School Vouchers

Great Debates
41

Huh? That cost per voucher is much less than the cost per child in the public school system typically quoted in my area (Philadelphia). Way less. I am not an expert, but it seems incredible that the cost of administering a voucher program rivals the cost of actually educating a child (including overhead). Maybe Philly is a bad example.

Do you have a cite? I would appreciate it. Frankly, when I saw Renob’s point, my reaction was, wow, if this is true, everything else is just the standard political bullshit. There would simply be no compelling reason not to permit vouchers, IMO. Nobody would lose.

42

I live in the South. That’s why. All of the private schools here (AR) are either churched-based or were founded to circumvent de-segragaton laws that applied to urban public schools.

I know that in the the northeastern US, it’s different. I grew up there, attended both public and private schools. I am also aware that Catholic schools, while religious, tend to offer a very rigorous academic curriculum, as well as having a much more analytical approach to their religious studies, so even non-catholics send their kids to them (and Jesuit Universities are VERY well respected for this reason as well). That’s certainly not the same thing here, where, as I said, most private schools are backed by Fundamentalist Christian money.

43

Nonsense. I found your point, whatever it was, incomprehensible. What the fuck do teacher’s union dues have to do with private vs. public schooling using vouchers?

44

No one has mentioned charter schools as used in Alberta. If enough people (mostly parents) get together, and write a charter for a school they want (within certain parameters, of course), the province will kick in funds to each student, slightly less that is spent on average for the public system.

If you want a hockey school (or other sport), ok. Religious? Fine. Academic? Dandy. If the charter meets the criteria set out by the province, it’s fine.

Other criteria include, you can’t charge more and fundraising is limited, still subject to standardized testing, can’t promote hatred (that’s illegal elsewhere), must be a board that includes a certain % of parents of students, can’t refuse students that are elegible for the public system (e.g. special needs, recent immigrants) and gets periodically reviewed by the province, in terms of student performance, meeting legal requirements and meeting the charter.

A friend’s wife taught at a Muslim school, though she wasn’t Muslim herself. She wore a hijab out of courtesy, though she wasn’t required to do so. She’d applied to Xtian schools, but they were more interested in how good a Xtian she was, rather than how good a teacher.

If memory serves, a few of the charter schools have failed (disbanded voluntarily), a few others had their charter revoked, and were forced to close. But most are doing just fine. There’s lots of parental involvement, and they’re probably subject to better scritiny (what the Hell is that? I mean scrutiny) than the public system.

The only serious objection I can see here is state funding of religious schools. However, it is not biased in favor of any religion, including atheism, so it’s balanced, at least.

If anyone has corrections, please put 'em in, 'cuz I’m outside of Alberta these days. I do understand there are more charter schools in Calgary than in Edmonton, in part because Edmonton’s school board is more flexibile in terms of accomodating different types of schools.

45

I gradumacated high school in 1994 in Massachusetts.

During the entire time I was in high school we had an experimental school choice program. I thought it was great. I never took advantage of it, but many did.

The first year it was available around 30 kids chose to go to the school system at the next town over, IIRC. No one extra came to our school. The simple reason is that they had a much better school system then we did. AKAIK the system only existed as an arraingement between public schools.

I would think, that at the very least, a competition system could be set up with vouchers between public schools only. That would silence a lot of the complaints being brought up by critics of vouchers. No public funding of religious education. No money leaving the public school system. It seems like a good start. If it is successful then talk could begin about bringing private schools into the system.

46

The problem is not a lack of “competition”. The problem is that public schools are no longer permitted to TEACH. If they do anything at all that smacks of teaching, they get slapped down on some kind of “civil rights” violation.

Here is how to fix city schools:

Make it a mandatory death sentence to be anywhere in the manufacturing or selling side of a distribution chain of illicit drugs that sells to minors or to parents.

Make it a death-penalty offense (mandatory) to with intent and knowledge supply minors with firearms outside of specific, well-defined settings.

Make it a death penalty offense to knowingly sell alcohol to minors.

Enforce those executions, make them public. Sell popcorn.

47

I would think, that at the very least, a competition system could be set up with vouchers between public schools only.

That WOULD be a good start, Debaser, and it’s a good idea.

However I can already see a problem with that.

Let’s say I live in City A. City A’s schools suck, and I want LittleSnoopy to go to City B to go to school there. So I get a voucher.

City B is a 25 minute drive. Now, were this to happen to me, I’d gladly drive her back and forth every day. But you know there are gonna be some parents who will immediately start screaming about the inconvenience and demand the school bus pick their kids up too.

Here’s a question I have for the anti-voucher people:

If vouchers aren’t the answer, what is?

We’ve already established that sinking more money into a bad public school district doesn’t do a bit of good. Teachers really aren’t required to turn out smarter kids because they’re unionized and go on strike whenever they get all pissed off. I’m not totally anti-union but I can see how unionization takes away one’s motivation to do their job well (not always but definitely in the case of teachers IMHO). If you can’t get fired, why bother doing a good job? Yes, I know there are some wonderful teachers out there, but let’s face it … there are many more mediocre teachers in the schools than excellent ones. And more than a fair share of flat out bad teachers as well.

So what do we do if you’re so hell bent on people not having the right to send their kids to a better school district?

48

Precisely, so what is the difference between “public dole money” and “vouchers”? Both are funded out of the same trough.

Thanks for making my case.

49

That isn’t true. I also live in the south (the Carolinas). My small city has 22 private schools. 13 are church-based and 9 are not. In addition there are several charter school that are not religious in nature. As far as getting around de-segregation laws - I would like to see some proof from you that minorities are not welcome at private schools. You are painting the whole south with a mighty wide brush there.

50

Having reviewed the more recent numbers, I find I misstated the “much more.” (The voucher program had some “irregularities”–e.g., sending 1,100 kids to school by taxi cab, set-up overruns in the first years, fly-by-night schools–that were “corrected” a couple of years ago and the overall costs per child have dropped significantly. The taxpayer costs for the voucher kids appear to be roughly 1/3 the costs for the public school kids. (There are still some funny numbers in there: the voucher kids are all K-8 while the public school figures are based on K-12, so some higher high school costs tend to inflate the public figures a bit, but not enough to create the 1:3 ratio.)

On the other hand, looking up those numbers I tripped over a number of other bits of information. For one thing, the vouchers do not seem to be “saving” many kids in Cleveland. The law says that the number of kids entering the voucher program from non-public schools must not exceed 50%. Technicaly, that has been met. However, only one in five children (21%) in the voucher program have entered private school after attending a Cleveland public school. 36% (in 2002) had transferred from one private school (not covered by vouchers) to another private school (covered by vouchers) or stayed in the same school and applied for a voucher. The remaining 43% of kids entering the voucher program were incoming kindergartners (many the younger siblings of kids already in the program). Policy Matters Ohio website. .pdf (If the direct link fails, go to http://www.policymattersohio.org/ and follow the various links to voucher-related pages.) In addition, the number of kids actually entering the program has begun to fall off. The people who actually sent their kids to voucher schools were the ones who already had the means to get their kid into some other school besides a public school. Vouchers are not rescuing Cleveland kids, they are simply draining public school funds.

(It should be noted that they are also not making any outsiders rich. The profiteers were among those who inflated the costs in the first couple of years and they have been weeded out. The remaining schools tend to be parochial schools who are taking a loss on most of the kids they admit. Generally, church-supported schools have a tuition that is lower than cost, with the remaining cost born by the church. Vouchers cover 75% - 90% of tuition (which is lower than cost) so the churches wind up subsidizing the kids on voucher programs for any child whose parents are not already contributing to that church’s general fund.)

Anti-voucher site on voucher finances.

Basically, I do not have a philosophical opposition to vouchers, but a pragmatic one: they are not the salvation of poor children that they are claimed to be.
Comments to the effect that poor schools should not be funded because they are failing would only be appropriate if the schools were failing for their own incompetence. Most fail because of the social conditions in which they find themselves. If we want to improve education, we need to address the issues of a culture that does not appear to reward education, a mobile population that prevents many kids from attending a single class for an entire year, and other issues. These are tougher problems than waving a magic voucher wand over the schools, however, so they will not be addressed.

Is there any voucher program in the U.S., currently, that is actually “rescuing” children from public schools and actually increasing students’ learning? (Cleveland fails on both of these points; I don’t know where some program may be succeeding.)

51

Who says that the problems with education stem from having a mobile population? Are there any figures showing a correlation between cities with mobile populations and cities with failing educational systems?

Also, I think voucher do address the problem of a culture that does not reward education. If a youth in an inner city environment is bullied because he is smart in school or generally not happy with his educational experience vouchers give him or her the opportunity to do something about it. They can go to another school where they do have a chance at learning.

52

The teachers. A review of the Cleveland schools a couple of yeas ago showed that in the primary grades in some schools, turnover was as much as 60% in a year due to the families of the students moving from one neighborhood to another (prompted by evictions, houses being condemned, divorces and remarriages, etc.)

Which, of course, presumes that the youth would be willing to endure the extra bullying in the neighborhood for going to a separate school or that the youth would even undertake to look for alternative education, given the situation that downrates education as a whole. The issue is not that lots of kids are being bullied into not studying, it is that few kids see any point in studying, to begin with. There is no culture of education in those areas.
Earlier, poor immigrants could see education as a way to escape the poverty of their situation. They studied, they escaped, and their younger siblings or neighborhood kids saw that example and followed them. The kids trapped in the areas of the worst poverty, today, have decades of watching kids get the education and fail to escape: they see no point in the effort. (There is also an element of “acting white” condemnation that needs to be addressed, but that is not the sole source of the problem–and it is both a development of and a cause of the larger issue.)

The solution you propose is simply a way to say “Well, we gave them a choice, now we can write them off since they did not take it.”

It also presumes that vouchers will do anything. The reality is that no one seems to have found a way to make the vouchers actually work. As noted, above, vouchers are aimed at tuition and tuition does not cover cost. If you aim the vouchers at cost, the cost will probably go up to match the aid. I have read of several people who were going to go out and create a wonderful school to replace the public system. I have not read that any of them have succeeded. They either go bankrupt or fail to improve on the students’ scores over the public schools.
As I noted earlier, I do not have a philosophical opposition to vouchers. The evidence to date says that they are not doing what it was claimed they would do.

53

Obviously not everyone at PS126 will be able to go to St. Anthony’s. I’m fairly certain that not every parent with a child at PS126 will want their kids at St. Anthony’s. Some will want their kids at local School Named For a Salad. Some will choose the local School Named For an Innovative Italian. There will those who go for the Local University Laboratory School. Others might like Snooty McSnoberson Upstanding Academy and some will want their kids at Happy Holy Christian School and some will choose Al’Educaya Islamic Education Center and some will choose Excellent Extracurriculars Generic Private School. And if it becomes clear that the Salad School doesn’t want people from their neighborhood or the Happy Holy Christians are neither happy nor holy and only give scholarships to their “own kind” then the parents will look elsewhere.

Is the possibility that some schools would not have space for more students or would not accept lower income students a reason to dismiss voucher programs? No. It’s just part of shopping for a school, something that people with the money to pay full out have dealt with since the dawn of private education and something that vouchered parents would have to deal with once they have vouchers in hand.

I’m always curious, so I’m going to ask a question to those who are opposed to vouchers on separation of church and state grounds and do not want your tax dollars “funding a religious institution.” How do you feel about federal monies (Pell Grants, especially, which are not repaid.) being used by students at religiously affiliated colleges? If federal government money can be used by students to fund education from those institutions, why shouldn’t local government money be used by students to fund their education on the compulsory level?

54

So, lets let the smart kids who want to try and learn out of those areas. Sure, maybe many of them woudn’t take advantage of it. But, some would. That’s better then nothing, right?

I think that vouchers would be a large step in the right direction of fixing these problems.

If you disagree, then what’s your solution? Clearly it’s the status quo that has created this bleak situation which you describe.

I agree, but we should drop this. My hijack alert is ringing!

It’s funny that I see your point to be similar in nature to the way you paint mine.

You seem to me to be saying “Well, since vouchers haven’t been proven 100% successful at solving all of our problems, we should never try anything to change the education system for the better.”

The only real reply I have to all this is my own personal experience. I chose to stay at my school. But, a large number of kids in my school went to the next town over. It was very controversial at the time, because of the funding we lost and they gained. But, it did work. People were unhappy where they were. The parents were willing to drive a couple towns over to drop them off and pick them up. They got out of where the didn’t want to be and went to the better school. That meets my definition of success.

It seems to me that anyone who understands why capitalism is the best economic system ought to understand why vouchers would improve the schools. The way that education is run now is like having a single grocery store in every town that we were forced to shop at which is run by the local government. Does anybody think that such a system would be better than the grocery stores we have now? These same concepts of competition apply to education the same as they do to anything else.

55

Not AFAIK. A private school can accept or reject anyone it wants to, for any reason – and I can easily imagine a scenario where the “difficult students” (e.g., troublemakers) are rejected by all the private schools their parents apply to. If these kids don’t end up on the streets, odds are good they’ll all end up together at a lower-quality school, the ones that are so impoverished and desperate for money that they’ll take anyone. And what kind of an education will they get, I wonder?

56

It would also explain why private fire companies were such a raging “success” in the nineteenth century, why private prisons have “only” a 90% failure rate, today, and why we bid out military services instead of using a government entity.

I do not oppose trying vouchers in a few places. Before we jump into them, I want to see one municipal voucher system work. The constraints on municipal education differ in many respects from suburban or rural issues and I do not see that a couple of suburban districts with open enrollment has any bearing on city school problems.
Where have vouchers actually succeeded?

57

Yes, rjung, but even if that scenario is true, so what? Woudn’t it be better to have a system that was actually successful in teaching the kids, even if it left a few behind?

You seem to be suggesting that it’s better to have a system that doesn’t work for anyone than a system that works great but leaves some behind.

Besides, if those kids are troublemakers, then they should be kept out of the better schools. That’s the way colleges work, and no one is complaining.

58

Whatever happened to “leave no child behind”?

I prefer to see it as supporting equality instead of segregation. If there’s something wrong with the system, then fix it so it benefits everyone, instead of just the folks who are lucky enough to benefit.

Having a college education is not mandated by law.

Geez, Debaser, what if it was your kid getting the short end of the stick here? Would you really be willing to shrug your shoulder in resignation and say, “Sorry, kid, you’re doomed to a life of mediocrity because you aren’t good enough”?

59

See, I don’t see myself as the one shrugging my shoulders in resignation here.

I have conceded much for purposes of this debate. With private schools out of the argument, all of the religion issues and money leaving the public system issues are gone.

Yet, you still complain because the system wouldn’t be perfect for everyone. Well, right now the system is perfect for no one.

(just for the record here I don’t have kids)

I’m not suggesting that children be thrown out into the street. Everyone can still have the right to an education. However, students that like to can choose to go to a better school.

If it was my kid he wouldn’t get the short end of the stick. I would raise him or her properly. I would insist that he or she behave appropriately, at the very least at a level that schools would accept him. If some other parent is letting thier kids run wild I would be happy if my school wouldn’t let them in to distract my child.

60

Simplified Hypothetical:

There is a school system that graduates 1,000 kids per year in a city.

They are doing a shit job of it. None of the students graduating from any of the schools in the city are getting an education.

Vouchers being implemented would improve the learning for some students, leaving others behind.

As a result, 500 of the graduating class of 1,000 every year would have a quality education that enables them to go on to college.

[/hypothetical]

I would call this a success. There would still be work to do to help the other 500 students, but it’s a definate step in the right direction.

It seems that there are some here who disagree. That if a program doesn’t help every single student then it’s not worth trying. I just don’t understand that.