Vouchers destroy public schools! Don't they? (The tide is rising...)

January 12, 2004

Say someone is sitting in a beach chair with the low-tide ocean waves lapping only a few feet away. When the tide comes in, only an unconscious or deceased person would not pick up the chair and move further back!

It is the classic misconception, of judging tomorrow's policy changes with today's actions. The best example of this is the politician who counts the taxpayers in his district, totals up last year's tax revenues, then figures the district's revenue can be doubled by simply doubling the taxes.

The assumption, of course, is that people won't change their behavior under the changing circumstances.

What happens in the real world is that people make choices. Just as the beach-goer gets up and moves rather than sit underwater, residents of a city have been known to get up and move when circumstances change (such as high taxes).

Schools are no different.

Consider the most distressed, educationally bankrupt shells of schools. Even the worst schools are staffed with salaried, living and breathing people, most of which are college educated!

To suggest that these people would not be able to adapt to changing conditions (such as the new requirement that they actually teach kids something) is to make a strong argument to eliminate these people, post-haste! (Yes, that means fired.)

But in reality, as has been proven time and time again, what happens in public schools where they feel the heat of competition from vouchers and school choice, is they improve. So, when people claim that vouchers--or other methods of school choice--will destroy public schools, there is a grain of truth to it.

Vouchers destroy the public monopoly over educating the poor.

School Choice destroys the placid status quo at underperforming schools.

Any questions?