Good point. I actually implied as much at the end of my previous post (#114), but for some reason it never occurred to me that since $9,800 is less than $13,755, government spending per student would go down if absolute spending remained constant. Duh.
Off the top of my head, there are a couple of ways to look at this. One is that increased spending on education is probably desirable one way or another, and vouchers might be a way to spend that money more efficiently (and would, incidentally, be a good way to get conservatives on board with significantly expanded school spending).
Alternately, you could keep spending the same. If you conceive of the state as merely the mechanism by which the people make collective decisions and take collective actions (and not necessarily as an entity separate from (and/or opposed to) civil society, then the important thing is that the total amount of money spent by society on education would remain constant; only the route the money takes would change. Of course, this would effectively represent a regressive tax, which is a tough nut. Most of the money would flow back into the economy (and much of it back into tax revenue), though, so it’s not a total loss.
OK, I see what you are saying. Thanks, and I believe you are correct.
The offsetting efficiency of a voucher system, coupled with the accountability of “funding following the student” is intended to counter-act this effect, however. Students whose parents are rich enough/committed enough to send their kids to private schools and still pay their taxes for other peoples’ kids will tend to have the advantages (involved parents, commitment to education, money) that tend to correlate with academic success.
[anecdote] One of the things that drove us to send our kids to private school was a referendum in our district, allegedly to decrease class size. There was a lot of publicity, much of which pushed the idea of “do it for the kids!”
The referendum passed. My wife attended the school board meeting where they decided how to spend the increase.
They decided to build a series of storage sheds to store their lawn mowers and other maintenance equipment for the football teams. My wife spoke up and reminded them that they were supposed to spend it to decrease class size.
They all laughed at the suggestion.
This was shortly after an incident at the school closest to our house, where a special needs student attacked two other class mates. The principal met with the parents of the special needs student, and the two that had been attacked. (Parents of the attackees were not invited.) The principal instructed the two who were attacked not to tell their parents, or anyone else, what had happened.