Let's debate vouchers.

Great Debates
41

I’m confused?

As I understand it, all students get the voucher, including the students who already go to private schools.

Won’t these students also then have the voucher plus the money their parents are willing to spend on a private school? Nontheless, won’t these schools still take the cream only?

And are private schools hurting for students? I presume their enrollment is already sufficiently full, such that the ratio of students to services are optimal. Can these schools double their student population without increasing tuition? Capital costs, logistics and all.

I suspect that parents with children in private school spend alot more money on education then just the tuition. All the attendant extracurricular costs, etc.

42

Current private schools might take the cream only, but with the influx of money vouchers would provide, it wouldn’t take too long before new schools are openned that cater to the average student. And I am willing to bet there would be at least some schools who market themselves towards children with disabilities, and other that aim for disruptive children. This sort of system would provide several sorts of niche schools, for different groups. Of course, some parents would chose incompently run schools, or creationism or fudementalist Islam, but hey - people on food stamps buy junk food with them.

Actually, food stamps make a good analogy for the school voucher thing; food stamps are just vouchers to supplement food spending for the poor. If we ran our food distrobution system like we did the education system, we would have masses of government owned farmers, of wildly varied quality and effiecency, spread about the country. And I wager some areas would be doing well enough, some private farms would produce dang good food, and some people would be starving. But instead, we hand people a subsidy for, and then let the market system and the person’s own choice determine what they want to eat. No reason we can’t try it with education, or at least start out some experiments in the seriously screwed up inner city schools.

43

It’s great that you made the effort to get some data out there for Pittsburgh–for others, go check out the CAPEnet citation (see above). If you just want a snapshot, or want to compare local prices to national, these people have already done the national research.

44

The problem is, the Unites States already spends more money on education per student than almost any country in the world (and it’s probably not much of a stretch to say, more than almost any country in the history of civilization), but we still get only mediocre results. From this, I can only conclude that it’s not the absolute dollar amount we spend on education that’s hold this country’s schools back, but it’s something else. The problem is that there is something in our system that won’t be fixed by throwing more money at it, and we need to figure out what that problem is.

45

Dr. Love, think that has anything to do with how big the US is in terms of habitable areas and where people actually live than compared to most countries in the world? Think if the entire US population lived in California it might be a little easier to fund schooling?

Suppose the EU suddenly took over education in Europe… think costs would go up?

46

You can thank George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” for that – if a school’s scores don’t show increases every year, their funding is at risk. Therefore, to avoid losing this money, teachers and administrators have to move heaven and earth to help their kids pass the test, to the point where studying for other subjects get cut in order to do so.

I don’t know of a single public school teacher who thinks NCLB actually helps students; I know lots who say it makes a bad situation worse.

47

The kids at my high school couldn’t afford to rent graduation gowns to take part of the graduation ceromony. They simply arn’t able to afford to pay anything- even the cost of a single textbook- for education.

Not to mention the near-total lack of controls on private schools. We had a post a while back where a woman wanting to send her kids to private schools was warned several times that some of the programs are not at all what they look like in those glossy brochures. I’ve known private schools where the teachers had no sort of credentials or education whatsoever. And when you bring religion into things (and it will come up) who knows what these kids could be taught. Thats great if you want a generation that knows nothing about science and english but all there is to know about Jesus. And what happens to the one atheist kid in town when all the other schools close down?

Anyway, none of this matters since this whole thing is about people who already send their kids to private schools wanting the state to hand them some money, not about education quality at all.

48

If America is spending the most per student than any nation in the world and getting the least return for it… doesn’t that show that this money is being wasted in the current system?

I know Democrats and their NEA will fight pretty hard to prevent school vouchers, so their scare mongering about taxpayer-supported fundamentalist Nazi schools are not credible. How’s this for scare mongering? Limosine liberals don’t want vouchers because they don’t want their daughters meeting and bringing home those “poor minorities”. “Aren’t they happy enough with the welfare we give them? Why do they insist on being in the same schools as our children?”
We can call “racism” in this issue pretty easily, too.

What’s wrong with vouchers being needs-based? That would remove the liberal’s complaint that middle- and upper-class people are getting money for something they would do anyways.

Doesn’t the government give grants and such to college students which can be spent in accredited private, religious universities? Why is that so much different?

How much is vouchers different from charter schools?

How well has the voucher system worked in other countries? I thought I heard from a Puerto Rican that their recent switch to voucherism didn’t cause that much of a change… but I’ll concede that Puerto Rico isn’t a large country.
What about Japan or the U.K.?

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49

I believe you are mistaken about NCLB funding. Scores don’t need to increase, they need to meet a certain standard. I don’t understand your opposition to a school focusing on making sure their students meet minimum standards, that is reading and math at grade level. Fundamentally, these are the subjects that I think are of primary importance. If little Johnny can’t read, who really cares if he can take all manner of electives.

Public school teachers are really not the group of people you want to survey about NCLB. Administrators are the ones that see NCLB filling their budget, providing funding, and can make management decisions based on what is available. These are all things that a teacher does not see. NCLB may not be perfect, but it sure as hell is better than what was there before, IOW, nothing at all.

<—who is the Controller for a small public charter school district.

50

The National Center for Policy Analysis has a good overview of the different options for improving US education and how well each has been proven to work. One of the most interesting facts:

The article is a bit long and three years old, but they have done a suprisingly good job of bringing all of the research together in one place.

51

No, I don’t think it makes a good analogy. Everyone is not eligible for food stamps, while school vouchers would be.

The only way I can see the voucher system working is by ensuring some basic rules:

  1. Income requirements. Why should people who can already afford to send their kids to private school get help doing so? Especially since these people are more likely to have access to good public schools anyway.

  2. District requirements. Kids should only be eligible for vouchers if their local schools are judged to be inferior. I’m much more willing to help people escape schools juggling large class sizes, low test scores, and no technology than helping Johnny attend a school with eleven AP classes instead of just five.

  3. To keep public schools functioning, the number of vouchers issued per district or neighborhood should be limited. Randomize the selection process using a yearly lottery.

4.Only approved private schools should be allowed under the voucher program. Only accredited schools should be approved, and schools accepting vouchers should have to submit to some scrutinity on a regular basis.

  1. Continue to work with our public schools. Public schools worked fine for me, just as they worked for the majority of Dopers. I don’t think it’s productive or realistic to give up on them.
52

I’ve never heard the complaint phrased exactly that way. I have heard people complain that people who already send their kids to private school are most likely to support vouchers, and that giving vouchers to children already in private schools doesn’t save the school system any money. And that always seems to be how the local vouchers presented. " Public education costs 10,000 per pupil. Give a $4000 voucher and the school district still has the other $6000 with one less child to educate. Even the school system benefits" It doesn’t really work that way, for a lot of reasons- suppose the kids who cost $3-5000 leave the system and the ones who cost $15-20000 stay. (special ed can be very expensive) If thirty second graders leave, you may be able to eliminate one second grade class-assuming there is more than one. But if three kids leave each grade of a pre-k - 8 school, you won’t be able to save a teacher’s salary. You’ll end up using a bit less of consumable supplies such as paper and soap. But the utilities, maintenance, salaries etc, will be the same.

A few big differences in my mind :

  1. The government is not required to provide a free, public college education to everyone. It doesn’t have to set up a system of colleges to accomodate those who aren’t accepted by any private college, or who don’t bother to apply to private colleges, or those who can’t afford private college tuition even with grants.

  2. The grants are based on financial need, and may vary with the cost of attending a particular college. I haven’t seen a voucher plan based on need yet, and don’t expect to. Many current supporters would not support them if eligibilty were based on need.

  3. Most importantly to me, financial aid doesn’t come from a public college or university’s budget. My city and state each have a public university system. But there is no subtraction from that system’s funding for those who receive financial aid. No “Students who lived in Brooklyn received one million dollars in state financial aid grants, therefore Brooklyn College loses $400,000 from its budget”. The financial aid comes from completely separate funds. On the other hand, if my kids get vouchers under the plan that’s being talked about in my state, that money will come from the public school sytems budget. If someone want to find another way to provide vouchers without taking the money directly from the public schools, that would be fine with me. Based on financial need or not. But nobody’s talking about raising taxes or dedicating a new lottery to pay for these vouchers.

53

Vouchers are a suspicious thing.

Every politician I’ve ever seen who supported vouchers wanted to make education into a simple issue.

Public education – and its problems – are not a simple issue, not at all. They’re complex as all hell, and if you insist on trying to fix it with simpleminded solutions, you’re just going to screw things up worse. Ask any teacher about “No Child Left Behind” to see what I’m talking about.

First of all, vouchers are based on the idea that competition is good, and that competition will somehow cause good schools to become better and bad schools to disintegrate.

This is a reasonable assumption… for a business.

Education is not a business. The closest you could get is “service industry.” It is, however, a service industry in which every American HAS A RIGHT TO THE SERVICE BEING OFFERED. The schools CAN’T tell you, “No, we don’t want to take your kid.”

Give every American a right to demand Coca-Cola or Wal-Mart merchandise, free of charge, and I’ll show you two powerful companies shoved to the edge of bankruptcy durn near overnight.

Hey, let’s make it even better. Let’s fire the boards of directors of those companies, and replace them with local elected officials. And let’s make those companies responsible to the State Board of Soft Drinks and Consumer Goods.

And then we’ll have a few generations of politicians ride into office by “Holding Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart Responsible To The Needs Of American Children.”

Do this, my friends, and I will show you the burnt-out wrecks of two once-proud, once-profitable corporations, and you won’t have to wait long.

Vouchers aren’t going to work unless the private schools that accept the vouchers are held to the EXACT SAME STANDARDS as public schools… as far as accountability, grade requirements, and who they MUST accept, whether they want to or not.

Any other equation equals, at best, the rich and able in private schools, and the poor, unable, unwilling, and so forth in the public schools… for which you and I pay the bills.

Meanwhile, I’d also like to see a solution to “public school problems” that doesn’t involve cutting off funds to the school. You don’t fix a car by refusing to put enough gas in it, folks…

54

But that is just not true. Try enrolling your inner-city kid in a rich suburban public school.

I think it is unethical to tell some poor kid that he has to stay in his crappy assigned school. The right to educational choice should be a liberal cause, not a knee-jerk liberal position. The fact that some conservatives are for it as well is not enough reason to oppose progress.

55

Dan, I have always thought of vouchers as a Conservative cause. Huh.

56

Yes I would expect the cost to go up, but by 60% (our per student cost as compared to the average per student cost given in the report cited previously)?
My question is: where is this money going? What does our school system have more of than any other? You seem to be suggesting that we have more schools than anyone else. A quick Google doesn’t seem to yield any numbers, so I can’t refute that. If you are correst, it would shed some light on why our costs are as high as they are.

57

Maybe it’s not more schools than any other country that causes it, but the sparse population we have in some areas- for example this school district http://www.death-valley.us/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1080 has 78 students, three schools and some of the kids are bused 60 miles one way to school. That’s three bus drivers, probably six teachers and at least one administrator, who get salaries and probably some benefits. Plus the costs of operating the buses, air-conditioning ( I’m sure ) the schools, etc, divided among 78 students. Apparently, there are quite a few small ( in terms of students)districts with similar problems. I’m not at all sure that other countries provide a free public education including transportation to , or even have, areas of such low population density

58

How in Ghu’s name does this bear on the question of per-pupil spending and results obtained in exchange for same?

59

New Schools? The capital/startup costs seem prohibitably high, when you consider that the average house price in Hawaii is $360,000.

60

Depending on the school district, that’s not necessarily impossible.

Case in point: I’m currently living in the city of Torrance, CA, which has a school district separate from that (but adjacent to) the Los Angeles Unified School District. If a parent in the adjacent LAUSD city of Carson, CA thinks that the Torrance schools are better, they can apply to enroll their kids in the Torrance schools. True, the TUSD has some limits on this enrollment, based on factors like available classroom space and first-priority for Torrance children, but if there’s no pressing reason not to let these “outside” kids in, the TUSD accepts them without any fuss. One of my cousins (who lives less than a mile away, but outside the Torrance city boundaries) is enrolled in a TUSD school this way, because my Aunt prefers TUSD over the LAUSD.

So much for “But that is just not true,” eh? :wink: