Vouchers, Again

I really don't think Megan McArdle's understood what I was saying about vouchers. Giving families more choice about which school to attend: Good idea. Public money without public accountability: Bad idea. Ergo, charter schools are a good idea. Alternatively, you could call it "vouchers" but add a lot of regulations that institutions accepting the vouchers were required to submit to.

That's my general take. In terms of specific proposals, you have to look at specifics. In DC, for example, a sufficiently generous voucher would, if not limited to poor families, probably do a lot to decrease the volume of young professionals moving to the suburbs to raise kids. That, in turn, would have various second-order consequences (on taxes, on property values) that one would have to think about. It's probably worth considering, but DC's in pretty unusual circumstances.

Comments

I think Matt's largely right about vouchers. It isn't that vouchers per se are a bad idea; it's that for vouchers to be a good idea, they have to be well funded, tied to accountability, used to fund educations at demonstrably good schools, etc.

But I would say that there are too many liberals who act as if the problem is vouchers themselves, i.e., that they bust the teachers' unions, that they will fund religious schools (so do Pell Grants), that they will take money out of the public schools, etc. There's no reason why a liberal shouldn't support a voucher program if it will actually lead to better outcomes. There is a huge question, however, as to whether the types of voucher programs that conservatives push for would actually lead to such outcomes.

Posted by Dilan Esper | March 18, 2007 9:22 PM

Education is one of those areas where I think I come down on the neolib side, which I assume is pro-voucher in some general sense. This may be because I know next to nothing about education policy.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | March 18, 2007 9:37 PM

"Jane Galt" not understanding a perfectly straight-forward argument? Tell me it's not so!

Posted by Matt (not the famous one) | March 18, 2007 9:45 PM

Unless you can identify a pedagogical tool that is proven to be effective, and that isn't being utilized in public schools, your support for charter schools is nothing short of union bashing. They represent another attempt to bring hucksterism and capitalist mountebanks into the public schools, quick to sell snake oil to the unwashed masses.

Posted by Father Figure | March 18, 2007 9:53 PM

Since we have apparently entered the season of reiteration let me reiterate what I said here at 2:10 PM.

Posted by Linus | March 18, 2007 9:55 PM

Linus, you identify a system of school organization you desire, but you don't identify a pedagogical tool that is proven effective, but that isn't being utilized in the public schools. Your rationale is that your system is "less coercive," but that doesn't make much sense, because indirect, market coercion is no less painful or unpleasant than direct coercion. Your system would not reduce coercion, it would simply force it upon different actors, many of whom are unequipped to deal with it effectively. It seems as though you simply don't like unions, and want to find a sift way to avoid stating as much...

Posted by Father Figure | March 18, 2007 10:02 PM

"Giving families more choice about which school to attend" is code for "giving white middle class parents the choice to segregate their kids from poor black kids." That's the animus behind vouchers; people who don't want their kids to attend school with "a certain kind" and want the government to subsidize it, and private schools who just want government money. As Al pointed out before, even though the proponents of school vouchers say they want to use market forces to improve education, they don't want an actual system of nothing but privately run schools. And the reason is because if every child was access to those schools, the private schools would have to educate the "bad" kids. That's precisely what the parents and the private schools don't want.

Posted by Freddie | March 18, 2007 10:06 PM

Actually, I think Matt has bought into some conservative nonsense on vouchers.

Essentially, vouchers would transform American education into a consumer product. One widespread feature of consumer products is that success often tends to go to those companies that spend the least on content and the most on advertising/marketing. I recall that a few years ago, Nike was paying more to Michael Jordan than it was spending to produce every Nike sneaker in the world. I suspect the a chain of "Michael Jordan" or "Reverend Holiness" signature-schools would be gigantically lucrative.

Consider that judging the quality/long-term effectiveness of schooling programs is extremely difficult. By contrast, tech/trade schools have an extremely short and clear feedback loop: if you get a good job, they worked. Yet our voucherized tech/trade schools have been a total and unending disaster.

Its true that American schools are much worse than those of most other developed nations. But nearly all of these other nations have a far *more* centralized/uniform/government-controlled system than our own. So why should be move in exactly the opposite direction?

Basically, the strong support for vouchers comes from an intersection of (1) liberterian ideologues; (2) right-wing Christians; and (3) inner-city ministers who want to get rich by setting up a "school" for their flock. A really, really bad idea, and a very unpopular one based on an unbroken series of landslide initiative defeats.

Posted by RKU | March 18, 2007 10:06 PM

"One widespread feature of consumer products is that success often tends to go to those companies that spend the least on content and the most on advertising/marketing."

Hucksterism. Pure and simple. Introducing "merit pay" while increasing "top talent" salaries for teachers would bring the same greedy scam artists currently polluting the "autoadmit" law discussion boards into our classrooms, to make "some quick bucks." Neat!

Posted by Father Figure | March 18, 2007 10:15 PM

Essentially, vouchers would transform American education into a consumer product. One widespread feature of consumer products is that success often tends to go to those companies that spend the least on content and the most on advertising/marketing.

This is nonsense. Another widespread feature of "consumer products" is that they are extremely low-cost and high-quality. The only reason marketing turns out to mattter, is because there is no difference in the quality between Nike and, say, Reebok.

There's no reason you couldn't attach certain regulations to vouchers: schools may not discriminate on race, must take certain standardized exams or what-have you. The question is whether a reasonable compromise can be reached such that most existing private schools would choose to accept the vouchers.

Ultimately, I think this is only a difference of degree, not of kind, from Matt's charter school proposal.

Posted by right | March 18, 2007 10:29 PM

"Giving families more choice about which school to attend" is code for "giving white middle class parents the choice to segregate their kids from poor black kids." That's the animus behind vouchers; people who don't want their kids to attend school with "a certain kind" and want the government to subsidize it, and private schools who just want government money"

Aren't parents already segregating their kids from poor black kids by moving to the suburbs? If you give poor black families vouchers that allow them to choose their school, how do you keep them from choosing white schools? I think this is the sort of regulation Matt is talking about. Certainly we wouldn't advocate any school voucher system that allowed schools to discriminate on racial grounds.

I think it it tragic that one of the largest determining factors for a child's education level is the property tax value of the parents home. Why are we forcing poor black children to go to school in poor black schools? Certainly many of these schools could be better funded, but isn't also possible that many of them are just poorly run? Why should the students suffer because of this?

Posted by Max | March 18, 2007 10:30 PM

There already exist systems for accreditation of private schools, just as there exist similar systems for accrediting private colleges. The government gives enormous amounts of money to students, either in grants or subsidized loans, to attend accredited private colleges, so why not the same for private schools?

Posted by Steve Sailer | March 18, 2007 10:32 PM

There already exist systems for accreditation of private schools, just as there exist similar systems for accrediting private colleges. The government gives enormous amounts of money to students, either in grants or subsidized loans, to attend accredited private colleges, so why not the same for private schools?

I think it makes sense to be laxer with rules the further up the age hierarchy you get, but I would also say that the rules for which colleges can get federal money are too lax.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | March 18, 2007 10:38 PM

A commenter claims:

"Giving families more choice about which school to attend" is code for "giving white middle class parents the choice to segregate their kids from poor black kids."

No, that's exactly backwards. The 2002 New Jersey gubernatorial election was fought on that issue, with the GOP candidate Brent Schuler backing a statewide voucher. Suburban moderate homeowners, who have much of their net worth tied up in the fact that they live in white/Asian school districts, abandoned the GOP in droves to vote for Democrat Jim McGreevey.

The big political problem faced by most voucher programs is that they would allow underclass students into suburban schools, wiping out the premium that home shoppers pay to allow their children to escape the urban underclass.

Virtually all liberals and moderates behave like this in their private lives -- they put the welfare and safety of their children first. What they don't like are rude people pointing that out!

Posted by Steve Sailer | March 18, 2007 10:41 PM

There's no reason you couldn't attach certain regulations to vouchers: schools may not discriminate on race, must take certain standardized exams or what-have you. The question is whether a reasonable compromise can be reached such that most existing private schools would choose to accept the vouchers.

But that's just it-- private schools don't want any of those kinds of stipulations to come along with access to government money.

Why are we forcing poor black children to go to school in poor black schools?

That's why I'm in favor of busing. But then, that makes me the devil, or at least according to Mickey Kaus.

Posted by Freddie | March 18, 2007 10:43 PM

"isn't also possible that many of them are just poorly run?" All sorts of things are "possible." If you are going to ruin hundreds of thousands of teachers lives, while simultaneously destroying unions, you better have more evidence than "isn't it possible?"

As for post-secondary education, there is a dramatic difference in quality seen in post-secondary educational institutions that most people would probably want to avoid in elementary and secondary education. Of course, hucksters like the managers of "Phoenix University" would probably love to foist that type of inequality on elementary and secondary educational institutions...

Posted by Father Figure | March 18, 2007 10:44 PM

Aren't parents already segregating their kids from poor black kids by moving to the suburbs?

This is my understanding, too. I'm full of support for what appears to be the standard Dem line of "everything just needs to be tweaked a bit," right up until the point I have to look some six year-old poor black kid in the eye and say, "Hey, by the way, we're writing you off." Some of the stories you hear about some of these schools--it's hard to not to think that anything would be better.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | March 18, 2007 10:47 PM

"But that's just it-- private schools don't want any of those kinds of stipulations to come along with access to government money."

Then no money for them. How hard is that?

Some private schools can continue to take the cream of the crop and get no federal voucher money. All we're doing is giving a choice to kids currently in a crappy school district.

Posted by Max | March 18, 2007 10:47 PM

But that's just it-- private schools don't want any of those kinds of stipulations to come along with access to government money.

Well you're being far to general. Many won't, but surely many would be fine with it. It depends on what the stipulations wind up being. More importantly, voucher money could easily drive demand for new private schools that would be open to regulations that were reasonable. As I said, it's not that different from people starting charter schools.

Posted by right | March 18, 2007 10:48 PM

But that's just it-- private schools don't want any of those kinds of stipulations to come along with access to government money.

Also, you could set up a voucher program where students could use their vouchers at other public schools. I know: crazy.

Posted by right | March 18, 2007 10:50 PM

I am a little confused as to the hostility towards vouchers. There are many of us on the left who are not ideologues and believe that there are some instances where government control works (health care) and some instances where competition would help improve quality (schools).

Who cares if libertarians proposed the idea? Ideology should not trump good ideas when it comes to alleviating societal ills. We should take advantage of their eagerness by only agreeing to vouchers if they agree to adequately fund the vouchers. We could secure an overall increase in spending on education while forming a system that uses the money more efficiently.

RKU writes, "[c]onsider that judging the quality/long-term effectiveness of schooling programs is extremely difficult." There are other expensive long term investments where people are competent enough to make their own decisions. Many people, while not expert mechanics, are competent enough to buy a car -- another long term, hard to judge investment. People will be interested in choosing correctly when it comes to the education of their kids.

Freddie thinks that "'[g]iving families more choice about which school to attend' is code for 'giving white middle class parents the choice to segregate their kids from poor black kids.'" The opposite may occur. As competition forces schools to improve or lose students and money, many public schools will improve and many parents will want to leave their children in public schools as long as they are performing well. There are many parents who currently send their children to private schools, but would like to send their children to public schools if they could do a better job.

There has been an impasse between the left and the right. We need to push for a proposal that could potentially increase funding and enhance how efficiently the money is being spent. It cannot be worse than the status quo where we have been stuck for the past several years.

Posted by golddog | March 18, 2007 10:55 PM

"Also, you could set up a voucher program where students could use their vouchers at other public schools. I know: crazy."

Yes, that is crazy. Unless schools literally had to accept all students who wanted to attend them, they will be able to select their students. The rich will cream, the rest will suffer. A true neo-liberal solution; increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Posted by Father Figure | March 18, 2007 10:56 PM

The big political problem faced by most voucher programs is that they would allow underclass students into suburban schools, wiping out the premium that home shoppers pay to allow their children to escape the urban underclass.

You're (deceptively) substituting "suburban" for "private". The school districts they live in are immaterial because the parents we're talking about send their children to private schools. Voucher programs don't move children from urban schools to suburban public schools, they move them to private schools.

If we take it as a given (as all voucher proponents do) that private schools inherently provide a better education than public, then by extending vouchers to only a few simply increases the inequality of educational opportunity. It's the definition of robbing Peter to pay Paul (and anyone who tells you that voucher programs won't take money away from public education is fooling himself.) The people agitating for school vouchers overwhelmingly aren't the urban poor, but Reason magazine-reading libertarian idealogues who want to send their children to private school on the public dime.

You could fix that inequity if you moved to Matt's system of publicly financed, privately-operated education for all-- but that has a whole host of other problems. And, as I pointed out before, the very people who support vouchers don't support giving everyone that access.

Posted by Freddie | March 18, 2007 10:59 PM

I see the argument that vouchers will improve our school system the way I saw the argument that a democratic iraq would somehow infect other countries with democracy: It sounds good, but what is the exact mechanism?

What is the exact mechanism through which vouchers will improve our school system? Because if they won't improve the system then what is the point?

Many people have said that it will introduce market economics into the system. That people will want to go to good schools and not want to go to bad schools. I got a bunch of issues with this notion. One is that people are already doing whatever it takes to get their kids into the good schools. There is very little room in good schools, so very few people would have anywhere to go with the vouchers. You could counter that they will go to charter schools, but a school is a very difficult thing to run and as recent studies have proved, they do no better at educating kids than regular public schools.

And are they going to get better? I don't really see why. Charter schools are funded exactly the same as public schools. They have the same issues, the same labor pool, and the same student pool. The only thing charter schools can do is shed bureaucracy, which is good, but bureaucracy is not the sole cause, or even the main cause of the problems we have in our schools system. The main cause is that we are failing educated non-white, non-middle class students.

So-viewing it at the system level-you either are giving parent vouchers that they can't use or are providing them with alternatives that are, on average, no better than where they started. You are not improving the system, you are just rearranging it.

To really improve the system, you need to figure out why it only really works (in national terms) for middle class white kids. And you need to figure out how to make it work for all kids. And that is not something that using market economics to shift a small percentage of kids from one school to another is going to solve.

Posted by cw | March 18, 2007 11:04 PM

Vouchers will never work in the idealized sense that, I think, Matt envisions for two reasons. First, it is close to impossible to imagine a system that could fund vouchers at a level sufficient to allow real choice by low income families. Sorry, but $2500 per kid ain't gonna cut it. Transportation costs alone make it darn near prohibitive. Look at the problems NYC, a city with an excellent mass transit system, has faced trying to expand school choice. Second, any voucher system is going to leave the non-voucher, as-of-right public schools with the most difficult and expensive kids to educate: special education students, students with behavioral problems, students with parents who don't care enough to take advantage of vouchers. The only way to avoid this problem is to require all voucher schools to accept all comers. But that is the proverbial poison pill for the voucher movement. One reason that parochial schools can give such a [supposedly] good education at such a relatively low cost [in addition to the lack of a union] is because they can keep these difficult and expensive kids out of their classrooms. Once they are required to accept any kid with a voucher AND to account for their success in educating that kid, the voucher movement with quickly disappear.

Posted by mert7878 | March 18, 2007 11:04 PM

The problem with vouchers is that, due to geography schools just can't compete with each other the same way, say, health insurance companies or car makers or whatever can. You're pretty much stuck with whatever is nearby, so I would prefer to see a centralized system such that schools are good as they can be, given whatever resources are available.

Posted by Chad Okere | March 18, 2007 11:21 PM

What is the exact mechanism through which vouchers will improve our school system?

I think that the mechanism that allows for improvement is based on two things: efficient allocation of resources and incentives that reward good teaching and punish bad teaching.

Instead of administrators deciding how best to spend money in a school district, parents will decide with their vouchers. If one school starts a great art program then they will receive more students and voucher money. Parents are in the best position to decide what is and is not working because they have a greater interest in the success of their children than the most dedicated administrators.

The schools are also forced to innovate to keep drawing in students and keeping the ones that they currently have. If one school starts a program that proves to be effective in educating children, then it's in the interest of other schools to copy that effective program so that they won't lose their own students. Good teaching is rewarded with more vouchers/money while poor teaching may lead to a school being shut down and replaced by another school that was able to attract students.

The two main points about a voucher program are that it allow parents, the people who are the most knowledgeable and interested in their children's education, to distribute resources and it encourages innovation in teaching methods to remain competitive with other schools.

Posted by golddog | March 18, 2007 11:23 PM

"Instead of administrators deciding how best to spend money in a school district, parents will decide with their vouchers. If one school starts a great art program then they will receive more students and voucher money. Parents are in the best position to decide what is and is not working because they have a greater interest in the success of their children than the most dedicated administrators."

Sounds like our university system. Imagine if federal funds weren't available for lower income students wanting to attend Ivy League schools and they were relegated to state schools. If vouchers are a bad idea, maybe FAFSA is a bad idea too and we should instead focus on spending more money in our state universities?

Posted by Max | March 18, 2007 11:29 PM

Unless schools literally had to accept all students who wanted to attend them, they will be able to select their students. The rich will cream, the rest will suffer. A true neo-liberal solution; increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Okay:

a) If we're talking about using vouchers for public schools (as I was in the post you're directly responding to) then the government is able to select which students go to which schools. The only difference here would be a market mechanism to enable school choice by transfering funding. We could easily make a rule as part of hte policy that public schools must accept students by lottery.

b) If we're talking about private schools then, yes, early on you may be right. Initially it will be those with the most involved parents, the highest grades, etc. who get into private schools. But in increasing the demand for these slots, more private schools will be opened and before long it will look much like the post-secondary education landscape, with private schools of varying quality for a broad range of student needs, and much better public schools whose existence depends on them effectively competing with the private alternatives.

Or we could give more money to the teachers unions. Surely that would fix everything. Wouldn't want to be a union-basher.

Posted by right | March 18, 2007 11:30 PM

Sorry to hog the comments, but cw makes an important point and I would like to hear from the voucher advocates out there exactly how the "competition" fostered by vouchers is going to transform education. Or, to put it more bluntly: how are vouchers going to overcome the well-documented correlation between SES and race and educational achievement? We know that traditional private and parochial schools avoid this problem largely by skimming the cream. We know that charter schools, which must take all comers, perform no better on standardized test scores than traditional public schools.

The SES and racial achievement gap is a fact of life even in well-to-do diverse suburbs like Shaker Heights, OH and Montclair, NJ. If excellent school districts like these have not solved the achievement gap, what makes voucher advocates think that some educational entrepreneur who sets up shop in a storefront is going to come up with some hitherto utterly unthought of solution? How is a voucher going to make up for a single parent working two jobs with no time for homework or the PTA, or a child who whose male role models are in and out of jail or can't hold a job because of substance abuse, or a child who is constantly ill because his parents don't have access to quality health care?

This is not to say that we do not have serious problems in our inner city schools. Rather, it is to say that, as Richard Rothstein and others have suggested, there is no magic bullet, whether called vouchers or accountability or standards based curriculum, that is going to solve this problem. While I don't abide some of his unreflective union cheerleading, I do think Father Figure makes a point when he asks voucher advocates what it is that public schools could be doing that they are not.

Posted by mert7878 | March 18, 2007 11:35 PM

The problem with vouchers is that, due to geography schools just can't compete with each other the same way, say, health insurance companies or car makers or whatever can.

Or grocery stores, or gyms, or dentists. Oh wait.

You're pretty much stuck with whatever is nearby

Right, because no one would ever go a little bit further if it were going to get their child a better education. Does anyone here live in a place where there is only ONE SCHOOL (public, private, charter, whatever) within a reasonable drive or busing area from your home? If so, my guess is you live in a pretty rural place. And if that's the case, a voucher program would have zero effect on your school because everyone would just choose to stay there.

Posted by right | March 18, 2007 11:38 PM

"[H]ow are vouchers going to overcome the well-documented correlation between SES and race and educational achievement?"

I too apologize if I am hogging up the comments section.

I don't think that a voucher system will close the achievement gap. We should be realistic about what it can accomplish. I agree that education is about more than what one receives at school, and a voucher will never give all children good parenting.

When evaluating vouchers, we shouldn't look at what they will fail to accomplish, but whether they will be an improvement over the current system and proposed alternatives. I do believe that they would give children a better education than a centralized, top-down administered system, but better should not be confused with perfect. All I can say is that current system had been tried for multiple generations and the results are still not acceptable, why not move onto a better, though not perfect, model?

Posted by golddog | March 18, 2007 11:52 PM

I think the business about a good art program begetting more good schols is off the mark and very middle class. This is not about good art programs, however important they may be [and they are]; it is about teaching kids to read and write. Most inner city parents clamoring for better schools complain, first and foremost, about the basics. Frankly, it is the middle class, whose kids attend schools that have the basics pretty well covered, who agitate for better art programs.

Also, the whole art business brings me back to the point of my prior post: diverse suburban districts with excellent art [& music & drama & AP & elective & sports] programs still have an SES/racial achievement gap.

And the analogy to the post-secondary schools misses the other point. Although the percentage of kids attending post-secondary schools has risen dramatically, it still represents a skimming of the cream. By and large the difficult and expensive kids -- special ed., discipline problems, non-copers -- have already dropped by the wayside. Problem is, K-12, we still have to educate these kids and I have yet to hear how vouchers will help this group, other than concentrate them in greater numbers in ever-emptier urban public schools.

Posted by mert7878 | March 18, 2007 11:55 PM

"Linus, you identify a system of school organization you desire, but you don't identify a pedagogical tool that is proven effective, but that isn't being utilized in the public schools."

All things (or at least pedagogy) being equal, private and parochial schools are still superior to American public schools on a purely cultural basis. They're more humane. They're kinder, gentler places. And the restrooms are clean.

Posted by Linus | March 19, 2007 12:00 AM

The one factor that best determines (by a wide margin) how a school is meeting the standards we set for educating our children is the socio-economic of the school population. The higher the percentage of non-white, non-middle class students the lower that school's performance. There are exceptions, but they are very few. The reason that private schools perform better is that they poor kids can't afford to go to them. If you local catholic school was suddenly flooded with kids from the local inner city public school, they would fail just as badly as that public school. In general, private are not better schools, they just have an easier population to teach the way we customarily teach.

Someone above said that taking dollars away from that bad public school would motivate them to have more innovative courses, but taking the money away from that public school will just mean that that many more resources will have to be cut. Not having the resources to meet the larger needs of inner-city kids is the main reason that inner city schools are bad in the first place. So now you take more money away, so that a handful of kids can go to private schools? How does that make sense?

Posted by cw | March 19, 2007 12:02 AM

cw and mert:

I found this article to be helpful reading. It's not about vouchers per se, but about school choice in the public context. I think vouchers represent a positive extension of this.

Posted by right | March 19, 2007 12:04 AM

golddog -

I appreciate your point about not allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good. However, I still have three issues. One, I don't think the available data supports your assumption that simply moving low income kids out of urban schools into a private voucher school is going to dramatically increase educational achievement. Low-income black kids in suburban districts score only marginally better than their urban peers. In charter schools, they tend to score the same or even worse. I might not have an objection to trying vouchers wholesale even with this data if it weren't for issue two: the kids left behind in urban schools who will be disproportionately more needy. How are we going to deal with them? Which brings me to point three: where are we going to get the money to implement a meaningful voucher program AND to meet the educational needs of the left-behind kids? There are plently of educational solutions out there that we know will improve achievement [very small class sizes, individual tutoring, radically raising teacher salaries to attract the best and brightest] yet we can't find the money to fund them. Why should we invest just as much, if not more, in a largely untested system where the available data shows problematic results?

Posted by mert7878 | March 19, 2007 12:13 AM

Not having the resources to meet the larger needs of inner-city kids is the main reason that inner city schools are bad in the first place. So now you take more money away, so that a handful of kids can go to private schools? How does that make sense?

cw, accurately estimating the cost of educating different kinds of students, is a crucial component to the success of any voucher program -- I agree with you there. It's certainly not easy, but it is doable, and a voucher program would actually help establish where resources are needed.

For example, if, in fact, students with, say, very low income families, or single parent households, or a parent in prison, or any other quantifiable demographic, are being "concentrate[d]... in greater numbers in ever-emptier urban public schools" (mert's words), then a voucher framework allows a much simpler way to fix it than our current system: you simply increase the value of those students' vouchers. The market equilibrium can be reached where the dollars are going to the right vouchers such that any student would be welcomed by any school.

Posted by right | March 19, 2007 12:14 AM

"So now you take more money away, so that a handful of kids can go to private schools? How does that make sense?"

Here's the scenario that I would imagine with a poorly performing public school. A private school would see that the public school is ready to lose its students. Under the current system there is no incentive to go into that neighborhood and build a private school because the residents would not be able to pay for it. Now, with vouchers, you have residents who are able to pay, though a limited amount, for the education. There is every reason to build another school and try to take those students. The students will only move away from the public school if the private school offers a better education. The private school, which wants the money of those students, must offer a better education. Will that education rival the present day fancy private schools? No. It will however be an improvement over the failing public school.

This hinges on vouchers that are well funded enough that there is an incentive for the private school company to build a school and compete for students. This should be a pre-condition for agreeing to a voucher program.

You are probably wondering how the private school will offer a better education -- what is the exact method? I don't know. A system of vouchers tries to create an environment where teachers and administrators, on the ground, work to figure that out. That's why it can be frustrating to people who want to know the exact method. The system's strength lies in the fact that it encourages good teaching through competition, but the exact methods only come into play when the system is instituted.

Posted by golddog | March 19, 2007 12:19 AM

"Why should we invest just as much, if not more, in a largely untested system where the available data shows problematic results?"

mert7878:

One of the reasons to support a voucher program is that the right is not willing to support many of those other programs that may also be effective. The beauty of vouchers is, partially, their political feasibility. Many Republicans are ideologically predisposed to some of these programs and we can offer our support if they pledge to fund these things decently. To me, it seems like a way to increase overall spending on education without Republicans getting in the way.

I do also believe that competition will help, but even if it does not, perhaps we can sneakily figure out a way to spend more on education.

Posted by golddog | March 19, 2007 12:36 AM

I think some of the shortcomings of vouchers can be addressed with a couple of simple restrictions on their use:

1) they must be good for the entire tuition - so they can't be used to supplement tuition at expensive private schools and everyone will have access to publicly funded schools.

2) lottery based admissions - this will give truly good schools an incentive to grow to be as big as possible rather than just take the best students. Special Ed. students could be given extra larger vouchers.

Vouchers certainly aren't perfect, but it's hard for me to believe they wouldn't be an improvement on what we have.

Posted by david | March 19, 2007 1:26 AM

Many here seem to be emphasizing the "feasability" argument (golddog) in response to critiques of vouchers (the idea that Republicans would sweeten things up in terms of funding if Dems gave a bit on "choice"). I think there's a couple of problems with this argument.

One is that, while some Republicans would agree to an increase in funding there's certainly no sense in which this would constitute a real commitment to funding higher ed. Indeed, politicaly/realistically, the opposite seems to be the far more likely case (as Republicans would likely cut funding down the road and seek to only further "liberate" education from the confines of the federal government). I have a hard time believing that regulation and privatization could work hand in hand for any significant length of time (can any recent example really contradict this? The recent privatization of much of the military certainly seems to support the case for a heavy federal hand) and for any significant reforms: the goals are just different. The end result would be a partial exoneration of the federal government for its responsibility to educate and paltry, momentary increase in funding.

further, just how feasible is it to institute the sorts of choices that make vouchers so appealing? People who argue for vouchers seem to think there is some infinite reservoir of educational entrepreneurs out there ready to sweep into every community and start up new schools. How realisitic does this sound? I'm sure that such a scenario could come to fruition in a few large cities but what about, you know, the rest of the country? Perhaps some large companies like Wal-Mart or Microsoft would attempt to get into the act, but can you really envision any of these incredibly large, incredibly successful diving into (what would have to be) a heavily regulated, heavily overseen "business opportunity"?

The idea that families could choose between competing public schools proves just as difficult to imagine. Even if we ignore the rural areas where such choice simply doesn't/couldn't exist, the schools in more metropolitan areas would face major enrollment problems. One could imagine all sorts of admissions processes, but think of what this would do to the lives of elementary school students! We would be basically be greatly expanding the college admissions process (something we really want more of?). Wealthier students would inevitably have a great advantage in this process as well, and thus the problem would really be just shifted rather than addressed directly.

We often represent the problems with Ameircan schools as some sort of intractable swamp, and then write off our responsibility for the mess by blaming the whole thing on the inevitabilities of bureaucracy ("Everything's been tired" blah blah). The reality is that there are several countries that have very successful educational policies that, in fact, already exist! Why not take our lead from them?

Posted by Berger | March 19, 2007 1:51 AM

I think trying to institute some type of national education voucher would be too difficult. School choice issues should be made at the local level, and usually when they are made, it's after a number of private institutions have agreed to participate.

From all the studies I've read on Education vouchers, no matter whether they're successful or busts, in almost all instances it's not the successful kids trying to get out of bad public schools that utilize them, but the poorest students (academically) from the poorest schools, looking for something that works.

To avoid regulation fights, I think that, in addition to a strong charter school program & experiments with public school choice, a voucher program should exist, but it should be limited in scope and only applicable to kids from low-income families with poorly academic performing children at schools that are failing them.

But this can't be a national thing. Education is tough to do from the Feds down. It has to be a state & local thing.

Posted by DRR | March 19, 2007 4:32 AM

We already have a lot of school choice in many urban public school districts. The LA Times employs Sandra Tsing Loh to blog as the Magnet Yenta to tell upper middle class parents how to get their scions into fashionable magnets in Los Angeles. There are also charter schools, SAS programs, academies, you name it. Some are quite good. Some aren't. The good ones have incredibly complicated rules for getting in, which keeps out dumb and unmotivated parents' kids.

The basic problem, however, is that only about 8 percent of the students who enter the LAUSD's 9th grade will ever break 1000 (930 old style) on the SAT's math+verbal test.

Posted by Steve Sailer | March 19, 2007 6:14 AM

All things (or at least pedagogy) being equal, private and parochial schools are still superior to American public schools on a purely cultural basis. They're more humane. They're kinder, gentler places. And the restrooms are clean.

Wow. That's wrong on so many levels. My (public) high school is just down the street from a large, regional all-boys private high school. There was always a debate in eighth grade about what school you would go to. What was amazing was the amount of local kids who would do a year or two at the private school and transfer because they were so miserable. They always complained about the violent, cliquish atmosphere and the enforcement of conformity from both the jock assholes and the priests who ran the show (and would rap your knuckles, literally, if, say, your hair was below your ears.)

I certainly don't mean to extrapolate from one school to condemn all private schools, but I do think that it totally depends on the individual school. Some of the most academically prestigious private schools can have the most violent, nasty social atmospheres. (Or have you never heard stories about British boarding school?)

Posted by Freddie | March 19, 2007 7:57 AM

Yglesias, you are against public money without public accountability? That's essentially what you have in places like D.C. How much do you spend per student to get those great results? $9k per year? More? The truth is that vouchers are no panacea. They would be good to keep slacker unionized public school teachers on their toes, but the reality is that to have a good school, you need good students. In practice, that tends not to happen when the bulk of your students are black or Hispanic.

As someone who spent 10 years in predominantly black public schools (transferred to predominantly white & Asian school in my junior year of high school), I would never send my kids to predominantly black or Hispanic public schools (I'm sure none of you would either, but you probably wouldn't admit it).

Because of that, my fiancee and I are saving up to move to a nearby town with great public schools (which happen to have barely any black or Hispanic students).

I used to be against vouchers because I thought they discriminated against people like us, working hard to afford premium real estate in a town with good schools. Now I am mildly in favor of vouchers, for two reasons:

1) The voucher amounts probably would not be set high enough to cover the cost at top schools. Instead, vouchers will lead to a middle tier of schools priced to compete for voucher money (Catholic schools will also get a lot of voucher students).

2) The kids who leave the crappy public schools will probably be better than average, since they will have parents motivated enough to take advantage of the vouchers.

Either way, vouchers by themselves = no panacea. Although, they might lead to some middle-tier schools trying some shit that has actually been proven to work, e.g., directed instruction.

Posted by Dave | March 19, 2007 8:08 AM

Freddie and Steve Sailer:

"The big political problem faced by most voucher programs is that they would allow underclass students into suburban schools, wiping out the premium that home shoppers pay to allow their children to escape the urban underclass." [Steve Sailer]

"You're (deceptively) substituting "suburban" for "private". The school districts they live in are immaterial because the parents we're talking about send their children to private schools. Voucher programs don't move children from urban schools to suburban public schools, they move them to private schools." [Freddie]

I live in NJ and Steve Sailer is right. Parents in towns like Old Tappan, and Tenafly, NJ have no need to send their children to private schools; their predominantly white & Asian public schools are that good. The average SAT score at Tenafly's high school, for example, is over 1200.

Also, outsiders can pay to go to suburban public schools. I did, for my last two years of high school.

Steve, one correction: The GOP Senatorial candidate's name was Brett Schundler. Used to be considered a rising star in the GOP. Too conservative to win state-wide office in NJ though.

Posted by Dave | March 19, 2007 8:24 AM

Actual experience with charter schools is disheartening. They exist like may flies.

Education is a terrible way to try to make money, and the lure of voucher money prompts people who shouldn't be in education into giving it a try.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | March 19, 2007 10:11 AM

While I have no doubt that some voucher advocates on this comment thread are well-intentioned [trolls excepted], I still haven't heard anyone address the two core issues for me.

1. Where are we going to get the money to serve all kids well? right's suggestion that we give more valuable vouchers to more needier kids is a good one -- and completely in lala land. Can anyone possibly believe that we will get to a political point in this country where we will see greater funding directed to individual children of incarcerated felons and drug addicts? It has taken the school funding movement literally decades of hard fought court battles to try to direct additional state-level funding to inner city schools. This could only happen through the courts. Yet right's voucher program would have to be legislative, which is why it will never happen. Too many suburban votes.

2. Voucher advocates keep singing the praises of the market and competition but I have have yet to hear anyone say exactly what these new private schools are going to do to actually educate children differently. Eliminating the twin boogeymen of the bureaucracy and teacher unions does exactly ZERO to actually educate kids.

The ability to fire staff at will, often praised as one of the linchpins of vouchers/charter schools only does you any good if: a. current staff are loafing due to the lack of at-will employment; and b. there is a ready labor pool of more talented people to replace them. "a" is only partly correct and I have yet to see any evidence of "b". Certainly, there is plenty of deadwood in our school system but, even after serving on a school board & earning the lifetime animus of the teachers' union, I am convinced that the majority teachers are already competent and doing their best in a set of very trying circumstances. As for "b", unless voucher schools are going to radically raise pay, unlike many private/parochial schools that actually pay their teachers less than public schools, I don't know where all of these great new teachers are supposed to come from.

So, spare me the competition rhetoric and market ideology. Just tell me how you're going to teach my kid to read, rite and do 'rthmetic.

Posted by mert7878 | March 19, 2007 1:21 PM

Why won't vouchers work? Because the marginal cost of educating a child is much less than the average cost.

Posted by Rob | March 19, 2007 1:51 PM

"A system of vouchers tries to create an environment where teachers and administrators, on the ground, work to figure that out."

You mean the dedicated professionals who are trying to "figure it out" currently? What an odd comment.

Aside from that, everyone on this board seems to accept the underlying assumption that "public schools in inner cities=bad." Maybe, but not according to the statistical measures reported by the DOE last January; they indicated that when SES is controlled public schools do as well or better than most private schools, and better than almost all charter schools, at educating children. Why should dedicated, underpaid, hard working teachers have their lives upended in order to solve a problem they did not create, and they were not created to solve (social inequality, primarily caused by neo-liberal supported globalization)?

Posted by Father Figure | March 19, 2007 11:40 PM

RKU wrote, Consider that judging the quality/long-term effectiveness of schooling programs is extremely difficult.

This nails it. The real problem with trying to create market incentives in education is that it's very difficult to measure outcomes. It's the same thing in health care. (And by "health care" I mean health care delivery---doctors, clinics, hospitals.)

A reasonable conjecture is that, for classes of products where "quality" is difficult to measure, market failure is far likelier.

Posted by liberal | March 23, 2007 2:36 AM

Certainly the market could do no worse than the monopolies that exist in our urban areas. In what other industry would allow a monopoly to operate? The state's interest in an educated citizenry. At one time the most efficient means of providing universal schooling was a system of government-run schools. Are government-run schools now the only option? Are we committed to government-run school monopolies for the benefit of children and parents or are are we committed to government-run school monopolies for the benefit of the employees? Was the original intent of government-run school systems universal education of children or the creation and maintenance of a loyal voting-block of teachers? Will we really force parents and children into low-performing schools so that politicians have a secure source of campaign funds in exchange for teacher life-time employment and generous pensions with no accountibility for student success?

Posted by Terry Brown | March 24, 2007 12:53 PM