Vouchers and Education

Here’s a different question, should the tax payers have little or no say in what happens in a gov’t funded school? That is, in effect, what a voucher system would do.

If education is entirely a private good, then parents should pay for it themselves just like they pay for their kids toys, clothes etc. If education is a public good, then does it make sense that 100% of the control of funds be given to parents? Somehow I don’t think we would accept this logic as applied to police protection (everyone get’s a voucher to buy their own body guard).

I generally don’t trust the constant refrain of ‘the schools are failing’. Does anyone remember ‘A Nation at Risk’? That report in the early 80’s said the schools were so bad that it would be an act of war if they were inflicted on us by a foreign country. Well since the early 80’s, that generation of supposedly poorly educated children went on to make the booms of the 80’s and 90’s and private companies did not have to spend a lot of money teaching basic skills. Anyone care to compare with the performance of Japan, a country with a supposedly perfect education system?

The reason vouchers are having a tough time is because most people are happy with their schools and see no need to disrupt a system that has worked for over a hundred years. There are areas where the schools are absolutly horrible such as some inner cities. I could see vouchers being used there as an alternative but even there I’m skeptical. I don’t like the idea of forcing a system on a population that doesn’t want it (in other words, don’t force an inner city community to adopt vouchers on the theory that ‘we know what’s better for them, they are just being fooled by the teachers unions’). More to point, I think the larger problem with inner city schools is really the problems of the inner city and not the schools. When you have high levels of crime, poverty, drug use and child abuse that is simply not going to produce a healthy student body even if you have great teachers and new computers in every classroom.

I would say they probably do, but then they also incur nearly all the cost of undergraduate education. Granted there are government scholarships and subsidized student loans but the cost burden for post High School education is weighted almost entirely towards the student & parent as opposed to the taxpayer for kidnergarten through grade 12.

Companies do spend a lot of time and money on remedial training. If you don’t think that this is a big problem, go over to the National Association of Manufacturers website and see what they say about the issue.

Some of my suppliers will train basically skilled kids to be welders, because they can’t find people with welding skills. But the operative word is “basic”. Most kids don’t even have basic skills (at least, those that don’t go on to college, which is the pool of kids that these manufacturers are drawing from). You would be surprised how hard it is to find good entry level employees.

Not that this should be laid entirely at the foot of the schools. But these kids do have high school degrees. You would think that they could do artithmatic, one of the skills needed to be a welder.

As for Japan, there are certain things that education cannot fix, like cultural issues like a dearth of risk taking, and a monetary and banking system that is REALLY screwed up. Japan would be worse off if their education system has US style results (or, lack of results).

>>I don’t mean to say poor education is not a problem but where is the actual data demonstrating that the US economy is impacted by ‘horrible schools’.

Boonton – can you name a single enterprise that is not improved by effective competition?

Yeah, good point. Give me an example of anything that is improved by a monopoly.

“And I don’t think that suburban schools are so great. Like I said, they are fine if you are a girl of average intelligence. But if you are brilliant, below average, or a boy of any intelligence, the public schools are not for you.”

I’m not sure I necessarily agree with the above statement. It certainly is true in some places and is not true in other places. Does the exceptional case justify overturning a system that was designed for the entire population along with the risks that will entail? Or is the above problem something that could be dealt with on a local basis (say extra help for the below average, ‘gifted’ courses for the brillant and specialized schools for those with offbeat needs)?

Here are some risks that I see; Competition will be to meet parents needs and wants since they will be granted almost all the power over spending decisions. Certainly there will be some extreme cases of abuse; I can imagine the Nation of Islam school opening up, all sorts of other marginal cult-type groups lining up for money. But will there also be less extreme but more dangerous abuses? Think about grade inflation, think about children being used as experimental test subjects for various educational/business fads or even schools that become more like television (keeping kids entertained while getting them out of the hair of parents)…

There is something to be said for old-fashioned conservatism. The public school system may be slow and bulky, maybe quite wasteful but there very well may be hidden dynamics…hidden markets where taxpayers express their interests via votes on budgets, PTA/School Board meetings, Teacher’s Union vs Principals that help keep things from changing too quickly…that keeps the fads and trends limited until they have proven themselves for a while.

If I ran the world (or even was just mayor of a large city) I probably would be taking an axe to much of the public system and doing things that would be viewed as quite radical like easing requirements to be hired as a teacher etc. But I would still tread very carefully before overturning the system and replacing it with something else.

The thought of 13 year olds paying back student loans from their Kindergarten days is kind of amusing 😉

While we are on the subject of comparing our semi-privatized university system to K-12 education, has anyone noticed that costs of college education have not been very well contained despite the fact that the consumer pays more of the cost AND there is a wide array of competition among suppliers?

“What is it that poor public schools fail to do that they would be forced to by vouchers? I’m skeptical that the problem with the inner city can be linked to just poor teachers. ”
~~~

To begin with, vouchers would equalize spending within big city school systems so poor neighborhood schools would be able to spend as much per student as rich neighborhood schools. Today in cities like NYC they spend as little as half as much.

One of the union’s most valued rights is seniority transfer. In NYC and other big urban unionized public school systems, teachers and adminsitrators pick the schools they want to work in by seniority. Of course the most senior teachers and staff pick the richest neigborhood schools with the easiest students to teach. The poorest neighborhood schools with the most challenging students get beginner and uncertified teachers.

As senior teachers and staff make more than double the money of beginners, but teacher & staff to student ratios are the same for all schools, these public school systems *systemically* spend twice as much on teaching the richest kids as they do on teaching the neediest.

Vouchers would remedy this by giving each school the same amount per student. This wouldn’t solve the problem of educating poor students — but it would eliminate one major obstacle that stands in the way of solving the problem.

“I suspect the true problems are systemic.”

Of course they are, and here are some of them, as evidenced in NYC public schools:

* Overfunding of rich neighborhood schools at the cost of poor ones.
* Teachers get their pick of jobs by seniority even when principals don’t want them.
* Teachers are immune from accountability for performance, 99% receive satifactory ratings and near 0% are dismissed for performance reasons annually, when only 1/3 of eighth graders are academically at grade level.
* Principals can’t even hire their own assitants.
* Principals who make $100k a year can’t even buy shades for windows or call a plumber if the toilets don’t work — everything has to go through the custodians and central procurement office, adding tremendously to both cost and delay.
* Custodians can’t be ordered by anyone to fix a broken shade or toilet — since the custodians are both (1) independent contractors who work for themselves, not anyone else, and (2) protected by tenure, so they can never be fired.
* Principals themselves are immune from accountability, 99% of them are rated “satisfactory” each year too, and it’s been many years since even one has been fired for performance reasons.

Vouchers would remedy all these problems. The principal of a voucher school is accountable to the school sponsor — thus the principal must meet performance standards. The principal selects the teachers, instead of vice versa, which makes them accountable. The principal can hire or fire the custodian, which makes the latter accountable. The principal can call a plumber or buy basic supplies for the school directly, which eliminates a vast bureaucracy and gets more money spent at the school level. And the poor neighborhood schools get as much money per student as the rich ones do.

Those are all pretty much *common sense* steps for running schools, aren’t they? E.g., they are the way private schools are run. But they all defy NYC schools union work rules.

The real reason why the public schools unions so hate and fear vouchers is *not* because they pose any “threat” to the public schools at all — in reality there is no way that voucher schools could represent any more than a *very small* percentage of all students in any plausible future.

The reason why the unions hate vouchers is because they are a threat to union *work rules*. If voucher schools are seen to work well and to make parents happy, then people might begin to ask *why* in the failing public school system do the poor neighborhood schools get all the uncertified teachers who are paid half the money? Why can unwanted teachers force themselves on schools? Why can’t principals call the plumber or buy shades on their own, like in the voucher schools? Why is there so little accountability for performance? Why do custodians have tenure? Why are there all these bizarre work rules and all this expensive centralization, when voucher schools work well *without* them?

Those are questions the schools unions don’t want to have to answer.

“Times change. Society changes. Work changes. Educational needs change.”

This is nice poetry but it doesn’t make much of an explanation.

“The public school system, both here and abroad, is modeled on a factory from the 1890s. Everyone is put on the assembly line that is the grade level system. There is one curriculum, and you learn X on day Y, and then move on to the next subject, much as a part moves down the assembly line.”

This is probably Exhibit A of what I was talking about. Let’s keep in mind it was only a few years ago very smart people were making fun of the ‘old-fashioned’ company that paid dividends and had profits, now the ‘new dot coms’ have moved beyond those old-fashioned standards. K-12 education is about the ‘basics’. Letters, words, grammer and numbers, math, geometry, calculus and logical proof. These were not the fundamental building blocks of a factory educated worker in the 1890’s, these were the foundations of an educated gentleman. The biggest difference is probably that classical languages are no longer standard.

“The public school system has worked in the past. It worked as recently as the 1960s. But it doesn’t work now, and more importantly, it doesn’t fit our societal needs at this point.”

What does this mean? By what standards were the schools working in 1950 but not 1960? How do I know what societal needs you are talking about and how can will I be able to measure whether or not your solution does a better job if it is implemented? Keep in mind that during the 80’s people were fretting that the US economy was going to be hampered by a poor education system but those students seemed to have been able to do a good job keeping up the economic growth (and shifting the workforce more towards a knowledge based economy to boot!).

“Wouldn’t many of those problems be solved if facilities were removed from the education system and schools simply rented buildings the way most companies do? Then it would be up to the landlord to deal with unions & by reasonable window shades.”

You’re kidding, right?

Of course some school buildings are leased. Why would this cause the unions to give up *any* of their exclusive rights regarding how schools are run?

BTW, how do you imagine that leasing buildings would solve the problem of poor neighborhood schools getting such lower expenditures per student than rich neighborhood schools due to seniority transfers? Or the problem of 99+% “satisfactory” performance ratings for teachers and principals when only 50% of students graduate high school, and most of them — the top 50% — do so performing below grade level?

“The public school system has worked in the past. It worked as recently as the 1960s.”

The public school system in the past never worked any better than it does now. Arguably it was worse in the past.

The illusion that it used to work results from three things:
1) Formal education was much less important in the old days — pre-1970s — and the majority that didn’t finish high school could still get good jobs. The further back you go the fewer the number who finished high school, it was only 10% a hundred years ago. There was no need to do so for most. But today anyone who can’t do at least good high-school work is going to be really hurting. So the quality of the schools is becoming *visible*.
2) During the 1930s to early 1960s there was a faux “golden era” for urban public schools, like NYC’s. That is, post WWI laws cut off immigration from abroad, internal immigration was minor, and the Depression’s deflation raised the wages of school-system personnel while they still enjoyed rock-solid job security, enabling the school systems to attract better people than either before or since. Chronic internal problems that existed before and which came back later went away temporarily, while the school systems got a temprorary influx of more skilled workers — but that all ended. During that one stretch the schools were less bad due to the temporary factors.
3)There’s a lot of both selective memory and self-selection among people who talk about how the urban public schools worked so well back then. They invariably were among the *minority* for whom the schools worked.

E.g., I once had a conversation with a bunch of people who claimed the NYC public schools had worked just great for them in their day, so I asked them what schools they went to. The answers were “Stuyvesant” “Bronx Science”, etc. So I said, great, you were all *tracked* into the elite top 10% and did fine in an era when the total graduation rate was 40%. But do you believe in tracking now? And do you think the 40% graudation rate of your day is good enough for now? It’s even worse than today’s!

“Of course some school buildings are leased. Why would this cause the unions to give up *any* of their exclusive rights regarding how schools are run?”

Leasing buildings moves the burden for maintaining the structure to the landlord, who is usually a property management firm of some sort. Facilities could, in effect, be put up for bidding like any other city contract.

“BTW, how do you imagine that leasing buildings would solve the problem of poor neighborhood schools getting such lower expenditures per student than rich neighborhood schools due to seniority transfers? Or the problem of 99+% “satisfactory” performance ratings for teachers and principals when only 50% of students graduate high school, and most of them — the top 50% — do so performing below grade level?”

Again you have made an implicit assumption, inner city schools are suffering because they lack teachers with seniority. First of all, I reject the notion that we should be concerned that one school has an expenditure of $50K per year for a teacher while another one has an expenditure of $75K for a more senior teacher. If the teachers are of equal value then the ‘poorer’ school is better off. Any stats or studies demonstrating that teacher seniority makes a real difference?

As I pointed out, even if seniority did make a difference the problem could be solved politically by abolishing it. Yes the teacher union would fight that but I asked does the police union have a seniority rule that allows experienced cops to have first pick on easy assignments? If not then it is clear that the seniority rule can be dealt with by less radical measures than vouchers.

“It would seem that the collapse of Marxism — state socialism, state monopoly ownership and operation of facilities and services — was sufficient cause, in those places where state socialism formerly existed, to try out the alternative of market incentives that had been proven to work in practice everywhere else in the world.”

Nice analogy but it falls short of the mark. We aren’t talking about a monopoly. There are plenty of alternatives to the public school system. Yes the state doesn’t typically pay for you to go to them but the state doesn’t pay for your membership in a country club if you don’t like the local park either.

Let’s return to my original questions which remain unanswered:

Where is the evidence that there is an education crises which merits radical reform?

Where is the justification for removing or drastically decreasing the say the taxpayers have in the money they are required to supply for education?

>>Are you comparing average SAT’s? If so then you should be aware that in the 60’s and before many students didn’t take the SAT’s. In the past SAT’s were reserved for those who were college bound and they were a smaller portion of the student body than they are today. Are you sure you are not comparing the top 10% of 1960 with the top 50% of 2003?

Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that teacher seniority doesn’t make any difference to quality. Then isn’t the fact that NYC public schools are structuring their salaries as if seniority made a big difference– paying 50% more money to more-senior teachers who aren’t any better– prima facie evidence of mismanagement?

Responding to JT

“I don’t think I’d describe the situation as a crisis. We have a system which has seen greatly expanded funding over the last 10-15 years and has shown absolutely nothing for it (test scores over that period). I am not an expert but that is the broad picture.”

Before you say there is nothing to show for education you have to answer some fundamental questions (which are almost always overlooked).

1. What do you expect to see for it? Are test scores the measure of all things, if so then I’d like to see an apples to apples comparision. How did the top 5% do on the SAT in 1960, how about the top 5% today.

2. Why do you want to see it? I’d like to see improved income (GDP). I don’t think there is any clear evidence that higher SAT’s in general lead to higher productivity. If education does mean improved productivity then you have a hard case to make because the US economy has been growing much more productive in the last 20 years….all during this supposed period of educational decline.

“Rather, I’d say it’s a question of improving a system that has shown it cannot change itself through the current proposed alternative to vouchers & competition, which is increased funding. I don’t see any reason to be satisfied with the status quo. No other industry would say, “our products our mediocre but hey it’s not a crisis so we’ll keep doing things this way.” The education industry shouldn’t be allowed off the hook either. ”

1. No evidence has been presented that the system cannot change. Certainly there are many positive changes such as increased computer use and ‘team’ learning exercises that have happened. Schools may be slow to change but they can change and the fact that there are many good schools (even in NYC which despite its problems has some of the best as well as worst schools in the nation) shows that the system can work.

2. What evidence is there that vouchers will eliminate funding increases? Certainly this *is not* the case with healthcare. With the notable exception of the Catholic School system, most private schools are very expensive. The Catholic schools, though, enjoy advantages such as selective student selection (parents of Catholic school kids have to be dedicated at least on some level), volunteers and a very low paid staff, tax free buildings & such that make educating a small % of the population very inexpensive but may not be scalable to the entire student body…

3. Your argument commits the fallacy of the false choice. In other words, you are trying to assert ‘either vouchers or the status quo!’ In reality, while I feel the schools are on average pretty good, there is no reason to think that vouchers are the only possible source of positive change.

>>I don’t think there is any clear evidence that higher SAT’s in general lead to higher productivity.

I agree that the mystery of productivity growth or lack of it cannot be explained easily…much less by just looking at SAT scores. It does seem clear that if the education system has become horrible, it hasn’t shown itself to be a dramatic drag on our economy. Our economy seems to be quite happy with the workers and consumers that the High Schools and Colleges turn out.

I also agree that we should not permit Unions to create unreasonable barriers to entry for new teachers. This can be solved by simply changing the rules, however. Yes unions may fight it but not as hard as they would fight vouchers. If there’s not enough political will to overcome the unions on credentials then there isn’t will to impose vouchers.

I disagree that the lack of metrics to measure teaching indicates failure. Perhaps the desire to quantify is going too far here. Suppose education is more like literature. We can certainly assert the US has been a literate society for quite some time, but its pretty difficult to say the literature of the 80’s was better or worse than the 90’s. We would laugh at someone who tried to claim any change in the quality of literature was helping or hurting the economy in a significant way.

I’ll look for the link but it came out a while ago that developing nations had actually a very small return on investment with education. While its accepted dogma to say ‘more education, more growth’ it may very well be that once you get past the basics diminishing returns have long set in for US education. ‘Fixing the schools’ may make us feel better…just like ‘higher quality TV shows’…but it is not significant from an economic point of view.

“For example, consider how letting Principals and/or school boards set pay could create a climate where teaching jobs become patronage.”

Now you’re kidding again. As if the public school system, the School Construction Authority, et al, aren’t the biggest patronage mill in municipal politics right now — in NYC and all such urban centers.

Of course, the fact that urban public school systems are now and always have been *notorious* patronage mills hardly results from “merit pay” — it results from the fact that they are *politically* administered. They are the biggest politically run organizations in major cities, so they are where politicians stash their buddies, sell jobs and offices, and worse. Where else comparable is there?

Here’s a NY Times Magazine story on the history of education politics in NYC in recent decades:
http://www.frontpagemagonline.com/Articles/articles.shtml?ID=3654

And in many other cities things are much worse than in NYC, e.g. in Washington DC.

Let us say that thinking politics is the *cure* for such things is … optimistic. If one want to get such gross political and patronage abuses *out* of school systems, one has to get the *politics* out of them, self-evidently.
~~~~~

“Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that teacher seniority doesn’t make any difference to quality. Then isn’t the fact that NYC public schools are structuring their salaries as if seniority made a big difference — paying 50% more money to more-senior teachers who aren’t any better — prima facie evidence of mismanagement?”

It’s double the money on the up end. The top is 2x the lower, the lower is 50% less than the top. And the answer is, yes, of course, obviously.

The real issues when a system is not accountable for performance are first waste in the form of rent seeking by the unproductive who extract income from it, and then, well, lack of accountability for performance among the rest who are supposed to be productive.

Re NYC, the first issue was described by Robert Sarrel while Budget Director of the NYC Board of Ed a few years back…

“[T]he paradox of urban school reform is the steady increase in education cost per pupil with no increase in student outcomes. … Over the past 20 years, factoring for inflation, (NYC) per-student spending has risen 80% while graduation rates, SAT performances, and Regents results have declined …

“To explain this it is necessary to understand the relationship between costs and outcomes by ‘unpacking’ the allocations process from the school board to the chalkboard…

“The figures are shocking and indicate that less than one-third (32.3%) of the dollars provided by the various funding sources to the Board of Education ever get from the school board to the chalkboard… it is inconceivable that the public willingly supports this structure as a valid educational expense…”

More from Sarrel with cites at http://www.mindspring.com/~jimglass/Sarrel.htm (originally from a fun old usenet discussion in the eponymously named misc.education)

The second issue, lack of accountability among those actually working in the schools, was memorably described by a NYC school teacher, Emily Sachar, who got the facts from Union heads and Board of Ed officials in a book that was nominated for a Pulitzer. Here’s an extract:

http://www.mindspring.com/~jimglass/accountability.htm

Let’s see if anyone knows of any private business that promotes by seniority that operates like *that*!

Public education is doomed because of extreme pluralistic differences. A secular government entity is utterly incapable to find a viable compromise. For instance, how do you keep parents happy who disagree about such basic issues as corporal punishment and vulgar language? There simply is no way to reconcile the values of parents who hold such incompatible views. The apparent consensus of fifty years ago no longer exists—and it is most unlikely that a reversal will ever again occur. Thus, only a voucher program makes any sense.

John Dewey greatly exaggerated the need for a public school system to Americanize the general population. After all, I see little evidence that children attending religious schools are less loyal to the American vision.

“Boonton, is this the first time in your life that you have encountered the phrase “suppose for the sake of argument”? The claim that seniority has nothing to do with skill was not mine; it was yours. I was pointing out an unwelcome logical consequence of it.”

My argument is that seniority does not necessarily equal skill. Let’s suppose some other things for the sake of argument. Pay being tied to seniority is a common system used in both the public and private sector. While I agree it has its flaws, it is not de facto wrong in all situations.

Consider this, suppose you are treated in a private hospital. You discover that this hospital pays the nursing staff based on seniority.

Question: Should you be allowed to prevail in a lawsuit on the grounds that such a policy is “prima facie evidence of mismanagement” as Paul asserted in an earlier post?

Question: Say you learned that all the nurses that cared for had less experience than average (imagine the experienced nurses, seeing you’re a rather cranky guy pawned you off to the newbies). Should you automatically prevail in a malpractice suit even if you couldn’t identify anything they did wrong?

I’m not saying experience is irrelevant, only that it is not automatically relevant. Regarding some schools getting stuck with all the newbies, there seems to be a host of easy fixes that could address the question. Require the average experience of any school to not deviate from the overall districts average by more than a certain degree, for example. Or require that a certain number of new teachers have at least one older teacher to act as a mentor.

Take the police department, which is also unionized. Do they allow districts to have no experienced cops? If not then it seems quite possible for the political system to overcome the seniority issue.

“Perhaps in the old days a kid saying ‘fuck’ in class would get beaten by his parents, today they may punished much less dramatically but I have not heard about parents marching into the school demanding that their kids be allowed to swear.”

I cannot believe your naiveté. Unfortunately, today you must have a consensus of just about every parent if you desire peace in the classroom. It often only takes one crazy adult to screw up everything. Have you ever heard of the ACLU and other such ultraliberal organizations? These extremists have made it virtually impossible to enforce a consensus morality upon the student population. The US Supreme Court has not helped anything with its insane decisions that for all practical purposes handcuff school administrators. Theoretical abstract principles may sometimes sound nice, but in the real world fail miserably.

How horrible is the situation? My buddy taught in an affluent public school where lawsuits are a constant threat. The school district takes for granted that it will spend minimally $60,000 every year. Much of everyday duties of the principal is focussed on preparing for court room battles. One parent sued because her mediocre student daughter was not accepted into the honor’s program. Sigh, the teenager was allegedly suffering from low self esteem. A private school does not normally endure such silliness.

It is indeed sad that your friends district has to allocate $60K per year to lawsuits but I’m anything but naive concerning classrooms. Believe it or not rules still exist, kids still go to the Principal’s office, there is still detention and suspension & a host of other common punishments. The parents suing because their kid was suspended for saying ‘fuck’ in class remains quite rare. I don’t see that as a problem that vouchers could address much. In fact, since privatized schools would presumably have a contractual relationship with the parents it might be even easier to sue over administrative things.

“This is a slam dunk. I feel like the proverbial batter who has been pitched a slow ball over the middle of the plate. Is the school voucher program a mysterious pig in a poke? Not in the least. A prudent and rational decision can be made at this very moment. We already have abundant evidence how well private schools have accomplished their educational goals.”

Excellent, then make the case that the schools are failing and a radical change is necessary. So far the attitude has been that simply saying the schools are bad is sufficient.

I do agree we have abundant evidence that when 5-10% of the population spends $5000-$25,000 plus per year of *their own money* on private schools the results are generally pretty good.

“Excellent, then make the case that the schools are failing and a radical change is necessary. So far the attitude has been that simply saying the schools are bad is sufficient.”

What is this “radical change” stuff? Are we suppose to take this premise as a given? Why in heaven’s name do you find it so dangerous that parents are allowed to spend their tax dollars for the private education of their own children—or even the public school of their choice. Are parents so stupid that only government bureaucrats can keep them out of trouble? Are you even hinting that only the parents able to afford the extra burden of paying “$5000-$25,000 plus per year “ possess adequate intelligence to make such decisions?

Also, I do not have to make “make the case that the schools are failing.” The case for the failure of many schools is already abundantly clear. You merely need to stop ignoring the many reported instances. The bottom line is this: parents have a right to determine what’s best for their own circumstances—and they don’t need your paternalistic interference.

“That doesn’t mean that the same performance can be replicated by giving people checks of other people’s money.”

Your point leaves much to be desired. After all, it is “other people’s money” that fund the public school systems. The involved taxpayers will not notice a dimes worth of difference on their pay stub. You are making something of a Freudian slip. It’s obvious that you strongly believe government bureaucrats know best how to run things. Parents are generally “dangerous” people.

“Your opinion seems to be that the taxpayers are too stupid to police their local school system and therefore parents are entitled to basically a blank check at their expense.”

You unwittingly embrace the socialist fallacy about the “people.” It is inherently impossible for the typical taxpayer to make daily decisions on these matters. Thus, this leaves the bureaucrats in virtual full control. I strongly believe that everybody concerned would be far better off if the parents were the primary decision makers—and the public schools were compelled to compete for the honor of educating their children.

“sufficiently qualified to judge school quality”?

Are they sufficiently qualified to judge the quality of a car engine, or a computer chip?

The neat thing about free markets is that they tend to reward success and punish failure.

“fooled by profit-seeking charlatans”?

As if it’s not happening today with tax-hungry charlatans.

“The involved taxpayers will not notice a dimes worth of difference on their pay stub.”

True enough, David, but irrelevant. They won’t notice a difference on their pay stubs if there’s a change in police protection, either,but the change will affect them nonetheless.

Boonton makes excellent points. The money to fund schools, whether by vouchers or otherwise, comes from all taxpayers, and the purpose is to educate the children of the community. As a childless taxpayer I have no objection to paying these taxes.

But I want to know that I’m paying for education. To take an obvious example, I don’t want to pay for a school that passes off creationism as biology. Nor do I want kids going to school in firetraps, or sitting sixty in a class. So I fear we will need some of those nasty bureaucrats to set minimum curriculum standards, make safety regulations, etc.

I am dubious about vouchers, but could be convinced. Right now I think that they fall into the category of proposals whose logic has some appeal, but whose proponents have not dealt with the realities of implementing them, preferring to smother theproblems under rhetoric about the wonders of the market. There certainly will be charlatans, financial and religious, and there certainly will be parents who make unwise decisions, despite all the sanctimony about it.

So I would liketo hear from voucher advocates what sort of (shudder) regulatory scheme they advocate to make sure MY money is being spent wisely.

Eric,

So are you suggetsing that voucher schools be subject to some sort of licensing requirement, as medical providers are?

Are you suggesting that they be subject to audit to be sure the money isn’t going to outsize salaries for administrators or football coaches?

Are you suggesting that there be safety inspections and requirements?

Should voucher schools be required to accept all comers, subject only to the facility’s limits? Didn’t happen in Cleveland as I recall.

Are you suggesting that curricula meet certain requirements?

All these things make sense to me. But they represent a significant amount of government involvement.

My point is really pretty simple: I think voucher advocates are comparing an idealized system with a real one. I would be more impressed by explanations as to how a voucher system would deal with some of these problems.

>>This is actually a different issue than vouchers.

Eric,

Sometimes vouchers are presented as a replacement for the entire school system…which would be privatization IMO. Other times they are presented for areas of concentrated horribleness…which would be privatization on a limited scale IMO.

I assume for this discussion we are talking about vouchers being used to replace the entire system since many supporters of vouchers seem like they want to use impoverished areas as demonstration projects for a larger implementation. This doesn’t mean that vouchers cannot be used in other ways…such as an ‘internal market’ where parents can take them to any public school etc.

There is no political will to make vouchers replace the entire government school system. So that’s a non-starter, argument wise.

But to get minority students out of rotten schools, vouchers may work. That is where you get the most bang for your buck. That is what we should limit our conversation to.

I agree there’s no will right now for dumping the whole system in favor of vouchers but isn’t that really where the voucher movement is going? I thought a voucher plan was recently voted down in a district that had reasonably good schools? Was it limited to just minority kids in the worst of the district?

Regarding using vouchers in the worst districts; I’m willing to give them a shot however I think they should not exclude overall reform of the public system. I think there has been quite a bit of ‘forget about reform, its not workable just toss vouchers at the problem’ by the right. For example, it seems like a lot of NYC’s problem can be found in the fact that the Mayor had until recently no effective control over the Board of Ed.

This meant that the voters would have a difficult time holding the Mayor accountable for the state of education since he could turn around and blame the Board for standing in his way. Board elections, being much smaller affairs, were more easily dominated by special interests.

IMO there are large school districts that work. So if you give me an example of a large system that is failing the first serious question that needs to be answered is why is it falling short. You can’t just chalk it up to the nature of government since there are other districts that have gotten it right.

Failing to address these issues is pretty dangerous IMO. For example, suppose NYC’s worst schools are the way they are because the interests of those communities are not represented for whatever reason. Say those communities do not have the organizational skills to demand quality. It would seem that failing to address this problem would be akin to treating the symptons but not the disease. I could see a voucher program turning into a grab of resources by the more powerful communities. For example, if the district is now spending $10K per student other communities would cut the vouchers down to $4K per student while grabbing the freed up $6K for themselves.

>>I think there has been quite a bit of ‘forget about reform, its not workable just toss vouchers at the problem’ by the right.

“You’re damn right there is! And for good reason.”

“The “Nation at Risk” report is over 20 years old! We have been “reforming” the public schools for a generation, and have absolutely nothing to show for it.”

Yes over 20 years old and what happened since then? The graduates of those ‘horrible’ schools went on to build not only an economic boom but one with heavy concentration in knowledge industries. This is the exact opposite of what you would expect to happen in a country with a failing educational system. Meanwhile what happened to another nation from 20 years ago that supposedly had a wonderful school system? Anyone hear from Japan these days?

Another thing. Shouldn’t we be talking about cost? We are spending significantly more than we were 20 years ago, even on an inflation adjusted basis. Shouldn’t we have something to show for all that money?

Why don’t Catholic schools have this so called cost disease.

More money for education has always been sold as reform. Don’t blame the victim when he asks for evidence of the efficacy of this reform.

Again, can you give me an example of a monopoly that has successfully reformed itself?

“Why don’t Catholic schools have this so called cost disease.”

They don’t? Are Catholic schools as affordable today as they were 20-30 years ago? I know for a fact that Catholic Colleges certainly ARE NOT!

“More money for education has always been sold as reform. Don’t blame the victim when he asks for evidence of the efficacy of this reform.”

And ‘our schools are a diaster’ also serves the interests of those demanding more money…as in ‘education in the US is horrible, we need to raise taxes to pay for a new scoreboard!’. When this is used by either the left or the right we should challenge the assertion, which is all I’m doing. I cannot judge every school district in the US but I can observe that when school budgets are being set by taxpayers in individual districts and I can conclude that whatever they are getting it makes them happy enough to keep the status quo. Does that mean they are getting better education or a nicer football team?

“Again, can you give me an example of a monopoly that has successfully reformed itself?”

Errr, public schools are not a monopoly. If you want examples, though, I can tell you a lot of people feel Microsoft has improved itself greatly since its Windows 95 days and even the Post Office has improved greatly (at least from my point of view).

Public schools are monopolies even though Catholic schools are available at less than $250 per month? Somebody here overpaid for his Introduction to Microeconomics course…

>>Public schools are monopolies even though Catholic schools are available at less than $250 per month? Somebody here overpaid for his Introduction to Microeconomics course…

“The problem is market share. Despite Linux being free, Microsoft dominates the operating system market.

Despite not costing all too much, the Catholic schools have a very small sliver of the educational market. And because of competition from the government schools, enrollment is declining and schools are closing.”

So you are telling me the Catholic schools are not worth $250 a month? Parents would rather send their kids to the public schools? That’s hardly a monopoly.

“B, from what I’ve read, in inner cities at least, the school population isn’t all that different than the general population. So the Catholic Schools are educating substantially the same kids for substantially less money.”

Actually the population issue is more subtle. In any population you may have an average… For exampe, among sick people the avg cost might be $12K. Some of those people will be cheaper and some more expensive. If you draw a representative sample then your average should match the overall population.

Take the inner city, 95% of the kids may be minority, 95% of the kids may be low income and 95% of the kids may fit various other common demographics. Even so, some of those kids will be easier to teach and some harder. If you took 5% of as a *random* sample and sent them to the Catholic school you have an apples to apples comparision. But if the Catholic school was able to select a non-random sample then you are not comparing apples to apples. Right off the bat, the fact that the Catholic parents are willing to sacrafice $250 a month means that they have a higher than average interest in their kids education. This probably translates to other things like discipline at home, being involved with their kids’ school work etc. Even though these parents may look like their public school neighbors, they really aren’t. This means that the results you achieve for the 5% going to Catholic school cannot be so easily scaled up to 95% of the population.

“Parishoners who tithe a certain amount of money per week get a discount on tuition…. Catholic schools no longer rely on nuns for cheap labor. They employ lay people, for the most part. Salaries are low, but somehow they find people to do the work.”

I’m interested in knowing *why* Catholic schools seem to cost less. I think part of the reason is that they get a discount on the ‘raw materials’. The Church has ample property, exemptions and a low cost labor force (granted a lot more teaching is now done by non-clergy) as well as sources of finance. I think a bigger part is that the Catholic School system is teaching a self selected part of the student body. Even if they don’t do this on purpose it happens because:

1. The fact that a parent has to jump through even a few modest hoops to get into the school screens out a lot of harder to teach students.

2. Harder to teach students can be dumped back into the public system.

3. Since many of the students are part of a smaller community inside the larger population, it’s a lot easier to use both positive and negative tools to keep people in line. Positive because it is easier to find volunteers & sources of free labor to supplement the paid staff and negative because parents are more likely to have relationships with the staff & other parents. Your kid says ‘fuck’ in the classroom and he not only embrasses you in the abstract but you have to think about your golf buddies, the people you sit next to in Church, your wife’s best friend etc. knowing you have ‘The Bad Kid(tm)’

“The problem is market share. Despite Linux being free, Microsoft dominates the operating system market.”

“Despite not costing all too much, the Catholic schools have a very small sliver of the educational market. And because of competition from the government schools, enrollment is declining and schools are closing.”

I just realized that this first fact totally undercuts your monopoly argument. Microsoft can be a monopoly even though its competition is free (and many say its competition has a better product to boot!). So not only is it possible to compete with someone (i.e. public schools) who are charging $0, it’s even possible to dominate them in the market!

“The Catholic schools have a dillema. In areas where they are superior to the public schools, like inner cities, the population cannot afford $250 per month. In areas where the schools are good, like certain suburbs, people are unwilling to pay anything in tuition, because they can get an equal schooling for free.”

So shouldn’t we be asking why the public schools in those suburbs are so superior to the ones in the inner cities? Why are they the equal of the Catholic schools, while the inner city ones aren’t. Sounds like government-run schools are fine some places.