# School Choice and Vouchers **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 25, 2009, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908 "2009-06-25T03:28:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**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 26, 2009, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/101 "2009-06-26T14:35:09Z")
> [@A.Selene](#): > > Competition between schools, whether public or private, would properly re-adjust the incentives for schools to successfully educate children. Schools worked well would expand and successful programs be emulated by other schools; failing paradigms would pass away. Voucher programs are just the way to do this. The problem you’re missing is that while the passage unto death of “failing paradigms” is one thing when you’re talking about breakfast cereals or toothpastes, it’s quite another when you’re talking about education. What happens when the only school serving Inner City Area X or Rural Area Y “passes away”? You need a new school, and while the omniscient, omnipotent free market will surely provide one in time, 5000 kids will be roaming the streets for a couple of years in the meantime. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/102 "2009-06-26T14:36:48Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > My problem with vouchers is that I imagine it’s one of those things that only the “in the know” middle-class parents will take advantage of, not the people who really need it. I don’t think that would be the case. While middle class families cold be expected to be more knowledgeable about their education options, people living in poor areas have more incentive, as their current plight is considerably worse. Also, from the popularity of charter programs in poor areas like Milwaukee and D.C., I think your premise might be wrong. ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/103 "2009-06-26T14:40:40Z")
> [@furlibusea](#): > > First of all, the law is what we have to deal with, day in and day out. It is the reality. Whether you like it or not, Bi-polar girl needs to be there. Does she need to be in your kid’s classroom? That really depends on how disabled she is. Most kids are included sometimes during the day, but many of the kids with really difficult needs are likely to be in their own classes for academic classes. > > Ok. I admit that the pwincess pwecious thing was over the top. I am, however, afraid I have seen too much of the idea of shielding kids from the disabled. I think the problem here is you two are talking past each other. One side is talking about disruption and the other about special needs kids needing more help. One can be special needs and not be disruptive. However, if you are disruptive, for whatever reason, you should be removed/isolated. IMO (and this opinion would get me in trouble as a teacher) disruptive students rights end when they interfere with the rights of the other students to get an education. They then need to be removed. However, I fully agree that special needs kids should try to have access to normal classrooms. My personal anecdote is: I was teaching HS…and there was a boy in the district that had been institutionalized. He was violent, hated women (especially female teachers) and had other issues. However, he was bright and liked science, particularly computers. The community was paying $100K a year to institutionalize him. They decided to mainstream him. As part of the plan, they knew he liked to bond to a single authority figure. They figured I would be the one because I was male and I also taught math/computer science. they set it up so that he would bond to me. It worked like a charm. He was never really a lick of trouble. We were able to keep him in line (plus I think he really wanted to himself). So…in this case your daughter could have been put in a class with a boy that had a prior history of violence to women, had been institutionalized..a scary person. However, I am on his side. He was given a chance and if he had started being scary he would have been removed (disruption=removal). He didn’t, so he wasn’t. A success. Now, I think both sides might agree this was a good risk. HOWEVER, if the child would have started being disruptive he should be removed immediately because other kids should be getting education in school, not being disrupted. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/104 "2009-06-26T14:43:38Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > The problem you’re missing is that while the passage unto death of “failing paradigms” is one thing when you’re talking about breakfast cereals or toothpastes, it’s quite another when you’re talking about education. > > What happens when the only school serving Inner City Area X or Rural Area Y “passes away”? You need a new school, and while the omniscient, omnipotent free market will surely provide one in time, 5000 kids will be roaming the streets for a couple of years in the meantime. This brings up a good point. But I think the reality is simply that there will always be—needs to always be (?)—a public option or two. While I advocate Charters and Vouchers, I don’t foresee public schools closing altogether. I can see their role shifting considerably, though. And in those instances where a public school might be doing okay, why would you close it? I wouldn’t be surprised that some public schools would outperform some voucher schools. In the end, it comes down to the faculty, staff, and parental involvement. The idea is to inject more choice, and competition into the equation. And break the power lock the teachers’ union has right now, which is much to our detriment. ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/105 "2009-06-26T14:45:07Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > And innumerable other things. And forget about “a meaningful way”; there’s all sorts of things that the private sector can muddle through that the government can do much better. Contrary to right wing dogma, the free market is not innately better than the government. > > Because the “something else” would be worse than what we have. And while it needs improvement, it’s hardly “failed”. People also benefit from others being well-fed. Should the government nationalize the food industry? ---
**Author:** ![A.Selene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3ec8ea/32.png) [@A.Selene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A.Selene)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/106 "2009-06-26T14:50:56Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > The problem you’re missing is that while the passage unto death of “failing paradigms” is one thing when you’re talking about breakfast cereals or toothpastes, it’s quite another when you’re talking about education. > > What happens when the only school serving Inner City Area X or Rural Area Y “passes away”? You need a new school, and while the omniscient, omnipotent free market will surely provide one in time, 5000 kids will be roaming the streets for a couple of years in the meantime. If there are 5,000 students attending the school, it seems to me unlikely that it would pass away. I’m not trying to be snarky here, I just don’t see how a school servicing 5,000 students would disappear overnight and there would be nothing to service the children for years… As a retort, in my hypothetical Inner City Area X or Rural Area Y, there wouldn’t be one school that educated every child in that area. Think rather than 1 school of 5,000, 10 schools of 500. One that is doing poorly closes shop, there are 9 other in the area to take in the students. And if there is proper competition in the area of education, there **will** be many schools; people have different ideas about education and different priorities. Some parents may want to send their child to a school with a good music program; another to a school with strong athletics, and so on. ---
**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 26, 2009, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/107 "2009-06-26T14:57:36Z")
That would improve the situation somewhat in Inner City Area X, but Rural Area Y probably doesn’t have more than one school, or perhaps two. There’s no way that the surviving school (or even two surviving schools) could cope with an influx of students of that relative size. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/108 "2009-06-26T15:39:49Z")
> [@BlinkingDuck](#): > > Now, I think both sides might agree this was a good risk. HOWEVER, if the child would have started being disruptive he should be removed immediately because other kids should be getting education in school, not being disrupted. And if this girl weren’t disruptive, then it wouldn’t be an issue at all - well, except that the school employs a social worker and a child psychologist to meet her needs and the needs of the other students with special needs - and the budget only stretches so far - providing a lot of specialists means cutting somewhere else - often much larger class sizes, no music, art, phy-ed or library (at least not with specialists), lack of classroom materials. IEPs are very cool things for the kids who need them, but they do need to be funded independently of the overall budget - what we’ve done to the public school system is to say “you have to provide them, but we aren’t funding them.” They then get funded on local levels and people see their local taxes going up - more money to the schools AGAIN. If you make private schools provide IEPs and take all kids when you start funding them via vouchers, you’ll simply move the problems. If you can mainstream kids with minimal disruption to the other kids and a “fair” distribution of resources - no problem. When there are 42 kids in a fourth grade classroom, but two full time sign language translators to work with the two deaf kids in the school full time - two kids are getting an unequal distribution of resources. (That was the situation about four years ago). I about flipped when I realized we now employ in our elementary school a PT and an OT (both part time - district wide we employ several full time) to meet the IEP of kids - those are things that should be being covered by health insurance - not school funding. ---
**Author:** ![mazinger\_z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@mazinger\_z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mazinger_z)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/109 "2009-06-26T16:13:09Z")
Just an anecdote: My older sister and I went to Catholic grade school. While we tested high in standardized tests, I did not think it any different because we continued to score high in standardized tests in public high school (but this was a suburban high school). My little cousin just graduated from my grade school and is testing to get into a selective area high school. His cousin on his dad’s side is the same age and got kicked out two years earlier (behavioral problems and bad grades, he didn’t want to repeat 6th grade) and went to public school. The expelled cousin is in a more remedial math, but is otherwise an educational rock star, still with behavioral issues, but, to the public school system, he is smart. My little cousin has about the same or slightly worse GPA, but is in P/S Geometry, like I and my sister were, in 8th grade. I’m sure we were at the same reading level. The expelled cousin is in, like I said, remedial math. Both cousins took a prep class for the High School Entrance Exam and little cousin totally outperformed the expelled cousin. My grade school, like all other Catholic schools I know of, except colleges, take anyone who can pay the tuition. The only difference now, from what I heard, is that there are less nuns and they are more willing to hold you back from graduating. I routinely had 30+ kids per class, and I have the class photos to prove it. I had special needs kids in my class growing up. We had two kids confined to wheel chairs who had their own caretaker (I don’t know if they were state or school or privately sponsored). We had blind kids. And, there was one kid with down syndrome. Granted, when I went to public high school, I saw more of these types of kids, but there were 700+ kids per class. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/110 "2009-06-26T16:49:30Z")
> [@Ruminator](#): > > 99.999% of parents have preferences for their children whether it comes to choices of school, food, entertainment, etc. Each choice parents make will put money towards one bucket at the expense of another. That’s why if there’s only one publicly funded educational bucket, funding it doesn’t come at the expense another. > [@](#): > > Don’t kid yourself into thinking you’re exempt from this. So, it’s also “you you you” I don’t have kids. Why would I want my tax dollars going to selfish people who think their kids are entitled to a superior education at the expense of the rest of the community? > [@](#): > > Your analogy is flawed. Money for vouchers doesn’t come from public school budgets? I would actually support vouchers if the public schools could keep the same amount of funding to teach fewer students (although there is some concern about the “creaming” effect). I’d also like to point out that supporting vouchers is unpatriotic, because it means that you don’t care about your country’s schools. Supporting the public schools is like supporint the troops, as opposed to supporting the independent contractors. ---
**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 26, 2009, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/111 "2009-06-26T16:59:12Z")
> [@sqweels](#): > > I’d also like to point out that supporting vouchers is unpatriotic, because it means that you don’t care about your country’s schools. Supporting the public schools is like supporint the troops, as opposed to supporting the independent contractors. 😃 _Support our mercenaries! Buy black ribbons!_ ---
**Author:** ![Vihaga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Vihaga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vihaga)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/112 "2009-06-26T17:42:52Z")
> [@furlibusea](#): > > The law says that every child is entitled to a free and appropriate education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment possible. To be perfectly honest that kid needs an education more than your kid. Kids with special needs are less likely to graduate high school, and even if they do they are more likely to be unemployed or under employed. Look at 70% of high school graduates with disabilities being unemployed vs. 8% of those without disabilities. In order to have an equal chance at the job market the disabled kid is going to need trade school at the very least. If the purpose of a public education is to provide workers, those kids need an education, and if you want pwincess pwecious not to ever see those nasty disabled kids you should pay out of pocket. In what universe does it make sense to hold back our future contributing citizens on the off-chance that we’ll make a genetic anomaly marginally less worthless by doing so? Those odds are horrible. The girl deserves an education, but so do her classmates, whose education she’s preventing. The “least restrictive environment possible” shouldn’t include environments in which she’s incapable of not imposing restrictions on others. ---
**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:** [June 26, 2009, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/113 "2009-06-26T18:00:40Z")
> [@furlibusea](#): > > Ding Ding Ding Ding.. we have a winner! The problems with inner city schools can not be fixed with education reforms. I think you mean that the problem with inner cities cannot be solves with education reform. but education itself can be. ---
**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:** [June 26, 2009, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/114 "2009-06-26T18:03:56Z")
> [@furlibusea](#): > > But the environment in my daughter’s classroom is the kids and their parents. My students will bring their chaos wherever they go. Maybe when there were more kids in the district they would have been more spread out and not all put together to create a festering mess. The exoerience here in DC has been that there are in fact a lot of involved parents and kids that want to leanr. Not every poor kid wants to be a drug dealer and has irresponsible parents but when you have a class of 40 with 4 or 5 kids that are like that then all 40 go without an education because the teacher is spending all their time trying to keep the clss under control. ---
**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:** [June 26, 2009, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/115 "2009-06-26T18:08:39Z")
> [@bobthebuilder](#): > > I strongly disagree with your statement “the free market is not innately better than the government” simply because the free market is > A. Free > B. Cooperation > where as government is > A. Not Free > B. Coercion The free market is absolutely positively not better at everything than the government. At the very core, things like defense, law and order come to mind. The free market does not take into account all externalities (pollution is a pretty good example), there are some goods and services that we wish everyone to have that the free market will not allocate to everyone (education and health care come to mind). These are all areas where the government is superior to the free market. ---
**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:** [June 26, 2009, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/116 "2009-06-26T18:18:02Z")
> [@bobthebuilder](#): > > I love how you bring up the phrase economic coercion, which as far as I know is a meaningless phrase. There are places in the world where people sell their kidneys for a pittance because they need the money to feed their children. According to you there is no coercion implicit in this arrangement because noone forced the fellow to sell his kidney. I think you are probably right, there isn’t necessarily coercion but these people don’t have a lot of choice either. This same principle can be applied to less dramatic examples here in the USA. > [@](#): > > Governments are the greatest oppressors of people, just think of all the governments who have opressed their people in so many different ways, beyond what any single corporation or individual could do.. Governments are also necessary. So may the people will have more freedom if government are smaller? and if power is not concentrated in the hands of a few? Everything is a balance. Noone on this board wants a totalitarian police state where the government controls when your life, by the same token, people don’t want to rely on the market for their life and retirement anymore. They see the good that government can do and while we can vote with our dollars with companies like Starbucks, how do you vote with your dollars with companies like Lehman Brothers and AIG Financial Products? ---
**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:** [June 26, 2009, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/117 "2009-06-26T18:21:10Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > My problem with vouchers is that I imagine it’s one of those things that only the “in the know” middle-class parents will take advantage of, not the people who really need it. The voucher system in Dc is only avaialble to families that that have low income (its kinda like a need based merit scholarship) and I am all for it if for no other reason than becuase it adds a little economic diversity to places like Sidwell Friends. ---
**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:** [June 26, 2009, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/118 "2009-06-26T18:25:11Z")
> [@athelas](#): > > People also benefit from others being well-fed. Should the government nationalize the food industry? Have you ever heard of food stamps? ---
**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:** [June 26, 2009, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/119 "2009-06-26T18:26:21Z")
> [@A.Selene](#): > > If there are 5,000 students attending the school, it seems to me unlikely that it would pass away. I’m not trying to be snarky here, I just don’t see how a school servicing 5,000 students would disappear overnight and there would be nothing to service the children for years. If GM and California are not too big to fail, what makes a private school serving 5000 student too big to collapse uder its own weight? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908/120 "2009-06-26T20:29:07Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > The free market is absolutely positively not better at everything than the government. At the very core, things like defense, law and order come to mind. The free market does not take into account all externalities (pollution is a pretty good example), there are some goods and services that we wish everyone to have that the free market will not allocate to everyone (education and health care come to mind). These are all areas where the government is superior to the free market. The free market is almost always better than government when it comes to pricing, valuating, and maximizing the efficient distribution of goods and services. We delegate police, military and the law to the government because those activities involve the use of force and coercion. However, there are market failures. There are sometimes externalities not paid for, information asymmetries, and other reasons why the market needs to be regulated to maximize efficiency. If you can present evidence that such problems exist in education, and you can identify the problem and explain how the government can fix it without making it worse, then let’s have that debate. But if you can’t, the default position should always be tha the market is better than the government, because history shows us that that’s almost always the case. So the burden of proof is on you to explain why government intervention is necessary. You can start by explaining how a system where in one city alone [700 teachers are paid to do nothing](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090622/ap_on_re_us/us_rubber_rooms) makes any kind of sense at all. The inability to fire teachers and administrators leads to bloat. The average corporation has about 5-8 levels of management. Some government bureaucracies have up to 32! You have directors, executive directors, junior directors, senior executive directors, regional directors, program managers, coordinators, ad-infinitem. Bloated bureaucracies do not lead to optimal outcomes. Nor do systems in which it is impossible to fire poor performers or reward excellent performers. In general, I don’t see any issues with allowing the market to control education. We know it works, because private schools outperform public schools. Yes, there are social issues with funding and making sure all kids have access to education, but that does not mean the answer is a giant government organization heavily controlled by union workers. Innovation in education is almost dead. The teacher’s unions and government bureaucracy have seen to that. If you teleported someone from 1950 into modern America, it would be almost unrecognizable. Factories are completely different. Modern communications have completely changed the way we work, play, and engage each other. But you know, if all the change gets too overwhelming, just plunk the poor guy in a public school classroom. He’ll feel right at home, because they don’t look a whole lot different than they did in 1950. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-choice-and-vouchers/500908.md?page=7)