Here is a question for all of the voucherites.
Suppose I agree with you that the school systems are failing our kids.
What happens to those students that cannot get vouchers? Do they need to stay in the failing schools? How do you justify some of the students getting out of the system but not all?
Here is a better article on the D.C. Voucher program. I wonder though, how many of the good DC private schools would the $7,500.00 cover. I notice that Gonzaga costs $13,500.00 per year. Archbishop Carroll is about $8,500.00 per year. Here is the list for the high schools. Granted, from what I’ve seen they don’t have the decaying buildings that the DC Public Schools have and they can fire ineffective teachers.
In effect, that is what happens in the District. A few of my neighbors whose children have approached school age have sold their homes in the District and moved to the suburbs. Some other people have sent their children to private schools. Those with means either leave the City or send their kids to private school. For the most part, the students in the DC public schools are the ones whose parents can’t afford to send them elsewhere.
Here are the pictures from a Post article on Cardozo High School. (Warning! a 15 second commercial plays before the picture slide show can be viewed). I would not send my children to a DC public school. I drive by an elementary school on my way to work and from the outside the building doesn’t look well maintained.
That’s why I said “portends a possible future” – it’s a thin-end-of-the-wedge problem; if we’re going to devote public resources to alternatives to public education instead of to fixing its problems, public education might languish to a degree that undermines the social-contract consensus of devoting public resources to education at all.
Also, what Saint Cad said. And what Caffeine.addict said.
I am a little unclear. Are you saying that it is unconstitutional or just inappropriate and socially destructive in your opinion?
Throughout history, competition has been a positive force-it lowers costs and improves quality. In places (like Stalinist Russia) where competition was outlawed, the quality was bad and the prices were high. Why is education any different? Vouchers would force the DC public schools to compete. That would be a good thing. but the bureaucracy that “runs” (into the ground!) the DC school system doesn’t want this-it wants MORE taxpayer money, so it can hire MORE superintendents, consultants, etc. all in all, a proven record of incompetence! So, sure, throw more money at the DC schools-just don’t be surprised at the results!
Competition as a positive force relies on the idea that it is the least costly and highest quality products that sell the most. In the case of education as the product, certainly private schools may offer a higher quality of education (though I have reservations about how that quality is judged), but it bypasses the costliness issue. On top of that, for competition to inspire others to do better requires that the others are motivated to be better by it, usually by profit - what about the existence of good private schools motivates public schools to do better?
I went to a private grade school. I had to take a test to get in. I’m convinced that part of the appeal for my parents was that the price kept out the riffraff. (My grade school tuition was higher than my college tuition!)
In a voucher system, what would stop the private schools from raising their prices by the exact amount of the voucher? If they were charging 15 grand a year, and the government starts giving out $7500 vouchers, they would just raise their price to $22,500. The people who were already there continue to pay their 15 grand plus hand over the voucher, the riffraff are still priced out, and $7,500 that used to go to the public school now goes to the private school.
Also, what happens to the kid who can’t pass the test to get into private school? He’s stuck now in a public system that is much poorer because of the loss of voucher money.
It’s not, but there are areas where the bad of free-market competition outweighs the good, as in our current health-care system.
There was once a West Wing episode on exactly this question.
Democrats rely upon teachers’ unions for political support, and are generally committed to the concept of public schools and opposed to vouchers, believing that they weaken public schools and may violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Republicans suspect all public school teachers are Democrats and are generally committed to the concept of competition as a means of making public schools better, even if it sometimes doesn’t work. Around and around we go.
How about we allow vouchers when the private schools HAVE to take anyone who applies to them, instead of being able to pick and choose their students like they do now?
The market 9in education) is distorted, because the consumers are coerced into consuming the product. That is why (partly) the public schools are so dangerous-they are forced to take violent, unwilling students. In many cases, public schools are merely holding pens-they make no pretense at education.
So, yes, competition works, but only if the product is not subject to coerced consumption.
Private schools have to take those kids too, at least until they figure out they’re violent and unwilling - and then of course the money is down the drain.
Besides, aiding private schools adds to this problem, not alleviates it. Vouchers mean that the idea of public schools as a dumping grounds is just going to spread; it’s saying “they make no pretense at education” and choosing to accept it and work around them, rather than try to improve.
Not so fast, I’m not sure that you want to agree with me. The problems affecting the DC Public schools have been around for a long time. I don’t think that the voucher program has been the cause of it. Years of neglect, and other systemic issues have led to this. The voucher program only covers 2000 students. The Public school system has approximately 58,000 students. I’m not sure how many are in Charter Schools.
This article from November states that the DC Chancellor wanted the power to fire ineffective teachers. Bad teachers were just shuffled around. The DC School system also has too many buildings. The reason that these voucher programs came about was due to the poor states of the DC school system to begin with. Frankly with all the scandals in DC and the track record that the District has managing projects, I don’t think that the 18 million would make it to the students. I think that this article paints an accurate picture of what happens with money in the DC School system. If anything, I think that vouchers or a tax credit for parents who want to opt out of the DC school system would be a benefit and might actually begin the formation of a middle class with children in the District. I fear that in the next five years I’ll have to move out into the suburbs despite generally liking my life in the District for much of the same reasons.
It’s both in MY opinion, but I’m not on the Supreme Court.
Education is a right, not a product.
A lot of the anti-voucher sentiment is based on the proposition that vouchers detract from efforts to “fix” the public schools. How are these schools fixed, then? Everyone seems to think there is some easy way to solve the problem and that people want vouchers instead of doing that. I’d actually like to see some evidence to back that up.
It seems to me that parents (especially in DC) have heard about trying to fix these schools for so long and have seen no results from these plans that they leap at the chance to get out of them. Why, in the face of increasingly worse public schools where no attempts to fix them work, should parents be forced to send their kids there?
And what type of free market competition do we have in our health care system?
Incidentally, how is that “competition” thing working out for gas prices?
That between insurance companies – but it’s an illusion; the health-insurance industry is as cartelized as the petroleum industry, and not because of any government policy. Some economic sectors simply lend themselves to natural oligopoly, and those are the ones government should step in and run as public utilities.
Question:
Do you see a constitutional issue when a student is given a Pell grant and uses that money to fund education at Notre Dame, Baylor or Brigham Young?
Yes.