School Vouchers - Would they work?

Great Debates
21

let us also remember a couple of other points.

As ** Sandy ** points out, once the student is at the private school (paid for by public funds), but gets tossed out (not necessarily expelled, simply tossed out), the tuition has already been awarded, and the public school has the ** obligation ** to take the student.

and as ** redtail ** beat me to it, while the per pupil funding would remain the same, the ** costs** system wide also pretty much remains the same, which means the ** per pupil costs ** would go up.
as far as teachers unions being against vouchers - you’ve attributed only a financial motive to their position. If it is indeed your claim that the ** only ** reason the teachers unions are against vouchers is because it would hit them in their own personal pocketbooks, surely you wouldn’t mind supporting that arguement? see, I personally believe that most (not all) teachers do NOT support vouchers for all the excellent reasons laid out here by:

** Milo, redtail, dropzone, Sandy Price, Dangerosa, kunilou, Satan, stufinb and David B ** (my apologies to anyone I may have left out)

22

Sandy said

Wrong. I attended such a private school for 8 years. Such a blanket statement can’t be correct.

What if vouchers were on top of public shool funding? Would you then still oppose them?

23

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Satan *
**If someone can tell me how the public schools are supposed to get better by taking money AWAY from the public schools and giving it to parents to REMOVE kids from the public school system, I would be amazed.

Isn’t that what we want to do, after all? Make public schools better?

Excluding the “do away with the whole system” Libertarian extremists, isn’t that what we ALL want?"
I’ll give it a shot.

First, the federal voucher program of GW, as was alleged by the VP, but I haven’t seen it, encourages (perhaps even requires) the States to match the funds I believe 3 to 1, diverting even more funds from the public system. There is your $8,000.00 for private school.

The public school systems have HUGE bureaucracies. I don’t know the actual figures, and they vary from state to state, but the number 50 cents on the dollar rings a bell as far as money actually making it beyond the Boards of Education and into the schools.

The reason it ‘helps’ public schools is:

A. It will get rid of that pesky over-crowding problem.
B. It establishes accountability, a requirement to show results or lose funds.
C. Schools will be competing for your ‘business’ The ineffective schools will end up shut down and their administration replaced to achieve results.

D. The goal is to give the children a good education, not necessarily to help the existing public school system get better. Perhaps the end result will be a total restructuring of the educational system where each student’s share of the education budget will go to private school systems. (I assume that is the Total Libertarian response) Perhaps public-run facilities will disappear. Perhaps private institutions will be brought in to make public education better or public educators will get their act together and move the administrative expenses into the classrooms.
The hope is to encourage schools to become adequate before vouchers are required. The current system isn’t working and just dumping more money into a failing system won’t help. Don’t you suppose that State and Local Boards of Education will scramble to get to a level of success that defies the ability or desire to leave their schools?

I don’t allege that the politicians that run our school systems don’t want the kids to succeed. I allege that they don’t know how to do it, but they hold their own survival above their responsibilities to educate our children. The voucher policy forces their hands to admit to their ineptitude and step aside so that people who can get the job done can get inside.

24

Private schools carefuly define the rules of the school before a student is accepted. No one is asked to leave without a valid reason.

Many of our students had special needs. These were addressed and worked out before taking in the student. We had a blind girl and several who were physically handicaped and needed help get in and out of the classroom. They were certainly safer with us than in public school where they were ridiculed.

To check a school’s qualification just call your local University and ask about this. That’s how I found the two schools my kids attended.

Yes, the parents are sometimes asked to participate in the Christmas and Easter festivals. We had a Mother’s club in both schools.

The schools that my kids attended learned French from first grade. They were taught phonics and the school felt a non-phonics foreign language would be good for them too. When they got to high school, Spanish Italian and Latin were offered.

Many private (Christian) schools do not require any specific faith be taught. We included Jewish songs in our Christmas programs and Easter festivals too. We had Islamic kids too and they went along with everything. The color range of the kids was a very good experience for all of them By the time they graduated the kids were color blind.

I consider this money well spent. Both my girls were able to walk into U.C. Berkeley without a blink of an eye. This school is rated number 2 in the USA.

All anyone has to do is call a private school and ask if they will accept vouchers and I doubt very seriously if they will. I worked for 17 years in our school and we turned down one federal grant after another. No thanks!!

25

Not all teachers are purely motivated by economics, but money is usually part of the motive. Any union that creates barriers to entry does so, at least in part, to eliminate competition. I am in such an organization, and I still believe it’s true.

I considered becoming a teacher and took some education courses in college. One of the things I learned was that of all college students, those who graduated with an education degree had the third lowest SAT scores on average. So I believe that many teachers fear increased competition because they do not believe they can compete with private schools which might start hiring teachers with higher degrees. This is not meant as a blanket insult to all teachers because it is certainly untrue for many.

Another reason is the fact that the NEA opposes any type of measure that is geared towards accountability such as merit pay, certification, etc. Any one of these reasons might not prove an economic motive, but cumulatively, they provide enough data points for me to extrapolate a line.

26

**

They have that choice now, why vouchers?

That’s only partly right, currently on average schools spend roughly $8000 per student. so what happens, you get 6 students to leave taking away funding of $48,000 not say the $24,000 which will go for vouchers.

**

This is not the same thing. Contracting by the Fed and State governments have all sorts of documentation and reporting requirements, i.e. accountablity. Something sorely lacking in every voucher initiative I’ve seen. The government also opens up contracting to everyone, also not true of vouchers.

You might also want to talk to some San Diego residents who are feeling the effects of turning a previously government run system over to business. (electricity derugulation) That choice was susposed to help bring down rates, it had exactly the opposite effects. I’d be willing to bet that they’ll be no difference here. The private schools will realize that now there’s more money availible and raise their tuitions accordingly.

All govmnt aint bad!

**
[/quote]
It is ironic that those who are for a woman’s right to choose are against a parent’s right to choose. So is choice a good thing or not? **
[/QUOTE]

See my earlier commment. Also as people have already pointed out, for most this won’t create a “choice” at all. BTW, in regards to the sweeping generalization, I didn’t notice any one putting “pro-choice” in their sigs or posts, but maybe I missed something.

27

It seems a very important point is being missed. Sure public schools would get less money and would therefore have a higher per pupil cost. But this is part of the point, forcing public schools to compete on quality to retain students or become more cost efficient.

the problem with any kind of education system is simply the tradeoff, providing a broad based scheme tends to lower the standards and quality for eveyone. But allowing more individualized solutions which tend to be more cost-effective and higher qulaity tends to leave out the most disenfranchised. It is a very difficult thing to balance. There is no dogmatic solution, it is simply where your priortites are.

28

Getting away from students with discipline problems is EXACTLY the reason why many parents choose to send their students to private schools. I went to private schools for 10 out of my 12 years before college, and I know lots of students over the years who were invited not to come back – and a few who were tossed out in mid-year.

As for the comment about the bloated bureaucracies in public schools, sure there are. They’re tax-supported institutions. There are laws to complied with, forms to be filled out, bids to be let and received, etc. Go ask the human resources manager in your company how much of his/her average work day is taken up with stuff that has to be done because that’s how various laws have to be complied with. And your company is a PRIVATE organization. Criticizing public schools because they have to hire people to take care of things that the law/the court/the state department of education requires them to do may be an argument for doing away with public schools, but as far as vouchers go, it’s a specious argument.

And to Sandy Price (who posted after I started writing this) congratulations on having found an exceptional private school. I assume you had to do a considerable amount of digging to find it. Would you share your experiences in weeding out the private schools that didn’t offer what you wanted, were not able or willing to take physically handicapped students or did require that students subscribed to a specific faith or value system?

29

I guess I hadn’t realized public schools were a business. Oh, because they aren’t. Neither is the police station, if I recall correctly.

Again, people (with money) have a choice already. I think it’s an extremely limited number of people that would be helped by this voucher thing, and the schools would suffer.

I highly doubt there will be a long line of schools just jumping up and down, “Hey, is your child disabled or have a discipline problem!?!? Let me take that $4,000, which in no way will cover my costs, and I’ll teach him!”

I enjoy your free-market viewpoint but I don’t think it applies in this instance.

Guess what, though? I have no children, nor do I personally make use of the jail, but I’m willing to pay for both of them with my tax dollars. I’m that sort of a crazy liberal, just so you know.

It seemed to me that people supported vouchers for purely selfish motives without thought of the greater damage they would do, and you seem to agree with me.

I was going to go into this more but it looks like stuffinb is saying what I want to say, but more intelligently, so I’ll step aside for the moment.

30

I’m sure that some private schools are very tolerant; some are completely nonsectarian, in fact. But others can be extremely dogmatic and narrowminded. Most voucher plans don’t seem to distinguish between the “good” tolerant private schools and the “bad” Bible-thumping (Koran-thumping, Collected Works of Sun Myung Moon-thumping, etc.) ones, and it seems to me that trying to do so would cause at least as many Constitutional problems as not doing so.

31

Correct. Schools aren’t businesses, but why shouldn’t they be. The standard refrain is that education is too important to leave to the private sector. Food’s important, but I don’t want the government being the source of supply.

And, yes, I do think there will be a school jumping up and down asking to take care of special needs children. If a child is housebound there are plenty of companies “jumping up and down” to help them. Why is it hard to imagine that some schools will open with the express purpose of dealing with special needs children, discipline problems, etc?

32

I have a mother of five who sent her kids to private school because they have discipline problems. I went to an all male Jesuit school for 2 years. Many people sent their kids there to straighten them out.

It is disingenuous to paint all private schools as these elitist institutions that only accept kids bound for Harvard. That is disingenuous. There are many, many different kinds of private schools.

33

One assumption we are making is that private schools are universally good. This is simply untrue. I agree that in the currant situation private schools come out with better statistics (higher test scores, etc.) but they get to choose their student body! I am sure that if public schools could choose to educate the cream of the crop their test scores would look great, too!
Another problem is that there is absolutely no accountability in private schools. Thats right, they can and do hire untrained teachers (heck! you dont even have to have gone to college!) and pay them badly. It is a general fact that teaching at private schools sucks. They can teach whatever the heck they want. How would you like a genereation taught, for example, that the halocaust didn’t happen? Or how about teaching our kids survival techniques instead of cirrculum because Jesus is coming soon. Or maybe it’d be cool to set up schools to convert gay students into hetrosexuals! The posibilities are endless. But, you say, most parents wont choose such extreme options…maybe most won’t. But what about the children of the ones that do? Children dont get ANY choice. So if your parents put you in a “None of that sissy art stuff this is a fast track to being a lawyer” school, even though you are an artist at heart, you are screwed? Great, we can start Japan style career tracking from kindergarten! And it will be based on what the parents want their kids to be! Or maybe the kid in a small town has only one “choice” georaphically: a fundamentalist christian church and he was raised wicca. Obviously these are extreme examples, but they could happen.
All the talk about helping poor children is a lie. First there is the probelem that a partial subsidy won’t allow truely poor children to attend. Even simpeler than that, there is no garentee that private schools won’t simply raise prices by $4,000 (or whatever the voucher amount is). Or maybe people can set up $4,000 a year schools that pack kids into wherehouses and give them a terrible education (which will still be better than one at voucher gutted public schools). So voucher proponants should market their scheme as what it is: a subsidy for the already wealthy.
The already wealthy say “I shouln’t have to pay twice!”. I dont think they get the idea behind public schoold and compulisary schooling in general. Having a genereally well educated population helps us all. Every single one of us. When you pay school taxes, you aren’t just paying for your specific kid. You are paying so that the American people as a whole are educated enough to vote intellegently. You are paying so that new military recruits are educated enough to do their jobs. You are paying for reduced crime because people can get real jobs instead of drug dealing and theft. That is why there is a public education system that is payed for by tax dollers. And if you want to opt out of it, fine. That is your “school choice”. But we dont get paid not to take advantage of (or, gasp, help) systems that are put in place for our collective advantage. I, for example, will never use our cities municipal marina. But that does not mean I get a “voucher” to pay for other forms of entertainment. I opted out.
So if you really want to help schools, where are you? Why arn’t you volenteering your time to tutor, mentor, or otherwise help a public school? Why arn’t you a member of the PTA? Why aren’t you kicking ass to make sure the schools in your neighborhood are top notch? If your not doing that I dont want to hear you whine because you arn’t doing anything to solve the problem. FIve minutes at a ballot box won’t “fix” out public schools, but genuine parental and community involvment will.

34

Public scholls can’t compete, as the playing feild is not level. Public schools are REQUIRED BY LAW to accept everyone, even tho the child may not speak english, have a learning problem, or a discipline problem.

Next: public schools are also required by Law to teach the kids. They have standards, etc. Private schools have no required standards. At least thats true here in CA, where the Voucher inititive specifies the State, etc, CANNOT have any educational standards at all for these schools.

It would be perfectly “legal” for a private school to teach nothing but the writings & speeches of Hitler. And by "teachers’ who are not even literate.

Next- there is no proof that private schools actually do better than public schools, just ancedotal evidence. Private schools do not take the tests that public schools do to compare them. Note that I am willing to concede that many private schools do better, just like public schools in very expensive/rich areas usually do better than inner city schools. But there is nothing "magic’ about being a “private” school- some also appear to be worse.

35

I’m pretty heavily in favour of vouchers. Now, I live in LA ( lausd’s motto “Mostly, we tech your kid how not to get shot!” ), so my point of view my be biased.

Here are the reasons:

  1. currently, the school system gets something like 8k per child. If a parent takes a child out of the system, there is a 4k “refund”. It is my understanding that the school system gets to keep the other 4k; that is, that the school’s budget is reduced by the 4k, not by the full 8. This is a net WIN for schools. This strikes me as extremely fair, btw.

  2. space. LA needs to build lots and lots of schools over the next 10 years, and can’t find space for them all. Shifting the burden of building that infrastructure is a really good idea.

  3. 4k is enough. 4,000 us would help an awful lot of people get to private schools. More than you’d think. This debate has gone on for a long time, and I’ve asked quite a few middle class parents about it. I realize that this is hardly a scientific sampling, but many have said that the money would be enough to tip the scale.

36

I may be reading what you said incorrectly but I and my two sisters didn’t spend $8k/yr each when we attended public school. The school may have spent that much but I (nor did my parents’ property taxes) didn’t pay for all of that. So if I had taken $4k (a number used above, I don’t know what Bush’s plan is) each year in the form of a voucher that would have left $4k behind with the public school that I was no longer attending. In other words the schools would not lose $72k in your situation but only the $24k going to vouchers. (Of course if all of these numbers are bogus to begin with then this argument doesn’t work.) Am I missing something?

37

I think that they best arguement for vouchers is that they give the power to the parents. If you are dissatisfied with your child’s education and do not have the money for a private school if they are in the public schools you can raise alot of hell and hope it works. But under vouchers you could move your child to a new school.
I used to teach at a private school where the tuition was less than what the public schools got per pupil and I can tell you that if a parent was unhappy things happened, because they could always go somewhere else.
My wife is a teacher at a public school where there is no way we would send our kids to and many teachers there feel the same way.

38

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by even sven *
** One assumption we are making is that private schools are universally good. This is simply untrue.

That is why it is CHOICE. The voucher will let you go to public school or the private school of your CHOICE. You won’t be forced to send your kids to a bad private school.
"Another problem is that there is absolutely no accountability in private schools. Thats right, they can and do hire untrained teachers (heck! you dont even have to have gone to college!) and pay them badly. "

Again… CHOICE. So you can send your kids to a good private school; a good public school; or a bad private school, or a bad public school… your choice.

All the talk about helping poor children is a lie.

No, actually the bill as I understand it won’t help middle class or rich people at all. Why? because they tend to live in nice neighborhoods with nice new public schools and highly paid, highly competent teachers because they pay higher property taxes and help to support their public school system with fund raisers and such. Their schools do WELL, they won’t qualify for the opt-out.

“So if you really want to help schools, where are you? Why arn’t you volenteering your time to tutor, mentor, or otherwise help a public school? Why arn’t you a member of the PTA?”

See the above, the middle class and rich do that. The ‘poor’ don’t have the money to help their public schools succeed and they tend to get railroaded by a larger bureaucracy in inner-city school systems. That is why they need the competition, to get the politicians in the system off their self-supportive asses and do something or get out of the industry. In middle class and rich neighborhoods, there is a stronger control over the Board of Education because they boards tend to be smaller and more accessable.

I may be wrong on the plan, I haven’t seen it, but my understanding is that if your school does well, you don’t get the voucher option. It only applies to schools that fail to meet minimum standards.

39

The last couple of posts have misundeerstood public school funding.

If a public school gets $8,000 in state funding per student, that’s only if the student is enrolled there. It gets nothing if a student doesn’t attend the public school.

So if a parent gets a $4,000 voucher and sends the student to another school, that won’t “leave $4,000 for the school.” The school will get 0 for that child.

That’s the state formula for funding. The local school district would continue to take in $X and spread them out.

This dual system of funding explains why a school system often is in worse shape when enrollment is declining, even though the local tax rate remains high. As noted earlier, there are still fixed costs that must be paid, but because there are fewer students enrolled, the state contributes less.

I believe Vermont tried to get around this by making all schools state-funded, and is now battling lawsuits by local school districts arguing that they should be able to impose additional taxes to go to their own schools – in other words, back to the old system.

40

kunilou,

While I’m willing to be corrected, that is not my understanding. My understanding is that school funding works like this

(Tax revenue / number of kids ) = $ per pupil.

So, we have

( 8 billion / 1 million ) = 8000/pupil ( those numbers are reasonably close for LAUSD, btw ).

If we take out 200k kids ( many more than I think will leave, but for the sake of arguement…), we get

( (8 billion - ( 200k * 4k ))/ 800k )

or ( 7.2 bil/800k ) or 9,000 /kid.

You are working on the assumption that the amount the schools can spend per child is fixed, and that the total amount is variable. It is my understanding (in CA, at least) that the tax revenue is fixed, and that the amount per student is variable.

Like I said, I’m willing to be corrected, but I’m fairly certain.