# Explain to me what is wrong with school vouchers as an idea **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 21, 2017, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941 "2017-04-21T19:53:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/201 "2017-04-25T07:18:38Z")
It’s fun to witness the dialog in this thread. Here’s some specific complaints about voucher programs: > [@Uncle\_Jocko](#): > > Here’s the thing about vouchers, and why they aren’t the magic bullet so many conservatives think they are. > > Private schools don’t have to follow all the rules public schools do. As mentioned, they can include instruction (and indoctrination) on religious views. They don’t have to take students they don’t want, such as the low-performing or special needs students. They can do this because they are private, funded by tuition or grants/support from churches or philanthropists. > > Once they take vouchers, they are now taking what is, by all rights, public money. I don’t think they should be allowed to do that unless they have to follow the same rules public schools do. > > It’s pure apples and oranges here. Do private schools tend to get better results? Sure, but they’d better, since they don’t have the low-performing/special needs/troublemaking students. It’s not a fair comparison at all. > > Public schools have to take every student. Bring in vouchers, and you’ve started a death spiral for many public schools as the “better” students flee to the private schools, leaving the publics with an increasing percentage of challenging students coupled with a loss of funding. > > The answer is to improve our public schools. That’s a huge question, I know, and I don’t have the answer, but I do know vouchers ain’t it. This was immediately followed by a post (thought not in response to **Jocko** ) by a Dog-eat-dog doctrinaire: > [@octopus](#): > > That doesn’t seem relevant. No one is saying the market is perfect. People are saying at least in a competitive marketplace you have options and voting with your dollars does make a difference. Hi, **Octopus**! If you’re here to defend vouchers, do you think you might want to address some of the objections, e.g. those in **Jocko** ’s post? > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > … Oh, what the heck. You’re just plain wrong in most cases. Let’s take, for example, Ohio Amusing that you take Ohio for your example. The right-wing dominated Ohio is the poster-child for [fraudulent schools — a scourge that will get much worse as right-wingers continue to push education away from public control to hucksters who have corrupted politicians](http://www.mydaytondailynews.com/news/for-profit-schools-blasted-for-fraudulent-practices/ADvyUPYCUOr3YcMJzsztTJ/). And [Ohio’s voucher system is biased against black students.](http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/08/28/white-students-disproportionately-use-ohio-school-voucher-program.html) And [charter schools are often operated for profit by the same hucksters; this is especially a problem in … guess where? … _Ohio_.](https://weaponsofmassdeception.org/3-charter-school-kid-prisons/3-3-why-charter-schools-are-fraud-factories) Even a right-wing think tank concluded that [QUOTE=Stanford University’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes, which is part of a conservative think tank funded by the pro-privatization Walton Foundation] Students in Ohio charter schools perform worse in both reading and mathematics. [/QUOTE] Sorry if I appear to be conflating charter schools with voucherized for-profit schools. As you will learn by clicking, in Ohio both are operated by the same cast of profiteering fraudsters. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/202 "2017-04-25T11:04:06Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Let’s say your kid is in a small, rural school with only 50 12th graders. With a class that small, the school probably won’t be able to offer AP Statistics or third-year Latin. But with online education, your kid could take statistics and Latin from an Ivy League professor. Local governments should absolutely pay for such things. I did exactly this for two AP classes, paid by my parents though. The one problem being that rural internet leaves much to be desired. When I’m on the farm I’m stuck with satellite or my phone. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/203 "2017-04-25T11:12:49Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > That’s the way we do things in many other areas. > > [ul] > [li]We take taxpayer dollars and make them available to Medicare and Medicaid recipients. Those recipients decide which doctors and hospitals to go to, and your contribution is used to pay for which doctors and hospitals they choose.[/li][li]And there’s this law called the ACA (commonly “Obamacare”) under which your contribution is used to subsidize people’s health insurance purchases. Most people have a choice about what insurance to buy, and your contribution is used as the buyer sees fit.[/li][li]Section 8 housing vouchers, the primary means of providing housing to the poor. The poor decide which apartment they want to rent, and your contribution is used as the poor person sees fit.[/li][li]College and University education. Millions of students decide which college or university to attend, and your contribution, in the form of subsidies and loans, is used as they see fit.[/li][li]Food Stamps. Your contribution is provided to poor people, and used to purchase the food that they see fit.[/li][li]Etc…[/li][/ul] > > There is an obvious difference between how we provide K-12 education in this country and how we provide almost everything else. Nobody thinks that the government should completely own and operate 95% of the food industry, for instance, and that only the super-rich should be able to afford non-government food. Instead private industry does almost all the production. For those who can’t afford on their own, we give them food stamps, put a few rules on how those food stamps can be used, and then let the poor people decide what food they most want to buy. The same for health care, housing, and many other things. Why would we not approach K-12 education the same way that we approach those things? We can - but that’s not what vouchers do. The difference is in how we handle the money when there are comparable public institutions. For example, in many places, there are public hospitals - they don’t lose money from their budgets to pay for Medicaid/Medicare. Money for section 8 vouchers doesn’t come from the budget of public housing developments if they exist. And public colleges don’t lose funding for each student who goes to a private college. Sure, all of those institutions will lose money from the budget when and if their costs go down or if there is just less funding available i- but a hospital’s costs don’t go down because there are ten fewer patients and neither does a school districts cost go down it loses ten students. There would be much less opposition to vouchers if they were funded in some other way. Problem is of course that often the people in favor of vouchers are also those in favor of lower taxes. As far as “That’s the way we do things in many other areas.” goes, yeah, that’s the way we do some things. And we do many other things the way we do schools. Fire departments ,police departments, trash collection, libraries, park and recreations system etc. The government either provides the service itself, contracts with another government or private entity to provide the service or it doesn’t provide the service at all. You don’t get a voucher if use a private security company in your gated community. Either your local government provides trash pick up or it doesn’t - but if it doesn’t you don’t get reimbursed for the cost of the provider you choose. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/204 "2017-04-25T13:50:27Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > If it pleases the crown, may I keep my own money that you have already taxed so that I can pay for the education of mine own child? Sure, but that means that you cannot have any of my money for your child. It is as if you are complaining about the local parks not being good enough for your child, and rather than voting for a parks levy, or showing up at the P&R meeting to voice your opinion on the running of the parks, you are demanding that we divert the public money meant to maintain our public parks for your personal backyard landscaping budget. > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > You say that both public schools and private schools have the same costs for educating the same number of students. What basis do you have for making that claim? > > It’s a widely known fact, at least among policy wonks, that it costs the government far more to build anything than it costs private enterprise. Say that the public school system and a private system are both building a school for 500 kids with 20 classrooms, brick walls, floors, roofs, cafeteria, gym, and so forth. The public school is going to cost far more, because public construction projects have to follow a bunch of government rules for contracting: unionized labor for certain things, wages must be above a certain arbitrary number, affirmative action, certain percent of contracts must go to businesses owned by women and minorities, etc… etc… Private schools and private enterprises can ignore all this dumb $%!& and just build the building as well and cheaply as possible. So, your complaint is that building a public school is going to be built to better standards, and uses local labor at prevailing wages rather than importing low wage migrant construction work? You are correct in that the building will be made cheaper, but it will not cost that much less, because most of the “savings” will be going into pockets as profit. In any case, the building of a school is only one part of the operational costs. I am sure that you could put up some sort of structure for less, and that you can make more of a profit off of my tax dollar for private companies, but the end result for my tax dollar is going to be poorer. > [@](#): > > Private schools have another advantage: they can focus on education. Drive by a public high school and you’re likely to see three football fields, four baseball fields, eight tennis courts, three running tracks, etc… Private schools are allowed to value education more than throwing a ball around, so they are more likely to actually spend money on things that matter. Cite? I went to, and live next to one of the largest school districts in Ohio. I drive by it regularly. I do see _a_ football field, as well as a big patch of grass they call a practice field, 2 baseball fields, 4 tennis courts, and one paved and one gravel running track. These are all paid for out of the sports budget that raises money through ticket sales and donations. Very little if any of the tax dollars went towards these facilities. > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Cite, please? > > Oh, what the heck. You’re just plain wrong in most cases. Let’s take, for example, Ohio’s Educational Choice Scholarship Program. [Here are the rules:](https://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/programs/ohio-educational-choice-scholarship-program/) > > Ohio’s “EdChoice” scholarship program, enacted in 2005 and launched in 2006, offers private school vouchers to K–12 students who are assigned to “low-performing” public schools. Participating private schools are required to accept the voucher as full tuition for students whose families are at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Learn more about this program’s funding, eligibility and regulations on this page. > > So this voucher program is available only to students from families earning below 200% of the poverty line, and from schools that the government classifies as lousy, which in most cases is schools that poor students attend. And similar rules are in place for the majority of voucher programs across the country. So how exactly are they are subsidy for wealthy parents? 2 things here. First, the OP, as well as other voucher advocates are not proposing a means tested system (though I will acknowledge that John Mace did indicate that vouchers _could_ be means tested), but instead to be used for middle class and higher families to divert public resources for their own exclusive use. Second, as has been linked to up thread, Ohio’s voucher system is not exactly something to be used as a model of _improving_ educational outcomes. > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Two words: online education. School vouchers are great, but frankly when it comes to reforming education in this country, most reformers think too small. They’re still stuck in the rut of believing that every child should spend 8 hours a day, 180 days a year, for 12 years in an ugly, blocky, depressing building called a “school”. Why should children be tormented like that? If kids can learn more by taking part in online courses, why shouldn’t that option be pursued? Millions of children from elementary school to Ph.D. programs are already taking online courses. Why shouldn’t governments identify the best online options and pay for children to take those online courses? To be honest, the reason for having children sit through that ordeal is to train them to be able to sit at a desk for 8 hours a day, 200+ days a year, for the rest of their lives, as that was the type of job that most kids were expected to go into after graduating. As middleman paper pushers have been largely obsolete by computers, we are training kids for a job that started going obsolete decades ago, and is essentially entirely absent now. > [@](#): > > Let’s say your kid is in a small, rural school with only 50 12th graders. With a class that small, the school probably won’t be able to offer AP Statistics or third-year Latin. But with online education, your kid could take statistics and Latin from an Ivy League professor. Local governments should absolutely pay for such things. Online education absolutely should become an integral part of public education, not just for rural students, but far all, it allows flexibility (any time, any where), diversity (didn’t understand how this teacher explained it, try another), patience (How many times can you ask a teacher to repeat what they just said before they get frustrated with you? How many times can you ask that of a computer?), and other advantages . But, before you can do that, you need to get broadband out to rural areas. Doesn’t do a rural family much good to be enrolled in online courses when they are on dial-up. But, at this point, we are talking about a complete overhaul of public education, which I would not argue it is not long overdue for, but just throwing vouchers at the problem so that those well off are able to use my tax dollars to give themselves another advantage at the expense of the public education that benefits myself and the community is a non-starter, IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/205 "2017-04-25T15:26:35Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > You are correct in that the building will be made cheaper, but it will not cost that much less, because most of the “savings” will be going into pockets as profit. In any case, the building of a school is only one part of the operational costs. This would require for-profit schools, which are hardly the norm. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/206 "2017-04-25T15:44:38Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > To be honest, the reason for having children sit through that ordeal is to train them to be able to sit at a desk for 8 hours a day, 200+ days a year, for the rest of their lives, as that was the type of job that most kids were expected to go into after graduating. As middleman paper pushers have been largely obsolete by computers, we are training kids for a job that started going obsolete decades ago, and is essentially entirely absent now. > Online education absolutely should become an integral part of public education, not just for rural students, but far all, it allows flexibility (any time, any where), diversity (didn’t understand how this teacher explained it, try another), patience (How many times can you ask a teacher to repeat what they just said before they get frustrated with you? How many times can you ask that of a computer?), and other advantages . But, before you can do that, you need to get broadband out to rural areas. Doesn’t do a rural family much good to be enrolled in online courses when they are on dial-up. Hold up–before you criticize modern classrooms for being obsolete, be sure it’s not your understanding of them that’s obsolete. In a few minutes my third graders will return from lunch and will be working on science. Some will be going outside to measure lettuce sprouts (using the metric system, baby!) and recording their results in a Google doc they made. Others will be taking photos of the under-desk storage compartment they built from popsicle sticks and sharing the photos with me online. Others will be redesigning the vehicle they built that was supposed to be powered by Coke and Mentos and failed spectacularly; they’ll probably end up writing about why it didn’t work, since I’m pretty sure it’d take much more skilled engineers than them to get it to work, but I wanted them to discover the problems firsthand rather than tell them. And so on. Yes, many workplaces have changed. So have many classrooms. As for online education, it has a pretty poor track record so far. It’s great for self-motivated students who have a lot of self-discipline. But for other kids, the lack of a teacher’s physical presence makes it easier to space out or goof off. It can be harder for a teacher to diagnose a student’s misapprehensions and correct them, when the teacher lacks clues such as body language and minor hesitations in answers or even voice tone (Did the kid confidently answer “21,” or did they say it like it was a guess?) I’m all about using it appropriately, but it’s not going to be a panacea for a long time, if ever. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/207 "2017-04-25T16:04:53Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > It’s fun to witness the dialog in this thread. Here’s some specific complaints about voucher programs: > This was immediately followed by a post (thought not in response to **Jocko** ) by a Dog-eat-dog doctrinaire: > Hi, **Octopus**! If you’re here to defend vouchers, do you think you might want to address some of the objections, e.g. those in **Jocko** ’s post? > > Amusing that you take Ohio for your example. The right-wing dominated Ohio is the poster-child for [fraudulent schools — a scourge that will get much worse as right-wingers continue to push education away from public control to hucksters who have corrupted politicians](http://www.mydaytondailynews.com/news/for-profit-schools-blasted-for-fraudulent-practices/ADvyUPYCUOr3YcMJzsztTJ/). And [Ohio’s voucher system is biased against black students.](http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/08/28/white-students-disproportionately-use-ohio-school-voucher-program.html) And [charter schools are often operated for profit by the same hucksters; this is especially a problem in … guess where? … _Ohio_.](https://weaponsofmassdeception.org/3-charter-school-kid-prisons/3-3-why-charter-schools-are-fraud-factories) Even a right-wing think tank concluded that > > Sorry if I appear to be conflating charter schools with voucherized for-profit schools. As you will learn by clicking, in Ohio both are operated by the same cast of profiteering fraudsters. I agree that private schools should be required to meet many of the same standards a public school meets. Who’s going to oversee that though? It’s not as though public is scandal free. [Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Public_Schools_cheating_scandal) If public schools didn’t have massive problems there wouldn’t be such demand for private. People do vote with their money. And that excludes the kids who can’t vote because of a poor family. A voucher makes the playing field of choice more level. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/208 "2017-04-25T16:18:29Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Sure, but that means that you cannot have any of my money for your child. No problem with me. I’ll pay my own way, and you pay yours - I don’t want your money. Sometimes we may agree that it’s beneficial that we all contribute for certain things so for those we’ll agree to do so. Some areas we may disagree, and in those cases, we’ll go our separate ways. Seems fair right? > [@DrDeth](#): > > Can you keep your tax money to build your own army, your own roads? Do you think the justification for public funding of armies and roads is the same as the justification for public funding for education? If so, can you describe this sameness? I think one is quite different than the other. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/209 "2017-04-25T16:21:03Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > As for online education, it has a pretty poor track record so far. It’s great for self-motivated students who have a lot of self-discipline. But for other kids, the lack of a teacher’s physical presence makes it easier to space out or goof off. It can be harder for a teacher to diagnose a student’s misapprehensions and correct them, when the teacher lacks clues such as body language and minor hesitations in answers or even voice tone (Did the kid confidently answer “21,” or did they say it like it was a guess?) I’m all about using it appropriately, but it’s not going to be a panacea for a long time, if ever. Online education may be great for adults, but I have to imagine that folks suggesting it as a replacement for gradeschoolers hasn’t had a gradeschooler 🙂 It should be another tool in the toolbag available if it works. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/210 "2017-04-25T16:29:35Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Hold up–before you criticize modern classrooms for being obsolete, be sure it’s not your understanding of them that’s obsolete. In a few minutes my third graders will return from lunch and will be working on science. Some will be going outside to measure lettuce sprouts (using the metric system, baby!) and recording their results in a Google doc they made. Others will be taking photos of the under-desk storage compartment they built from popsicle sticks and sharing the photos with me online. Others will be redesigning the vehicle they built that was supposed to be powered by Coke and Mentos and failed spectacularly; they’ll probably end up writing about why it didn’t work, since I’m pretty sure it’d take much more skilled engineers than them to get it to work, but I wanted them to discover the problems firsthand rather than tell them. And so on. There certainly are times when school is not dull tedium, and I applaud any educator who does what they can to make learning more interesting and accessible, and I haven’t been in the school system for over 2 decades, but there is quite a bit of rote work and tedious exercises whose purpose served, as it was explained to me when I was in school by several teachers and principals (I had to have it explained a lot, as I had issues with doing the rote tedious exercises.) to train us to be able to do rote tedious work as adults. > [@](#): > > Yes, many workplaces have changed. So have many classrooms. Hopefully, but from what I get from my nieces and kids of friends is that the amount of homework has increased, and the amount of in classroom work has as well. > [@](#): > > As for online education, it has a pretty poor track record so far. It’s great for self-motivated students who have a lot of self-discipline. But for other kids, the lack of a teacher’s physical presence makes it easier to space out or goof off. It can be harder for a teacher to diagnose a student’s misapprehensions and correct them, when the teacher lacks clues such as body language and minor hesitations in answers or even voice tone (Did the kid confidently answer “21,” or did they say it like it was a guess?) I’m all about using it appropriately, but it’s not going to be a panacea for a long time, if ever. Online education cannot replace a teacher, but it can serve as an excellent supplement. If you can watch lectures online, and have any part you didn’t understand repeated ad infinitum until you understand, or pull up a lecture from a different teacher that may explain it in a way that resonates with you better, then that frees up the teacher from being a lecturer themselves to being able to do focus more on small groups or even individual tutoring, something that is impossible with class sizes of 30+. > [@octopus](#): > > I agree that private schools should be required to meet many of the same standards a public school meets. Who’s going to oversee that though? It’s not as though public is scandal free. [Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Public_Schools_cheating_scandal) > > If public schools didn’t have massive problems there wouldn’t be such demand for private. People do vote with their money. And how do you know that there are scandal? The fact that public school’s records are public, and that they have no right or ability to hide their records from further scrutiny is why we caught on to the fact that there were teachers fudging scores in order to not lose funding under no child left behind. How is this going to work in a private system, where they do not need to make their records public, and you will need to convince a judge to give you a subpoena before they can be scrutinized? > [@](#): > > And that excludes the kids who can’t vote because of a poor family. A voucher makes the playing field of choice more level. This makes no sense. In the school district, the poor family actually has the same voice and vote as the wealthier families. With the voucher system, the wealthier families have more of a voice in what happens to the public’s money, and the poor family has even less voice, as their child is left behind in a school with fewer opportunities as that funding goes to the well off. > [@ruken](#): > > This would require for-profit schools, which are hardly the norm. Huh? For-profit schools are exactly what we are talking about in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/211 "2017-04-25T16:33:37Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > No problem with me. I’ll pay my own way, and you pay yours - I don’t want your money. Sometimes we may agree that it’s beneficial that we all contribute for certain things so for those we’ll agree to do so. Some areas we may disagree, and in those cases, we’ll go our separate ways. Seems fair right? Cool, I did a bit of research on my taxes, and between my home and my business, I pay about $14k a year on property taxes. The majority of that is for school, and I have no kids in the school district. So, if I can have that money back, then you can too. I am happy to pay it if it goes to bringing up the education level of the community, but I have no interest in subsidizing your kid. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/212 "2017-04-25T16:43:43Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Huh? For-profit schools are exactly what we are talking about in this thread. The thread is exactly about vouchers for private schools. Are you under the impression that private = for-profit? ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/213 "2017-04-25T16:47:09Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Cool, I did a bit of research on my taxes, and between my home and my business, I pay about $14k a year on property taxes. The majority of that is for school, and I have no kids in the school district. So, if I can have that money back, then you can too. > > I am happy to pay it if it goes to bringing up the education level of the community, but I have no interest in subsidizing your kid. Sounds great to me! I’m certain I pay more than that, though in CA property taxes are not the main source of education funding. Our funds go to the state where they put it through a sausage machine that screws it all up. But I’m sure the supermajority of Democrats in the state legislature will get right on making CA a beacon of public education. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/214 "2017-04-25T16:53:11Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > The thread is exactly about vouchers for private schools. Are you under the impression that private = for-profit? In places that have made major pushes for voucher/charter schools, yes, it pretty much does. In Michigan, for example, [about 80 percent of such schools](http://www.csmonitor.com/EqualEd/2017/0104/In-Michigan-a-test-case-for-US-public-schools-under-Trump) are operated by for-profit companies. As soon as you talk about handing out money, somebody is going to come sniffing around with their hand outstretched–that’s capitalism. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/215 "2017-04-25T16:55:07Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > That’s the way we do things in many other areas. > > [ul] > [li]We take taxpayer dollars and make them available to Medicare and Medicaid recipients. Those recipients decide which doctors and hospitals to go to, and your contribution is used to pay for which doctors and hospitals they choose.[/li][li]And there’s this law called the ACA (commonly “Obamacare”) under which your contribution is used to subsidize people’s health insurance purchases. Most people have a choice about what insurance to buy, and your contribution is used as the buyer sees fit.[/li][li]Section 8 housing vouchers, the primary means of providing housing to the poor. The poor decide which apartment they want to rent, and your contribution is used as the poor person sees fit.[/li][li]College and University education. Millions of students decide which college or university to attend, and your contribution, in the form of subsidies and loans, is used as they see fit.[/li][li]Food Stamps. Your contribution is provided to poor people, and used to purchase the food that they see fit.[/li][li]Etc…[/li][/ul] > > There is an obvious difference between how we provide K-12 education in this country and how we provide almost everything else. Nobody thinks that the government should completely own and operate 95% of the food industry, for instance, and that only the super-rich should be able to afford non-government food. Instead private industry does almost all the production. For those who can’t afford on their own, we give them food stamps, put a few rules on how those food stamps can be used, and then let the poor people decide what food they most want to buy. The same for health care, housing, and many other things. Why would we not approach K-12 education the same way that we approach those things? When we first created a public school system any state could have decided to have a voucher system at that point but in every state and almost every country we decided to have a public school system rather than a voucher system because it really is the best and most efficient way of educating the population. In 1980, Chile under the rule of Pinochet and the Chicago Boys protégés of Milton Friedman implemented a school voucher system. And while it hard to compare apple to apples, there is very little evidence that their voucher system outperformed a public school system. I support school choice mostly because at the margins, particularly in poor urban areas, choice is the only way students can escape a school that has become a violent gang ridden hellhole, but I think there is a really big gap between school choice in areas with underperforming violence ridden schools and school vouchers in rural Kansas where everyone is just going to send their kids to “evolution is just a theory” school. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/216 "2017-04-25T17:11:07Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Cite, please? > > Oh, what the heck. You’re just plain wrong in most cases. Let’s take, for example, Ohio’s Educational Choice Scholarship Program. [Here are the rules:](https://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/programs/ohio-educational-choice-scholarship-program/) > > Ohio’s “EdChoice” scholarship program, enacted in 2005 and launched in 2006, offers private school vouchers to K–12 students who are assigned to “low-performing” public schools. Participating private schools are required to accept the voucher as full tuition for students whose families are at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Learn more about this program’s funding, eligibility and regulations on this page. > > So this voucher program is available only to students from families earning below 200% of the poverty line, and from schools that the government classifies as lousy, which in most cases is schools that poor students attend. And similar rules are in place for the majority of voucher programs across the country. So how exactly are they are subsidy for wealthy parents? They have a similar program here in DC and you have a handful of inner city school kids going to Sidwell Friends with Obama’s girls on a voucher. The voucher doesn’t cover a third of the cost of the tuition and fees but Sidwell Friends goes ahead and participates in the program anyway. If they were told they had to take all comers for that amount, they would withdraw from the program. This is not the template that the school voucher folks want to implement. If it was really just a scholarship program for poor kids at failing schools then most people wouldn’t have a problem with it. Heck the Mayor of DC (endorsed by pretty much every teacher’s union in the country), supports the DC voucher program because it brings new money to the table to pay for the vouchers rather than strip public schools of funding. The Secretary of Education’s support of vouchers is based on her desire to expand access to religious schools for middle class kids. She is not opposed to top up fees (requiring students to pay the difference between a voucher and the tuition rate. The argument for top up fees is that every public school student has access to after school programs for a fee, why can’t public school students spend money to improve on what is being publicly provided by paying top up fees? ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/217 "2017-04-25T17:15:15Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > In places that have made major pushes for voucher/charter schools, yes, it pretty much does. In Michigan, for example, [about 80 percent of such schools](http://www.csmonitor.com/EqualEd/2017/0104/In-Michigan-a-test-case-for-US-public-schools-under-Trump) are operated by for-profit companies. > > As soon as you talk about handing out money, somebody is going to come sniffing around with their hand outstretched–that’s capitalism. The vast majority of US charter schools are non-profit. And if for-profit is a problem, follow Mississippi and Tennessee and curb them. For-profit EMOs run something like 15% of charters. I’ll pull a citation if you like. I don’t have data on vouchers, but I have yet to interact with a private school that isn’t a 501(3)(c). Do you know how many of the 30k+ private PK-12 schools in the US are for-profit? ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/218 "2017-04-25T17:17:34Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > The thread is exactly about vouchers for private schools. Are you under the impression that private = for-profit? Ummm, yes. Well, sort of. I am aware that there are many private schools that are for profit, are you under the impression that this is not the case, that private != for-profit? There are private schools that are run by religious groups that are not for profit, but I have even greater reservations about those than I do about the ones run for profit. Hard to say whether a poor education is worse than a poor education combined with indoctrination, but I would prefer that my money not be used to support either. > [@Bone](#): > > Sounds great to me! I’m certain I pay more than that, though in CA property taxes are not the main source of education funding. Our funds go to the state where they put it through a sausage machine that screws it all up. But I’m sure the supermajority of Democrats in the state legislature will get right on making CA a beacon of public education. Okay, well, the easiest way to vote with your dollars is to move to a community where they don’t have as high of a tax rate. Of course, they will have fewer services available to you, and the public that you interact with will be more poorly educated and unhealthy, but if you don’t want to pay for those services, no one is forcing you to, and you will have freed up those precious tax dollars to be used for your personal enjoyment, rather than the improvement of the community in which you live. If you are paying more than $14k in property taxes, you are obviously wealthy enough that mobility is not an issue. Why do you stay in a state and a community that takes so much from you without giving anything back to you in return? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/219 "2017-04-25T17:21:07Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Two words: online education. School vouchers are great, but frankly when it comes to reforming education in this country, most reformers think too small. They’re still stuck in the rut of believing that every child should spend 8 hours a day, 180 days a year, for 12 years in an ugly, blocky, depressing building called a “school”. Why should children be tormented like that? If kids can learn more by taking part in online courses, why shouldn’t that option be pursued? Millions of children from elementary school to Ph.D. programs are already taking online courses. Why shouldn’t governments identify the best online options and pay for children to take those online courses? > > Let’s say your kid is in a small, rural school with only 50 12th graders. With a class that small, the school probably won’t be able to offer AP Statistics or third-year Latin. But with online education, your kid could take statistics and Latin from an Ivy League professor. Local governments should absolutely pay for such things. Well, that’s one idea that I have seen get a lot of traction from the homeschooling crowd. A lot of home schoolers like the more tailored approach to education that home schooling permits. It is much more time intensive from the parent’s perspective but the kids end up with something closer to a 1::1 student teacher ratio tan conventionally taught children. If you are talking about having teachers play a Khan’s academy video during class, I think they already have stuff like that going on in school. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941/220 "2017-04-25T17:37:05Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Ummm, yes. Well, sort of. I am aware that there are many private schools that are for profit Then show us that this “many” is even enough to bother discussing. There are over 30k private schools in this country. I don’t know anyone sending their kid to a for-profit one. Your profit argument doesn’t hold water if it’s a rare exception that can be avoided when crafting voucher legislation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-to-me-what-is-wrong-with-school-vouchers-as-an-idea/784941.md?page=12)