School Vouchers: Should We Chance this is a Good Idea?
by Kara Laughlin
In M. T. Anderson's futuristic book, Feed, one of the main characters compares his education to that of his grandparents: "School™ is not so bad now, not like back when my grandparents were kids, when the schools were run by the government, which sounds completely like, Nazi, to have the government running the schools." In Feed, School™ is now run by big business, and instead of learning boring, unimportant things like history and vocabulary, which you could just look up on the Internet anyway, students learn how to get good bargains, how to decorate a home, and how to find a job.
Anderson's vision of school is a helpful starting point to a discussion of school vouchers, because it highlights the worst fears on both sides of the debate. To hear some people describe them, school vouchers are that first false step down the slippery slope to a School™ system in which kids, especially poor kids, are only taught what is in the corporate interest to teach. Untested subjects like art, music and civics will suffer as students learn test-taking skills, and biology will suffer as private schools teach creationism at the public's expense.
At the other extreme are those who think that the lack of significant outside competition is what has brought our public schools to the sorry state they're in now. Unionized teachers have little incentive to improve performance, since most are difficult to fire once they're in the system. The teachers that do excel tend to move away from the most challenging, neediest schools to more affluent suburban schools with higher salaries and fewer discipline problems. Though advocates of vouchers wouldn't publicly compare the present system to Nazi Germany, they might catch themselves nodding if someone else made the analogy at, say, one of archconservative Grover Norquist's weekly gatherings.
In a study recently published by the Brookings Institution, Paul T. Hill writes, "At its worst, the choice debate is partisan, shedding more heat than light on the subject. Pitting ideologues on both sides of the question against each other, it is more reminiscent of a political campaign…than a discussion of public policy. The debate over choice is too rarely what it should be: a reasoned discussion of alternative arrangements for educating children." As we make our way through the voucher debate, perhaps it's time for a few classes of our own. Let's start with….
History
In the 1950s economist and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman proposed the use of vouchers as part of a three-legged stool of education reform that also included magnet schools and privatization. Several cities and the state of Florida have had voucher systems as far back as the late 1990s, and some have reported improvements in achievement, most credibly for African-American students in Washington, DC. This year, Congress approved the first nationally appropriated voucher system for the District of Columbia (Clinton vetoed a similar program during his tenure).
Many of these programs have been challenged in court, on the basis that when state money is used for religious education, it violates the First Amendment. For the most part, the Supreme Court has held that voucher systems do not violate the First Amendment because it is the parent, and not the state, who decides where the money will go. A recent Supreme Court ruling, Locke v. Davey, in which the State of Washington was allowed to exclude future ministers from a state scholarship program, may or may not change this interpretation in the future, though it will almost certainly inspire more court cases.
Civics
To liberal cynics, vouchers seem specifically designed by the Republican right to weaken teacher unions and cause divisiveness among coveted (and traditionally democratic) black and Hispanic urban voters. These liberal cynics make some convincing points, one of which is that there is little conclusive evidence that the voucher systems are leading to higher test scores and achievement for the students they serve, to say nothing of the children left out of the voucher programs. Add to that the sticky constitutional issues -- should state money really be spent on teaching the catechism? -- and the case seems pretty clear cut. Most liberal apologists argue that what our troubled schools need most is not competition, but financial and political support.
The problem comes when parents are faced with the prospect of sending their own children to failing public schools. As a left-leaning mother of a toddler, I can certainly relate to the moral dilemma that this creates. While I am troubled by the thought of those left behind, if we were living in a failing public school district when the time came to register for kindergarten, I would be tempted by a voucher that would allow us better alternatives.
Many middle class parents, though, don't often face the issue directly, because, as any realtor will tell you, they preempt it by buying houses in good school districts. Under the current system, it's the parents who can't afford to move who are stuck with the schools where they live, and their children don't have time to wait for public school reform. They need to learn to read by the time they're out of third grade, or their opportunities for future success shrink dramatically. Few parents, no matter what their politics, are willing to lay the burden of their principles on the backs of their own children.
For a parent like Mitch Berkson, whose daughter attends a private school in Providence, vouchers seem like the best way to meet the immediate educational needs of his child without leaving him financially strapped. Berkson, like many parents, is no longer willing to trust that, with more funding, the public school systems will work. "Instead, I want them to trust us, the parents," he says. "If you do a good job, you will be rewarded. Children will clamor to get into your school; better teachers will be more highly paid; parents will be happy."
Math
But some would argue that, in their most nationally-recognized form, vouchers end up being a lot like tax credits for the wealthy, since most vouchers offer grants of $1000-$5000 per student, while private school tuition can be as much as three times the upper limit. The first President Bush's national plan to give $1500 vouchers for poor Americans to apply to private school tuition probably wouldn't have cost him much. Though some parents may have been able to apply the vouchers to inexpensive parochial schools, most would not have the means to contribute the remaining tuition to even the least expensive private schools.
However, the voucher programs that have actually been set up are more controlled and more effective. Though there are differences, a typical city or state voucher system might look something like this: a city with failing schools decides that students in the most miserable schools can now receive a voucher for the amount of money a private school would spend on them up to a given cap. The participating private schools agree to accept the voucher as full tuition. Schools in America spent an average of $7548 per student in the 2001-2002 school year. Vouchers can cap at anywhere from $1500 to $5500. Private schools accepting vouchers at the lower end of the spectrum as full tuition tend to have the same problems attracting teachers and paying for students as the failing public schools with whom they're supposed to compete. Those toward the middle and upper ends are the schools that may be improving achievement for their students, but many of these schools save by not having expensive things like social workers or IEP plans for special needs kids.
Current Events
In November of last year, the Brookings Institution released a report by the National Working Commission on Choice in K-12 Education (NWCC). The report, titled, "Doing it the Right Way makes a Difference" concludes that vouchers per se neither save nor damn public education. Rather, it's the way that voucher systems and other forms of school choice are implemented that determines the outcomes.
"The research supports neither the greatest fears about school choice, nor the greatest hopes," writes Nonresident Senior Fellow Paul T. Hill. "What we realized is that choice doesn't necessarily lead to any particular outcome…. It depends on the circumstances in which it is introduced and the way it is implemented. It can be implemented well with thoughtful design, and it can enhance public education in communities that take it seriously."
The NWCC report studies four possible consequences of school choice: the effects on the students whose parents exercised choice, the effects on children whose parents were slow to choose, and were therefore "left behind" in failing schools, the effects on stratification and segregation both within the established and the new choice schools, and the effect on community cohesiveness and civic- mindedness.
For the most part, the commission didn't find any universal patterns, positive or negative, in school choice. Some studies report higher parent satisfaction among those who choose. While most students whose parents took advantage of vouchers and other choice-based initiatives showed no statistically significant achievement gains, one study shows single-digit percentage improvement among African-American students.
Ultimately, it seems that the most important consideration in implementing a voucher program is funding and overseeing it sufficiently. The NWCC report notes that programs that offer vouchers but underfund the program limit the new choices of parents. For example, in Cleveland, vouchers were so far below the per-student funding given to the city's charter school program ($2700 vs. $6100, respectively), that many schools stopped accepting vouchers and applied for charter school status, thus limiting choice for voucher-qualified parents.
The commission also stresses the need for regulation of
approved schools, both so that parents have the information they need
to make informed choices, and to prevent abuses of the system. Currently,
both Milwaukee and the State of Florida are in the news for abuses of
voucher programs. Florida's state-sponsored voucher program has been
riddled with abuses in recent months, including schools billing the
state for students enrolled in the public schools and home schooling
parents taking voucher money to which they are not entitled. In Milwaukee,
the principal of one school accepted $300,000 in vouchers for students
who had never enrolled, and used some of the money to buy two Mercedes.
That school was subsequently closed. A February 2000 report of the Milwaukee
program found that the average voucher amount exceeded published tuition
rates by 99%. This means that on average, the private schools in the
voucher system were charging the city twice the amount of tuition for
students. They were maxing out their allowable voucher amount (about
$5400) while they were charging parents who weren't in the voucher program
about half that for tuition.
Understandably, such abuses have some critics calling for more regulation
of schools and tracking of students, a movement many supporters of vouchers
are reluctant to make for fear of further First Amendment entanglements.
Another complication to voucher systems may come from George Bush's No Child Left Behind Act. As states assess whether they are meeting their goals, they will have to account for students being served through the voucher system. At least one voucher program, Milwaukee's, does not require participating private schools to conduct standardized testing, so one wonders how the state will track the progress of voucher students.
Pep Rally
One of the unfortunate dynamics of the political debate about public schooling is that politicians left, right, and center, target their rhetoric to the most inappropriate voters: parents. Parents can't be expected to make measured decisions about what's best for a community when their sons' and daughters' lives are at stake.
Older empty nesters near retirement and young singles are the ones who should be most engaged in the debate. Empty nesters need to realize that today's students are tomorrow's policymakers, and the future of Social Security and Medicare depend on the young learning something about creative innovation and civic-mindedness, in addition to getting high standardized test scores. In the case of the second group, single adults are in the best position to make changes that will have a stable, positive effect on their children's education. If those of us who don't yet have school-age children work at it, we may be able to make some improvements in the public educational system in a measured manner, so that when the time comes to enroll our kids in kindergarten, we will have a public education system that finally lives up to the fifty-year-old promise of Brown vs. Board of Education: a public education system that serves all of its citizenry, regardless of geography, race or means. If we can come closer to fulfilling that promise, I for one don't care how we manage it.
Web Resource Links
Coverage of Florida's Voucher System
Why
the Right Hates Public Education from The Progressive, January
2003
Event Summary of "Doing it Right Makes a Difference"
American Federation of Teachers Voucher Page
Home
Page of the Friedman Foundation
Coverage
of Milwaukee Voucher Program