The Tea Party and establishment Republicans agree on some things – school vouchers for one. Both Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz are fans of this transfer of money. Especially as they have opportunistically linked it to civil rights. A two for one deal.
It warms the cockles of the conservative heart to ship public money to private interests. And with school vouchers there is actually a plausible – if superficial – argument that they would improve education.
To explain, let’s first understand school vouchers themselves. A school district spends a certain amount of the public’s money, per student, at the local public schools. Parents, who want their kids educated on the public dime generally have no choice as to where their kids attend school.
The proponents of vouchers argue that parents should have a choice. To that end parents would be given a voucher representing the money the district spends on their children. Parents could use it to buy education at the public school – or at any other school of their choice. This choice, proponents argue, would inspire competition between schools, with the best prospering and the others failing. The “magic of the marketplace” rewarding the successful, if you will.
Seems like a good deal – right? In theory yes. But the world is a real place where what happens is not what we wish for or hope for, but what human nature brings about.
And as such, the biggest beneficiaries of this transfer of public money wouldn’t be the average family. The winners would be the rich and the religious.
How so? Consider the parents with kids already in private school. As it stands, they receive no direct benefit from the school district. However, institute vouchers, and those parents will receive, on average, a windfall of $10,568 per child – tax free.
The school voucher proponent will elide this point and divert attention to the benefits accruing to the poorer parent. It’s a red herring. The poor will still not receive an equal education. The rich will still afford the better schools. The poor may have the illusion that choice gives them new opportunities. But there is no evidence that alternatives – like charter schools – are any better.
School voucher proponents tell stories of quality non-public schools – because there are some. But there are also exceptional public schools. The best of any group tell us nothing about the average of that group. (The average wealth of ten people – one of whom is Bill Gates – will be far higher than that of ten regular folks. But having Bill Gates in the group doesn’t tell us much about the rest of the group)
How will the religious benefit? Quite simply by their ability to pervert the education marketplace. School competition should be based on measurables like SAT scores or college admission rates. But religion causes people to make education choices that have nothing to do with education. Parents will send their kids to schools whose faith is simpatico with their own.
Christian schools that teach intelligent design are the most egregious example. But what of schools which teach that global warming is a socialist plot, or that slavery’s sins have been overblown, or that the Holocaust never happened? Is it reasonable, or even fair, to send the people’s money to “schools” which ignore science and history?
Proponents of vouchers are contemptuous of “government” control of schools. To them, the local school board may be preferable to federal “oversight”. But better yet, is a citizen’s right to make individual choices.
There is a deep suspicion in the conservative/libertarian mind of all things directed by the “authorities” – and why not. But the question must be asked – are all parents equipped to make the best education choices for their children?
The compromise that America has made (along with all industrialized nations) is that parents have the right to send their kids to private and/or religious schools, making whatever financial deals (scholarship, tuition assistance, etc) they are able. But if parents want to have their kids’ education subsidized by their neighbors then they have to send them to their local public school. And their ability to direct their children’s education is through the local, elected school board.
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