Menu
» Next Entry (newer): Black Alliance for Educational Options
The point to vouchers: Helping parents pay for private school
February 26, 2004One of the favorite arguments against vouchers is the "all or nothing" attack. Specifically, if the vouchers can't pay for all kids to go to any private schools, then the whole voucher program must be rejected.
Here's a simple little graph illustrating how silly this argument really is.
Assuming a $5,000 voucher, we've graphed whether private school is "affordable" at various levels of tuition and parental contribution. Obviously the wealthiest parents (top row) can afford just about any private school, voucher or no voucher. We aren't concerned with these folks.The poorest parents are the ones who really need the boost. As you can see in the bottom rows of the graph, none of these parents can afford private school, while a small range of schools becomes affordable with the voucher.
But here's the kicker: A large group of parents might be able to contribute a little to their child's private school tuition, even if they can't afford the whole thing. If they can contribute even a few thousand dollars a year (less than $40 a week!) a much-expanded range of private schools becomes available.
To get "the big picture" for the benefit of vouchers, just look at how many squares are red in the upper left, and green in the dotted lower right. This red-green combination illustrates a situation where private school moves from not affordable to affordable, all because of a voucher.
Voucher opponents have their sights firmly set on the lower right portion of the graph--the situations where parents can't afford expensive private schooling with or without the voucher. Naysayers would be willing to sacrifice all the students for whom private schools are newly affordable, all because of the worst-case scenarios.
Wake up, folks, this glass is not half-empty.
Do you have any statistics on how many schools fit in each of those tuition categories?
ms. frizzle February 27, 2004 05:10 PMIn addition to the data Ms. Frizzle is asking about, how about providing information about the quality of the schools in each category? Is a 3 or 4,000 dollar/year private school any good?
Jeff February 28, 2004 10:50 PMMs. Frizzle, the range of private schools' tuitions depends on geographical area, but nationwide the average private school's tuition is half the per-pupil expenditure of the local public schools.
Of course, "the average private school" doesn't exist, but if your local public schools spend about $9,000 per child, on average a good chunk of the private schools will be in the $4,000 to $5,000 range, with of course there being no ceiling (for the children of aristocrats, of course :-).
Check out my January 25th post Doing the Math with Public School Budgets where one guy did a survey of all the private schools in the local phone book, and the most expensive matched the average per-pupil expenditure of the local public schools.
Jeff, excellent questions. Possibly the answer would be "no" if a $3,000 school was located in D.C., but "heck yes" if the school were located in Utah, where the public schools spend less than $5,000 per pupil anyway.
But the point is that private schools can't stay in business unless they're doing the job. Since no one is forced to attend any particular private school, a very inexpensive school may well be of decent quality.
There are no such assurances about public schools. (I've worked in such schools!) I say, let parents choose!
ceb February 29, 2004 04:42 AM