A Discussion of Vouchers

February 19, 2004

Some recent commentary by fellow edublogger (and good guy) Jeff Hellman over at So You Want To Be A Science Teacher centers on criticism of Bush's education policy ideas.

We'll be the first to tell you we're not big fans of federal education policy, but we'd like to correct some misunderstandings about the whole concept of vouchers. Jeff writes:

I'm also curious about this $7,500 voucher plan. Yes, there are many private schools in DC that cost less than $7,500.

Our understanding is that most private schools in D.C. are less expensive than $7,500.

But, they're not Title I schools- they don't have the same mix of kids that a public school does.

What exactly does "mix" mean? Racial mix? Socioeconomic mix? Sure, the poorest parents in D.C. probably don't have their kids in private schools, but what does being poor have to do with anything? Isn't a scholarship the only thing keeping many poor kids out of private schools?

It is illustrative to see what happens when poor parents are given scholarships for their kids to attend private schools: it's an overwhelming success! Privately-funded vouchers (aka K-12 scholarships aimed at poor parents in inner-city schools) are not a new thing. When people bother to ask how the kids are doing, the answer we've seen is, "Pretty darn well!"

What's going to happen when these private schools enroll Title I students and then realize it costs more to educate them?

Whoa. Stop right there. First off, from the context, it looks like "Title I" refers to handicapped kids, with special needs and special teachers, and probably special mobility-assistance needs. So we looked up a definition of Title I and found this: "Title I refers to programs aimed at America's most disadvantaged students." It futher defined the program to "improve the teaching and learning of children in high-poverty schools."

That's it? Children from high poverty neighborhoods? Why on earth would it cost more to educate kids who just happen to be poor? Title I funds were government's attempt to throw money at the problem of failing public schools in high-poverty areas.

But correlation does not prove causation. Just because the government has spent more money (in the form of Title I programs) doesn't mean high-poverty kids are more expensive to educate.

Private schools are already very expensive, and by their selective nature they often don't enroll the costliest students.

Who's defining "very expensive"? Sure some private schools are very aristocratic, but by and large, most private schools bend over backwards to keep costs low and make tuition affordable. This is why most private schools charge less in tuition than the per-pupil expenditure of the neighboring public schools. (In some cases a lot less.) In fact, most Catholic schools are financed, in part, by their local parrish, so the tuition is actually less expensive that what it actually costs to educate the child.

But this "selective nature" concept is a straw man. The only thing keeping poor kids out of private schools is tuition (and even so, most private schools offer scholarships to a few poor kids a year), because they'd go out of business if they worked for free. Like we've said before, private schools which admit children on scholarships (funded by whomever) do just fine with these kids--after all, they're just poor, it's not like they've got leprosy or something.

And now we're paying for the private school infrastructure (often religious) as well the public school infrastructure required to educate everyone.

We're not sure why religion is mentioned, but the "required to educate everyone" phrase is an appeal to sentiment, nothing more. When public schools fail to do their job, it is most emphatically not because they're required to educate everyone. Their failure is due squarely to a failure of leadership and of mission.

We've worked in a wide variety of inner-city public schools to see the difference leadership makes.

We've seen failing public schools who can't teach kids with their $8,500 per child stipend, and other open-enrollment public schools in the same neighborhood doing great things with the same population at a level of funding of $6,500. And we've noted in the past that the highly successful KIPP schools specifically target under-served populations, and do a great job with them, and they're open-enrollment public schools.

Maybe the Bush Administration is counting on the fact that not all public school students are going to take up the voucher offer. They must be hoping that the best students will flee to private schools so that the private schools can remain successful at a low cost.

A stunning example of crass cynicism combined with a conspiracy theory. (Notice the coupling of "voucher offer" and "best students" when there's no such connection in real life.)

But "private schools . . . remain successful at low cost" precisely because of the free market for private schools. The free market cannot stand failure (for long), it truly is Darwinian in that only the hearty survive. In terms of schools, only private schools successful in teaching kids survive.

But what about the public schools? For many reasons (that I wrote about when Rod Paige discussed 'educational emancipation'), vouchers themselves are self-selective (parents need to make a major committment, for example). If the best students leave the public schools, what's left?

We see here why "best students" and "vouchers" are coupled. The assumption is that parents who sign up for a voucher (which in reality doesn't have to involve a "major committment," sometimes it is as simple as filling out a request form) are the parents of the "best students."

You know what they say about assumptions. In areas with mature voucher programs such as Milwaukee, the facts don't support any such correlation.

Probably a system that's even worse, continues to fail its students and is completely unable to attract good teachers. And if this downward spiral continues, public schools become the ghetto of the school system holding the vast numbers of students who can't get out. Wouldn't it make more sense to fix the public schools?

This dystopia would be reality only if a certain number of assumptions were true (which they aren't):

• First there's the perceived correlation between "voucher students" and "best students," which doesn't exist.
• Second is the perception that public schools faced with competition (exhibited by students transferring out) will get worse. In studies of public schools in the same neighborhoods as charter schools (a form of free-choice public school), the public schools got better. (Complacency doesn't have to be sclerotic.)
• Third, the description of a "ghetto of a school system holding vast numbers of students who can't get out" doesn't describe public schools after voucher programs. It describes some inner-city public school systems today!

Let's get rid of the assumptions, and instead work with facts. School choice (including vouchers) helps not only the student who's the beneficiary, it stimulates improvement in public schools.

"Wouldn't it make more sense to fix the public schools?" Yes. Let's expose them to competition, and history shows us they will improve.

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Update: Jeff Hellman responds to our criticism.