The Perfect School Voucher Plan

[Art Vandelay]

This means that already well-off parents who send their kids to private schools will be given extra pocket-money curtesy of the state. And because the rich pay less tax proportionately, the average Joe will subsidize wealthy parents.

Do you mean the rich pay less property taxes proportionally, or less taxes in general? I don't see this as giving "extra" money to the rich. As it stands, every parent who sends their child to private school is subsidizing everyone who sends their child to public school. Vouchers would not so much subsidize the rich, but make the rich subsidize everyone else less.

We could equally say that the increased teacher-student ratio in the schools (after the voucher kids had left) caused the improved performance.

But such an explanation would do nothing to refute the poroposition that vouchers help everyone, would it?

Except, thanks to the voucher value, they'll be doing it with less money. They used to have $8000 per pupil. Now they have $7200. Through no fault at all, that school has lost 10% of its funding.

So you're assuming that public spending per pupil will be tied to voucher value? Is there a reason why this must be so?

Tmy actually makes a very good point when he asks why can't you just go to any school you want, regardless of where you live.

An argument can be made that this would reduce choice. If school districts can prevent students from other areas from attending, then parents can choose, through tax referenda, how much they want to spend on education. If there are no restrictions, then why would any area vote to raise their property taxes? Any benefits are just going to go to neighboring areas.

If competition was really going to improve all schools, then we should just throw the educational 'market' wide open and forget about national curriculums, exam standards, school boards and so on. Hell, I'd look after a class of ten kids in my living room if I got eighty grand a year out of it!

I don't see how competition means getting rid of standards. Would getting rid of referees increase competition in football?

 

[Tmy]

I remember stories from the Milwaukke experiment. Bugus schools would open up just to take advantage of the vouchers. They hired sex offenders and taught the kids nothing since they didnt have the same stringent oversight at the public schools. They were basically day care centers that made a bunch of money off of vouchers.

 

[Tmy]

An argument can be made that this would reduce choice. If school districts can prevent students from other areas from attending, then parents can choose, through tax referenda, how much they want to spend on education. If there are no restrictions, then why would any area vote to raise their property taxes? Any benefits are just going to go to neighboring areas.

Wouldnt a voucher system suffer the same fate?

 

[Meadmaker]

I remember stories from the Milwaukke experiment. Bugus schools would open up just to take advantage of the vouchers. They hired sex offenders and taught the kids nothing since they didnt have the same stringent oversight at the public schools. They were basically day care centers that made a bunch of money off of vouchers.

Tmy's right, but he left out something. Those bogus schools shut down, not because a government oversight panel stepped in, but because parents withdrew their kids.

Something similar happened in Michigan with expanded charter schools.

But the voters in Michigan and Wisconsin kept the programs. Why?

These lessons show that competition is no magic wand. Oversight, standards, and reporting are all needed any time the government starts throwing around money.

 

[Tmy]

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But the voters in Michigan and Wisconsin kept the programs. Why?
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Cause their greedy parents who love getting a big fat govt check?

 

[Art Vandelay]

Wouldnt a voucher system suffer the same fate?

You mean parents from one city get vouchers from another? I don't see how that would be much of a danger.

 

[Meadmaker]

Cause their greedy parents who love getting a big fat govt check?

In Milwaukee, they are means tested. You can't get a voucher unless your kid qualifies to get a free school lunch. Those kids weren't going to private schools before.

In Michigan, you have charter schools, and religious schools aren't allowed. They couldn't stay at their private schools and keep the checks.

No one got a check except the people who ran the new, private, schools.

There must be some other reason that the voters keep the programs.

 

[Meadmaker]

I hadn’t read much about the Cleveland system, so I wanted to do a bit of research. I typed “ ‘effect of vouchers’ Cleveland” into google. I got a lot of research papers and position papers, with the anti-voucher side better represented than the pro voucher side.

Here’s an anti-voucher paper, with findings typical of the sites I looked at, and typical of the sites I had seen in the past.



http://www.epinet.org/studies/vouchers_intro.pdf

Research on the effect of vouchers in Milwaukee and Cleveland showed
anywhere from no effects to small effects of vouchers for mainly African
American students. Studies in Cleveland suggest that the achievement
gains after two years in existing religious schools for voucher students
were higher in one subject, science….

• Research in Dayton, New York, and Washington (conducted and evaluated
by voucher proponent Paul Peterson and his colleagues) show no
significant test score gains for Hispanic and white voucher recipients, but
it did find gains for African Americans that were statistically significant
overall in New York and Washington and marginally significant in Dayton
(in reading only). But several methodological issues make these
comparisons of achievement gains problematic. …

• Findings that the threat of vouchers for students in “failing” (F) public
schools caused math and writing gains among Florida’s lowest-performing
schools to increase significantly more than the gains of higher-performing
schools are plagued by methodological problems….

To summarize: We know it looks like vouchers are doing a good job, but it isn’t all that good, and we think they may be cheating.


If I could find a “vouchers cost a lot and do nothing” research paper, I would be impressed. If I could find a “vouchers caused a lot of harm” paper, I would rethink vouchers. But as best I can tell, those papers don’t exist. Instead, I find papers that say, “Vouchers aren’t as good as proponents say they are, so let’s not do them.” That makes no sense to me.