* Milwaukee school vouchers

Topics: Education
10 Apr 1995

From: "DG Ervan Darnell"


Wisconsin has a trial school voucher program where inner-city Milwaukee
parents below and just above the poverty line can get a $3209/year voucher
in order to send their kids to one of a select group of private schools
(4/10 MacNeil/Lehrer). The first restriction is that the parent cannot pay
more than the voucher amount. In other words, the first thing the
government does in trying to privatize schools is to make rational pricing,
and therefore competition, illegal. It is a designed to fail experiment.
Not surprisingly, the demand was larger than the supply of available slots.
They held a lottery to decide who got to go. Parents cannot spend more to
create another slot. Their discretion in moving their child to the school
that is best for him/her is about zilch.

Despite being strangled out of the starting gate, parents approved
overwhelmingly (as shown on surveys of involved parents). It would seem
children approve as well. However, apparently test scores are not up (the
evidence so far is quite weak but leans towards no effect). Some people
are therefore arguing the experiment is a failure. They fail to mention
that the public schools cost $7200/year. So, for cutting the price in half,
kids are getting an equally good education. Sounds like a win to me.
Despite not allowing the private schools to charge an adequate rate to be
competitive, the experiment still shows the public schools failing. As a
footnote, some argued that the public schools must accept the more expensive
'special needs' cases. Yes, but they also get paid more for doing so.
There is nothing to prevent paying the private schools more too (except bad
political psychology).

It is curious how the mentality that says 'the equality of failure is to be
preferred to the inequality of success' infects the school system. Defense
of the public school system often takes that line. It is especially clear
in the defense of policies such as a 'mainstreaming' (slowing down everyone
so the mentally handicapped can be in (what used to be) a normal class).
Interestingly, even Polly Williams, the greatest exponent of vouchers in
Wisconsin, is upset that expanding the voucher program will eventually allow
rich people to buy a better education. Well, what is wrong with that? Why
must everyone be drug down to the same level? She would prefer that poor
parents not be given a chance to educate their kids in order to avoid
letting rich parents buy a better education for theirs.

As usual, the answer is to completely abolish the public system so that such
complaints have no legal standing. Several groups promised to sue if the
state expanded the program to private religious schools. Full privatization
would also fix that problem, as I have discussed before. Even if one
believes the poor should have their education subsidized, full privatization
would have little effect on that issue. The reason is that schools are
usually paid for out of local property taxes. Poor people are not getting a
significant subsidy now. They are already paying for their own schools.
The subsidy they get now is surely not 50% in any case (what they would save
by privatization).

As for the argument that parents would not educate their children unless
forced to, we can keep truancy laws for the sake of argument here and simply
force people to spend some fraction of the amount they are already spending.
I think this sort of worry says more about the liberal nanny state mentality
than it does about parents. Regardless, I do not mean to address every
pathology of the public schools here, but I will just close with my favorite
factoid: In 1870, before public schools or truancy laws, the literacy rate
("reading and writing") was 85% (U.S. Statistical abstract), that includes
blacks and persons living in the territories. This was when kids had to
work instead of go to school, education was not as valuable, and it was
relatively more expensive than today. The public schools have been around
so long, it seems to be universally accepted that we just could not do
without government intervention. We could.


Home