There is a new NBER working paper by Richard J. Murnane, Marcus R. Waldman, John B. Willett, Maria Soledad Bos, and Emiliana Vegas. I have not had a chance to read it, but here is the key part of the abstract:
We found that:
1. On average, student test scores increased markedly and income-based gaps in those scores declined by one-third in the five years after the passage of SEP.
2. The combination of increased support of schools and accountability was the critical mechanism through which the implementation of SEP increased student scores, especially in schools serving high concentrations of low-income students. Migration of low-income students from public schools to private voucher schools played a small role.
We interpret these findings as more supportive of improved student performance than other recent research on the Chilean policy reform.
That is not exactly the Milton Friedman story, but it is essentially a positive report for vouchers.
All you need to make the case for school vouchers is that the outcome is not much worse than the state only model in terms of education outcomes. There should always be a bias towards freedom, for parents and children to choose schools most suited to their particular desires. Plus overtime it is likely to be cheaper. The fact that there may also be a slight benefit in education outcomes with voucher is just a bonus.
ChrisA’s argument neglects the likely cost of this increased freedom for parents and children, which cost will be borne by the taxpayer.
We’ve already seen how something like education vouchers works on a large scale. Grants and guaranteed student loans give post-secondary students the same kind of school choice that vouchers would offer to K-12 pupils. It certainly doesn’t appear that these programs have reduced the cost or increased the quality of higher education.
If a widespread voucher program were implemented, we could expect to see elementary and secondary schools following a similar trajectory. Schools would compete on amenities; parents would demand ever-larger vouchers so that little Bobby could attend a school with a domed football stadium; and the taxpayer would wind up footing the bill.
No. If we want to increase competition in K-12 education, the sensible course is to abandon the notion of free education for all, and to require public schools to obtain some fraction of their budget from tuition and student fees. Like a voucher program, this would tend to level the playing field for public vs. private schools. Unlike a voucher program, it would reduce the transfer of taxpayer funds to a special-interest group, viz., the perpetrators of minor children.
I would be happy with a voucher scheme that set the value of the vouchers at 90% of the cost of educating a child in the state funded system. That way it would be guaranteed to save money. Anyone who wanted to avail themselves of the state funded model could simply decline the voucher.
Suppose instead we just say only parents of school age kids get to vote in any local elections.
…and only parents of school age kids are forced to pay taxes for schools.
I mean wouldn’t that be the same, you pay for the schools but only parents get to vote on them.
Ungood idea. Per the US Dep’t of Education’s 2014-15 numbers, about 13% of students enrolled in public school receive special-education services. It seems likely that the marginal cost of processing an additional non-special-ed (NSE) public-school student is less than ChrisA’s 90% of the mean cost for all students. We could be looking at a positive-feedback situation here: as NSE students leave the public-school system, the mean cost of educating a public-school student rises, and the value of the 90% voucher rises with it, prompting even more parents of NSE students to leave the system…
Eventually, the remaining public-school population consists chiefly of the most seriously damaged children, and the 90% voucher far exceeds the current per-student public-school spending. However, the private schools would keep up with the 90%, through Olympic-sized swimming pools, interstate cheerleading competitions, Macintosh products for all students…
Maybe someone could open a private special ed school , with only staff trained specifically to teach special ed atudents, and thus take advantage of gains from specialization. Ido imagine that one facility dedicated to only the most damaged student could probably operate more efficiently.
This makes sense. The disabled kids (13%? Give me a break) go to disabled schools. Kids who just want to sit in a detention holding cell go to schools that specialize in detention holding cells (public). They can play angry birds as long as they don’t hurt anyone.
Smart poor kids go to schools where they won’t be shot or threatened by drug dealers. Low hanging fruit here: schools where no student learns because 99% of the management effort is in preventing chaos and violence and lawsuits. That resource can now be concentrated on helping people.
@Hazel Meade: Specialized special-ed school? More efficient, certainly; but just imagine the response from the soi-disant advocates for the disabled. At least 25% of the online comments will refer to Jim Crow in some way, and at least 5% will point out that this kind of thinking leads straight to gas chambers.
@Potato: That 13% probably encompasses everything from Susie, with 20/100 vision, to Joey, who’s got nothing going on north of the cerebellum. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that schools tend to push as many students as possible into special ed, in order to secure additional federal funds; just as we get the strong impression that schools try to keep kids from being certified as English-language proficient for the sake of the extra money they get for bilingual ed.
@Your Husband’s Cane
Yes, I’m with you on that. If the cost of educating disabled kids in regular schools is so high, then is it really worth it just to make them feel like they are normal and belong (or whatever the point of that is supposed to be)? Which I doubt they do anyway – it’s not like the other kids don’t know who rides the short bus, figuratively and literally.
Separating them into a different school might also reduce the number of kids classified as “disabled”, because they wouldn’t be able to demand as much funding for each one, and of course, parents are going to fight to keep their kids in the regular school. So we’d end up with some narrow criteria like actual medical diagnoses of disability. And then parents would stop having their kids diagnosed with ADHD just so they can get extra time on tests.
Freedom means spending someone else’s money in this case? I’m all for parental input but it isn’t exactly ‘freedom and choice’ for the taxpayer who funds vouchers.
It’s interesting when it comes to college, the complete opposite tact is taken by conservatives. College tuition is inflating supposedly because gov’t is paying for it while giving students complete ‘choice’ when it comes to which college to attend, if any at all. Or these days the ‘problem’ is student loans….but with student loans you have even more connection to consumer freedom, choice and responsibility.
Now that said I’m not against vouchers but I’m against their pitch as a free for all ‘right’ that will somehow fix all that’s bad about the education system that’s worked for well over a century.
I am not a conservative, I lean libertarian. But if I was designing an education system from scratch I would go with something like a basic income for everyone from say 14 years up to early 20’s. The payment could be used either for education, or just as simple supplemental income. Many people, I am sure, would simply spend the money on dope and sleep the day long, but at least they wouldn’t be wasting the time of the teachers or the other students who did want to learn. And it would be more fair, why should clever Jonny get funded by the state to go to College rather than dumb Donny?
OK exactly what problem are you trying to solve. The population today is no dumber than it was decades ago…in fact its probably smarter.
“Freedom means spending someone else’s money in this case? ”
No, the money is being spent already and will be spent in any case. This is just allowing the consumer of the educational resource more freedom of choice.
If someone spends their Social Security money donating to a synagogue, we don’t scream that government money is going to religion.
If the government needs computers and buys them from private company Dell, we don’t complain that PUBLIC money is going to PRIVATE corporations.
Yet with education, somehow we need to meet some magical requirements that aren’t met elsewhere.
The government wants an educated citizenry. And it will spend money to get it. The mechanism shouldn’t be that important. Funding the schools and teachers themselves, or funding the schools and having vouchers for the teachers, or raw vouchers for everything, the question is
isare our children learning? and are we paying a good price for that. The same as if the government were buying computers.Both Your Husband’s Cane’s and Boonton’s comparisons between college financial aid and vouchers are off the mark. College financial aid increases the demand for college and, hence, increases prices. If everyone, even people that presently don’t go to college, were assigned a college, then costs would be even higher. Vouchers for K-12 do not increase total K-12 demand.
ChrisA is correct. The case for geography-based government monopoly requires showing that it produces significant benefits over vouchers. Unless there is a good reason for government monopoly intervention, why preclude the probability of harnessing parents’ localized knowledge and school accountability that is inherent in school choice?
So it’s a supply-demand problem? But the demand for K-12 schooling has to be about 2X+ the demand for college since at best 50% have a college degree. Add to that a 4 year degree is only 4 years while k-12 is 13.
Given that you can increase the supply of college by essentially hiring people with degrees, it seems odd to assert that there’s a serious problem increasing supply given the population has many more people with degrees now than it did in the past?
Sending 60% of the population to college is generally going to be twice as expensive as sending 30% of the population to college.
But at least my Uber driver gets to talk to me about French history!
https://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/censusatlas/pdf/10_Education.pdf the demand argument fails.
Between 1940 and 2000 the portion of the population with a HS diploma went from about 25% to 80%. A 4 year degree went from maybe 5% or so to 30%. Getting more than half the population to finish HS means adding enough capacity to put half the population through 4 years of school. Why would a much smaller increase in college education tap out our supply and capacity to add to it?
Cannot tell If serious…
Truancy laws? It literally became against the law.
What I do not understand is the liberal resistance to vouchers. Everything for the poor unless they get to make a choice. Then it’s evil incarnate.
I want to assume the best of intentions. Is it a belief that government does everything better, is it trust in the democratic accountability process (which is wrong given failing schools), is it a desire for social engineering via forcing poor smart children to go to school with dumb poor children…they certainly don’t send their children there.
We talked about moving to SF and I vehemently rejected the idea. Bay Area does schools via housing prices. Liberals would burn in effigy anyone who proposed making success schools with admissions criteria being a standardized test.
What does that say. 🤔
If vouchers didn’t work nobody would bother opposing them.
Apart from that pesky 1st Amendment issue in the U.S., where the idea of using vouchers as a way to siphon taxpayer money into the coffers of a religious institution.
As hopefully straightforwardly (if a touch polemically) explained here – ‘Charter schools are constrained by the same laws and policies that, for example, prohibit public schools from endorsing religion. Vouchers, on the other hand, allow parents to use public money to pay for private, mostly religious schools that are largely unaccountable to the public. So, for example, a voucher school may use your taxpayer dollars to teach its students that the earth is 6,000 years old. And a number of such schools now do just that.
You don’t have to be a constitutional scholar to get that using public money to fund religious schools violates the letter and spirit of the first amendment. Even the radical conservatives in today’s Federalist Society would agree that the US constitution would not allow the government to cut a check to, say, the local mosque in exchange for supplying education to local schoolchildren. That is why they invented “vouchers”: by pushing the “choice” to use government money to subsidize religion down to the parents, the government can fund religious schools while pretending that it is not.’ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/apr/23/school-vouchers-religious-subversion
I recognize that someone living in a nation with a state church, with the monarch its supreme governor, may not understand this point. For example, this is unimaginable in the U.S., which among many things, was also a radical political attempt to remove theocracy from political life – ‘The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is a title held by the British monarch that signifies titular leadership over the Church of England. Although the monarch’s authority over the Church of England is largely ceremonial, the position is still very relevant to the church and is mostly observed in a symbolic capacity. The Supreme Governor formally appoints high-ranking members of the church on the advice of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who is in turn advised by church leaders.’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Governor_of_the_Church_of_England
But don’t worry, young earth creationists are also able to play the state money game in the UK – ‘Creationism is still taught in dozens of faith schools despite Government threats to withdraw their funding, the Telegraph can disclose.
Last August Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said schools found teaching creationism as scientific fact would not be eligible for any money from the taxpayer.
Yet a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests show that 54 private schools are still being funded by local authorities, while continuing to teach that the Earth began with Adam and Eve.
Only 14 of the 91 schools teaching creationism have had their funding withdrawn, an investigation by the British Humanist Association revealed.
The campaign group also found that some faith schools’ science departments were teaching pupils to identify what happened on each of the days of the creation.
The curriculum of one group of religious schools reads: “Creation stories give a holistic image of the origins of the earth, plants, animals and human beings’ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11578432/Creationism-still-taught-in-faith-schools-despite-Government-funding-threat.html
+1 Re federal and state money to support religion in schools.
Which is intolerable, while a monopoly granted the ideology of the teachers’ colleges is totes OK.
‘while a monopoly granted the ideology of the teachers’ colleges is totes OK.’
I have no problem with the Commonwealth of Virginia funding teacher colleges such as JMU, and I have no problem with teachers educated at JMU (note that this is referring to James Madison University).
And there is no monopoly granted to state colleges – those wishing to earn an education degree and then become a Virginia public school system teacher are free to go to a school like – ‘So you’d like to be a teacher? Marymount offers one of the leading teacher-education programs in the greater Washington, DC, area. MU’s undergraduate education programs are unique in the Northern Virginia area.
All education programs are designed to prepare graduates to enter the job market as beginning professionals in their respective disciplines. Marymount alumni teach in public, private, Catholic, and independent schools.
In order to become a teacher, the Commonwealth of Virginia expects you to become an expert in the subject matter you will be teaching. So, you need to choose a major for the discipline or population you’d like to teach, then supplement that coursework with classes to earn teaching licensure. Marymount offers undergraduate teaching licensure for elementary (grades prekindergarten-6) and secondary (grades 6-12) levels.’ https://www.marymount.edu/Academics/School-of-Education-Human-Services/Undergraduate-Programs/Overview
You are familiar with Marymount, right? ‘Marymount is a comprehensive Catholic university, guided by the traditions of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, that emphasizes intellectual curiosity, service to others, and a global perspective. A Marymount education is grounded in the liberal arts, promotes career preparation, and provides opportunities for personal and professional growth. A student‐centered learning community that values diversity and focuses on the education of the whole person, Marymount guides the intellectual, ethical, and spiritual development of each individual.’
At least in Virginia (unless you were objecting to the very idea of teaching colleges, which seems unlikely) there is no monopoly on those who are able to ensure that the ideology of the teachers’ colleges is totes OK. Though when talking about the Catholic Church, we really aren’t talking about free ranging inquiry or undisciplined utterances, are we? As the Catholic Church has a long tradition of ensuring that the institutions under its control follow its ideology, I’m sure you actually are totes OK with Marymount educating teachers to get a license, correct?
Thankfully voucher supporters are free from any ideological bias.
Please clarify, what exactly is the ‘teachers college monopoly’?
I too am mystified by the idea that allowing religious schools to receive public money – based on the voluntary choice of parents, who are after all taxpayers – is somehow abhorrent.
This is NOT an establishment of religion problem. In a voucher program the public schools remain non-denominational, and the private school may be of any religion, there are no restrictions on which religions may operate a school and receive funding.
Now, let’s remind everyone that it was not so long ago that mandatory religious participation of any sort was completely removed from all public education, a development which I support given that pubic education is mandatory and public school must contain students who are of different religions or no religion at all. However, this does happen to have the effect of denying parents who WANT some sort of religious education for their children the opportunity to put their children in a school that conforms to their religious beliefs. There is nothing wrong with that. The voucher system means that if you DO want religious activity in the classroom, you have that option, and people who don’t want religion in the school have that option too. Both religious people and non-religious people pay taxes, which go to support schools. It strikes me as monstrously unfair to yank religion out of the classroom for those parents who actually want to have it and then deny them the opportunity to choose an alternative school that has it, unless they pay for it completely out of their own pocket – on top of the taxes they already pay to support the non-religious public school.
And let’s note that it’s NOT only rich people who want schools with religious content. We’re talking about over the last 30 years, middle and low income people who have seen religion progressively removed from schools, against their wishes and then been told that there is something abhorrent about allowing them the option of putting their kids in a private religious school, because it’s supposedly immoral for their tax money to be spent on something that they support.
“It strikes me as monstrously unfair to yank religion out of the classroom for those parents who actually want to have it and then deny them the opportunity to choose an alternative school that has it, unless they pay for it completely out of their own pocket – on top of the taxes they already pay to support the non-religious public school.”
Near me is a public park with a large man made pond….they call it a ‘lake’ where they have lifeguards and people swim.
Even closer is a private club that has a big outdoor pool….costs maybe $400/year for membership.
If I join the club I don’t get any tax break. I pay taxes for the public park whether or not I use it. Parents are taxpayers but let’s be serious, it is the non-parents who fund the schools and they are provided to the parents *for free*. If you happen to want your kids educated in a Saudi style Islamic Madressa in addition to secular education why is it a ‘monstrosity’ that I insist you pay for that out of your own pocket?
‘mystified by the idea that allowing religious schools to receive public money – based on the voluntary choice of parents, who are after all taxpayers – is somehow abhorrent.
This is NOT an establishment of religion problem.’
Except in an American context, it most certainly is. It is a direct transfer of taxpayer money to an organization of an established religion, an organization directly intended to foster the purposes of that established religion. Just as religious schools cannot be banned merely due to their religious nature, they also cannot be supported due to their religious nature (and the Catholic Church, for one, will tell you explicitly that they control Catholic schools, and absolutely no one else – leaving aside the fact that the Catholic Church is monolithic more in theory than practice – the hierarchy brooks no dissent when it comes to their decisions).
‘it was not so long ago that mandatory religious participation of any sort was completely removed from all public education’
A prayer said by a student or teacher is not the same thing as transferring public funds directly to a religious institution. This is not merely a difference in degree.
‘The voucher system means that if you DO want religious activity in the classroom, you have that option’
No, the 1st Amendment clearly forbids using public funds to finance religious activity, regardless of where it occurs, not only in the classroom.
‘Both religious people and non-religious people pay taxes, which go to support schools’
And if they wish their children to go to a school run by a religious institution, they will need to pay for that, as the 1st Amendment forbids transferring public funds to a religious institution when the reason for the funds to be transferred is any degree of religious education. Which, to use the Catholic Church as an example, its school explicitly provide.
‘It strikes me as monstrously unfair to yank religion out of the classroom for those parents who actually want to have it and then deny them the opportunity to choose an alternative school that has it, unless they pay for it completely out of their own pocket – on top of the taxes they already pay to support the non-religious public school.’
Tough – a wide variety of theocrats have always been opposed to the extremely radical idea represented by the separation of church and state as expressed in the 1st Amendment.
‘And let’s note that it’s NOT only rich people who want schools with religious content.’
Who cares? This has nothing to do with wealth.
‘We’re talking about over the last 30 years, middle and low income people who have seen religion progressively removed from schools, against their wishes and then been told that there is something abhorrent about allowing them the option of putting their kids in a private religious school, because it’s supposedly immoral for their tax money to be spent on something that they support.’
I’ve included the whole section, but the only point relevant here is that not ‘immoral’ for no public funds to be transferred to a religious institution involved in furthering its religious goals, it is simply against the 1st Amendment. And as noted above, there are a number of people who feel that their religion deserves taxpayer money, regardless of the clear intent of separating church and state. Oddly enough, there was this man named George Mason, who can be noted, among other things, for this – ‘George Mason supported the separation of church and state, and in the years immediately after the Declaration of Independence, he worked to end government support of churches in Virginia.’ http://www.god-and-country.info/GMason.html
But let us end with words from someone who was not actually in the main responsible for the 1st Amendment – ‘The George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom takes its cue from Washington himself, who wrote to a group of clergy who protested in 1789 against a lack of mention of Jesus Christ in the Constitution. Washington wrote, “You will permit me to observe that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction.” In that same year, he wrote to the Baptists of Virginia, a distinct religious minority in that state, “If I could conceive that the general [that is, the federal] government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure … no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.“’ http://www.gwirf.org/separation-of-church-and-state/
The American government is forbidden from taking tax money from believers of any creed or none, and then giving it to a religious institution with its single belief, which would appear as spiritual tyranny to any who do not share that religious institution’s beliefs.
That some people still have a problem with the radical idea that the state should have no place in religion is not surprising – theocracy as a concept predates democracy by a considerable number of years, much less the sort of democracy created out of the ideas of the Enlightenment.
Let me add, this is an American perspective explicitly based on American history and the American Constitution and why the Bill Of Rights exists, which may not have much (or any) resonance for non-Americans. People tend to forget just how radical major parts of the the Enlightenment really were, especially when used as the foundation of a government with no religious component at all. No need for non-Americans to accept it, of course.
The Supreme Court has already upheld the use of vouchers to fund religious schools 2002, in a decision joined by the liberal Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelman_v._Simmons-Harris
Rehnquist, writing for the majority, stated, “The incidental advancement of a religious mission, or the perceived endorsement of a religious message, is reasonably attributable to the individual aid recipients not the government, whose role ends with the disbursement of benefits.” In theory, there was no need for parents to use religious schools, and if the law did not especially encourage the use of vouchers for religious schools, the fact that most parents chose parochial schools was irrelevant.
In other words, because the parents decide whether the funding goes to religious institutions or not, there is no establishment of religion. Whether or not religion is supported is entirely up to the decisions of private citizens.
Boonton:
Near me is a public park with a large man made pond….they call it a ‘lake’ where they have lifeguards and people swim.
Even closer is a private club that has a big outdoor pool….costs maybe $400/year for membership.
Now let’s imagine that the public park BANNED all religious activity within it’s bounds. I.e. nobody was allowed to use the park to publicly pray, or hold a church group meeting, or wear T-shirts with religious endorsements on them, or perform a play with a religious message. And let’s further imagine that weekly attendance at a park of some kind was an activity mandated by the government, as in school attendance.
Then how do you think that religious people would feel about having to pay a $400/year membership fee per year in order to do the kinds of things at the park that they wanted to do?
Wikipedia can be useful to read to the end, which says this – ‘Most state constitutions have so-called Blaine Amendments, which specifically forbid state funding of religious and/or sectarian education. As a question of state, not federal, law, Ohio’s Blaine Amendment was not considered by federal courts in the case.[citation needed]
Other states, such as Florida, have struck down similar voucher systems as violative of the Blaine Amendment.’
Basically, this can be as one of those cases that hinges on the federal government not actually being in charge of education, and not ruling on state matters, and where using Ohio’s court system would have been more appropriate. And where, one assumes as in Florida, where such a voucher system would have been struck down.
Here is some information about it – ‘The term Blaine Amendment refers to either a failed amendment to the U.S. Constitution or actual constitutional provisions in 38 of the 50 state constitutions in the United States that forbid direct government aid to educational institutions that have a religious affiliation. They were designed to prohibit aid to parochial schools, especially those operated by the Catholic Church in locations with large immigrant populations.’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaine_Amendments
There is no question that there is a long running American discussion involves this matter, and that it has a lot of twists and turns. In theory, though the Supreme Court ruled on the matter, vouchers used in religious schools would still violate Ohio’s own laws concerning the separation of church and state.
If this seems a bit inconsistent, well, religion is a messy thing to keep separate from the state, as theocrats reliably refuse to accept that such a thing is even possible.
And yes, I think that Mr. Original Intent and old school Catholic Scalia is one of those theocrats perfectly able to ignore the clear words of America’s founders so as to achieve, in this particular case, a long running Catholic Church goal everywhere it exists – getting paid by the state to educate students in Catholic beliefs.
There is no ban. The lifeguards, who work for the town, can’t lead religion class either.. want to pray before you take a test in school or before you take a dip in the lake go ahead.
the liberal Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
Er…
Vouchers are not “direct funding” – the voucher is given to the parents, who are free to choose where to spend it.
The federal government may not be in charge of education, but it IS in charge of first amendment issues.
There is no ban. The lifeguards, who work for the town, can’t lead religion class either.. want to pray before you take a test in school or before you take a dip in the lake go ahead.
Yeah, I’m not talking about silent internal prayer. I’m talking about a group of people getting together in the park for an open-air mass, organized by themselves. Religion is a social activity and people like to do it in groups. It’s also an important part of their lives that they may spend a significant amount of their free time on – not just a leisure activity.
Yeah, because nobody ever got a Pell Grant to go to Notre Dame before.
I’m a bit less concerned about the First Amendment issues as I am about the ‘for profit’ fiasco.
Universities are an interesting point, of course. Take BYU, which takes government money, but wishes to not have to follow the accompanying regulations. You are welcome to see how the LDS would enjoy not only having its cakes, but eating it without anyone telling them how to.
Generally, schools that take federal funds have to comply with federal laws and regulation, even when those may conflict with their religious beliefs. Unless they are politically astute enough to get explicit carve outs in federal laws and regulations – of which the Catholic Church, to keep using a single example, is a past master at acquiring.
Boonton, we have plenty of terrible public schools now. It’s not clear to me why the fraction of terrible schools might increase under a voucher system.
oops – here is the BYU link – https://www.lds.org/ensign/1976/02/news-of-the-church/byu-receives-support-on-stand-against-sex-bias-rules?lang=eng
Vouchers do not represent state funding of religion because the recipient is not required to use them exclusively at religiously affiliated schools. If seniors donate part of their Social Secuirty checks to their churches, that is not state funding of churches.
Placing religious tests on the vouchers — say, allowing non-religious students to use vouchers at non-religious schools but not allowing religious students to use them at religiously affiliated schools — that would be a first amendment violation.
Saudi Arabia would love to set up a chain of Madrassas…..and if vouchers would cover the costs that’s all the better since oil prices have been low. Make America Great Again, touch that glowing orb!
If Muslims in America wish to set up Muslim oriented schools, as long as those schools are accredited by the same standards of any other schools, they should be allowed to receive voucher money.
Do note that accreditation standards include teaching things like math and biology and US history and not just memorizing verses of the Koran.
Sounds good in theory, would that really be applied in the US? ‘Religious freedom’ cases essentially means it is almost impossible to question religious schools for failing even basic, non-ideologically loaded issues like having safe facilities or not hiring pedophiles. Then on the flip side you have the fly-by-night ‘lets grab free money’ that will crop up at the same time.
I think it would be more pragmatic to leave religious schools to themselves but require parents (or donors, no one says you can’t donate to your Church’s school system to take the tuition burden off parents) foot the bill for them.
Islamophobia!
Sharia law!
You make the call – but I’m inclined to take Salfists/Wahhabists at their word, actually.
Though as a believer in the 1st Amendment, I have absolutely no anxiety of that particular bunch of theocrats having any more success in America than all of the other theocrats who wish their own religion to be the dominant one.
You moved to a country with no first Amendment equivalent and extoll it’s superiority. You can’t claim to be a staunch adherent now. I mean, you can, but that doesn’t mean anyone has to take you seriously, which, really, why would they?
‘Religious freedom’ cases essentially means it is almost impossible to question religious schools for failing even basic, non-ideologically loaded issues like having safe facilities or not hiring pedophiles.
Accreditation is a pretty straight-forward process that is not open to a whole hell of a lot of interpretation. People are certainly free to have whatever wierd religious beliefs they want, but they aren’t entitled to accreditation if they don’t meet standards to be accredited, and therefore are not entitled to voucher funding if they do not meet those objective standards. This isn’t that complicated. Not being entitled to state funding in your school is not equivalent to a ban on the religion or it’s wierd practices.
While I’m on the subject, there is a reason that I mentioned biology – because if you’re worried about school teaching young earth creationism or madrassas, you can get around that problem by making sure the accreditation standards mandate the teaching of evolution in biology classes. In fact, I would absolutely agree that it should be part of the standard for accreditation. The school has to teach science in it’s science class. they can say it’s just “what scientists currently believe” or something, but they can’t leave it out of the curriculum entirely. That would filter out the religious schools run by fringe religious groups that can’t bear to teach evolution.The school has to teach science, which means it has to teach what the current state of science is, whether they agree with it or not.
[“You don’t have to be a constitutional scholar to get that using public money to fund religious schools violates the letter and spirit of the first amendment.”]
Your professed enthusiasm for the Constitution rings hollow. Using public (taxpayer) money for non-constitutional purposes is routine in the U.S. — for just about anything our politicians can dream up. Government violations of 1st Amendment free-speech rights are also routine.
Education and schools are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution — how could the Founders have overlooked such a supposedly ‘critical government function’ ? Where does the Constitution authorize a huge, intrusive Dept of Education?
No doubt you favor compulsory education enforced by criminal law across the nation; have you ever read the 5th Amendment? Apparently the Bill of Rights does not apply to citizens under age 18.
Stressing the Constitution is extremely risky to your point of view.
“Apparently the Bill of Rights does not apply to citizens under age 18.”
Because tou think they entered a voluntary association with their parents or guardians?
‘Education and schools are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution’
Amazingly, neither are railroads, and yet, somehow, we don’t feel there are any constitutional questions regarding them due to their lack of mention in the Constitution.
[” Amazingly, neither are railroads, and yet, somehow, we don’t feel there are any constitutional questions regarding them due to their lack of mention in the Constitution.’]
many serious constitutional questions have arisen about government regulation and funding of railroads over past 150 years
as suspected, you lack even a basic understanding of Federal/state constitutions — so avoid them in your argumentation. Thiago and Bill like your line of thought.
The line of thought that knows what the Bill of Rights is? Tip: it is not Galt’s Gulch’s Constitution.
‘many serious constitutional questions have arisen about government regulation and funding of railroads over past 150 years’
Why yes, yes they have (I’ll admit my phrasing may have been less than precise). And oddly enough, even without mention of railroads in the original Constitution, those constitutional questions have managed to be decided.
‘as suspected, you lack even a basic understanding of Federal/state constitutions’
Wait, you are seriously now bringing state constitutions into this? Like this state’s Article 9? http://law.justia.com/constitution/california/article_9.html You know, an article from the California Constitution entitled ‘Education.’ I’m guessing that you really aren’t all that aware of the fact that the U.S. Constitution and those of each American state are really quite different from one another, are you? If only due to different periods of when states were admitted to the Union, with the original colonies having considerably different constitutions than one like Wyoming’s, where Article 1, Section 23 says ‘Education.
The right of the citizens to opportunities for education should have practical recognition. The legislature shall suitably encourage means and agencies calculated to advance the sciences and liberal arts.’ http://www.uwyo.edu/robertshistory/wyoming_constitution_full_text.htm
Perhaps you could see if your state also has a constitutional obligation to educate its citizens, then decide to what extent it is failing in that area. Maybe you could blame teaching colleges while you are at it.
Yawn, another person who intends to lecture us on the Constitution as if the local schools were funded and run by the Federal Government.
‘as if the local schools were funded and run by the Federal Government’
Unfortunately, testy_3a wrote ‘Federal/state constitutions’ – and yes, states are most certainly involved in educating their citizens, as noted in both the California and Wyoming Constitutions above. And local schools in a state need to follow state standards – one hopes this is not controversial.
Local schools are required to follow federal law. Have people have forgotten all about Brown v. Board of Education, or the need in 1957 for Eisenhower to send the 101st Airborne Division to allow local students to attend a local school. http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_little_rock_school_desegregation_1957/
Local schools follow the US constitution, which explicitly requires states respect equal protection and empowers congress to enforce that with law
I know that many conservatives will not agree with this, but if government money starts going to madrassas the conservative outrage will be predictable. The conservative outrage at church schools run by blacks like Jeremiah Wright will also be predictable. Why not just stop with Charter schools, where the point is to accommodate differences of opinion in pedagogy and operations, not politics and theology?
Though I already posted this link, it is a fascinating case of how the U.S. courts handle religious disputes. Which, in essence, is that they stay as far away from ruling on theological grounds as possible (and the irony of a Catholic attempting to use the courts to overturn a decision made by the Catholic hierarchy is beyond the Onion.). Sorry for the length, but it is quite illuminating – ‘The Diocese changed its policy before the 2015-16 school year, and required students to be immunized to attend the Holy Spirit elementary school in Jacksonville, where Flynn’s youngest son had just graduated from kindergarten.
Flynn objected in writing, citing his religious belief, but the Holy Spirit School refused to admit his first-grader. Flynn sued the Diocese of St. Augustine and its Bishop Felipe Estevez, claiming the policy violated his “statutory right to exempt his child from compulsory immunizations at Holy Spirit.”
Though private and public schools in Florida require students to be immunized it allows exemptions if a parent objects in good faith, in writing, saying the immunization conflicts with his or her religious beliefs.
The Diocese argued that that its students must be immunized for the common good and that this “requirement is a religious tenet and practice.”
It also said that a secular court should not be allowed to invade its “ecclesiastical sovereignty” over church policy, in violation of the First Amendment.
The trial court concluded that the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine, also called the church autonomy doctrine, “precluded it from wading into the religious controversy between the Diocese and a Catholic parent seeking admission of his non-immunized son to first grade. We agree,” Makar wrote.
He called the church autonomy doctrine a result of “a long line of Supreme Court cases that affirm the fundamental right of churches to ‘decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine.’”
He added: “Resolution of Mr. Flynn’s request to declare his religious objection valid and to admit his non-immunized child to Holy Spirit would ‘inappropriately entangle [the trial court] in constitutionally protected church doctrine’ and improperly place it in the position of determining ‘the religious morals, tenets and practices of a given religion.’”
Were a secular court to force church schools to accept nonimmunized students, in violation of church policy, it would “send() the message that the secular government can, by statute, take away a constitutional freedom.”’ https://www.courthousenews.com/church-school-can-reject-non-vaccinated-students/
I bet many conservatives would be outraged. That doesn’t mean they are right. Lots of people are outraged by lots of things. That doesn’t mean we don’t do them.
The Constitution allows direct taxpayer funding of military chaplains and religious charities (which, unlike military chaplains, may not use the money for religious purposes), so the Jeffersonian “Wall of Separation” idea is only one interpretation of the 1A that has not been adopted by SCOTUS. It is the radical secularists inspired by French sansculottes who seek to impose such an understanding on our 1A.
Study: “Migration of low-income students from public schools to private voucher schools played a small role.” Cowen: “That is not exactly the Milton Friedman story, but it is essentially a positive report for vouchers.” Woody Allen: “The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small.”
Instead of vouchers for private and moneyed interests, I would rather favor payments for students and their families. Brazil has one of the biggest aid programs for poor families with school-aged children in the worls: poor families receive money provided their children remain at school. I think better performance should earn them more money. If children treated their schooling as it were a day job, outcomes would probably be much better and society would recoup the money invested and much more as the human capital would soar. Being stingy with the nation’s future is being penny wise and pound foolish.
I guess that no one looked at the NBER paper:
“In an effort to boost student achievement and reduce income-based gaps, the Chilean government passed the Preferential School Subsidy Law (SEP) in 2008, which altered the nation’s 27-year-old universal school-voucher system dramatically.”
Basically, they had a FAILED school voucher system, and they made improvements by giving more money in vouchers to poor students.
Alex is right, uncle Milty might be rolling in his grave.
By the way, if you want to read more about the Chilean school voucher system, read here:
“Chile’s voucher program has been widely studied and largely found to have exacerbated inequality, reduced public school enrollment and minimal to no impact on student achievement.
A 2012 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report highlights Chile’s high-levels of socio-economic stratification between public and private schools. According to the report, 80 percent of the most-advantaged quarter of students attend a private school, while only 38 percent of the least-advantaged students attend these schools. Chile’s system has been closely studied by Chilean researchers who find that school vouchers have only served to increase, socio-economic segregation between schools. Researchers at the University of Chile and New York University found that children from families in the lowest income groups enroll in public schools at much higher rates than do children from the middle-class, who are more likely to use vouchers to enroll in private-subsidized schools.”
Here is a link: https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/chiles-school-voucher-system-enabling-choice-or-perpetuating-social-inequality/
Reducing enrollment in government schools is all to the good (and even more desirable in the US).
If school vouchers lead to better outcomes for rich students, because some disruptive poor students were kicked out of the private schools, is that a failure of the original voucher program?
Failure to understand their value system.
Verboten is that it comes down to conscientiousness. For me, it’s a tragedy when smart conscientious minorities in the US are confined to shit schools because of their zip code. For liberals it’s a tragedy of funding. Inner city schools already receive the most funding, but it’s not enough. If we give them 30,000 dollars per student then we’ll live in utopia.
Charter schools come along and say they’ll kick out disrupters. They educate at cheaper rates and similar or better scores. Liberals attack. Some charters are scams. True.
But the bottom line assumption is that no one should have choice except them. Since they can afford it.
Make republicans (congressmen) use Medicaid and democrats use public schools in the lowest SES neighborhood within 30 miles.
See who cries first.
The thing about school vouchers in Chile is that charter schools are highly regulated, including how they must spend their money, and are subject to strict and burdensome controls by authorities seeking to undermine them, so they are forced to be as much as possible as a public school. Therefore, their advantage over regular public schools is that they are better managed and that they generally hire more motivated staff. It is actually surprising that they are any better than public schools and provide to students under such circumstances.
And now that have amended the law that regulates them to reduce and discourage charter schools, so we will probably see fewer of them, working under worse conditions. A great loss for families and the country.
In “the Milton Friedman story,” we should not want a situation where voucher schools (or charter schools) persistently outperform public schools, and the largest role is simply students switching from bad schools to better ones. We should want a model where the threat of competition causes public schools to improve relative to being a monopoly. Over the long term, if the gap between voucher schools and public schools decreases, and public schools improve, that is strong evidence in favor of the vouchers. If there is a persistent gap where voucher schools do better, that is likely to come from either an artificial cap on the number of voucher and charter schools (preventing new schools that would be marginally worse than the worst current charter school but still better than the average public school) or a voucher or charter system that is not truly available to those trapped in the worst schools.
Very strangely, I see education researchers and reporters mess this up all the time, praising Massachusetts for having a low cap on charter schools that leads to a large gap, and claiming that results in DC– where after a few years of stimulating competition public schools have started to improve and close the gap, are bad for charters and vouchers.
Partly this is a result of what is easy to measure; it is very easy to examine the gap between schools, and only somewhat harder to measure the gap adjusted for various factors (or looking at lucky lottery recipients versus those turned away.) It is extremely difficult to determine if a generalized improvement is due to the threat of competition. So I don’t overly blame most researchers for measuring what can be measured, but it’s a reason to be restrained in drawing conclusions.
Yes, this is consistent with the recent results in US studies.
Voucher students didn’t outperform public school students, but that may be because the public schools improved once they faced the threat of competition.
Chile has had a national voucher system since 1981 when the school voucher system was instituted by Pinochet.. The policy changes this study covers are increases in voucher value for the poor.
Not sure how any of this relates to the US.
For the most part it doesn’t, but you do have a anti-voucher contingent that insists that vouchers would create some massive harm. This is yet another study indicating that vouchers don’t tend to harm students and particularly the poorest students.
The only solid argument that I’ve seen for significant harm is that the various public teachers would have their total work force cut. Of course, the amount of teachers wouldn’t change so some would certainly just start working at private schools. But this would effect the numbers and the political power of the various public teachers’ unions.
More than 4,000 words from you two blowhards on a subject regarding which neither of you has an ounce of expertise.
Was that supposed to be in response to PA, or was something deleted, or what?
Wonder why Maria gets listed second to last.
Schooling in the US has nothing to do with education and everything to do with the wealthy maintaining their neighborhood real estate value by using school attendance zoning to segregate out undesirables so the precious offspring of the annointed can be protected from hypergamous predation. Nowhere is this more evident in Northern Virginia where public schools are de facto private enclaves zoned to maintain exclusivity among the wealthy Democrats who reside there. Consequently no school vouchers or charter schools at all, except for the intelligent ones who get segregated into Thomas Jefferson so as not to wreck the local grading curves. Anyone who cares about children’s actual welfare need only look to the Netherlands where families have meaningful educational choice, far less is spent per pupil than in the US, and Dutch students significantly out perform even the top tiers of US students.
Visited a nephew in Alabama. Private schools there were basically white only because the city was desegregated.
Billy,
What do you think you’re proving with this inane comment?
The only thing I garner from it is that you’re white trash. The lady doth protest too much? Makes more sense. Self hating southern family?
Some day we’ll take you seriously. We promise. Just keep emasculating yourself.
But our kids won’t mix with yours. For obvious reasons. But keep voting democrat. Maybe if you make us enough money you can over leverage yourself into a house with decent schools for your kids.
But let’s be honest. They’re not Ivy League material. So public schools for the masses. Don’t even think about vouchers. Gives me the vapors!
Or you know…..maybe we do vouchers and the rich Marthas Vinyard kids have to compete with the smarter kids with darker skin.
Then again it’d tank your house price.
Decisions decisions……
Potato,
No denial of my observation in your statement.
I am not paying for your segregation with federal dollars. And, if you want to send your kids for religious education, pay for it yourself, or send them to public school and bible studies on the week end.
Meanwhile, learn to practice religion, as it is not reflected in your intemperate and racist comments.
Alabama should follow the proper model of having rich cities where people go for “good schools” which keep out the poor by zip code. They aren’t discriminating right!
It’s the other way around. Because people have to go to the school in their neighborhood, school quality determines real estate value. Of course, it is somewhat circular because poor areas can’t afford great schools, and rich people will sort themselves into the better school districts, so property values will tend to rise in the good school districts and fall in the bad ones with consequent feedback on funding levels.
But as to your point, rich people don’t deliberately spend money to improve the school district so as to keep property values high. The effect is much more of a natural market outcome of a lack of school choice than you suggest. The fact that people MUST, in most cases, send their children to the local school if they can’t afford a private one creates this sort of emergent sorting effect, it’s not deliberately planned.
I wonder if all the voucher opponents simultaneously arguing that (a) vouchers are subsidies to rich people because only rich people can afford private school, and (b) that anyone who wants to send their children to religious schools is obligated to pay for them out of pocket (while still paying for the public ones), can see the hypocrisy in this position.
Is this not equivalent to asserting that only rich people should be able to send their kids to religious schools?
In terms of the first, let’s say we had a universal voucher of $5K. Why wouldn’t every private school raise their tuition by $5K? I mean the that’s a pretty simple model but in terms of consumer choice, the parents were already willing to spend whatever it is tuition was so simply raising tuition $5K would leave the parents no worse off.
What exactly are private schools offering as their product? I suspect one aspect is a positional good (a positional good is something like “I have the best house on the block”….no matter how rich society gets, how efficient production becomes….only one person can have that good unlike, say, HDTV’s which get cheaper all the time and almost everyone can have one). If that’s the case then parents would *want* private schools to raise tuition to counter vouchers because adding more seats just dilutes their product. Why does Harvard and Yale sit on billion dollar endowments instead of opening dozens of branch campuses and scaling up the # of degrees they offer each year?
“anyone who wants to send their children to religious schools is obligated to pay for them out of pocket (while still paying for the public ones), can see the hypocrisy in this position.”
Anyone who wants to be a member of a country club rather than going to the public park has to pay for the club out of pocket while still paying for the park in their taxes!
Tuition might rise due to increased demand, but there’s no reason to think it would cancel out the voucher. Schools compete and new schools would enter the market. You might as well ask why food stamps don’t increase food prices by exactly the amount that would cancel out the food stamps, or why Section 8 housing wouldn’t cause rents to rise by exactly the amount that cancels out the subsidy.
Anyone who wants to be a member of a country club rather than going to the public park has to pay for the club out of pocket while still paying for the park in their taxes!
A country club is not a life necessity, the way schooling for one’s children is. Nor is it mandated by the government. Many people feel that some kind of religious education is an important part of raising their children. Not just rich people who want to show off that they went to a fancy private school. Most local public schools used to have, for example, morning prayers, or Christian-themed christmas pagents. Lots of people want those things for their children still. You’re telling them they can’t have them unless they are rich enough to afford the positional good.
In the example I provided demand did not really rise. At the end there is not a single additional student in private school than there was before. Rather than help students or even rich the vouchers simply end up increasing the incomes of those who run private schools.
“A country club is not a life necessity, the way schooling for one’s children is. Nor is it mandated by the government. ”
Hang on, choose what you want to complain about. If schooling is a necessity, then gov’t mandate is irrelevant to you.. If Congress passes a law saying you must breath air, that doesn’t mean you’re being oppressed should they fail to give you ‘air vouchers’ good for buying tanks of oxygen.
“Most local public schools used to have, for example, morning prayers, or Christian-themed christmas pagents. Lots of people want those things for their children still. You’re telling them they can’t have them unless they are rich enough to afford the positional good.”
What if I want to have morning prayers every morning on an elegant 18 hole golf course? You are seeing a huge issue here because you are pretending these goods are bundled somehow and they can’t be unbundled. Plenty of places do Christian pageants and do morning prayer either formally or informally. You do not have to buy a full k-12 education from them, just go to their paegent or attend their prayer session. The fact that the taxpayer paid teacher isn’t conducting this is no more an oppression to you than the fact that your postman isn’t allowed to come in your house and give you a 15 minute sermon is an oppression.
Well, that’s a silly assumption. If there were vouchers, obviously more parents would go to private schools and demand would rise.
Secondly, there are costs involved in having to have a separate facility to do religious education – you have to transport your kids physically from one place to another, which working parents may not have time to do. Sunday school, evening classes both mean that leisure time on weekends and evening must be sacrificed. It’s more efficient to do it all in one school, if that what you want.
I feel I must reiterate again that I AGREE that religious activity in public schools should not be allowed. I’m saying that parents should have a choice of schools where they can direct their tax money and there’s nothing wrong with allowing options including religiously affiliated schools in that array of choices – I see not first amendment violation in allowing parents to decide that their tax dollars will go to a religiously affiliated school. Moreover, I’d even say the religious schools should admit any student who applies, not just students of the affiliated religion, AND that those students should not be required to take part the religious instruction offered in the school. In other words, the religiously affiliated school must offer a secular program for any student who wants one. It’s just that the religiously affiliated school would be allowed to have religion classes as electives, religious activities as extracurricular activities on school property and morning prayers, and would be allowed to display religious symbols on school property. One could even require that voucher money not be used to finance the religion classes, so the parents pay for that part of it themselves. It’s just that it’s all allowed to occur in one building where the kids are there all day.
I don’t think you really demonstrated why. Today let’s say your cost range for private school might be $3K for a Catholic education all the way up to $40K for an elite prep school. The only demand that might be hidden here are parents who are willing to spend more than $0 but less than $3,000. They use public school simply because no private option exists at that price. If a universal $5K voucher was instituted, who is going to demand additional private school slots? The parent who was already spending $3K would have no issue spending $8K because the voucher brings that cost down to $3K. A clear dynamic would be initially many private parents trying to shuffle their kids ‘up’ to a more prestigious school but existing parents would ‘defend’ their place in the schools by opting to hand over the vouchers via tuition increases.
“Secondly, there are costs involved in having to have a separate facility to do religious education – you have to transport your kids physically from one place to another, which working parents may not have time to do….”
So my father-in-law grew up in Newark NJ in an Italian community. Families were expected to attend mass every Sunday and many people attended *daily* mass. Somehow they did this in an era with fewer cars, fewer jobs that offered ‘flexible time’, less money. If the religion is important you’ll do it, if it isn’t you won’t. That’s not the government’s concern nor my concern.
What is interesting is you are ignoring the benefits to religion. When I was young it was CCD once a week. For min. cost I attended classes in the evening at the nearby Catholic school. Unlike the students who attended the Catholic school, the readings, workbooks, little tests, none of those things required the Catholic school to teach me the basic toolsets. They didn’t need to teach me to read, or write, for example. They didn’t need to accustom me to taking tests with ‘fill in the blank’ questions. All that ground work was done free by the public schools allowing the Catholic school to just pick up with the actual religion.
Well, get this, I’m an atheist. I don’t see benefits to religion. I just feel that all parents should have options and that there’s no first amendment violation in allowing people to choose options which include religious instruction. I also think there is something unfair about requiring religious parents who are poor or middle class to fund non-religious public schools while denying them the right to put their children in a religious school. A school isn’t like a park. It’s a place your kids are going to be all day five days a week for 13+years of education. It’s going to dramatically shape who they are as people. It’s like if we mandated that everyone pay for community meals that included meat and then told the vegans they have to pay for it themselves if they want a vegan option, and only rich people can afford to be vegans anyway, so allowing vegan options in the community meal program would be a subsidy to rich people. Well, guess what, there are actually lots of poor vegans!
Problem is you aren’t denying anyone a right to do anything. Put your kids in a religious school. You’re saying today that’s a horrible unfair burden on poor and middle class families. But generations of even poorer families paid for religious schools while at the same time paying the taxes that support public schools. Are you saying you only support vouchers with an income cut off? If not then why are you playing a class angle? Giving Ivanka Trump a voucher while telling us you are only doing it for the poor mother in the welfare motel?
The park is an apt example because whether or not a park is a necessity is really up to you as an individual. Having kids does incur responsibilities to them but that is inherent in the decision to have kids, gov’t requirements are there because your kids are not mini-Ayn Rands who can intelligently bargain with you and ensure their future interests as adults are protected.
“It’s like if we mandated that everyone pay for community meals that included meat and then told the vegans they have to pay for it themselves if they want a vegan option”
Suppose the gov’t, for whatever reason, wanted to support chicken farmers. It agrees to buy 300M chickens per year. Each New Year every American is given a coupon good for 1 free chicken.
Whatever the economic wisdom of this idea (and it’s probably a fraction of what is done in terms of special favors given to oil/gas/cattle/corn producers)….how would this work for your vegan friends? No one is forcing them to eat chicken….but they do have to eat. Is it a right that they also get a coupon for veggies equal to about 1 chicken (however you measure that)? I would say no, if you don’t want what the gov’t is providing gratis, that’s fine but you don’t then get a right to force the gov’t to add to what it offers by demanding it pay for substitutes you would prefer.
The most expensive 5% or 10% or so of private schools are probably positional goods. And you’re right that it doesn’t make sense to subsidize positional goods.
For the rest, they just want their kids to receive an education. For my oldest, the public school basically told us to pound sand and they weren’t going to do what was legally required. It was less work to put him in private school for a while.
For our second child, we’ve done public all the way, fighting with advocates to make them do the legal requirements. It’s weird that, even though we are putting a bigger strain on the public school system, we would be regarded as being more supportive of the public school system by the usual suspects here.
I think it’s less the schools than the parents. I suspect nearly 100% of private parents are to some degree buying a positional good. At my work, for example, there’s many people that use Catholic schools without much to indicate to me devout Catholic faith as a major motivation. I suspect they also correlate positively with higher end car brands in the parking lot.
I don’t think this is a perfectly simple “give everyone $5K voucher, every private school raises their tuition by $5K” but to the degree any parent is buying a positional good they will become price insensitive to spending $5K. Unfortunately supply cannot help here because *new* private schools cannot make more positional goods. So by some measure, right off the bat, a universal voucher program is going to start by wasting money because it is going to be sunk into the search for positional rank by parents.
This is pretty serious, let’s say 30% of the motivation is positional. I think that’s low but let’s say it is. If you replaced the entire public school system by simply taking the total budgets and voucherizing them you end up with:
1. A loss because students who were already in private school with parents paying their way are now getting a voucher out of the funds that had been used for the public school kids. That’s a dead weight loss to taxpayers. Let’s say pre-voucher 10% of kids are schooled privately.
2. If 30% positional ranking is in effect, you’re going to get price run ups sinking voucher money in the ranking chase.
3. Inflation acts as a further tax on parents. If 30% of parents will be willing to blow their voucher chasing ranking, what happens to the rest of parents? A school that used to charge $6K now charges $12K because they are a bit better than their competition catching rankings chasers. What does this do to the parents who aren’t into the rankings game but just had their kids there because they found it a good school? Their costs have been increased from $6K to ($12K-5K voucher) $7K.
You’re now looking at a triple whammy of cuts. Even if the private schools universally do better than our mostly public but private available system, you are starting from a sunk position. If all this adds up to a virtual 50% cut then even if the schools are twice as good that only brings you back on par.
In reality I think the situation is worse. In the college market I feel like the % of money spent on ranking/position is more like 60-70%. At least in the college market, though, you don’t have vouchers (Pell grants pay for almost nothing these days). If you want to chase the positional good you end up paying the student loan. I don’t see any reason why a universal voucher system wouldn’t start out blowing the same amount on positional goods.
I suspect nearly 100% of private parents are to some degree buying a positional good.
This is crazy. Clearly, a lot of people believe that public schools are failing their children, and that private schools provide ac better educations. You’re literally arguing that all of those people are lying or delusional.
At my work, for example, there’s many people that use Catholic schools without much to indicate to me devout Catholic faith as a major motivation.
yeah, because they are that desperate to get their kids out of the public school system, they are willing to risk them being subjected to religious indoctrination to do it.
I’m an ATHEIST, and I’m considering putting my kids in a Catholic school, rather than the local public school.
“You’re literally arguing that all of those people are lying or delusional.”
Keep control of yourself. You make it sound like a positional good is something like child abuse or neglect. Many people would be happy if their kid got into an Ivy League school. Do they literally believe 4 years later he will have 5 to 10 times knowledge in his brain compared to those who go to a more average school? Probably not but they think the network connections established plus the education is more than worth it.
It’s also economically rational. Networks are powerful. It’s worth money to get into a more potent one if you can. But they are also limited goods. Money will help one person get into them, but by definition it can’t help everyone, if you try you just pay monopoly rents to those who control the networks.
Clearly, a lot of people believe that public schools are failing their children,
As evidence you will submit attendance at local school board meetings, voter turnout in school elections and mass organizing on the local school level?
Side note, if you toss out the libertarian argument to give vouchers to everyone….these concerns I have vanish if you consider vouchers not as an entitlement but as a tool. For example, giving vouchers in a population dense area that can support multiple schools that could be cashed in by either public, charter or private schools could be an effective way to help failing schools (although to be honest, a failing school is a bit of a fiction IMO. Invariably you only find ‘failing schools’ in communities with massive social problems. If our problem was bad public schools why are there no failing schools in communities that pay $5K per house per year in property taxes or more?).
You really *should* read the paper before declaring a victory for Friedman.. As the paper title makes clear this is about a ‘voucher reform’… a reform to make the system ‘a very different design than that which Friedman designed’… and instead a model similar to that proposed by Jencks. . The reforms greatly increased resources to lower income children and began imposing much more strict regulation the behavior and pricing of private schools receiving the vouchers (e.g. regulation of the fees they could charge in addition to priority vouchers, they could no longer select students by income etc)…. More recent educational reforms passed in 2016 go much further and now effectively require that any school receiving vouchers be a non-profits. Again, it seems hardly at all what Milton had in mind.
No one read the papers, as my comment showed. And, no one did further research to see how their voucher system faired. See my link showing studies of their voucher system.