# Romney's voucher system for schools **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 12, 2012, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919 "2012-06-12T14:37:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/141 "2012-06-15T13:33:26Z")
> [@Fiddle\_Peghead](#): > > Maybe I’m incredibly dense, but just I don’t understand how this would work. A poor student chooses to go to a public school in another district because it is better than the one in his own district. The bigger issue is that Romney’s proposal will require Congress to pass legislation overriding state districting laws. They do actually have the authority to do it under the 14th Amendment, but only to break up segregated school systems. They can’t do it just because they want students to have more choices - except perhaps by forcing states to change their own districting laws by threatening to withdraw federal education funds. ETA: FMI, that’s pretty much what **furt** noted on the first page of the thread: school choice initiatives may work in densely populated urban areas, but almost certainly won’t in low-density/rural areas. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/142 "2012-06-15T13:44:55Z")
In addition to my earlier post, I don’t understand how the “competition” from poor kids being allowed to go to better schools outside their district leads to improvement in _public_ schools. Being that there is no profit motive, perhaps the idea is that a given under-performing school will somehow improve itself so as not to be shut down if it finds students leaving it for other schools. But how can this work? It has the same monetary resources for school facilities, hiring good teachers, etc. Are we to believe that, say, jaded and burnt out teachers in poor schools will suddenly be motivated to turn things around and somehow bring the school up to a higher standard? Which leads me to again say that the idea of choice in public schools will not solve the problem. You MUST improve existing schools. Someone in an earlier post suggested this cannot be done. I don’t have kids, but I am very well acquainted with the public schools my 11yo nephew and 8yo niece attend, and they are uniformly excellent. Yes, they live in one of the wealthiest areas in the USA, and this surely accounts to a large degree for why the schools are so good. But they are proof that public schools can be every bit as good as private ones. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/143 "2012-06-15T13:55:01Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > ETA: FMI, that’s pretty much what **furt** noted on the first page of the thread: school choice initiatives may work in densely populated urban areas, but almost certainly won’t in low-density/rural areas. Furt mentions public _charter_ schools, which I know nothing about. If we’re talking about new, well-funded charter schools, I guess I can see how they could succeed. Correct my if I’m wrong though, but charter schools don’t charge tuition, right? So again, the is no profit motive there. In any case, I’m only speaking in the context of existing public schools, however. See my last post. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/144 "2012-06-15T13:57:34Z")
The general idea is this: school X has 100 pupils. School Y has 100 pupils. School X is superbly run; school Y is not. Higher test scores and parent/pupil satisfaction survey results at X lead 35 students from Y to enroll in X. X gets 35% of Y’s funding to offset its additional load. Eventually, either school Y will improve, or X will control all school funding in the district, meaning everyone gets a good education. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/145 "2012-06-15T14:01:13Z")
> [@fumster](#): > > You do understand that employers in many countries in Europe pay a payroll tax, that is not included in the salary, that funds things like UHC. .. and US employers pay benefits that are, on the average, [30% of total compensation](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/eci.nr0.htm) (and are not included in the salary). Oh and payroll tax as well. ---
**Author:** ![FixMyIgnorance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7feea3/32.png) [@FixMyIgnorance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FixMyIgnorance)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/146 "2012-06-15T14:09:39Z")
> [@Fiddle\_Peghead](#): > > In addition to my earlier post, I don’t understand how the “competition” from poor kids being allowed to go to better schools outside their district leads to improvement in _public_ schools. Being that there is no profit motive, perhaps the idea is that a given under-performing school will somehow improve itself so as not to be shut down if it finds students leaving it for other schools. But how can this work? It has the same monetary resources for school facilities, hiring good teachers, etc. Are we to believe that, say, jaded and burnt out teachers in poor schools will suddenly be motivated to turn things around and somehow bring the school up to a higher standard? > . I think this is the main idea behind Romney’s proposal. By allowing people to “vote with their feet,” it supposedly puts pressure on underperforming schools to up their game so students won’t leave – a classic “marketplace” dynamic where if you don’t adapt, you are phased out of the game. But this, to me, feels like typical Republican rhetoric, honestly, as if the schools are underperforming because they’re lazy/stupid as opposed to severely underfunded and riddled with a variety of other issues. It also just seems like a strategy to chip away at public schools and funnel more money into the private sector (and potentially the religious sector). Some schools suck and are unfortunately the only choice some kids have, and this voucher system isn’t addressing the core issue IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/147 "2012-06-15T14:12:58Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > The general idea is this: school X has 100 pupils. School Y has 100 pupils. School X is superbly run; school Y is not. Higher test scores and parent/pupil satisfaction survey results at X lead 35 students from Y to enroll in X. X gets 35% of Y’s funding to offset its additional load. > > Eventually, either school Y will improve, or X will control all school funding in the district, meaning everyone gets a good education. I get the general idea. I think my denseness can be explained by the fact that the idea itself seems so ridiculous. School Y is so poorly run that any money spent on it is a waste. We simply use that same money to expand school X, which means building more facilities and hiring more high-quality teachers. But if we know that is what will solve the problem, then just fix school Y in the same way and cut out the intermediate steps! ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/148 "2012-06-15T14:15:15Z")
> [@FixMyIgnorance](#): > > But this, to me, feels like typical Republican rhetoric, honestly, as if the schools are underperforming because they’re lazy/stupid as opposed to severely underfunded and riddled with a variety of other issues. Again with the “severely underfunded” canard. As I pointed out before even [severely overfunding schools](http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-298.html) has no effect on the quality of education in them, and United States already pays more to teachers and spends more per pupil than any other Western country. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/149 "2012-06-15T14:22:04Z")
> [@Fiddle\_Peghead](#): > > I get the general idea. I think my denseness can be explained by the fact that the idea itself seems so ridiculous. Funding is moved around, suggesting that the main reason one school is so much better is due not to money at all, but the already high-quality of facilities and teachers at school X. In other words, school Y is so poorly run that any money spent on it is a waste. We simply use that same money to expand school X, which means building more facilities and hiring more high-quality teachers. But if we know that is what will solve the problem, then just fix school Y in the same way and cut out the intermediate steps! > > I believe it was **Farmer Jane** that suggested this earlier. I couldn’t agree more. Well, that _is_ the theoretical end result, if school Y doesn’t improve. I know it sounds like an iffy theory, but it’s worked in other contexts. The UK NHS went to a sort-of-market-based model for allocating patients to general practitioners (family physicians) beginning in the 70s. It worked like this: doctors were paid on a per-patient basis (all NHS patients must “register” their primary care physician or clinic). Popular doctors took more and more patients; unpopular doctors would have fewer. This meant the (subjectively) poor doctors could spend more time with patients, theoretically leading to roughly equal quality of care. ---
**Author:** ![FixMyIgnorance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7feea3/32.png) [@FixMyIgnorance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FixMyIgnorance)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/150 "2012-06-15T14:24:29Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > Again with the “severely underfunded” canard. As I pointed out before even [severely overfunding schools](http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-298.html) has no effect on the quality of education in them, and United States already pays more to teachers and spends more per pupil than any other Western country. If overfunding schools has no effect on the quality of the education, then the funding needs to be re-allocated better within the school system. I mentioned earlier that the increase in funding doesn’t necessarily go towards making things better for the students. I know that years ago when I was in high school, we had budget cuts all over the place, and it made the school worse over time. Eventually we caught a windfall of additional funding and almost all of it went into renovating the entire building. The textbooks didn’t change/get any better, teachers didn’t change, no new/top talent was hired, etc, but we certainly had new sports equipment and a stadium overhaul. I don’t know if there were salary increases too, but I wouldn’t put it past them. Of course, I am but one anecdote, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this were common. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/151 "2012-06-15T14:25:54Z")
> [@FixMyIgnorance](#): > > If overfunding schools has no effect on the quality of the education, then the funding needs to be re-allocated better within the school system. I mentioned earlier that the increase in funding doesn’t necessarily go towards making things better for the students. Did you read the link I gave? 20 years of ridiculously high funding for the school district didn’t improve the educational achievement in the slightest. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/152 "2012-06-15T14:38:01Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > Did you read the link I gave? 20 years of ridiculously high funding for the school district didn’t improve the educational achievement in the slightest. Is a single test case enough to prove that increased funding cannot improve education results? And earlier you said > [@](#): > > Throwing money at them does not work, as studied here and as evidenced by the fact that the United States spends the most per pupil (except Switzerland) out of all Western countries with pathetic results. This speaks to the average spending per student, but doesn’t break down the amount of spending in good schools vs. poor ones. Some schools may be pathetic, but as I stated earlier I know of two in a wealthy district that are excellent. Perhaps this is an anomaly, I honestly don’t know. Do you have any statistics for schools across the US that compares funding to education results? ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/153 "2012-06-15T14:41:13Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Well, that _is_ the theoretical end result, if school Y doesn’t improve. > > I know it sounds like an iffy theory, but it’s worked in other contexts. The UK NHS went to a sort-of-market-based model for allocating patients to general practitioners (family physicians) beginning in the 70s. It worked like this: doctors were paid on a per-patient basis (all NHS patients must “register” their primary care physician or clinic). Popular doctors took more and more patients; unpopular doctors would have fewer. This meant the (subjectively) poor doctors could spend more time with patients, theoretically leading to roughly equal quality of care. Did you get your threads mixed up? 🙂 I thought we were talking about salaried public school teachers, not doctors who stand to profit more based on the effort they put into their jobs. I’m not sure the comparison is apt. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/154 "2012-06-15T14:44:21Z")
> [@Fiddle\_Peghead](#): > > Do you have any statistics for schools across the US that compares funding to education results? [http://www.heritage.org/static/reportimages/57EAC2158291FB1057F142C86F169A7F.gif](http://www.heritage.org/static/reportimages/57EAC2158291FB1057F142C86F169A7F.gif) Does this look like spending more money improves results? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/155 "2012-06-15T14:48:19Z")
> [@Fiddle\_Peghead](#): > > Did you get your threads mixed up? 🙂 I thought we were talking about salaried public school teachers, not doctors who stand to profit more based on the effort they put into their jobs. I’m not sure the comparison is apt. The point is that the same _effect_ should still apply: good schools will have more students, and thus a higher teacher/student ratio, whereas crappy schools will have fewer, allowing teachers to spend more time with each student. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/156 "2012-06-15T14:59:43Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > [http://www.heritage.org/static/reportimages/57EAC2158291FB1057F142C86F169A7F.gif](http://www.heritage.org/static/reportimages/57EAC2158291FB1057F142C86F169A7F.gif) > > Does this look like spending more money improves results? First off I want to be clear that I’m not saying it does or doesn’t. That was just a simple request for information. As stated, various arguments I’ve read don’t make sense to me, but I’m willing to be convinced. Now, to the chart. It doesn’t really tell me much at all (despite the fact that it is _exactly_ what I asked for). 🙂 Not to move the goalposts on you, but clearly I should have asked for data on before and after spending for particular districts. And just showing the graduation percentages, quite frankly, isn’t too helpful. It doesn’t tell me about students who were promoted along the line when perhaps they really didn’t deserve it, and nothing about what exactly students learned at school. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/157 "2012-06-15T15:09:53Z")
Oh, and another thing about that chart. Are the dollar amounts for each district adjusted for local prices? I see that Meza, AZ is dead last in spending, yet has the highest graduation rate.\* Do dollars in Meza go further than they do in Boston, where they spend well over two times as much on students, but have a 20% lower graduation rate? I just can’t draw any hard and fast conclusions from this chart. I need more data! \*Again, though, I’m not sure how useful just the graduation rate is. ---
**Author:** ![FixMyIgnorance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7feea3/32.png) [@FixMyIgnorance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FixMyIgnorance)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/158 "2012-06-15T15:11:17Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > Did you read the link I gave? 20 years of ridiculously high funding for the school district didn’t improve the educational achievement in the slightest. To be fully honest, I only read the opening couple of paragraphs: > [@](#): > > Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil–more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers’ salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country. > > The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration. > > The Kansas City experiment suggests that, indeed, educational problems can’t be solved by throwing money at them, that the structural problems of our current educational system are far more important than a lack of material resources, and that the focus on desegregation diverted attention from the real problem, low achievement. Which to me seems obvious – if you put additional funding into additional buildings, expensive amenities, pricey field trips, etc, I am not honestly surprised that performance did not rise. I think this experiment could have turned out completely different had they directed resources into optimizing the educational experience. Money alone isn’t the answer, but without it, real change is hard to bring about. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/159 "2012-06-15T15:20:11Z")
> [@FixMyIgnorance](#): > > Which to me seems obvious – if you put additional funding into additional buildings, expensive amenities, pricey field trips, etc, I am not honestly surprised that performance did not rise. I think this experiment could have turned out completely different had they directed resources into optimizing the educational experience. Money alone isn’t the answer, but without it, real change is hard to bring about. I didn’t want to make yet another post before anyone even responded to my others, but this is the exact thought that occurred to me right after I last hit “Enter”. It seems to me that there is a theoretical optimal amount of dollars per student that should be spent in order to maximize the educational experience. Too much and your just creating needless distractions. But too little, and you don’t have the resources to adequately educate anyone. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2012, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919/160 "2012-06-15T16:04:12Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > That’s exactly the point. If, on average charter school do the same or worse, meaning the average kid is the same or worse, then what is the point continuing to fund these experiments? I liken it to pharmaceutical research. Say you have a drug that is supposed to cure cancer. It does for some people, but for others it kills them, and for the average person it is ineffective or bad. What is the chance that such a drug would be approved? The more apt medical analogy would be one where various drugs were tried, and the results were mixed among the different drugs. When some drugs show signs of being able to alleviate the symptoms, and other drugs show signs of making them worse, the logical response is not “give up on medication, because on average it doesn’t work.” In 2012, being against school choice in any form is the equivalent of the Rush Limbaugh position on global warming, where stubborn insistence and selective data reading is pitted against the analysis of pretty much every expert in the field. School choice-or-not is no longer an issue among serious people who study or do policy in education; the issues are what those choices should look like, how widespread they should be, and how the market should be structured and regulated (e.g. vouchers vs. public charters, for-profit vs. non-profit, etc). But “no charters” has ceased to be a tenable position for anyone but stubborn idealogues. Don’t listen to me: go read the progressive think tanks like [CAP](http://www.americanprogress.org/publicsearch/?text=charter+schools&searchicon.x=0&searchicon.y=0) and [PPI](http://progressivepolicy.org/?s=charter+schools) and [Education Sector](http://www.educationsector.org/search/apachesolr_search/charter%20schools); look at the NEA and AFT, both of which agree that charter schools are part of the solution; look at the progressive-leaning non-profits and foundations that are playing a role, from Broad to Gates to Education Pioneers and the Urban League; listen to the Democratic policymakers who have done the research and come out in favor of charters. It’d be easier to name the three or four big-city mayors currently in office who _don’t_ support charter schools than to list the couple dozen who do, from [Booker](http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2011/06/21/newark-mayor-cory-booker-charter-school-advocates-are-modern-day-freedom-fighters/) to Emanuel to Nutter, etc. Sorry, but the ship has sailed. If your position is “no charters,” I don’t think I have any more to offer you. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romneys-voucher-system-for-schools/624919.md?page=9)