Recently, a pro-voucher organization released a report claiming that vouchers save money. The National Education Policy Center assigned the report to two scholars, and they found that the report’s claims were untrue. In addition, numerous studies have shown that students who use vouchers are likely to fall behind their peers in public schools, especially in mathematics. If you care about educating the next generation, vouchers are a big step backward.
BOULDER, CO (March 15, 2022)—A recent report from EdChoice argues for expansion of policies that publicly fund private schools, contending that private schools could provide equal or better outcomes at lesser cost. A review released today examines the report’s methodology to determine the soundness of its claims, and it finds the cost-saving estimates to be based on unsubstantiated assumptions.
Luis A. Huerta and Steven Koutsavlis of Teachers College, Columbia University reviewed Fiscal Effects of School Choice: Analyzing the Costs and Savings of Private School Choice Programs in America, and found its accounting procedures to be based on conjecture.
The report asserts that voucher and voucher-like (tax credit scholarship and education savings account) programs have saved state and local treasuries some $12.4 to $28.3 billion dollars as student “switchers” use those programs to leave public schools and enter private schools. The report claims that the purported savings result from the lower numbers of students in public schools coupled with lower variable per-student costs.
However, Huerta and Koutsavlis point out that the cost-saving estimates of private school choice programs are based on speculative assumptions. In particular, the report guesses in estimating the number of switchers across programs and for determining resulting variable cost fluctuations. With some limited exceptions, states operating these private-school subsidy programs do not track the previous enrollment status of students who use the vouchers to subsidize their enrollment in private schools. Such lax accountability standards mean that the number of switchers and estimated fiscal savings are necessarily based on conjecture.
Consequently, the report’s findings do not provide a sound base for policy decisions. Huerta and Koutsavlis provide suggestions for more detailed accounting procedures and more nuanced methodologies for calculating reliable variable student costs.
Find the review, by Luis A. Huerta and Steven Koutsavlis, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/fiscal-effects
Find Fiscal Effects of School Choice: Analyzing the Costs and Savings of Private School Choice Programs in America, written by Martin Lueken and published by EdChoice, at:
https://www.edchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/The-Fiscal-Effects-of-School-Choice-WEB-reduced.pdf
Public education is an public asset of economy of scale and efficiency. There is no rival system that returns such value to a community. Public schools are not only academically superior to voucher schools, they offer professional services to address a variety of student needs. They generally accept all students and provide students with opportunities to create friendships with a variety of diverse students.
Cost savings for vouchers are an illogical conclusion. Communities cannot adequately fund a quality public school and a number parasitic voucher schools for the same dollar. All schools suffer in quality and service as a result, or communities will have to spend more tax dollars to fund multiple institutions for staffing and operation or cut services. Vouchers are a scheme to send pubic money out of public schools and into private pockets.
I think there is no reason for any calculation to determine that the statement “vouchers save money” is not only false but also wrong in every sense of the word: Vouchers save money for private schools by taking money away from public schools hence from the public. That’s not saving money, that’s taking money.
The same way, the reason Walmart “saves” money for customers is because it pays ridiculous salaries to its workers, not to mention their other similar practices.
Taking money away from people cannot be sold as saving money. Thieves don’t save money, they take it; no calculation is needed to observe this.
Seriously, when did we start calling thievery a money saving process?
Ever since that vaunted supposedly free market took charge of everything economic, i.e., the beginnings of capitalism.
The EdChoice article supports spending less on education and ignores the fixed costs of public school funding. I guess they think it’s better than a flourishing democracy to empower the rich elite with lower taxes. Interesting choice of beliefs.
EdChoice = choose to be an opportunist
What are the programs for very sparsely populated rural areas called that let families choose which distant public high school to attend? When my spouse was a child, his home was halfway between two small urban areas that each had a high school. It was a thirty minute drive to either choice. He ended up going to the high school that the neighbor’s child went to because he could get a ride there.
There were no nearby private schools.
Urban areas and rural areas are very different.
Francis Kelsey Fan– Here’s a kicker I found when your post spurred a google search: “Definitions. The United States Census Bureau defines these areas in the United States as sparsely populated and far from urban centers, which make up an estimated 3% of the land area of the U.S., but is home to more than 80% of the total population.” !!!
Is there an answer to this conundrum? I suspect there is much more our govt could be doing for these far-flung people. Cannot help but think of Australia. They once had only ‘radio’ school-cum-homeschooling for such kids, but today you can see how they’ve fleshed it out into a network of regional schools offering much more. Yet there is still a commute involved.
I grew up in the rural surrounds of a small [30k] city. We too had no private schools anywhere nearby [they were in larger cities a couple of hrs’ drive away.] Thank goodness we had nearby village K-6. But starting in 7th grade, I had 45min schbus ride to jrhi, then 1hr schbus ride to hisch. What I notice about yr spouse’s experience: had to get “a ride” to school???
My husband doesn’t remember how other families coped with the absence of a school bus service.
In a past hearing I attended on statewide vouchers, representatives of rural school districts raised the concern of neighboring districts try to poach football players, so I guess that even sparsely populated rural education policy can be complex. The town my husband grew up in doesn’t even have a traffic signal, only a set of four way stop signs.
Considering that Utah spends less than $8000 per student and the vouchers law that fortunately died would have given up to double that per student, it’s obviously not the case here.
So typical of the pro-privatization of pubsch ed: “cost” = $s required to provide something that calls itself K12 ed & keeps kids busy during their parents’ workhrs, but should never be measured against even state stds for ed achievement—that would be subjecting them to faux bureaucratic ‘gubmint’ regulations. Never mind the cost to the state of turning out ‘scholars’ who can’t meet minimal state reqts for hisch grad & are thus more likely to end up on the state dole. And don’t under any conditions count the extra cost to the state of a third tier of K12! Deep pocket funders are reaping benefits! Hey, more kids in non-union schools! And corporations locating here because they can get 1:1 tax credits for every buck they invest in ESAs benefiting those incredibly cheap tuition schools!
The 250k students in voucher programs comprise one-half of one percent of US public school students. It’s hard to care. Yet I’m glad NEPC pays attention to faux claims of cost savings– good to get out front of the narrative. Cuz this will grow, just as charters did, and charters already are really hurting some school budgets even tho they’re only 7% of K12 students.
“The 250k students in voucher programs comprise one-half of one percent of US public school students. It’s hard to care. ”
I guess you don’t live in a voucher pushing state. Where vouchers are used, public schools start to die a slow death. Slow,because in the first couple of years of the voucher program, they get funds from the state to compensate for the loss of funds. Then teh school is onits own, and with 10% loss of its budget, imagine what happens.
Thanks for that perspective, Mâté. I was living in my bubble when I said “it’s hard to care.” Vouchers are concentrated in certain states, and in states where that slow death was already underway thanks to too many charters, just accelerating the process.
Although nation wide, charter school a minority of total students, within urban districts, charter schools can have a much higher percentage.