Voucher: Solution or Flawed Compromise ?

American public schools can be described in only one way: an unmitigated failure. The government has created an educational system free of the checks and balances that normally guide success and encourage innovation in the marketplace, namely, profit and loss in a setting of open competition. Instead, government schools shelter teachers through life-long tenure, virtually eliminating all accountability about what and how subjects are taught in the classroom. Furthermore, there are few incentives for cost-efficiency because this could result in budget reductions. Instead, whenever there seems to be a “learning problem,” the cry is for more of the taxpayers’ money.

The only real solution is to put education back into the marketplace. Unfortunately, some of the proposed “market solutions” are really still government solutions, since they come with political strings attached. One of the most popular of these is the school-voucher plan.

The voucher has excited many pro-market advocates over the years. Under the plan, government would still collect taxes for education, but parents would be allowed to select the schools that their sons and daughters would attend. Theoretically, the government would be a silent third-party to the transaction, merely issuing the vouchers used as payment.

This would purportedly place all families in America on the same level playing field. School choice no longer would be a privilege of the rich; it would become a reality for all. Allowing parents to choose their children’s schools would make those schools accountable to them. If a school failed to meet particular parents’ standards, they would shift their children to another, taking the vouchers with them.

Unfortunately, proponents of the voucher fail to fully understand that the government involvement which has been so destructive of education would continue with their plan.

For the voucher scheme to work as its advocates suggest, government would have to separate its check-writing powers from its regulatory powers. In other words, the government would have to allow parents to use the vouchers at any school of their choosing, without any comments, criticisms, or controls over that school’s curriculum or methods.

However, even a cursory examination of the reality of American politics exposes one inevitable truth: whatever the government pays for it ends up controlling. There are no exceptions!

Two cases prove instructive on this issue: Hillsdale College and the Virginia Military Academy (VMI).

Hillsdale College is a small liberal-arts institution in Michigan that has been admitting and graduating women, blacks, and other minority students on an equal basis with white men since before the Civil War. The college was never accused of or shown to have discriminated because of race or gender in its entire history. But in the 1970s the government decreed that because Hillsdale accepted students receiving federal aid it must comply with all federal regulations, including anti-discrimination laws. Hillsdale argued that since the government money went to students, and not directly to the college, it should not be subject to regulations. The Supreme Court disagreed, holding that any college which accepts students who bring along federal dollars must follow the government’s rules. What was especially disturbing was the Court’s ruling that, even without evidence of discrimination, student aid could be terminated if the school failed to abide by federal guidelines concerning student admissions and anti-discrimination campus policies.

Twenty years later that precedent was used against VMI, an all-male military school that received money from the federal government in the form of student financial aid. A lawsuit against the school claimed sexual discrimination, and the court ruled that because VMI received federal tax dollars, it had to adhere to all federal regulations, including those prohibiting sex discrimination.

Although appearing to be a free-market solution, the voucher system could actually destroy any real alternative to the public schools. While vouchers might improve education slightly in the short term, over the longer run they would threaten to destroy any possibility of real school choice and undermine existing educational pluralism among private schools in America.

First, private schools accepting vouchers would become hooked on government money and increasingly doubtful over whether they could exist without it. Then, like the VMI and Hillsdale cases, government regulations would begin to envelop these schools. Maybe not the first day, or the first year, but eventually pressure groups with “politically correct” axes to grind would pressure the government and courts to extend controls to these new institutions caught in the web of government dependency.

Many private schools that wished to maintain their autonomy might be unable to survive the subsidized competition from the public schools and private schools that accepted vouchers. Those that did survive would most likely have to raise their tuition and once more become schools more or less exclusively for “the rich.”

Private schools accepting vouchers and the accompanying regulations would become de facto “public” schools, reduced to the standards and quality of the existing government system. All would be forced to conform to the government’s model, with no real competition and choice. This would take from parents any incentive to shop around for the best schools for their children. Some of the weaker schools might close, but the vast majority would exist under the government’s regulatory standard.

Finally, a new layer of bureaucracy would arise, with new offices to oversee the program and to assure that schools followed the rules. Once again, tax money would finance a bloated government infrastructure—money that parents could have been spending on their children’s education.

How different, then, would that system look from today’s current public-school system, in which parents are stuck sending their children to deficient public schools unless they can afford to pay more money out of their after-tax income for better private schools?

Although the voucher proposal may look like a market-based alternative to public education, when analyzed with foresight and an understanding of how politics actually works, it is revealed to be a mirage and not a free-market oasis.

Like it or not, it should never be forgotten that every government dollar comes with strings attached. Schools dependent on government money can never become the basis of an actual market-based educational system. To develop such a competitive system, we must allow and require schools to operate according to the rules of the market, where consumers—in this case parents—spend their own money.

Interesting approach. I think a lot of homeschoolers do essentially that. Homeschool entirely through 8th grade, and then phase in community college courses and/or individual high school courses in school districts which allow that.

Another important issue, though, is the huge numbers of kids who just shouldn't be doing high school or college academic work at the traditional age. We're spending colossal amounts of education for kids in the 14-22 age range, which is a time when most them really care about nothing that isn't driven by hormones and/or lack of life experience. Except for the small minority who are really academically self-motivated at that age, they'd be better off doing something like working at McDonald's, and maybe taking one course at a time that meets 2-3 times a week, until such time as they are serious about pursuing education.

It's a horribly common pattern in the U.S. that young people totally waste their time in high school and college, while taxpayers and parents are footing the huge bill for the illusion that they are "studying" full time. Then when they reach their mid 20s or early 30s or whenever they get a clue, they'd really like to do it all over again and get a serious education that will land them good and steady employment, but the money's all been spent and nobody's offering them a free ride anymore, now that they're really serious about studying.

"every government dollar comes with strings attached"
This must never be forgotten.
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Yes, especially with the Bush 'faith based' ploy that will as Roy Black said, corrupt government and destory religion.

I agree Vouchers are flawed. Charter schools are teh answer, except that they should be considered for profit private schools and all private schools should be cosniderd charter schools:
http://www.neoperspectives.com/charterschoolsexplained.htm

I must agree. While vouchers would have the desirable effect of damaging the public schools and perhaps destroying the teachers' unions (an effect better than the first), it would bring most of homeschooling under direct government control--which will be a problem directly.

Why get the government involved at all ? As an example, catholic parochial schools educate the K-8 group at a cost of about $ 2000 per year. If I took my property taxes as somewhat standard for a suburban area, I could pay to put 4 kids thru K-8 without one additional dime.

Why do all of you insist the government still has a role at all ? No tax credits, no vouchers, no property taxes, no state subsidies, no federal tax dollars. You would be surprised how cheap education would be, and how well accomplished kids would become when it becomes a voluntary activity.

In colonial days, an educated citizen used to spend no more than 3 years in a school situation, and some additional years before that at home spending a few hours a day at home learning to read, write, and do arithmetic. The statistic is that 97% of the population was at least literate(could read). Boys used to start attending Harvard University at 14 or 15. Are we intellectually inferior than our ancestors ? Men and women became productive members of the business community without 16 years of schooling. And please, don't use technology as the excuse for a greater need for education. Kids teach themselves computer skills with no problem.

Government has no business at all in the educational field except to indoctrinate the young and control society.

Are we intellectually inferior than our ancestors?

No. We homeschool, and we are pretty confident that our childeren will be done with High School by ages 14 or 15.

Why do all of you insist the government still has a role at all ?

I don't insist this at all. (I merely posted this for comment, not to endorse it.) I agree that the ideal, perfect-world situation (and the one that I would pick when and if I am in charge of these things) would be to get government completely out of this field.

As a practical matter, however, I don't see them getting out of the "education" business (unless the government goes out of business altogether), and I would be interested in the possiblity of getting some of my taxes back that I'm paying into a failed "education" system that I have opted out of. Tuition tax credits seemed like they might be a less-intrusive method of doing this than vouchers. If it meant having to knuckle under to government's rules and indoctrination, however, they can keep the money. (Which is why I wouldn't do a voucher, BTW, for the reasons that have been discussed in the article.)

Government has no business at all in the educational field except to indoctrinate the young and control society.

Agreed. That's the biggest reason that we homeschool.

Nope, no thanks. I'm sick of the government trying to manipulate people's behavior through complicated tax schemes -- and a tax credit such as you propose would certainly not be made available to "high income" people (and like the current "alternative minimum tax" abomination, that would end up including people who live in very expensive parts of the country, who are struggling to pay for a very modest lifestyle -- did you see the article in the NYT a couple of days ago about the cheapest apartment for sale in Manhattan? $215,000 will get you a whopping 180 square feet, and of course on top of the mortgage you have to pay the coop/condo's monthly maintenance fee, which is usually well into the hundreds even for a tiny apartment, and if you want a parking space that will run another $350/month or so, so you'll probably decide to do without both the car and the parking space, even if you're making low 6 figures a year.).

And of course it's higher income people who currently pay a disproportionate percentage of the public school-supporting taxes, have fewer children on average than average and lower income people, and are usually paying the full tab for private schools for their own few children, while also paying the tab for other people's children to attend the public schools.

Enough already. Shut down all the public schools and hand out vouchers in the exact same amount for every child of a U.S. citizen. Anybody who wants a more expensive school for their child than the voucher will buy, can pay the difference out of pocket.

I agree with you, but from a political sense, it makes more sense to move to charter schools first, (as documented by my previous link), and then move to the pure libertarian system wherby eduacation is in the hands of the people and not in the power of government at all.

Step by step.

Who the hell is "having eight kids?" Or is this just some hypothetical?

Is education a basic need? Probably. But you have to admit there is a terrible amount of diploma inflation out there - the need to have a piece of paper to prove you're somebody. It costs more to prove you're somebody these days than it used to, and you can't blame parents for inflating the value society puts on what is usually a pretty worthless peice of paper. To say they can't have 8 kids unless they can afford some some artificial pedigree is absurd. Government broke the education system, not the parents trying to provide a good start for their kids.

My thoughts exactly. There is so much diploma inflation today that Hertz Rent-A-Car hires only college graduates for their counter help. Yes, their counter help. You know, the person who helps you fill out the blank spaces in the form, runs your credit card, and says, Have A Nice Day. You need a $ 66,000 college education for that ? A person with a 10th grade education of 20 years ago would do that job just fine.

The only reason I don't like the tuition tax credit idea is that it implies that taxes for education were extracted already. I don't believe gradualism works at all. The only way to quit a bad habit is cold-turkey. The problem with gradualism is, the system still doesn't work, and you will get those on the left who will blame it on not enough government influence.

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