today is not the ceiling. There is room to grow.
(Note that the above may or may not be in harmony with any answers provided by the hostess)
I am overwhelmingly in favor of vouchers, but I don't think people who move to the 'burbs are ALL hypocrites. This is a classic public goods problem (or at least we've made it into one) where someone can rationally not make a marginal difference because it only helps if a lot of people also comply.
For instance, I believe the mortgage interest deduction on income tax should be repealed, but I am not a hypocrite if I take the deduction because my marginal cost is high and I get none of the social benefit. The only way that deduction will disappear is if there's a change of policy or a grass roots non-deduction-taking movement (neither likely).
Two thoughts for consideration.
(1) What about special ed? Costs are increasing the in the special ed arena faster than in any other area. Who should bear those costs? My personal belief is that special ed should be funded ENTIRELY by the state and/or feds, with all other students funded by the fed/state/local funding that now applies to all students. Sure, you'd have to make sure that districts didn't place students in special ed simply to save money, but that shouldn't be hard to do.
(2) What about the effect of competition on the public schools? This has always been, to me, the over-riding justifdication for vouchers. Where the schools are already good, alternates won't spring up. Where they aren't, alternates will force the public schools to compete for students. And that's a good thing.
Kate wrote: [Vouchers] punish smart kids who have lazy/uneducated parents.
I think you have to show that vouchers punish such kids more than they already are.
But consider: (a) Vouchers offer an incentive for parents to get more motivated, in direct contrast to the current system; and (b) there's no reason teachers and guidance counselers can't encourage students to apply to alternative schools, especially when they transition from K-6 to middle school; from middle school to high school.
The very term "public school" -- for example, the way Andrew Lias uses it -- seems problematic to me. The goal should be better public education. "Public School" suggests a particular kind of brick-faced institution, over-administered and alien to innovation.
Personally, I don't see any innate virtue in who owns a building.
I don't have a definite position on vouchers, but I tend to be skeptical of any promise that seems to good to be true (in this case, the promise that vouchers will "fix" education). Here's why:
Would schools be required to accept anyone? If the answer is no, then it seems like you're going to have a fairly large pool of kids whom no one is going to take (either because they're too poor, too black, have bad test scores, whatever. Whether for good-faith or bad-faith reasons, my point is that there will be a substantial pool of kids whom schools will not take).
So, what happens then? Does the government now step in and force schools to take children? Seems like vouchers would be a way to turn private schools into public schools.
Anyway, this isn't necessarily an argument against vouchers. I'm just having a real hard time visualizing how they would work on a mass scale.
" ... Unless you think that it's really possible to get every child into a private school -- a proposition that borders on magical thinking -- public schooling will remain a reality. ..."
Why is that 'magical thinking'? Phase out the government schools (over some reasonable time-frame, say 10 or 20 years); continue to legally require every parent to provide an education for their children; and provide a tax break for middle income parents and tuition grants for poor parents. Private schools would spring up overnight to supply the demand. It doesn't require very much capital to start a school; Socrates only needed a pointed stick to draw figures in the dirt.
I'm glad someone (Andrew and Winston) said it first. I'm sure I didn't take as many Econ classes as some here, but I do recall that a direct subsidy (such as this) has a pretty dramatic impact on prices -- I expect that they would rise almost (but not quite) as much as the value of the subsidy itself.
I'm confident that someone will notice the large $$$ being spent and try to get in on the action. In fact, they may even compete on price, requiring competitors to lower their prices.
Unless there is a proverbial land rush, this would be a slow process, starting with schools that are going to absorb only the people that are almost, but not quite, willing to fork over full tuition right now.
I expect starting a school has a fairly high barrier to entry. You need property, teachers, advertising, whatever. And, depending on the regulation that comes with it (all TBD) it can seem quite risky, I am sure.
In practice, what you would probably accomplish is benefiting students who are presently on the margin, while removing money from the public school left-behinds. The more migration outwards, the worse the problem gets for those still in public schools, which continues until the market completely clears, right?
The only way to solve this is to make a commitment to preserve the baseline for those remaining while committing the funds for those ready to leave. Not impossible by any means, but probably expensive.
Building upon Peter's Bautista's point, if public schools are required to take all comers and private schools receiving vouchers are not, then public schools are not competing on a level playing field with private schools and could never be held to the same academic standards.
While private firms may spring up to meet the needs of many of the students that the current crop of private schools don't accept, it is still likely that some students will not find a home in the private system. If so, there will always be a need for some amount of public education, and crippling the system that provides for those with no alternative is not an acceptable moral outcome for me.
This discussion has gone on to show that morals are not universal. It's clearly "help those who help themselves" vs. "help those who DON'T". Personally, I am all for helping those on the margins, especially since it appears to be much less expensive.
Hmm, I'd be a huge proponent of vouchers if not for the obvious and disastrous problem of tuition inflation. Does that make me morally bankrupt? Or maybe just someone morally ARM-about-to-reset?
Tuition inflation applies to colleges because kids can borrow a lot of money, and the cost is someone invisible until they graduate. No one's talking about providing $18K a year worth of subsidized loans for secondary education. Remember, the schools have to actually provide the service, which costs somewehre near the value of the voucher; given that the value of the voucher is capped, it's hard to see why tuition inflation would be higher than the current cost pressure in the schools. It may inflate on the margin for some kids already attending private school, but this is fairly low on my list of worries.
Public schools are essentially required to take any children, including the toughest possible cases - kids with antisocial disorders, learning disability, no ability in English or years behind their grade. These kids can cost far more to educate than others. Would a voucher program have some way to provide for these children?
Most private schools will never accept these children if they can avoid it, and specialized schools for problem cases cost much more than normal schools. Either students with much higher expected costs of education will need to have larger vouchers, or some sort of assurance that public school funding and quality will not fall so far that they cannot be accommodated at all. These are not insurmountable problems, but they need to be addressed.
Sweden, of all places, has had school vouchers now for fifteen years. It seems to work.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3717744.stm
Speaking of tuition inflation in colleges... When you couple that with the meme about signaling being the primary benefit of a [top tier] college education [as compared to the bottom rung one], it begs a question: when, finally, will we see a market correction? I mean I absolutely positively refuse to believe this "signaling" is worth $150K or more to the prospective employer. Thus it is the students and their parents that keep absorbing the losses and something's got to give... WHEN?
On the same page... when will the benefits of telecommuting become more obvious to middle and upper management... and when will everyone finally see the utter lack of added value from most of those tiers of management ;)
Just thought I'd throw in a bit of anecdotal (i.e., worthless) evidence: my children go to Catholic schools in the Dallas area. The school my son goes to (from which my daughter just graduated - she is now in high school) is expanding services and personnel to deal with children who have special needs, mainly because with a couple of other Catholic schools opening up in recent years, there is competition for students. Sure, it's an anecdotal point, but I cannot help but think that it illustrates a flaw in the argument that children who have special needs will be left behind in a voucher system: they will be a market to be served too. Private schools do not have to be only for the creme de la creme.
Well, I'm as liberal as they come, and this debate is kind of a no-brainer to me. If I put myself in the position of a mother living below the poverty line and in a crappy school district, you bet I'd want my kids to go to a private school using vouchers!
For me, the goal of public education is well worth defending. A certain public education system, not so much. Now, I also think that any voucher program should have the following characteristics: it should be means-tested (as to not just be a subsidy for the rich); it should be sufficiently generous to actually pay for a private school; it should require organizations taking vouchers to adhere to some minimum standards (including, but not limited to, health & safety, non-discrimination, non-religious indoctorination; etc); and it should extend beyond secondary school to college (why not give students from poor families vouchers for college if they have the grades to get it?).
A good news story about a private school that serves kids with learning disabilities (buried in all the whining about the headmaster who seems like a good manager to me): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/28/AR2007102801469.html?sub=AR
Frankly, I was surprised to learn about the Chelsea School and it puts vouchers in a new light for me. Not sure how much the school costs, but apparently it's less than what the public school would be paying to provide the same service.
Another argument for vouchers- the environment.
A lot of urban sprawl is caused by our public school systems. As inner city public schools and first ring suburban schools get taken over by teacher's unions, parents correctly pick up and move farther out.
When people can send their kids to excellent schools in the inner city or first ring suburbs, they will stay there and not contribute to urban sprawl.
"Public education is vital to creating a common identity as American citizens"
Can't we get much of this by setting a requirement that schools teach a basic civics curriculum?
"Tuition inflation is a reality now."
If you require that the voucher be taken as payment in full for tuition, you'd suppress a lot of this.
"if public schools are required to take all comers and private schools receiving vouchers are not, then public schools are not competing on a level playing field with private schools and could never be held to the same academic standards."
So what? You can measure students based on their performance differences between years rather than absolute scores. Today charter schools contain students that are on average worse than the non-charter students, but that isn't relevant to determining if they are helping those kids.
If you believe that it costs more to educate students of below average aptitude, you could provide additional payment for those kids. Combine that with first-difference based test metrics and you would see an appetite for catering to many types of children.
"State interference in education usurps the child's rights and displaces the custodial role of the parents in exercising those rights. That the state would seize the custodial rights from the parents demonstrates that it has its own interests in mind. The state must resort to force because neither the child nor the parents want the natural arrangement to be overturned. Because the state rests on compulsion its activity extinguishes the very basis for the development of the personalities of children, which is freedom.
Moreover, state officials lack the knowledge of and concern for the child possessed by his parents. The state has no interest in developing the personalities of children or in catering to their interests and aptitudes. The state does not desire them to participate in the social order by their free associations. The state funds and regulates formal education to further its own interests and attain its own ends. Even if it did adopt the natural, privately secured ends of education, no method of instruction it adopted could improve upon the private system of education. Short of mass enslavement, the state could not provide individual tutoring to children and would have to resort to schooling. Instead of the diversity of schools in the market striving to develop the personalities of students, the state is interested in uniformity of schooling and the concomitant suppression of individual personalities to produce a homogeneous citizenry serving the ends of the state."
http://www.mises.org/story/2750
we really should remember that "Public/State Schooling" was a plank of the Communist Manifesto for good reason...
And this, about John Taylor Gatto's book
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Underground_History_of_American_Education
Is a helpful starter to understanding some of the foundations of our currenteducation schema..
If you take away the monopoly position of public schools (which is essentially what vouchers do), you'll almost certainly end up with the kind of diversity we now have among colleges--everything from big public universities to small special-interest schools. Schools with strong arts programs, strong science programs, religious affiliations, technical schools (nursing, criminal justice, secretarial skills, ad infinitum). Some are expensive because of demand (e,g., the Ivy Leaguers), and some are aimed at the price-conscious, the academically disinclined, and the party-lovers. In other words, a free market that gives people what they want.
What an idea...
As has probably been said, I don't think voucher opponents are necessarily hypocritical, even if they pull their kids out of failing schools.
They would be hypocritical if they blamed the specific recipients of vouchers as being responsible for hurting the failing schools, but I'm sure most of them instead focus on the program itself hurting the schools, rather than the people themselves.
It's possible, for example, and probably common, for voucher opponents to assume that voucher recipients are simply acting in their own children's best interests, but that from a general, or big-picture view, vouchers aren't good for the schools.
This may be right, or it may be wrong, but I don't think it qualifies as hypocrisy.
1) There's no way to assure the quality of private schools Ha. Ha. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Seriously? The problem with private schools is that they can't match the same level of quality we've come to expect from our urban public school system? And what else have you learned in your visit to our planet?
This is not evidence! Thinking that something is funny is not a substitute for providing evidence when making an affirmative claim! You've still offered not a shred of evidence to back up this notion. None! Ever! How may times do I have to point this out to you: the fact that something seems self-evident to you is not sufficient evidence for argumentation.
I'm sorry, but if you're going to be here in the marketplace of ideas, going "hahaha" isn't going to cut it. (And incidentally, it reinforces every negative association you have out there. Really. You bring so much of it on yourself with childish stuff like that.)
Freddie, it is literally not possible for many inner city schools to get worse. You're talking about places where almost no one graduates, and those who do mostly can't read at a high school level. Saying that you're worried about controlling quality in a voucher program aimed at those kids is like lashing yourself to the deck of the titanic because the lifeboats don't look safe. If you want evidence, just take a look at this estimate of graduation rates for the nation's hundred largest school districts: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_48_t3.htm
Barely 30% of the black kids who enter high school in New York City manage to graduate. How much worse do you think private school could do?
And look-- you've got to drop this hypocrisy canard that you harp on again and again. You can either make this argument on the merits or you can't. But stop constantly trying to leverage your argument by constantly wailing on this straw population who's existence makes no meaningful difference to the discussion at hand.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the perceived academic advantage of private schools is actually a product of private school's exclusion of difficult students. All the types of students private schools exclude, whether by rule or economics, are exactly the students who drive down the test results and damage the perception of public schools. Fill the halls of private schools with the poor, the intellectually and cognitively disabled, the emotionally disturbed, the criminal, and those with severe behavioral problems, and I promise, whatever advantage private schools are seen to have now will vanish. As the ratio of students educated by private schools who have those problems increases, the private school's academic advantage will diminish. You've utterly confused cause with effect.
Here's a wild idea: there is such a thing as basic or inherent academic and intellectual ability, not all students are going to succeed at all disciplines, and some are going to fail at all of them. And you know what? Nothing will ever change that. Never. Some people are not intelligent. And you know that, considering you are on record as saying that you think intelligence is heritable (and influenced by racial disposition.)
And, by the way, I know lots of kids who went to Exeter or Groton or Choate. They're all on coke.
Why do we insist that talented children attend school with wasters (Defined as children who, at best, don't care about their education, at worst, actively interfere with the education of their peers)? What's wrong with sending the talented kids to schools that can get the best out of them?
Anyone who argues against this while simultaneously sending their own children to a private school is a hypocrite.
I live outside of the north east, in a state where 90%+ of school-aged children attend public school, so it is less of an issue in my neck of the woods. But the above statement makes sense to me. To actively obstruct the access of poorer families to gain access to quality education while refusing to send your own children to schools with these people's children? That's hypocrisy.
Freddie is a bad person.
I cannot believe I just read a defense of the public school system based, essentially, on eugenics - we should not have vouchers because some kids aren't smart enough to succeed...(and here's the kicker) and the way to sort that out is by whose parents can already afford to pay for private schools. Just stunning - how un-freaking-American can one idea be. Just go back to Britain and whip some peasants if that's how you feel.
Megan seems to have won most of the argument hands down. It would not be difficult to require all schools accepting vouchers to accept all students, as currently occurs in New Orleans' charter schools. The main argument she has not sufficiently address, I think, concerns tuition inflation - we could easily end up with just a set of schools like our current public schools that cost voucher, and then other schools that move gradually up the scale as they require more and more of a contribution.
I do not believe that vouchers would be a magic bullet, anymore than the current accountability craze currently sweeping New York public schools is, but given that everything else fails and I have never, ever, ever seen a reform plan that has even a bat's chance in hell of working, it seems like the logical thing would be to try them.
Freddie, yes, selection effects matter, but it simply isn't true that they are the only factor. There are schools that succeed even without excluding students, and top-notch private schools provide a better education to elite students than top-notch suburban schools. That is not to say that a private school could turn a troubled kid into a Groton graduate, but I don't think you can assert that a good school makes no difference at all.
Quick point, for everyone who is so concerned about tuition inflation - you are completely and totally missing where that inflation has come from. It has come from a demand that has increased at a rate disproportionate to the rate of increase of the supply. Vouchers would not change the demand - at worst, they add a few individuals who would otherwise homeschool, which likely would be a statistically insignificant change - and would only increase the supply, because they would add additional schools to the already existing public school system. Supply would INCREASE, and demand would stay the same.
Basic economics. Supply goes up, demand stays the same - price goes down. This isn't college, people, the infrastructure already exists to handle the numbers.
And nobody is talking about increasing the amount we pay for this service, either - we're talking about permitting the money we're already spending to be spent in other places. The whole of the change that is being proposed is introducing competition.
There is no opposition to this. At all. And Freddie, you're arguing for the abolition of public school entirely, if you aren't aware, when you say that some people are stupid no matter what you do.
Half Canadian, and whoever else still stuck on the hypocrisy argument,
Why must we sling this kind of mud? I'm opposed to the tactic from the other side too, but the assertion that vouchers are ruining the public schools is not a personal one, it is empirical.
Of course, it could very well be wrong, but that's beside the point when it comes to hypocrisy.
I would really just like an answer to this post from anyone who thinks it's hypocritical for anyone to oppose school vouchers while taking their own child out of failing schools.
My point is this: insofar as you have people blaming the actual recipients of vouchers, and holding them personally responsible for the failure of the public schools, then yes, it would be hypocritical to take your own children out of these schools.
However it is not hard to imagine being opposed to the program of school vouchers, yet advising a less-fortunate friend to take advantage of a voucher, to better their own child's situation.
This is possible because one can be opposed to vouchers for bigger-picture reasons, but not at all blame people who take advantage of the vouchers, and admit that they themselves would take advantage of the program if they found themselves in that less-fortunate situation.
One can be opposed to school vouchers because of the large scale effects, and at the same time place their own child's progress ahead of this policy opinion, and refrain from blaming individuals who take advantage of the voucher program.
I have the feeling that most people who oppose the program do so for policy reasons, and stop short of holding the individual actors who may get an opportunity accountable for doing anything wrong.
I have the feeling that most people who oppose the program do so for policy reasons
There's no doubt about it. I also have a feeling that they do it for [policy] reasons other than interests of the children
Great post, Megan. I'd add that argument 4 is a bit bizarre.
1. First, it's not true. As of the 2006 edition of The Education Gap, by William Howell and Paul Peterson, every publicly-funded voucher program in the country was aimed at 1) students from low-income families, or 2) students who attend "failing" public schools [note that not many of these students are likely to be in rich, white suburbs], or 3) students who have no public school in their community [same]. The federally funded DC voucher program, for example, is limited to students under 185% of the poverty line, and in fact, the average recipient comes from a household with three children and an income of $17,356. (See http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/2007_dc_evaluation.pdf)
2. Do you get the feeling that some of the people making argument 4 would also defend the fact that Social Security and Medicare have no means test and would hence include Bill Gates' father?
As for the argument that private schools will just jack up their tuition by the amount of the vouchers: I've run into this argument before w/r/t to the DC voucher program. If you look at page 17 of the study I linked above, only 38.8% of the schools participating in the DC voucher program have tuitions that exceed $7,500, even though the DC voucher will pay up to $7,500. Of course, the voucher law for DC specifies that schools have to charge voucher students the same tuition as everyone else, and given that only the poorest students are getting vouchers, this puts a natural constraint on how high tuition can go.
Max,
I have no problem believing entrenched interests would do things for less than admirable reasons.
But the idea that most people who oppose vouchers do so for reasons other than children's interests seems to be bordering on a ad hominem.
I think Megan's points are strong, I just think she's wrong about the hypocrisy issue, which is unfortunate, since it seems so tangential to her main points. And it needlessly detracts from the force (or eloquence) of her argument, since this rather unwarranted assertion comes right at the beginning.
12. Public vouchers for private shchools will decimate private schooling. Once private schools are addicted to public funding, the state can continue to add constraints to that funding bit by bit until there is no difference between most public and private schools.
Do you think the state and the public education lobby will have less power over private schools when private schools start taking big chunks of public funding, or will they have more power? Do you suppose they'll use that power better than they've used the power they already have?
Public funding is what makes public schools public. Public vouchers are an efficient way to decimate private schooling.
Per Freddie:
All schooling is local, but here in New Jersey, a parochial school, k-8 or 9-12, costs about half what a public, i.e. government run, school costs per student. There aren't lots of nuns left in parochial schools anymore, much to the chagrin who pay for parochial schools, believe it or not in NYC parochial schools were free for Church members until about 1950 because of nuns who taught poor kids for free, so the 'model' is expandable. Special ed lowers the cost advantage but doesn't dent it all that much. So maybe the private schools would still stink, but they'd cost half as much.I am involved with a private scholarship charity in Newark, we spend some CSF grant money too, and we turn most of our applicants away, and I'd bet at least 1/2 of Newark parents (and I am being conservative, I'm sure of 1/2 but I think it's really closer to 3/4) of the kids in Newark would be going to parochial schools if they had a voucher and there was space, so I guess the NJEA is right to fight vouchers tooth and nail, like they do.
Jay J, inner city govt run schools were ruined sometime in the mid 60's. Vouchers can't ruin inner city public schools, they 'left the building' a long time ago.
Also, as far as test scores improving and such, it seems that people who focus on that exclusively might be bewildered by why inner city parents like the voucher school a lot better than the public school. Even if their child's chance of going to the state university is not increased by his new school, the kid's chance of ending up in the state penitentiary is radically decreased. This consideration might never get onto a suburban parent's radar screen, but it matters in Newark.
Last, but not least, if vouchers don't work, noone will take them and the program will terminate itself.
The 'I don't want my tax dollars supporting religion' stuff too will of course mean that you want to abolish Social Security, since some elderly people who live entirely on their SS checks have been known to toss money into church collection baskets.
The one thing I have trouble is this seemingly romantic attachment with the govt running schools, which all this support for 'public' i.e. govt owned and operated, schools are all about. Why? The only concievable advantage is the common culture arguement, and in this day and age, that's laughable. What makes a school somehow better if the govt runs it?
John Kennedy:
The private schools aren't forced to accept either the vouchers or any terms that are attached to them. They can continue existing exactly as they are if they choose.
I find it interesting that no one has commented on Sweden's "voucher" scheme that Tom linked to:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3717744.stm
It seems like a very sensible solution to the problem of school choice. For those who are to lazy to click, it solves the tuition inflation problem as well as the "no competition" problem where the public schools are already supurb.
I'm curious why voucher opponents don't also argue for further state control. Dressing kids isn't easy either; it takes a lot of time, involvement and money. Yet, I think no one would be foolish enough to suggest the state start to run kids' clothing stores...
The charter school-voucher movement is basically a scam. The argument is that American schools perform much worse that schools around the world. But most of those superior foreign education systems are composed of government, not private schools.
Why the scam? Conservatives hate the public school system in the US because they believe it is dominated by liberals, unions, and bolated bureaucracies. The right way for them to change this would be to persuade public to outlaw the unions, get rid of the liberals, and drastically slash the bureaucracies.
But conservatives have never been able to get the public to agree to this, so they came up with the voucher-charter school plan as a way of destroying the public system without the public realizing it. Fortunately the scam is failing.
megan: Vouchers don't work This is the best argument against school vouchers.
Vouchers have been around long enough that if they worked, it would by now be abundantly clear. The fact is they just don't, or produce at best marginal effects. That being the case, we should abandon vouchers and look for other approaches until we find something that works.
So why don't you see that? My guess is it is because you are a conservative and conservatives don't care about inner city, mostly black and latino people. This is because constratives have a radical plan to change the whole country, but they have never been able to get the majority of the public to sign on to it. So. starting in the Sixties they have made a covert appeal to white racists who are not really conservatives (they are really agranian traditionalits). White racists like to see blacks poor and ill-educated, so mainstream consertatives pretend to care about inner city education but do their best to sabotage it.
Megan: Vouchers destroy the public school system So? Having a public school system seems like a dumb goal to me, but even assuming that the very existence of such a system is somehow a worthy thing to aim for, surely it's achievement should be a second-order priority. The primary goal, it seems to me, should be educating America's children to reach their fullest potential; after that goal has been achieved, we can turn our attention to things like having teacher's unions and public schools.
There's something very odd about the way that a lot of people treat health care and schooling--as if they were special, magical goods that can only be provided by the government. Yes, these are vital goods that people are ill-equipped to evaluate. But food, shelter, and clothing are even more vital, yet few of us believe that this means we should all get our produce from giant collective farms, or move into public housing projects.
What a stupid, stupid, stupid argument. Collective farming has been tried many times, and it has always failed. Collective shelter has generally done pretty poorly, too. But public education has been tried around the world, and done quite well, at least when sufficiently funded and well administrated.
With this argument you make quite clear your deep-seated ideological irrationality. What happens in the real world is of no interest to you, it is all about your own private set of hates and fantasies.
bobo the chimp,
It's unfortunate that on the one hand, you have Megan accusing those with perhaps and honest disagreement of hypocrisy, and then there's you from the other side, who act as if the only reason for anyone to be in favor of vouchers is because they're heartless conservatives who hate the public schools.
So sad that the argument has to contain these distractions at all, it takes away from the substance.
Megan: Public education is vital to creating a common identity as American citizens
Again we have the conservatives sacrificing its own principles for political gain. For the longest time conservatives praised the public schools for taking immigrant children and making them into people with a common American identity and loyalty.
But the Religious Right believes that America as such is deeply corrupt and has formed its own private identity, in part by keeping their children out of the public schools (oh, and this ties to white racists, who are mostly Evangelicals. Starting in the 50's with Brown vs B of E, they withdrew they children from the public schools in the South in massive numbers). And in an effort to gain the support of the Religious Right, conservatives have for a couple of decades been trashing the public schools system. Would it really be good for America if all latinos whent to latino-only schools that praised latino culture and condemned American society? I thought conservatives were supposed to be against multiculturalism
By the way, I should have made clear in my previous post on racism that conservatism itself is not racist, but the conservative political movement has corrupted itself by making an alliance with white racists.
Bobo writes:
Would it really be good for America if all latinos whent to latino-only schools that praised latino culture and condemned American society?
If one replaced 'all' with 'many' they do that now Bobo.
Megan: you are, in short, arguing that a voucher system cannot possibly be worse than the current situation.
ARE YOU SURE?
my problems with your claim:
1. It's a really big country out there. Wiki states that there are about 16,000 school districts and equivalents, under 51 different state / D.C. legal systems. You're painting with a really big brush.
2. This statement of yours: "Having a public school system seems like a dumb goal to me" is the worst kind of libertarian trash. Mandatory public schooling has been, according to virtually every education expert, economist and historian I've ever heard, a tremendous benefit to the US, which is why we're trying to export the idea elsewhere. Your hostility to something that helped bring enormous economic success to this country colors my view of the rest of your argument.
3. You write: "I don't want my tax dollars used to pay for religious education. Waaaaaaah." If you're to be a big league blogger, you're going to need to become more familiar with the US Constitution. Read up on some Establishment Clause jurisprudence before you denigrate legitimate constitutional claims with baby sounds. You'll sound much less foolish.
4. You write: "There's no way to assure the quality of private schools" as an argument against vouchers. But there is a way -- regulation. Do you really think, even for a moment, that when the federal government overrides 50 state laws and 16,000 school district contracts to create a voucher system in every school district in the country that it won't include an oversight component? HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!!!!!!!! What planet are YOU from, lady?
Francis, you're confusing a guarantee of universal education, which I fully support, with government provision of same, which I don't. My goal is to get all the kids educated as best we can; public schools are but one possible means, and one that isn't working very well.
As for the establishment clause, I think you might want to read up on the supreme court ruling on this very topic, which established that it's perfectly all right to use government money to pay tuition at a parochial school.
Contra Francis, the U.S. has never had "Mandatory public schooling". We have had mandatory schooling, with the government providing free public schools for everyone who wanted to go to them, which has turned out to be most parents most of the time. But parents have always been free to send their children to private or Catholic schools, as long as they go to school. Or rather, as long as they are being educated somehow, because home-schooling is also legal in just about every state, provided the parents can prove that they are schooling their children adequately.
There are even some exceptions to that. Last year I taught a 7th-grader who had been "unschooled" by her hippie parents for grades K-6. That's just like home-schooling, but the child teaches herself, with no guidance from the parents. Judging by the one example, it actually works fairly well: the girl was mature, well-informed on a wide range of 7th-grade topics, and very teachable. The only drawback I could see: her spelling and handwriting were atrocious. (Actual example: her phonetic spelling of 'often' was 'auphin' -- only one letter right in the whole word!) It appears that spelling and handwriting must be actively taught and can't just be soaked up voluntarily. Of course, one student is hardly enough to generalize from.
Yes, I'm aware of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris. Here is the critical holding:
This Court's jurisprudence makes clear that a government aid program is not readily subject to challenge under the Establishment Clause if it is neutral with respect to religion and provides assistance directly to a broad class of citizens who, in turn, direct government aid to religious schools wholly as a result of their own genuine and independent private choice.
Also please note that the Sup.Ct. specifically recognized that state constitutions may have more restrictive establishment clauses that prevent voucher use at religious schools.
That's a substantially more nuanced (not to mention less insulting to your readers) position than "Waaaagh".
Ms McArdle:
Taking one of your sillier arguments in part:
"There's something very odd about the way that a lot of people treat health care and schooling--as if they were special, magical goods that can only be provided by the government. Yes, these are vital goods that people are ill-equipped to evaluate. But food, shelter, and clothing are even more vital, yet few of us believe that this means we should all get our produce from giant collective farms, or move into public housing projects. We recognize that the way to ensure that everyone has what they need is to give them the money to buy it . . . and, arguably, to have building codes, the FDA, the USDA, and so forth to ensure that consumers are protected from hidden dangers."
Let's unpack that first statement and see what we have, shall we? First, you admit that health care and education are vital "goods" (odd choice of words for what are actually *services*, but whatever...) that people are ill-equipped to evaluate. Then you go from there to talk about commodity goods that are "even more vital", and then talk about the benefits of having the government assume the role of benevolent protector of the poor uninformed consumer.
"Why don't we want to have giant collective farms? After all, the government could realize marvelous economies of scale and huge cost savings from its enormous purchasing power. The administrative costs would fall too--after all, almost all of the money you pay for food goes, not to the farmer, but to the various middlemen who purchase, process, store, ship, and distribute it. We could probably cut our national food bill in half!"
You know, we already sort of do have this (in the form of government subsidies to giant agri-business combines like ADM and Monsanto. And your conclusion (if you're not being sarcastic) is really dumb - did you mean to have the government just run the giant collective farms? If you did, the middlemen would still be there and still be adding a huge markup to the cost of food. If you didn't, and you meant that government should take over the whole distribution network, it's disingenuous of you not to say so.
"Somehow, we recognize the factors in production of food and clothing that make the government a less attractive provider than the market."
It would be courteous to your readers to list these factors instead of just alluding to them and letting everyone fill in the blanks with their own favorites and hope the rest of us will wear ourselves out punching air. That's either sloppy or dishonest.
"And even most of the left has recognized that Section 8 vouchers are better than housing projects--they didn't yank people out of poverty, or magically solve all the problems attendant upon being poor, but they did improve peoples' lives by giving them some of the control over where they live that the rest of us enjoy as of right."
You seem determined to try and speak for "most of the left" without citing any source at all, which is (once again) disingenuous. Section 8 housing has its successes, but it has its failures too. And it causes problems that you aren't mentioning at all:
and this:
So your use of section 8 housing vouchers as a rousing success story is curious, to say the least.
"But honestly, there's no reason that vouchers will destroy the public school system provided that the public school system is doing a decent job of educating our kids. This argument sounds to me like an implicit confession that public schools can't compete with private ones."
No, it's not. As they're currently constituted, voucher programs don't require schools to accept any voucher student whose parents want him/her to attend; they can still cherry-pick the students they want and leave the hard cases to the public schools. Public schools are hamstrung by having to educate every student, no matter their problems or level of disruption. And their teachers can't discipline a student and really establish their authority because some parent will whine and threaten to sue.
If you want a fair comparison, try putting the private schools in that kind of straitjacket and see how well they handle their responsibilities.
13) The problems of public school education are problems of delivery -- the schools do not reliably deliver a "quality education" (however defined). Vouchers do not address the delivery problem, vouchers merely alter the method by which education is funded. Changing the funding model does not address the delivery problems.
Would conservatives and libertarians support vouchers going to schools run by the Nation of Islam? If not, why not? Ours is a secular constitution for a very good reason: It guarantees religious institutions freedom from government interference -- which is every bit as important as denying one religion state primacy over another. Do conservatives really want to get in the business of discriminating among religious groups when it comes to distributing tax monies for education?
(I attended affluent suburban private schools from pre-K through high school, but attended public universities. With some notable exceptions, the teaching in the public institutions was vastly superior in every way.)
Vouchers have a place and may actually be an improvement, but schools that want to take government money, need to abide by the same rules as public schools:
1.) Accept the same cost basis as the public school district being serviced
2.) Accept all applicants
3.) Meet all guidelines and requirements of public schools.
4.) Union shop
I believe you will find that under these conditions, private schools will soon look just like the public schools they are trying to replace.
The problem isn't the schools its the kids. #2 above is the tough one, which I doubt many private schools will want to abide.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the perceived academic advantage of private schools is actually a product of private school's exclusion of difficult students.
Evidence is something Freddie's a lot better at demanding than providing.
An alternative retort to #9 I don't want my tax dollars used to pay for religious education:
Evidently you're not really as interested in that "common identity as American citizens" thing as you claim.
Sorry TT, but besides the fact that I see no basis for your initial claim regarding "need," public schools do not accept all applicants.
In fact, they tend to only accept applicants from a very limited geographical region.
They also regularly expel students and prohibit their future attendance.
Vouchers get NO, NO, NO, support from me unless voucher supporters agreed to let the Dept. of Ed. have full regulatory powers over private schools.
No cherry-picking on ESL, ADA, or special ed students. Level playing field with public schools.
Adrian,
Private schools that don't accept the vouchers will find it very difficult to compete with private schools that do.
Suppose you have two private schools in town that produce equally well educated students. Now give every student a $6000 voucher every year. School A decides to steer clear of entanglements with the state and declines to take vouchers. School B decides to accept vouchers.
Suddenly every student at school A can save $6000 by switching to school B, which we've already stipulated is just as good. Can you see that school A is going to have a hard time surviving in such a "market"?
"Having a public school system seems like a dumb goal to me."
That says it all---along with the author's mocking dismissal of concerns over separation of church and state---about the author's perspect. Thank you, Ms. McArdle. With friends like you, vouchers don't need enemies.
"Giant collective farms?" The horror! Thank heaven we subsidize the profits of megacorporate high-fructose agribusiness instead.
Francis @ 9:43 p.m.
Your objections are characteristic of most people's objections to vouchers.
#1 You're painting with a really big brush.
&
#4 Do you really think, even for a moment, that when the federal government overrides 50 state laws and 16,000 school district contracts to create a voucher system in every school district in the country that it won't include an oversight component?
- Insinuating that there's simply too much geography/governmental machinery involved for the current massive governmental machinery to be decentralized/diversified. ??? Come on.
#2 Your hostility to something that helped bring enormous economic success to this country colors my view of the rest of your argument.
- Attacking the messenger.
#3 Read up on some Establishment Clause jurisprudence
- Whoops, you were wrong there. Unless there are state constitutions that would prohibit vouchers, of course. The same potential restriction affecting, well, every federal program in existence. Yet they exist!
Basically, you are counting on inertia to keep our failing system in place, with parents and children as hostages. And weak arguments like yours will add something to that inertia. But not much.
I have to go with Socratic. Vouchers seem to work as a way to subsidize schools that cherrypick. Sure, most Catholic schools have tried to be as inclusive as possible and have a history of teaching children where English is the home's second language, but schools that want to collect money for vouchers should also suffer the full panoply of underfunded federal mandates that local schools labor under.
When the Feds pay for the entire cost of NCLB, ADA, IDEA and the rest, I will cheerfully let them pay for the costs of vouchers, as well. Same thing with states. In Wisconsin, we don't need the smug cheapskates in Waukesha and Washington counties telling Milwaukee to spend more money on voucher education while they cut school aids to the district from the state.
Until the proponents of vouchers show that they actually care about public education more than they care about telling other people what to do, we might be better off without any Federal involvement in K-12 and less micromanaging from the state capitals.
Voucher proponents need to put their money where their mouth is.
But having a public education system is a very wise goal. The critics of public schools, particularly in certain big cities, have very legitimate points. That does not mean that the public education should be forgotten because it doesn't work perfectly. The critics of vouchers are also making legitimate criticisms. It is a sensible question to ask what the best use of public resources is.
It was a mistake of Ms. McArdle to equivocate the desires of some parents to keep their children ignorant of science with the desires of some people to keep the First Amendment alive. The concerns about the First Amendment are quite legitimate. This is not merely a matter of some people not liking expenditures on religious items, it is a matter of complying with the law. Religious education is not a government function and cannot be done on the government's dime.
The problem with vouchers is that the rules and regs are still goverened by the state legislature who is not an honest broker in the deal. In my state (MA) the state has made ridiculous provisions to more or less make home schooling impossible and has put limits on the number of charter schools because they are exempt from union rules. Since the legislature is beholden to the NEA and BTU they will never be an honest broker and will decimate any legitimate voucher plans.
My guess is it is because you are a conservative and conservatives don't care about inner city, mostly black and latino people.
You're projecting
White racists like to see blacks poor and ill-educated, so mainstream consertatives pretend to care about inner city education but do their best to sabotage it.
Then you must be assuming the Democratic party and the NEA are all white racists because this has been the backbone of their policy for over 40 years.
Before we engage in the massive socioeconomic experiment of generalized vouchers, I'd like to know why the public schools are failing. Just a rank-ordered list of factors. Then I'd like to examine that list, to determine which factors are specific to public education as currently (and perhaps arbitrarily) constructed, which are specific to public education as a general phenomenon (a public good, in the economists' sense), and which are more a function of the community, social pathologies of the sort Moynihan famously observed in the 1960s, etc. I'm only interested in vouchers if the second factor is the most important--otherwise they're not the solution. They might bring incidental benefits, but they might also bring incidental costs, and it would likely be a wash (at best). Only if we've diagnosed the problem to be public education, in some sense that's so basic as to be unreformable in our political system, should we be looking at the generalization of vouchers.
Is it really true that "Religious education is not a government function and cannot be done on the government's dime". I mean is the second half really true? It's my understanding that veterans can use their G.I. Bill money entirely on religious education, by spending it at a seminary. Not many go from soldier to clergy, but they can if they want to. Am I wrong about that? And please don't tell me that the G.I. Bill is all about deferred compensation rather than government subsidy. I know that. It's still government money spent (sometimes) on religious education, isn't it?
Courts still have some questions about vouchers. Are they truly money for the parents that can be used as they like or are they just a subterfuge designed to get around the prohibition of direct funding of parochial schools? Certainly the argument has been made either way. If they are really for parents to spend, why don't all parents get them?
Traditionally, parochial schools have had a curriculum that is essentially the same as the curriculum of the public schools, with religious education added. But what do we do with a school that teaches religion and only incidentally teaches other subjects and that only to reinforce the religious teachings? How do we decide what is acceptable and what is not? Do we fund a religious school that lies to students about biology, chemistry and physics because the facts of science contradict the doctrines of that church?
The courts have made it clear that there is a line, but they have not decided that churches cannot get any government accomodation. How far can it be drawn in favor of funding church education? For K-12, it cannot be exclusively for religious education, but it may include funding that incidentally furthers religious education. Generally, the problem doesn't arise because most church-affiliated schools don't want to be responsible for complying with the regulations that come with funding.
I want to argue with Megan's point 9, specifically these words: "Catholic schools, where most of the vouchers would be used".
It's been 30+ years since Milton Friedman pointed out that Catholic schools dominate the low-cost non-public school market only for historical reasons. If we had vouchers, we would no doubt see some growth in the number of Catholic schools, but we would see a huge growth in Presbyterian, Episcopalian, A.M.E., Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, non-denominational, and militantly atheist schools, with a wide range of educational philosophies as well, from back-to-basics sink-or-swim military schools to artsy-fartsy no-grades-just-feelings schools. Let a thousand flowers bloom!
Obviously there need to be some minimum standards, and obviously we would need to be on guard against the government ruining all the private schools with excessive and stupid regulations.
I do think it's funny that voucher opponents so often complain about Christian schools not teaching evolution, because there's an obvious greater danger: the kind of Muslim school in which the students spend all day memorizing the Koran in Arabic without even learning the language, just as meaningless syllables, and don't learn any math or science or any other subject except a twisted version of history designed to encourage them to become suicide bombers. Madrassas of the sort found in Pakistan are fortunately rare in the U.S., but we would want to make sure they cannot be subsidized with vouchers -- or permitted at all, I would think, at least for those under 18.
Vouchers would not change the demand - at worst, they add a few individuals who would otherwise homeschool, which likely would be a statistically insignificant change - and would only increase the supply, because they would add additional schools to the already existing public school system. Supply would INCREASE, and demand would stay the same.
I think homeschooling would increase. There will have to be some type of voucher for homeschooling parents, and $5,000 can go a long way to purchasing music lessons, language tutors, and educational materials.
Since so many liberals want to control personal thought and behavior, however, I think we really need tax breaks, not vouchers. Make educational expenditures deductible against education taxes (property or income, depeding on the local funding). If I have no kids but I pay $1,500 in education taxes, I should have the option of helping pay for a poor child's education (limited to the amount of the voucher), donating the money to a scholarship fund, or sending it to the public school. This way, we can maintain public funding, but it will be entirely privately controlled. Otherwise, there will be no language, art, athletic, music, religious, science, etc. schools. We'll end up with a one size fits all regulation and you'll be only free to choose how you get it. i.e. health care.
The Iron Law of Voucher Debates: For purposes of constitutionality, all private schools are assumed to be Brother Jethro's Hallelujah Academy. For purposes of cost, all private schools are assumed to be Phillips Andover.
Megan McArdle | October 29, 2007 9:55 PM:
..you're confusing a guarantee of universal education, which I fully support, with government provision of same, which I don't.
I'd like to see an explanation of how the federal government can guarantee universal education without in some way providing for it.
Before wading into the comments, I just wanted to say, "Wow!"
This was one of the most powerful blog entries I have read anywhere.
What a complete demolition of an argument.
Before wading into the comments, I just wanted to say, "Wow!"
This was one of the most powerful blog entries I have read anywhere.
What a complete demolition of an argument.
grape_crush:I'd like to see an explanation of how the federal government can guarantee universal education without in some way providing for it.
Okay, Megan_McArdle could have phrased that better, but your response seems to reveal (and this is not to "diss" you) that you have never been exposed to the distinction she was making.
Megan_McArdle was saying that the government should *ensure* that everyone gets an education, but that this doesn't imply it has to directly run the schools. It could just *pay* existing (and new!) schools to do so, and reap the efficiency gains.
Which is what vouchers are.
You know, the topic of the entire blog post.
So far everything has been theory so let's put some numbers to it. I live 27 miles west of Chicago in a decent town. The Catholic grade school here will educate your kids for $2300 per year. The public grade school spends $7000 per student. Let's say for round numbers that the private school can educate a kid for 5K less.
We can make some assumptions. First, the parents sending their kids to the private school are happier than they would have been at the public school and the evidence is that they will part with $2300 of their own money. The private school may be better or it may be worse but either way it is irrelevant. If the customer is happier then the right choice has been made.
Tuition Inflation. Yes, you will have tuition inflation if you hand someone in my town a $7000 voucher based on what the Gov would have spent in the public school. BUT, if you were to say to the parent, here is $7K to spend, everything you DONT spend we are going to save in a little bank account for you. Upon the successful completion of High School, we will give you 25% of what ever you save for a trade school, or for College, the rest goes back to the taxpayer. You would not have tuition inflation.
I will tell you what I would do, I would homeschool my kids, bank the $7K a year for 12 years, take 84K * .25= $21,000 and send my kid to the best college I could afford. The taxpayer would get $63K back.
Megan,
I would write that the only significant argument against vouchers that you did not address is the one that says vouchers would be the camel's nose under the tent for government control over private schools- that, in the end, we would eventually wind up with all the same problems in private schools that now exist in the public ones, and in the same areas of the country.
What is it that those "voucher" schools are doing that the public schools aren't that makes them better? If there actually was some thing that could be proven to actually work, then you could just get the public schools to do it. I think it would be easier to pass that legislation than it would be to take money away from the public schools.
Of course, it wouldn't work because there isn't any such thing that they do better- except filter the student (and teacher) population. We sit here and compare schools by test scores, when those are primarily a reflection of the students, not a reflection of the quality of instruction.
What needs to happen is more variation in the public schools. Recognize that the few students that truly bring classes to a halt, that are not interested in education, do not belong in the classroom with those children that do care. Start using all of that expensive testing to put children in classes where they are able to progress as fast as they can and not be held back by others. Start using technology to develop individualized courses of instruction. Start using all of that extensive testing to not let children pass into the second grade until they meet the standards for first grade. Stop measuring the quality of schools by the test scores of their students and measure how much they are able to improve the test scores of students- it's the only way to measure the quality of the education as opposed to the population.
And yeah, we have to do this to the teachers too. Sorry unions, firing for poor performance is going to start happening a lot more often. This goes for the administrations as well.
As for you mis-focused folks who are claiming that tax dollars should be allowed to support religious education of any kind...it's already bad enough. Let's take the divisive issues off of the table first so we can make progress on real improvements that could be made today.
On the tuition inflation issue:
To the extent that subsidies cause tuition inflation in colleges, I would argue that this is caused by a combination of subsidy with artificial restriction of supply. You can't use government money in colleges unless they are accredited colleges. I view much of the college market as a cartel in collusion with government. Rent seekers, in other words.
This is a legitimate concern if we increase the use of vouchers, but only if one restricts the supply of schools by government enforced fiat.
On the issue of hypocrisy:
If you would be unwilling to send your own child to the worst inner city schools, but are opposed to allowing poor parents the option to use a voucher to get their children out of those same schools, then, yes, you are a hypocrite.
8:
Tax credits (as opposed to vouchers) are indeed the way to go. They invite less top-down control and weaken the argument that choice = funding religious education. It builds a broader political coalition, which is essential.
Essentially, with tax credits, the people are paying for education. With vouchers, the government is. Which bodes better for independent education?
Person | October 30, 2007 11:15 AM:
..you have never been exposed to the distinction she was making.
Assume that I have.
..McArdle was saying that the government should *ensure* that everyone gets an education, but that this doesn't imply it has to directly run the schools.
Then who runs the schools?...And just as importantly, who sets the performance standards and enforces penalties when those standards aren't met?
Please be specific; how would you (and McArdle) ensure that everyone gets an education without some form of government oversight?
It could just *pay* existing (and new!) schools to do so...
And how is that an example of the government not providing for universal education? I'd have more of a problem handing out what amounts to blank checks with little or no oversight.
Which is what vouchers are.
Blank checks given with little or no oversight?
You know, the topic of the entire blog post.
You'd be better off letting McArdle defend herself, Person.
Yancey_Ward: Potential gov. control of private education is important, but Megan_McArdle was only refuting *left-wing* arguments against vouchers.
Matt_M: Yes there is something private schools + vouchers do that public schools can't. Namely, incorporate market mechanisms for optimizing efficiency and quality.
biwah: Your point is in error once you shift to a valid comparison basis.
If vouchers have stringent controls over which education methods are eligible, they invite top-down control.
If tax credits have stringent controls over which education methods are eligible, they invite top-down control.
If vouchers do not have stringent controls over which education methods are eligible, they do not invite top-down control.
If tax credits do not have stringent controls over which education methods are eligible, they do not invite top-down control.
Person:
I get that. But this is a political issue, and the way things are structured affects how it is perceived, and therefore how many people will get behind it. This has been confirmed by polling on the issue.
Tax credits are also more elegant and do not rely on bureaucracy for distribution.
Assume that I have.
You haven't; and this is important because you need to be aware of your ignorance to know what you need to learn to make a contribution.
Then who runs the schools?
Whoever owns them.
And just as importantly, who sets the performance standards and enforces penalties when those standards aren't met?
The government can define what tests the students must pass.
Please be specific; how would you (and McArdle) ensure that everyone gets an education without some form of government oversight?
It would give people funds sufficient to purchase the education on the market; yes, there would be some "oversight" in terms of defining the minimum it must teach, but as indicated before, this is a semantics issue that becomes apparent once you understand the concept you're responding to.
And how is that an example of the government not providing for universal education?
It isn't; it's the *kind* of providing that's in dispute. Megan_McArdle, again, may have used poor phrasing, but the meaning was clear to anyone who understands the distinction she was referring to, whose existence you were totally unaware of until today. Namely, the distinction between the government running schools, and simply ensuring that enough schools are run such that all can get an education.
I'd have more of a problem handing out what amounts to blank checks with little or no oversight.
And I'd have even more of a problem with people entering a discussion without even knowing what they're talking about.
You'd be better off letting McArdle defend herself, Person.
Perhaps, but she really shouldn't have to respond to people who don't meet the prerequisites for understanding what her post is referring to.
I get that. But this is a political issue, and the way things are structured affects how it is perceived, and therefore how many people will get behind it
Very true; but only one sentence in your post spoke to that matter, and it was a bare assertion.
Tax credits are also more elegant and do not rely on bureaucracy for distribution.
Sure they do: an additional arm of the tax authority (for vetting tax returns that list education credits), and an agency that certifies schools as eligible (just as an agency would have to certify it under vouchers).
In the two very different places I've lived when this was a personal concern (Pasadena and a medium sized university town in the south), it was very difficult to obtain high quality day care and preschools at any price. In spite of plenty of people willing to pay for it, day cares and preschools did not magically spring up so that the supply would meet the demand. The lower quality cheaper places not competing to provide a better product either. Why would anyone expect "the market" to do any better with K12 schools?
If there actually was some thing that could be proven to actually work, then you could just get the public schools to do it.
(Followed by a commendable list of things the public schools should have started doing long ago, but didn't. The reasons why they didn't will surely disappear any day now.)
I have to say thanks for an interesting post and discussion. I'll be voting for vouchers next week here in Utah. The discussion hasn't changed my mind at all. I see vouchers as a way to provide an incentive for someone to improve education in our state. Without competition, I see no incentive in the present state monopoly for the schools to get better. Increased funding won't help because it can't be tied to performance.
Thanks Megan
Person,
I get that vouchers and tax credits are not all that different. But tax credits are marginally superior for the reasons I stated, and enjoy more political support.
Do you have any response to that that doesn't involve throwing rhetorical spitballs from the back of the class?
Person | October 30, 2007 12:18 PM:
You haven't..
I have. My point is that you and McArdle have posited a contradiction...that the government should ensure univeral education without the government providing for that universal education.
And all I've asked for was a simple explanation, giving you or McArdle a chance to clarify that position...For that, I get called 'ignorant'; that's usually a sign you're standing on pretty weak ground, Person.
..and this is important because you need to be aware of your ignorance to know what you need to learn to make a contribution.
Excuse me. I didn't see the posted rules for making a contribution, Person. I'm also sorry that my expression of ignorance doesn't align with yours.
Whoever owns them.
Who owns the schools now? Who would own them in your brave new world of school vouchers?
The government can define what tests the students must pass.
What? You want the government to dictate what schools have to teach? What are you, a commie?
It would give people funds sufficient to purchase the education on the market..
And where exactly do those funds come from, Person?
...there would be some "oversight" in terms of defining the minimum it must teach..
And if those government-mandated minimums aren't met, then the kids get moved to a different MacSchool, if one exists, and start the grade over. Or just get written off.
...this is a semantics issue..
What you and McArdle mean when you say, "a guarantee of universal education, which I fully support, with government provision of same, which I don't" is exactly what I'm trying to figure out.
What I gather the two of you mean is that the government should provide funding for and limited regulation of public education, the services of which should only be provided by non-government entities such as religious and civic communities as well as businesses.
Is that accurate?
It isn't; it's the *kind* of providing that's in dispute.
All you are talking about is who gets your tax dollars in order to provide the educational service with little oversight...And if that provider is a business, will their emphasis be on profitability or giving kids the best education they are capable of receiving?
...the meaning was clear to anyone who understands the distinction she was referring to...
A distinction which only a very special few such as yourself recognize, of course.
...whose existence you were totally unaware of until today.
More insult. *yawn*
...the distinction between the government running schools, and simply ensuring that enough schools are run such that all can get an education.
Fast-food education? Good luck selling that to Timmy's mom, Person...And good luck getting enough competing McSchools to open up in rural areas lacking the population to support them.
I could go on, but I'm sure that someone as intelligent as you profess to be has considered all the issues surrounding the practical implementation of your not-quite-free-market-education ideas.
And I'd have even more of a problem with people entering a discussion without even knowing what they're talking about.
Then I suppose you'd have even more of an issue with people resorting to insult instead of dealing with valid criticism of an argument, Person.
Guess I made a point you can't argue against. Again.
Perhaps..
No, really, you would be better off letting McArdle explain herself, because you're not doing a very good job of arguing in her stead, Person.
Insult and vague ideas don't make for a valid argument.
grape_crush,
I don't usually like Person's mode of argumentation either, but in your case, he made a valid point- you truly don't understand the distinction, which was quite baffling until I read you comment that your IQ dropped when you visited here. Now it makes sense.
Yancey_Ward: God* bless you too.
*I mean God in the secular sense.
grape_crush: Thanks for bolstering my belief that disagreement with me stems mainly from ignorance and low computational power.
biwah: There were no rhetorical spitwads. Let's review:
-you gave reasons why tax credits are superior to vouchers
-I explained how that was an artifact of an invalid comparison basis.
-You said that there were other reasons, namely, getting political support.
-I said your post also didn't advance any arguments to that end, either.
Did I not contribute something substantive?
biwah and grape_crush: I think there's a deeper issue at play here. I *enjoy* when people point out where my knowledge of facts is lacking. That allows me to remedy it, possibly discover something interesting along the way, and then gain a broader understanding of the world.
Your reaction is hatred.
What am I missing?
Yancey Ward | October 30, 2007 2:50 PM:
..in your case, he made a valid point- you truly don't understand the distinction..
A distinction which McArdle failed to make, and which apparently is only known to a special few, like Person.
...which was quite baffling until I read you comment that your IQ dropped when you visited here.
Vague ideas presented without supporting evidence (other than saying people who oppose vouchers are from another planet) will do that to a person.
Look; all I asked for was definition. Fine; I got one from Person, after wading through a bunch of condescension...And even under Person's interpretation, there's still issues with what amounts to turning over the service of public education to private sector interests, some which I mentioned in previous posts here.
Person | October 30, 2007 3:29 PM:
Thanks for bolstering my belief that disagreement with me stems mainly from ignorance and low computational power.
Which means that you have no adequate response. Predictable.
That allows me to remedy it, possibly discover something interesting along the way, and then gain a broader understanding of the world.
Of course, when someone you disagree with attempts the same...
..Your reaction is hatred.
'Nuff said.
What am I missing?
I'd guess self-awareness, empathy, and intellectual honesty.
I am a public school teacher who sends his son to a private school. Sure a voucher would save me money, but it would have a devestating effect on public schools. As a teacher I have noticed that their is a critical ratio of good to bad students that greatly affects the outcome of the class. I can teach a class of 26 good students and 4 bad ones, but having 5 0r 6 ruins the whole classs. of course smallewr class sizes (which exist in private school, but not public) can make a huge difference. If private schools can refuse admission to students then the public schools will be even worse. If the bad students have to be admitted to private schools, then private schools will get more expensive. One reason private schools are cheaper is the teachers are paid less because many teachers will work for less money to have smaller class sizes and "better" kids. Finally on money isses, a huge portion of money spent on public education covers things like buses and buildings, which private school does not provide.
1) Vouchers don't work. This is the best argument against school vouchers. But it's still not very strong.
That they don't work isn't...strong? Wow! When you're impervious to fact and logic, there's really not much to say, is there? Generally, a discussion can be affected by both facts and logic but, absent those, the discussion becomes "I just want vouchers." Less than shallow...
Somebody said: All you are talking about is who gets your tax dollars in order to provide the educational service with little oversight...And if that provider is a business, will their emphasis be on profitability or giving kids the best education they are capable of receiving?
How is emphasis on profitibility or on product quality any different from each other?
Does Starbucks ask themselves every day how close to get to serving "really Shitty coffee" in order to maximize profitability?
A question asked by a dipshit that never ran a company. Product quality is what makes the customers come back, customers coming back makes profits. Rinse and repeat.
Yancey Ward,
Of course, public funding will lead to public control. Vouchers are a recipe to make private schools public. Public school proponents in this thread have aready tipped their hand about how they see to "level the playing field". Their ability to do so will be immensely strengthened once private schools start accepting public funding.
tim | October 30, 2007 4:55 PM: Does Starbucks ask themselves every day how close to get to serving "really Shitty coffee" in order to maximize profitability?
No, Starbucks increases the retail price of its quality coffee to cover the added expense and maintain profitability. MacDonald's, on the other hand, has in the past resorted to food service tricks like keeping its shitty coffee at a temperature near boiling in order for it to taste fresher longer, requiring less ground coffee.
A question asked by a dipshit that never ran a company.
Apparently you haven't heard of the concept of minimizing overhead (in the form of materials, material quality, head count, et cetera) in order to boost profitability.
Product quality is what makes the customers come back, customers coming back makes profits.
In an ideal world it works that way, yes. When faced with the prospect of having to tell your board of directors, investors, or stockholders why you failed to show a profit, things get less than ideal.
There is one basic thing that is missing from this debate.
IT'S NOT YOUR MONEY!!
Which prompts the next question,
Why can't I use my money to educate my children in the manner in which they best learn?
I have money taken from me every year at legal gunpoint to incarcerate some ingrate punk who doesn't want to be there so that the unions can forcibly take my money from the teachers so they can buy political causes that I strongly disagree with.
Why can't I spend the money each year to buy the materials, to go the places, and to give my kids the best education possible?
Don't give me that crap about ssssocialization. Both of my kids get along with everyone from a newborn to senior citizens, even volunteering at a retirement home, and have more friends from further afield than if they would be cooped up with the same 40 kids everyday.
Why must I send money to a place that just gets in the way of a decent education? This whole debate is just about pride and arrogance and money on the part of the educrats and teachers. You think they care about students? El torro poo poo. It's about the money. MY money.
Dadofhomeschoolers
Grape_Crush; You Said:
No, Starbucks increases the retail price of its quality coffee to cover the added expense and maintain profitability. MacDonald's, on the other hand, has in the past resorted to food service tricks like keeping its shitty coffee at a temperature near boiling in order for it to taste fresher longer, requiring less ground coffee.
And yet, people still buy McD's coffee. Hmmm... Maybe that is because McD fills a niche that customers appreciate. Actually that is the case. The case-study to be exact. McD is the most popular restaurant in the world not because their food is the greatest, but because it is consistant from store to store and they have clean bathrooms. You know how their sign reads "Billions and Billions served"? That is because they give the client exactly what they are looking for. As opposed to public schools, that people are dying to get out of ( literally) in the inner city.
Would vouchers provide the best education possible? Maybe not, but it would provide the EXACT education that the parents are looking for. Just like there is no single car that is the "best" there is no educational choice that is the "best" for everyone.
Dadofhomeschoolers,
Megan obviously doesn't agree that it's your money if she needs it for her preferred social engineering. Whatever she decides she needs is to be referred to as *our* money, not your's.
I have money taken from me every year at legal gunpoint to incarcerate some ingrate punk who doesn't want to be there so that the unions can forcibly take my money from the teachers so they can buy political causes that I strongly disagree with.
Just once, I'd like to hear what Megan thinks of sentiments like these. I don't see how one can even have a country if a substantial portion of the citizenry think this way.
when my wife and i were preparing for the birth of our first child, we moved into the denver suburb that had the highest rated school system, which (then at least) was littleton, co. while some of the elementary schools may have been ok, the elementary school (east elementary) were our kids started out sucked without redemption.
we spent a year or so fighting with the school administration, gave up, and helped in a small way with the founding of a k-8 charter school. littleton academy was a great thing for our kids, and it continues to provide a quality education for those kids lucky enough to attend.
littleton academy is a public school: 1) anybody can attend, although parents have to be persistent to get their kids enrolled since there is a waiting list. i don't remember if there is a lottery for the available openings or if you just wait for your turn on the list to come up, 2) they provide special education as required. they didn't at first, but my son had some educational needs that weren't being met, and we successfully used the threat of a federal lawsuit to force them, kicking and screaming, to comply with the special ed mandates. to their credit, while i'm sure the governing body hated my wife and i's guts for this, they never took it out on either of our kids.
as for the quality of education, the high school that both my kids attended complained bitterly that the littleton academy students were over-educated in relation to their peers from other middle schools, and asked littleton academy to 'dumb things down'. how the high school administration had the utter gall to ask such a thing is beyond me.
my kids had a great experience at the charter school, but the integration back into a 'typical' public high was not particularly successful. we ended up home schooling both kids through high school.
my son's special ed needs simply weren't being met, and we determined it would be easier to do it ourselves rather than beating our heads against the brick wall of the high school adminstration for four years.
my daughter had discipline problems and the high school expelled her. i don't blame the high school: they should have expelled her.
school choice is a winner for both students and their parents. school choice is the answer here, and vouchers are a means (but not the only means) to that end.
Let's think through the repercussions of school vouchers. The demand curve for private education at the moment is downwards sloping and concave; few people want to pay for education that is highly expensive; many do if it is cheap. The supply curve is (mainly) upwards sloping and pretty inelastic; accomodating more students in the current number of private schools is going to very expensive. (We'll get to the effects of new schools in a bit).
School vouchers, as a subsidy, will shift the demand curve to the right: there is now more demand for private education. As any economics student will be able to tell you, the effect of this on an inelastic supply curve is to raise the price of private education by nearly the cost of the voucher, and to admit only a few more pupils in.
So obviously, a £3000 voucher will not allow your children to enter a £3000-fee school, as the cost will have risen nearer £5500.
If you can already afford to send your child to a private school, you're in for a windfall in terms of the quality of education; a small school of 400 pupils will now get an extra £1,000,000 courtesy of the government.
Of course, this money has been diverted from the fund (or potential fund) for state schools. About 5% of pupils are currently privately educated, so that means the money available for state schools has decreased by about £150 (assuming £3000 vouchers). In a state school of 1000 pupils, that equates to about five teacher's salaries and the entire photocopy budget. You can forget new books.
But of course, you now have a choice where to send your child. And you'll want to send your child to the best school in the area. Everyone will. Assuming they can afford the transport costs - although luckily transport costs are zero in a free market, of course. If you're lucky, maybe the school will sack a few more teachers so they can afford to bus kids across the city.
But how is the best school going to choose whose vouchers to accept? Either by:
(a) Setting an exam - although this hardly raises the standard of education in all schools; it just creams off the brightest pupils in the city.
(b) By catchment area - which doesn't increase choice.
(c) By lottery - which doesn't increase choice.
(d) Or by raising a financial hurdle - if you can pay a thousand pounds or so on top of the voucher, you can get your child in. Of course, this expansion in supply of private education will shift the supply curve, and the overall price of private education will fall a bit from its raised level, and - as free-marketeers know, will make those schools competitive and the quality of education within them will rise.
Of course, if you can't afford to pay a few thousand more on top of the voucher for your children's education - which accounts for the majority of people in the population - you'll have to send your children to one of the old state schools - or a new school that's bizarrely sprung up into an uncompetitive market. These of course now have less money per pupil, fewer pupils from richer socio-economic backgrounds, and fewer good teachers, as the private sector will have lured them away. So the majority of schools will be much worse than before.
If you're lucky, the failing school your child has to go to will be close by. Otherwise you'll have to pay to bus them there too. But you're probably a single mother and deserve it.
So overall, school vouchers will have increased the disparity in educational outcomes, not raised them across the board.
But this is the thing: the free-market is the most effective means of distributing goods and services according to ABILITY TO PAY. It has nothing to do with equitable distribution.
But if you're rich, you'll do very well out of them; better quality of education and possibly even the government giving you a discount on the private school you're already paying for. If you're rich you'd have to be a fool not to want school vouchers.
Or you'd have to have a social conscience.
i have been researching the voucher system for some time now. in any sort of debate it is crucial for a person to understand all sides of an issue before discussing it. this should be done before a decision is reached concerning any topic. Ms. Mcardle seems to have done her homework, at least she can answer most of the questions posted here. one thing i found to be odd in her presentation above was the astounding lack of respect for her readers. when she started out saying she is going to testify again, i almost stopped reading right there. i tried to read most of the posts here on this page, and there were many who found her colloquiallisms inappropriate and distracting. i only read her posting for one reason, to gain a further insight into this issue. Ms. Mcardle responded to the postings that referred to her inadequate use of the english language. when i say inadequate i mean improper, i have no doubt that she did this for emphasis but obviously she didn't fully realize how that would look to some people. everytime someone criticized her word choice she made a very good case while making it clear and concise. obviously she could have done this in the original post, but to me it seemed like she was more concerned with "testifying" as it were. i have been on many websites and read quite a bit on the issue of school vouchers, and for me, like many of those who posted, i still cannot find anybody who can sufficiently show HOW vouchers will improve education. of course i have heard the argument of competition will drive the schools to greatness, however my main concern lies with why in the world aren't we doing that now? of course Ms. Mcardle, like many others, understands what really motivates us here in the country, GREEN. if money can't make education better nothing can right. well i better stop on that tangent or else i will start "testifying" as Ms. Mcardle did. the main problem with the voucher system as i see to be is government control. many have argued, incorrectly i might add, that it is unconstitutional for the government to fund a private religious school. for the sake of my concern here please try and put that aside for just a moment. think of this, whenever the government provides money for something they will always try to control it. does no one realize that if the voucher system is put in place across the country the government will actually be in control of every school in the land, even the ones that were previously beyond there reach. so for those who think it is unconstitutional you haven't fully thought about the other side of this. once the government money start going into an organization they can, and will try to exert some measure of control over it. i completely understand that not all private schools are religious in nature. and as have mentioned in some of the above posts, students still have a choice about what they will accept. but don't think for a minute that the voucher system won't drive some religious schools out of business. Ms. Mcardle cannot adequatly answer that question, if she can then she must be psychic. i am sure she would argue that if a school doesn't want to accept vouchers then they don't have to. well that is all well and good, but let us think about the very foundation that proponents are trying to lay for a voucher system-competition. if the parents want their kids to have the best education possible, once again as proponents claim, then they would take their child out of that particular school and move them to a better one. i wonder also what a parent would do if they wanted to send their child to a school who is trying to operate without government money? where would this voucher go then? i guess they would keep it. to me these are the questions that need to be kept in mind. lastly i would like to add that a voucher system definitely can't be worse than our current system. i think proponents and opponents of vouchers can even agree on that point. however, for the most part there is a dwindling amount of educated, knowledgable people who can present the issues on this topic in a clear and concise manner. i urge anyone who read Ms. Mcardle's post to do your own research and homework before you automatically make up your mind on this issue.