Vouchers were once thought to be a dead issue in US education. Voters have turned them down again and again. The public dislikes them so much that even Republicans are afraid to use the V word. Instead, voucher programs–always enacted by legislation, not by voter referendum–are always called, euphemistically, “opportunity scholarships.”
When GOP governors like Mitch Daniels in Indiana and Bobby Jindal in Louisiana promote vouchers (er, excuse me, “opportunity scholarships”), they claim they are doing it to “save poor minority students from failing schools.” Who knew the GOP had become the party devoted to poor minority kids while slashing the budget for education and social programs?
It turns out that vouchers are antithetical to equity. They do not save poor minority kids. They increase segregation. Schools choose and skim. Vouches exacerbate inequality.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Agreed, that’s why I joined with the ACLU and filed a disability discrimination complaint against the Milwaukee voucher program for discriminating against children with disabilities.
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Good. I’m going to rejoin the ACLU now that I know they’re fighting the inequity of education for children of color or for those challenged by poverty or disabilities.
We are now divesting in education for the poor, but hopefully our legal system will put an end to that.
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Great. They have a Racial Justice Project which is where their voucher complaint grew out of.
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Of course they don’t.
Vouchers are designed to introduce market dynamics into the public education system.
That sort of private commodity market dynamics always acts to amplify inequalities — concentrating benefits in the hands of those who already have the most and distributing costs to those who can least afford them.
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I think it is important to see why inequality increased. In the early 1800’s, no country in the world had a life expectancy at birth of over 40 years. Today no country in the world has a life expectancy at birth of under 40 years. Inequality has perhaps increased, but it would be hard to argue that the more equal situation of the 1800s is to be preferred.
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Are you really an economist or just pretending to be one on the internet?
If you are not any sort of schooled economist, then you are doing that whole field a disservice by confirming our worst fears about them.
If you are any sort of schooled economist, then it might serve everyone concerned to specify your particular school or subschool of thought, so we’ll all know who to blame for your idiocies.
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What are your worst fears? Political philosophers like Jack Rawls recognize that there might be an advantage to allowing inequality, hence the difference principle.
Here is an interesting story about how allowing for inequality improved the situation for everyone: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/20/145360447/the-secret-document-that-transformed-china?sc=emaf
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@teachingeconomist – I too agree that free markets work for some goods. Learning is not a “good”. You’re comparing apples and oranges. There are some services in the social sector that just cannot be compared to goods and commodities.
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I am not comparing education to anything, just arguing that when thinking about inequality (in anything), it is not always the case that a more equal situation is to be preferred.
Education itself creates inequalities, but that is not an argument against education.
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Whether you agree or not, our nation has a commitment to equality of opportunity. We should reject policies that increase inequality of opportunity.
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I am all in favor of equal opportunity, I just think that denying Paul opportunities is a short sighted way of brining that equality about.
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Your facts on life expectancy are a bit misleading…
For example:
Looking at white males the life expectancy at birth in 1850 was indeed a very short 38.3 years. But that’s incredibly misleading. By age 10, the life expectancy had increased to 58.0 years. Comparing just life expectancy for 20 year-olds, in 1850 a young man could expect to live to 60.1.
The dramatic differences in life expectancy since the 1800’s come form decreased infant mortality.
Yes, life expectancy has increased, especially in wealthy countries, but not as much as the often quoted “hardly anyone lived to 40” canard would suggest.
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I did not say that “hardly anyone lived to 40”, so I will not take the blame for that statement. No doubt life expectancy is heavily influenced by infant mortality rates (and women’s life expectancy by maternal mortality rates).
My point is that the more unequal situation today (if you want substitute declines in infant mortality rates) is preferable to the more equal situation in the early 1800s. Do you disagree?
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I guess I’m having a hard time with your premise that things are “more unequal” today than in the early 1800s. There’s a word that’s on the tip of my tongue, starts with “s” – can you help me out?
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How about this: in 1809 NO country in the world had a per capita income level over $4,000 ( real GDP in 2005 dollars). Today there are countries with per capita income levels OVER $40,000 (real GDP in 2005 dollars) and countries with per capita income levels UNDER $3,000 (real GDP in 2005 dollars).
You may think that is a more equal income distribution today, but I suspect you would be alone in thinking that.
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Do your income figures account for slaves, indentured servants, and serfs who had no income?
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By the way, slavery (and snark) aside, I’m not convinced that things were any more equal among whites either.
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“S” is for “Strawman”
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I do not think it is a straw man at all. Let me quote from Dr. Ravitch’s post on November 12 of this year:
“The more charters open, the more the public schools decline, especially when they lose their most motivated families and students. This is not simply a matter of transferring money from Peter to Paul, but crippling Peter to enrich Paul.”
The enrichment of Paul is presumably through access to better opportunities in charter schools (that is not my assumption, but Dr. Ravitch seems to assume it to be true). Denying Paul that opportunity would reduce the gap between Peter and Paul, but I argue it makes us all worse off in the long run.
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Dual school systems are inefficient. That was the case when states ran segregated school systems, and it is true now when districts have a public system and a charter system. Add a third system–vouchers, as in Milwaukee–and all three systems are unsuccessful and inefficient.
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Comparing per capita income the way you do tells me nothing because it doesn’t give any comparative reference of what a dollar is worth. So what if our per capita income is over $40,000 today? What does that $40,000 buy? And, hint, it buys a lot more in those countries where the per capita income is less than $3,000 than it does here.
And, furthermore, you’re now talking about inequality about inequality among different countries, whereas I’m pretty sure your original post was about inequality within the U.S.
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2005 constant dollars.
My original point is not about inequality within the United States.
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If your original post was not about inequality within the U.S., then what exactly was it about and how is it relevant to this discussion? The rest of us are talking about vouchers in the U.S. not only not reducing, but actually increasing inequality.
Sometime you might try coming down off your cloud and living real life, especially the real life that more and more Americans are living. Then I think you might have some different ideas about inequality supposedly being a good thing.
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I am not trying to defend inequality as a good thing, what I am saying is that good things sometimes create inequality. Seeking to eliminate the inequality can also eliminate the good things.
I think education is a perfect example of that. Whether because of nature or nurture, education magnifies the differences in the ability of students to learn, creating very unequal outcomes.
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This is all very unfocused. You can’t have a discussion about equality without defining what is and isn’t being equated. Money, legal rights, health, happiness, etc.
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As we have seen over and over again, when you create voucher for $X then the price for prized quality private/charter schools quickly escalates to $X + $V (a “voluntary” contribution). This is exactly what economics teaches: when the amount of money chasing a fixed good increases, inflation is the result.
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Why do you assume the number of seats in charter schools is fixed?
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“But the state’s adult English literacy rate is even worse. California ranks 51st — last in the nation, behind the other 49 states and the District of Columbia — with 23 percent of the adult population unable to glean information from brochures, newspapers or other sources of information.”
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I wonder if the illiteracy rate in California has something to do with the large number of non-English-speaking immigrants in the state?
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Jon Awreby, it seems anyone can claim to be an economist these days particularly if you pledge fealty to the gods of free markets and competition.
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Well, that is the question — the difference between a religion and a science. Both have their place in human society, but they do have to know their place.
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You must not have kept up with my discussion with Harlan Underhill. I am often pointing out the limits to markets when commenting on his posts.
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I don’t want to inflate your ego…but many here do not follow your discussions with that other guy. I skim at times or completely disregard and I ignore those I find repulsive, not meaning you.
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I meant deflate….by Friday teachers are wiped out and one glass of Chardonnay can do me in. Sorry.
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Vouchers are about parents and students, not just students. If you look at “educational inequity” only from the “student” viewpoint, then +Diane is right. If you look at “educational inequity” from the point of view of a student and parent, then Diane is wrong. If a parent has no choice but to send the child to a school that has drugs, crime and gangs, then society fails both the child and family. What family is willing to wait
for the school their child attends to be fixed? NONE THAT I KNOW OF!
Vouchers are about activist parents (activism focused on their kids) getting
the most for the kids. Teachers try to give their all to each kid, but without
major support from the education system (public schools and administration)
and parents, their efforts will only win with exceptional kids — those who are wise enough to recognize a future beyond their hormonal urges and their local friendships.
Political correctness and school administrations throttle teachers to deliver the lowest common denominator to all kids because 1 kid or a few kids have this specific issue that must be addressed by all teachers. “Our policies cover all kids” is why school
administrators dumb down the entire education system.
Vouchers are an admission of failure of society, not teachers or even school districts.
Vouchers are, today, the best solution. Give vouchers to all parents who energetically
want the best for their kids.
Do that.
Now focus on the remainder of kids who have no functional parents,
who migrate to gangs, who have emotional problems and who are not so
very bright. These kids I want to help. But only after we “skim” from the population
those kids whose parents are actively involved in their futures. For these
kids, I would pay more taxes. But, alas, we must all act in unison and use
the one size fits all mantra. We must require all teachers to teach 140 IQ students
with the same efficacy as 4 gang bangers in the same class; 1 math challenged
kid who in every other way is an outstanding person; 1 reading challenged
kid who is a math wizard; 1 ordinary person who gets C+ in English, History,
Math, … but is elected Class President.
When I went to school, we handled those issues reasonably well.
No so today.
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Equity through vouchers is a marketing slogan, not a reality. A mirage in the desert has more substance. But I do think egbegb has indirectly touched on a very critical point that bears directly on the reason why this blog [“A site to discuss a better education for all”] exists.
Consider very recent history. Think of the lead up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. A very effective way to get people to make extremely bad longterm decisions is to inject lots of FUD into the discussion accompanied by a deafening drumbeat of “there is no time to wait, no time to consider the consequences, no time to weigh alternative courses of action. Hesitation, delay, taking a moment out for thoughtful reflection, just plays into the hands of the enemy.”
Whether or not difficulties in education are fixed, children keep growing up, and parents feel a need to act sooner rather than later. The charterites/privatizers prey on that feeling.
If vouchers could be proven to be effective at giving the vast majority of young people the kind of education available at the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, or Sidwell Friends, or Chicago Lab Schools, then perhaps there would be a blog entitled “A site to discuss how vouchers have proven to guarantee a better education for all.” On a more personal level, I have some passing acquaintance with Cranbrook. These institutions are not remotely what vouchers in general actually provide. In reality. In the world we actually live in. Here on planet Earth. *I urge people to check the websites and wikipedia entries for the abovementioned institutions.*
But making promises that play on people’s deeply felt feelings towards their children should be familiar to anyone who follows corporate America. Add in FUD and a feeling that time is swiftly running out, and you have a great marketing plan that can generate huge $$$.
Market plans, though, are not the same as solutions. And IMHO, the complicated, time-consuming and at times uncomfortable process of finding solutions to big problems are what this blog is all about.
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I know nothing about economics, but I do know education. And I know the effects of inequality, and unequal funding on the ability to provide my high poverty students with a quality education. As I watch the news tonight and hear that our nation is spending 5 BILLION dollars a MONTH on a war, it is difficult for me to fathom that our nation has such a low priority of education our most needy children. It doesn’t seem like rocket science to me….
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It ks a terrible waste to spend those resources on war. It may be a bit of a comfort to know that we spend ten times that amount a month on K-12 public education.
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TE: investing in education is a great investment. Without it we would have no future. Life for most of us would be nasty, brutish and short.
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I certainly agree. The poster was concerned that spending 5 billion a month on war was evidence of a low national priority for education. I thought she might think better of the country if she realized we spend more than 50 billion a month on education.
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I have a question you may be able to answer. I heard something “voucherest” the other day. So it is not using a voucher system, but this parent I spoke to in CA provides Home Schooling/Independent study and then enrolls her child in private music, art, and riding lessons and submits the reciepts back to the school for said private lessons for reimbursement. She says the school gets ADA for her student so it is cheaper for them to do this than having her child show up to school where they have to pay for a teacher, building,and the resources…..is this for real? Does this really happen? Is it really legal?
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Never heard of this. Probably depends on state law and some states are eager or cut costs and this would be one way to do it.
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Having relatives participating in that exact scenario, I can vouch that it is true.
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