Asymmetrical Information

Point 2a seems silly in the context of a national healthcare debate; if nationalising the healthcare system can be done under the commerce clause, I bet I can find room for education, too.

This seems orthogonal to the issue at hand. Why does a voucher system have to be nationalwide? For that matter, why would a single-payer healthcare system have to be national? I seem to remember liberals getting behind single-payer healthcare proposals in states like Oregon.

Libertarians and conservatives are standing here with the door open, ready to negotiate, and so far, no one's even wandered by

Liberals doubt the good faith of most of the conservatives and libertarians advocating vouchers. And for good reason. "Wander[ing] by" may well result in a system much worse than the present one.

I don't doubt YOUR good faith, but I think you are very much the exception to the rule.

Well, conservative and libertarians doubt liberals good faith as well on the issue of education. When we look at it, it appears that liberals are more interested in preserving a dying system in certain areas of the country due to their alliance with public employees' unions.

I really don't see why liberals can't support vouchers in at least some areas where the public system, today, is failing miserably. It is clear that many parents in the inner cities clearly want them, and they are not conservatives or libertarians.

Why not simply note for all the social democrats out there, those who support the Scandanavian or Swedish method of doing things, that a pure voucher scheme is indeed the way they do it in Sweden. Works well too.
Any two qualified teachers can set up a school and see if they can attract pupils.

I like the fact that anyone who disagrees with Matt is confused. Way to intellectually respect your opponents, Matt!

Let's go over 2 (a-c), the heart of the argument, shall we?

(a) Vouchers plainly aren't unconstitutional; the Supreme Court explicitly said so in 2002's Zelman v. Simmons-Harris. To the extent that they are unconstitutional, this is due to the State constitutions which have anti-Catholic Blaine Amendments dating from the 19th Century. Resting your case on century-old Know-Nothing-sponsored, nativist legislation is slightly like defending a policy position arising from a part of the Dred Scott Holding. Uncool. (Especially for our nation's 70 million Catholics.)

2b) I've heard economists spout this line about things not being politically feasible. The teacher's union, they say, is very strong and obstructionist. So let's go directly to second-best reforms. No, no, a thousand times NO! This is conceding before the negotiations (okay, streetfight) begins. Whether or not this is feasible politically is something we're going to figure out at the ballot box. And here's a hint: the stubbornest gang of Mo-Fos are going to win. Unions have an organizational advantage (regulatory capture, public choice, etc.) but choicers are a stiff-necked crew, and ultimately there will be more of us. Won't stop, can't stop.

2(c) Institutional barriers. I'm not sure what this means. But it's important to point out that school choice is more accountable than charters. Under a charter, a whole school has to fail for three to five years before you get a closing at the institutional level. With vouchers (or better, tax credits), if your the school is not working for your kid, you can put him somewhere else within one year! So charters use a clunky, institutional method of accountability while vouchers use a dynamic, consumer-driven model.

Ultimately, it's like you said, Jane Galt. School Choice is not a panacea. But it would be a large step forward over what we have today. The only reasons that we don't have it now are narrow self-interest and powerful teachers' unions. It's time to adopt school choice for the greater good.

If Sweden actually has a voucher system, then that should end all debate on the Left and liberal side right there. I don't know how many times over the years I've personally heard or read someone state "that's how they do it in Sweden", in an ex-cathedra manner that clearly terminated further discussion.

Well, ok, if someone can get a decent cite for me on this, I'm more than willing to chant "That's How They Do It In Sweden" any time education vouchers come up, insisting that all debate is finished.

If nothing else, the reactions to that statement from lefties and liberals will have some entertainment value...

Ellipsis, here is an article from the BBC re Swedish vouchers: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3717744.stm

My sister still lives in Stockholm and uses the vouchers for both her kids.

Excellent! Thank you very much.

JG writes:

Double spending per student, for all I care.

# of students in K-12 public school enrollment: about 50,000,000

current spending per student: about $10,000

Cost to double spending per K-12 student: about $500 billion

This gets to the nut of the problem. A hypothetical very-generously-funded voucher system would clearly be better than what we've got now. Even the teachers' unions would love a voucher system that doubled per-student spending on education. But I don't see how it's plausible that that would happen. It follows that any voucher proposal that doesn't come packaged with an increase in education funding is going to entail some cuts to public schools out of the box.

> It follows that any voucher proposal that doesn't come packaged with an increase in education funding is going to entail some cuts to public schools out of the box.

If they're teaching fewer students, why shouldn't they get less money?

Suppose that all of a public school's possible students took vouchers and went elsewhere. How much should public money should be spent on said school? Remember - it has no students.

> I think it's fair to say that a voucher should not be used at Tom's House of Arithmetic and Billiards.

If Tom's students learn arithmetic better than the students at PS-here forever, why shouldn't we want to let Tom's accept vouchers?

This seems orthogonal to the issue at hand. Why does a voucher system have to be nationalwide? For that matter, why would a single-payer healthcare system have to be national? I seem to remember liberals getting behind single-payer healthcare proposals in states like Oregon.

You can make a reasonable argument for single payer on a national basis: the race to the bottom. I don't think that would apply to states. In fact, I suspect that vouchers would lead to a "race to the top" as young, educated couples move to states with vouchers. The only obstacle: the Democratic machine and its vested political interests.

From the linked article on vouchers in Sweden:

Like the Conservatives' proposals in England, the Swedish voucher cannot be "topped up". In other words, any private school participating in the scheme cannot charge any additional fees.

Teaching styles are informal
Nor can the private schools select pupils on any basis other than first-come-first-served.

Heck, with the prohibition on additional fees, so that the vouchers aren't being used to partially fund schools that poorer kids can't afford, and a prohibition on selection, as well as reasonably tight regulation of standards for private schools, I could support that.

Andy Freeman -- two points in response to your 11:29 a.m. comment:

1) Suppose Boston has 60,000 K-12 students in public school and 20,000 K-12 students in parochial and other private schools. Boston's budget for public schools is $600mm, about $10,000/student.

Now enact a voucher scheme that gives all K-12 students in the city $2,000. (This is a "partial payment" voucher scheme that allows "top up" tuition fees, not the Swedish "full fare" approach.) Now the city is paying for $40mm worth of vouchers for the 20,000 students already in private school before it realizes even $1 of savings from public school kids moving to private schools.

2) I said above that the average per-student funding in the Boston schools is about $10,000. But the savings to the Boston schools from having one student move to a private school is substantially less than $10,000. Why? Three reasons:

a) A substantial part of the Boston school budget is cost of physical plant and maintenance, i.e., buying the schools and keeping them up. Those costs are essentially fixed over the short-run: the Boston schools won't save anything if one student leaves.

b) Other parts of the school budget are quasi-fixed: e.g., absent very substantial changes in the school population, you still have to run the same school bus routes.

c) The average per-student funding includes funding for disabled students, etc., that aren't likely to be the ones moving to private schools.

Clearly, if every student picked up and left the public schools, we could sell the facilities and that would be that. But that's not going to happen.

I'm not trying to bash the idea of a voucher program here. I like the Swedish idea (and I don't even care very much whether the schools that take vouchers are regulated, assuming that they are not absolute shams). But I'm trying to figure out how it could work financially on a back-of-the-envelope basis in the USA, and I don't see how that happens.

A valid concern:

Now the city is paying for $40mm worth of vouchers for the 20,000 students already in private school before it realizes even $1 of savings from public school kids moving to private schools.

True, it would increase the cost to the government... in much the same way that sending Social Security money to well-heeled private-school parents at a later stage of their lives increases the cost of that program. Do I sense another Liberal Consistency Check waiting to happen?

Zrimsek,

Social Security has to pay out to everyone in order to maintain a system where everyone has an investment -- if we turned Social Security into another income-based welfare program (as this liberal would ideally prefer), it would go the way that other welfare programs have (reformed, time-limited, denigrated by the right and center).

Is your implication that the parents who already have their kids in private school would not support vouchers based on need, but instead would demand equal payout to all, or even payout based on how much the parents were paying into government? I think this might be true of some, but it's appalling to think that every parent is this horrifyingly shortsighted about the future of our country that even those who can afford to buy their kids a good education will demand a share of scarce public resources in order to support a program.

Paul Zrimsek (1:23 p.m.): I'm not complaining about the equity of giving vouchers to kids already in private schools. If the government sets up a voucher system, people will be entitled to get vouchers -- that's why they call them "entitlements." My point is that there will be an up-front cost associated with creating a voucher system because you're spending money on students on whom you were previously spending no money. It wouldn't be just a costless reallocation of existing spending as some voucher proponents seem to assume.

As part of the collective Matt, let me say that vouchers are just another piece of restricted-use currency and should be avoided.

I would prefer that private schools have a path toward becoming charter schools, or performing charter school functions or or obtain education contracts.

If private schools would be in violation of religious separation rules, well, tough luck for them.

The problems with Jane Galt's proposal are twofold: 1) public money for private schools and 2) the standards that would be imposed.

Here's what will happen. Mark my words. (And if you need any proof, look to higher ed which for the past 40 years has seen tuition rates skyrocket, quality decrease, and debt for graduates spiral out of control.). Private schools will take the gov't money and simply inflate tuition, who will enjoy none or next to none of the subsidies. Private schools currently cost on average about half of a public school in Arizona: that's because that's what the market will bear. But come vouchers the "market" meaning, government subsidies, will bear whatever the amount government subsidizes through vouchers. So there go ANY of the efficiencies achieved by private education.

On to the second principle - standards. I am the hardest of the hardcore libertarians. But I'll be damned if I want government money going to subsidize some evangelical school that teaches creationism or for religious education. And there's the rub. Standards should be imposed that bar private schools from teaching anything but a government approved curriculum. Private schools work because private schools tailor their education to the parents' wishes and children's needs. I have no problem with it in principle, as loathesome as I think the religious right is. But I do not have any wish to pay for it through tax money.

Along the lines of Joe Strummer; I don't care so much if my taxes pay for another kid's religious education, as long as they still learn the other things that they need to. But I don't ever want to be in a situation where I'm legally compelled to send my kid to a private school where he'll be taught someone else's religion.

"Central testing? Fine."

A funny thing about the voucher debate is how quickly the worm turns on testing. Voucher opponents complain that vouchers don't allow for 'standards to be upheld'. The very same people claim that it is nearly impossible to judge how well a teacher or a school does when the context is something like NCLB. If you can't measure how well teachers do, why is worrying about standards a valid concern in the voucher debate?

Social Security has to pay out to everyone in order to maintain a system where everyone has an investment -- if we turned Social Security into another income-based welfare program (as this liberal would ideally prefer), it would go the way that other welfare programs have (reformed, time-limited, denigrated by the right and center).

I'm content to work this paradox I think I've identified from either end; since not everyone has an investment in the public schools, doesn't its near-untouchability suggest that SS might likewise do OK as a non-universal program?

> But I don't ever want to be in a situation
> where I'm legally compelled to send my kid
> to a private school where he'll be taught
> someone else's religion.

Ditto. Unfortunately, at the moment I am legally compelled to send MY kids to a public school where they're taught, among other things, someone else's ideology.

Of course I can pay private school tuition to avoid that... and have them learn somebody else's (by definition -- I don't have one) religion instead. Swell choice...

Max,

I am missing some reason you can't homeschool?

> I am missing some reason you can't homeschool?

Same two reasons why we generally hire someone to do something:

a) They (expectedly) will do a better job
b) It is less expensive than doing it yourself, after accounting for the lost time

Yes, this tradeoff is much more involved with schooling one's children than with mowing one's lawn. It is still a tradeoff. Since I am paying taxes, I don't see why public education should be part of my problem rather than part of the solution.

In any case, my point was that exposure to religious knowledge/values could not be any more harmful than exposure to leftist/"progressive" ideas that certainly exists in public schools today. At least from my standpoint of a lifelong agnostic.

On to the second principle - standards. I am the hardest of the hardcore libertarians. But I'll be damned if I want government money going to subsidize some evangelical school that teaches creationism or for religious education.

Funny. I personally wouldn't send my kids to a school that taught creationism, but the thought of some schools that teach such ideas receiving public funds really doesn't bother me -- as long as there's ample choice. I just don't care if some kids spend a lot of class time picking up the finer points of Buddhism or Seventh Day Adventism as long as they learn calculus and English composition in the bargain.

Not being a libertarian, I'm not opposed to the concept of using public money to insure that everybody gets an education. But the idea that there should exist this big, bad, centralized "factory" called "The Public Schools" that produces graduates inculcated in the polity's approved ideology strikes me as particularly statist and just plain awful.

I trust a free people to impart useful and noble values to their children more than I trust the state. Left to their own devices, sure, some parents will want their kids taught in a narrow, sectarian fashion. But most will not. For most parents the top priority will be getting their kids into the best school with the best reputation, in exactly the same fashion observable today with respect to post K-12 education.

Making public schooling *mandatory* rather than opt out -- where you can take your taxes with you, or receive a subsidy from higher income taxpayers -- you substantially enlarge the public verses private space. If coupled with that you enforce a separation of church and state standard in the public schools, you shrink significantly the scope for religious expression.

Not only an unintended consequence, in my opinion.

I think it's fair to say that a voucher should not be used at Tom's House of Arithmetic and Billiards.

Billiards is of course an excellent way of conveying knowledge regarding geometry and Newtonian physics. I consider that the hours I spend with a cue in my hand are golden. Help ya cultivate horse sense, and cool head and a keen eye. Did you every take and try to give an ironclad leave to yourself from a three rail billiard shot?

Seriously, some aspects of this debate go away if you take the approach I espoused in my comment to the earlier post. Make every school a voucher school, and issue a voucher for every child. It can cover the entire tuition at Tom's House of Arithmetic and Billiards, or a small portion of the tuition at Phillips Andover and the parents can make up the difference, or much of the tuition at those schools currently run by the government monopoly and the unions and bureaucrats can explain to the taxpayers why they should make up the difference.

I don't get your point about " suburban homeowners who are fiercely protecting their turf."

Tough-- they pay enormous property taxes to "protect their turf"-- since when have union busters turned against private property?

> Those costs are essentially fixed over the short-run: the Boston schools won't save anything if one student leaves.

No, but if large numbers leave, they can lease some schools. And, large numbers would leave. (BTW - In many areas, capital costs are separate from the day-to-day money. I don't know about Boston.)

As to the "money" lost providing vouchers to kids who have already left, losing a hidden subsidy is painful, but that's not an argument for continuing the subsidy.

Max,

I dunno - it seems like you'd rather complain than take responsibility for your kid's education. You could easily homeschool them and that would take care of your 'values' complaint.

And look into unschooling - it doesn't need to cost much more than a computer and an internet connecion and won't take more of your time than you should be putting in if your kids attended regular school.

You're free to solve the problem. You're free to complain. Your choice.

You give away your hatred of teachers with your assertion that causal firing is "outlandish." You must believe that firing people without a reason, or for a bad reason, is rational. That's disgusting; teachers will fight people like you every step of the way.

As for the Swedish comparison, let's first eliminate most socioeconomic inequality in our society. I'm sure you libertarians would be down with that. Because, of course, that's why the Swedish system (or the Danish or Dutch systems) work. If you don't eliminate social inequality first, you would just be exacerbating inequality with your silly voucher schemes, but that's probably your (implicit) goal anyway.

"Making public schooling *mandatory* rather than opt out -- where you can take your taxes with you,"

Anil, how much do you imagine that the largely poor parents trapped in grossly underfunded public schools actually pay in taxes? A fair bit of the problem is that quite a few folks have gone and taken their taxes with them to suburban districts.

Zrimsek,

Actually, public schools have a majority-sized base of support and investment. My parents were sufficiently well off that they could have sent me to boarding school, but b/c they chose not to, they were stuck with the public schools (our area was too working class and sparsely populated to support a private middle or high school). I would say that my family has been far more dependent on public schools -- even the tutors they engaged to supplement our education mostly were public school teachers earning extra money on the side -- than I anticipate my parents being on Social Security income. (Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if my dad ostentatiously returned his SS check to the government.) And I think a lot of people are in this situation -- the school choice debate of urban and suburban areas tends to mask the lack of choice even for the wealthy in rural areas.

PG: I've lived most of my life in rural areas. It's true that there isn't much school choice. Where I live now (Otsego County, Michigan, with a county population about 25,000 and only 5,000 in the county seat), you have a choice of the public schools, one pretty good Catholic school, and two small fundamentalist schools that are probably the Protestant equivalent of an Afghanistani madrassas. Or else there's a very good boarding school (assuming it hasn't changed) two or three hours drive away. When I grew up in Traverse City (considerably more populous, but still a small town), it was pretty much the same except the Catholic system included several elementary schools and the same boarding school was closer and kept luring the best teachers away from the public schools.

But, three things to consider:
1) It isn't the rural schools that have the worst failures nowadays. Some of them are pretty bad compared to an ideal school, but not compared to an inner city school with rapes in the hallways, illiterates being promoted through high school and >50% dropout rates.
2) Catholic schools don't do that much religious indoctrination. My son's putting his children through one - and he's an atheist. The tuition is much more of a problem than the religious slant, which shows much more in maintaining a high standard of discipline than in actual religion.
3) There is room for competing secular schools even with a population of 25,000 spread out across a 30x30 mile county. I know that because there are at least 3 secular high schools and nearly a dozen secular elementary schools - it's just that they are all public schools that don't have to compete. Allow people to choose a school without having to pay twice (taxes plus tuition), and secular private schools will be created.

OTOH, I can't see competing schools existing in the farming areas of North Dakota. (And I've got relatives there.) But I wonder if anything except homeschooling really makes sense in such places...