The neighborhood D.C. school had weak test scores and an inaccessible principal, writes David Nicholson in I Just Couldn’t Sacrifice My Son.
The thing is, with a second-grader who has already read the first two Harry Potter books, I can’t wait the four or five years it will take to begin to undo decades of neglect and mismanagement of District schools, much less the additional time needed to create programs for the gifted and talented.
His son thrived for several years at a charter school, but inexperience by administrators and teachers took a toll. Unable to afford private tuition, Nicholson moved to the suburbs.
So why all the middle-class angst and no mention of vouchers for low-income parents, responds Megan McArdle.
. . . every time I see some middle class parent prattling about vouchers “destroying” the public schools by “cherry picking” the best students, when they’ve made damn sure that their own precious little cherries have been plucked out of the failing school systems, I seethe with barely controllable inward rage. It is the vilest hypocrisy on display in American politics today.
Annoyed by an anti-voucher this thread on 11D, she argues both sides of the voucher issue in Vouching for vouchers.
. . . voucher opponents who have pulled their own kids out of failing inner city schools . . . have no good answer for why their choice is morally worthy, but vouchers are horrifying; their response to the deep need of kids in failing schools is a slightly gussied up version of “screw you, I’ve got mine.” Their children’s future, you see, is an infinitely precious resource that trumps their principles of distributional justice and community solidarity, but they cannot imagine putting the futures of poorer, darker skinned children ahead of sacred principles such as “Thou shalt not allow children to attend schools run by the Catholic Church” and “Supporting the public schools (even when they suck)”.
Another post sums up her argument by asking how many educated people would “oppose vouchers if they were the only way to get their child out of an inner-city public school?”
How many of them would accept that their child had to be left in that school because the systemic effects of allowing their child to exit that repulsive school would be dreadful?
She has more voucher hypocrisy posts on her site, which is now affiliated with The Atlantic, and tons of comments.
Update: Everyone is wrong on vouchers, says The Quick and the Ed. But aren’t some wronger than others?
Can’t resist this quote from Megan McArdle:
“11) There’s no way to assure the quality of private schools Ha. Ha. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Seriously? The problem with private schools is that they can’t match the same level of quality we’ve come to expect from our urban public school system? And what else have you learned in your visit to our planet?”
Megan’s entire argument assumes that the supposedly hypocritical suburban parent believes that vouchers work but is nevertheless denying them to poor children. Via Ezra Klein, we can see someevidence that vouchers don’t improve performance either of the students that get them or the schools those students leave. And here is a book from Cato that says the evidence favors charters and vouchers. The facts are by no means settled.
Moreover, Megan is being disingenuous in her argument. Even if the Palo Alto parent approves vouchers for the East Palo Alto kid, that kid is not going to be able to use the voucher to get into a tony private school. The kid isn’t going to get a Palo Alto-style education, even with vouchers.
on the contrary, argument would be that vouchers do exist in a proven market: in the form of houses
Megan’s entire argument assumes that the supposedly hypocritical suburban parent believes that vouchers work but is nevertheless denying them to poor children.
Well if a parent, suburban or not, chooses their kids’ schools on the basis of something other than “it’s the nearest with free space”, surely they are by their own behaviour indicating that they think school choice is valuable?
And if school choice is valuable for the children of middle-class parents, why shouldn’t it be valuable for the children of poor parents?
Even if the Palo Alto parent approves vouchers for the East Palo Alto kid, that kid is not going to be able to use the voucher to get into a tony private school. The kid isn’t going to get a Palo Alto-style education, even with vouchers.
They may however get a somewhat better education than they would have gotten in their local school. There is a lot more differences in education than Washington DC disaster zone vs tony private school.
I also happen to think there is a fair bit of value in parents being able to get their kids away from bullies if the school is unable to tackle bullying.
The suburban parent doesn’t believe choice in itself is valuable; she believes that a better education is valuable. If vouchers don’t lead to a better education then why would she support them? And the evidence, cited above, is mixed on whether vouchers lead to a better education. The high-powered researchers on the EPI conference call I cited above say “the best research available does not show school vouchers for poor children to be a promising strategy for attaining meaningful differences in student achievement.”
Please, Cardinal!
You can’t say things like “The suburban parent doesn’t believe choice in itself is valuable; she believes that a better education is valuable.”
How do you know? Maybe he [standing up for fathers here!] is a libertarian. Maybe he doesn’t want the state or the teachers’ union making his choices for him.
Also please don’t take the “researchers” too seriously; they’re edu-droids, most of them.
And your argument against giving parents a choice is….what?
Most anti-voucher arguments appear to be that if only you stayed and Fought the Power, things may get better for your kid. This means infinite patience as you drag yourself through endless meetings with uncaring bureaucrats, corrupt school board officials, and other crooked denizens of inner-city politics. Very occasionally, it actually works, but it’s rare enough that when it does you can get a movie deal…
But a voucher gives you immediate power: leave, and cut off their air supply.
Let’s look at your argument, Ragnarok. You’re saying that choice in itself is valuable and we ought to be for it. So then when I propose that we ought to install a new door in every single school in the US, and then give the children a choice of which door to enter, you will be in favor of that, right?
No. Of course not. It would cost some money, and it wouldn’t make the tiniest difference in the education of the children. The only time that choice is valuable is when there is a relevant difference between the choices. If we give the voucher kids a choice between two equally bad educations, it costs some money and political capital, yet we have done nothing useful.
A lot of children in public school today are being shortchanged. We need to find real solutions that work, not band-aids that sound good but are ineffective.
***************
The EPI conference call people are not edu-droids; EPI stands for Economic Policy Institute. Carnoy is a labor economist at Duke. Ladd is a public policy professor at Stanford. Krueger is a labor economist at Princeton, as is Rouse. Rothstein is an economist at EPI.
EPI shills for labor unions. Abundant evidence supports policies which give each individual parent the power to determine which institution, if any, shall receive the taxpayers’ pre-college education subsidy which taxpayers allot to her children. People who say otherwise must ignore or misrepresent evidence. In Professor Carnoy’s study of school voucher implementation in Chile, he found that the post-initiation environment produced three types of schools: State (that is, government) schools, private schools, and Church-operated schools. The private schools cost less than the State schools and performed as well, and the Churchh-operated schools cost as much as State schools and performed better. Avantage vouchers.
Gerard Lassibile and Lucia Navarro Gomez
“Organization and Efficiency of Educational Systems: some empirical findings”, pg. 16,
Comparative Education , Vol. 36 #1, 2000, Feb.
“Furthermore, the regression results indicate that countries where private education is more widespread perform significantly better than countries where it is more limited. The result showing the private sector to be more efficient is similar to those found in other contexts with individual data (see, for example, Psucharopoulos, 1987; Jiminez, et. al, 1991).
This finding should convince countries to reconsider policies that reduce the role of the private sector in the field of education”.
See also
Joshua Angrist,
“Randomized Trials and Quasi-Experiments in Education Research”
NBER Reporter, summer, 2003. http://www.nber.org/reporter/summer03/angrist.html
“One of the most controversial innovations highlighted by NCLB is school choice. In a recently published paper,(5) my collaborators and I studied what appears to be the largest school voucher program to date…A comparison of voucher winners and losers shows that three years after the lotteries were held, winners were 15 percentage points more likely to have attended private school and were about 10 percentage points more likely to have finished eighth grade, primarily because they were less likely to repeat grades. Lottery winners also scored 0.2 standard deviations higher on standardized tests. A follow-up study in progress shows that voucher winners also were more likely to apply to college. On balance, our study provides some of the strongest evidence to date for the possible benefits of demand-side financing of secondary schooling, at least in a developing country setting.”
Please read this one page Marvin Minsky comment on school.
Please read this article on artificially extended adolescence by Ted Kolderie.
E.G. West
“Education Vouchers in Principle and Practice: A Survey”
The World Bank Research Observer.
But we don’t presently have a system of “taxpayers’ pre-college education subsidy which taxpayers allot to children,” and while this language is great for trying to argue for vouchers, it really presupposes, incorrectly I think, the disposition of most taxpayers who aren’t parents.
Most of us who don’t have kids in the public schools assume that we are paying for public schools over which we have some control: electing school boards, legislators approving a curriculum, allocating funding to particular programs, etc. And we expect some societal benefit from this.
When it becomes clear that education is really about taxing people and handing the money over to other individuals do with the money what they please with zero accountability other than parental preference, I’m not sure there’s going to actually be the groundswell of support that some of you seem to think there will be, unless you can guarantee savings and lower tax bills.
(I anticipate a big, “well now we just hand it over to unions and the evil minions of the educational bureaucracy” but that’s not really true. Your elected officials decide how much money and to whom they give it every year. You could elect someone else if more people felt as you do. If they don’t, good luck getting real school choice or vouchers.)
Personally, I’d favor vouchers but I want some kind of accreditation for the schools that are eligible for them, public and private. I don’t mean accreditation by the usual educrats, just something that made sure that taxpayers were getting something for their money.
I think most existing private schools are pretty good, but I think vouchers will create a market for crappy ones, and I’d like to avoid that. We can cut off the bad public schools too.
Cardinal Fang said, The only time that choice is valuable is when there is a relevant difference between the choices.
I’m sorry but that is nonsense. First, choice is valuable in itself because it implies freedom. We seem to have forgotten about having the freedom for everyone to have a choice where their children go to school. Second, there may or may not not be a “valuable” difference between Crest and Colgate, Toyota and Honda, etc. But the fact that there are choices promotes competition, a key component in making things better. Freedom and competition are good, not bad. It’s sad that we have to be reminded of something so very basic in a free country.
Now, hopefully you won’t tell me that I have a true choice where I send my kids to school. I do not have a true choice. I can send my kids to a private school if I want to pay thousands of dollars in addition to the money I already pay for the public schools I would be choosing not to use. That is not a choice. My money is being confiscated to pay for other parents’ children. If my money followed my children to the private school (or even another public school), I am not taking money from the public school that I left behind. That school does not need my money anymore because it has three fewer children–my children.
Cardinal Fang also said, If we give the voucher kids a choice between two equally bad educations, it costs some money and political capital, yet we have done nothing useful.
But, Cardinal, it is not up to society to do something useful with my money that it has taken without refusing to give me a choice. It is up to me to do something useful with my money. If I have a choice, and there are indeed two bad choices, then why can’t I choose to spend my money on one of two equally bad choices? Or, why can’t I have the choice to search for another school that may be a good choice?
Freedom and choice, both of which promote competition, are not band aids. They are the cornerstones of a free society. Only real competition will improve education. Until then, the public school system will not improve because there is no incentive to do so.
How about we radically cut school taxing and funding, quit having public schools at all, and offer education vouchers only to the people who are poor enough to qualify for welfare.
We’ll let all parents use the money they would have paid in school taxes to wholly support their own kids’ education?
But we’d have a system of complete school choice.
How many families would come out ahead in this deal? How much would education be improved?
Given compulsory attendance statutes and tax subsidies for education, inevitably, someone decides what sort of education children receive. Aggregation of authority into remote hands places control into the hands of people with no detailed knowledge of individual children. Policies which give to individual parents the power to determine for their own children which institution, if any, shall receive the taxpayers’ pre-college education subsidy place control into the hands of people who know individual children best and are most reliably concerned for their welfare.
NDC wrote: “Personally, I’d favor vouchers but I want some kind of accreditation for the schools that are eligible for them, public and private. I don’t mean accreditation by the usual educrats, just something that made sure that taxpayers were getting something for their money.
I think most existing private schools are pretty good, but I think vouchers will create a market for crappy ones, and I’d like to avoid that. We can cut off the bad public schools too.”
Okay. How about Parent Performance Contracting, which combines financial and performance accountability with minimal threat of State intrusion into the operation of independent schools?
I’m not interested in expanding educational entitlement to post k-12, and it seemed even more bureaucratic than what I’d want. I’d just take the part about kids testing at grade level standard, to tell you the truth although that leaves a big whole in education for kids with special needs.
Here’s a question about style, Malcolm Kirkpatrick, and I certainly don’t think I’m above writing style reproach, but why do you favor writing things up in such a bureaucratic style, with the whole numbered sub-part deal? Who’s your audience there?
No, Cardinal, I’m afraid you’ve missed my point. Please re-read what I said.
And NDC said:
“(I anticipate a big, “well now we just hand it over to unions and the evil minions of the educational bureaucracy†but that’s not really true. Your elected officials decide how much money and to whom they give it every year. You could elect someone else if more people felt as you do.”
Well, except that the unions done got lots more money than thee and me. Of course I don’t mean to imply that such trivia would influence our elections and our elected officials – honourable men, all, selflessly servin’ us through fair weather and foul – but the fact is we don’t get to be heard.
Well, Ragnarok, that may be so, but it doesn’t make being taxed to hand the money directly to someone else any more appealing to me as a tax payer. Some of my attitude may be a reflection of living in a different state with a different political climate though.
You’re in California, right? Have you thought of going directly on the ballot proposition route? Could you all break the stranglehold of the teaching unions with a public referendum or are the California Constitutional issues? I just have a really hard time accepting that there’s popular support but nothing that can be done.
NDC said:
“Here’s a question about style, Malcolm Kirkpatrick, and I certainly don’t think I’m above writing style reproach, but why do you favor writing things up in such a bureaucratic style, with the whole numbered sub-part deal?”
Huh? What “…whole numbered sub-part deal”?
When you follow the his link and read it, see what you think.
“Have you thought of going directly on the ballot proposition route?”
Draper tried it some years ago, got beaten to a pulp by the teachers’ union. Hard to get rid of an entrenched bureaucracy.
There’s a lot of FUD, and most people buy it. So those parents who really care about their children’s education get the short end of the stick.
“When it becomes clear that education is really about taxing people and handing the money over to other individuals do with the money what they please with zero accountability other than parental preference, I’m not sure there’s going to actually be the groundswell of support that some of you seem to think there will be, unless you can guarantee savings and lower tax bills. ”
dingdingdingding. We have a winner. The only way vouchers work is if you give the *taxpayers* a choice. The taxpayer can give the voucher back to the public school, or give it to a child. There’s choice for you.
The data on vouchers isn’t terribly positive, but it doesn’t really matter.
I wrote about the various school choice options here when this article first showed up last week. Here’s a relevant quote:
Whenever I read this debate, I’m always amazed at how all the bright ideas on every side–school choice, magnet programs, vouchers, whatever–rest on a single delusion. The delusion, simply stated, is that parents with choices will willingly expose their children to a low-income, low-achieving population if you make it attractive enough.
You can’t make it attractive enough. Not ever. And if there’s one thing that policy wonks should have figured out from the history of public education, it’s that you don’t screw with the suburbs. Give them their schools, or they’ll leave. And they’ll take their support of public education with them. Whatever solutions we come up with have to work with the segregation that the suburbs demand. Any solution south of that, whether it’s vouchers, magnets, or choice, will only show success if the crossover rate is small enough to be a novelty, and only then if the parents can be sure that their kids aren’t exposed to much of the crossover. Rant if you like about prejudice and elitism; what do they care? Besides, all the evidence is on their side. All the ideologues have to offer is morality plays and shame.
Well, it’s kind of hard to win people over with the kind of rhetoric that gets used a lot times.
I think a lot of school choicers really do their cause a disservice.
Insulting the present system, especially to people who are either actually satisfied with it or have failed to recognized their dissatisfaction yet, isn’t really enough to sell most people on change because most of us know thing can and often do change for the worse.
And when it seems like the argument boils down to “I want your money taken away from you and given to me with no accountability to you,” you’re going to need to sell that a little harder.
Sorry, my comment was to Ragnarok, but I was slow posting. Cal’s points make a lot of sense to me. I think it includes an accurate summary of suburban thought, but I’d throw in a dash of, “and the suburbs don’t really want to hear it from middle class or affluent parents in the city. You elected to live in a district with dysfunctional school system and now you want to get tax money to send your kid to a private school? Yeah, not so much. You had a choice and you made it when you bought there. Good suburban schools are the upside of living in the land of chain restaurants and strip malls. You guys can’t have your cake and eat it too.”
(NDC):“Personally, I’d favor vouchers but I want…something that made sure that taxpayers were getting something for their money. I think most existing private schools are pretty good, but I think vouchers will create a market for crappy ones, and I’d like to avoid that. We can cut off the bad public schools too.â€
(malcolm): “Okay. How about Parent Performance Contracting, which combines financial and performance accountability with minimal threat of State intrusion into the operation of independent schools?”
(NDC): “I’m not interested in expanding educational entitlement to post k-12, and it seemed even more bureaucratic than what I’d want. I’d just take the part about kids testing at grade level standard, to tell you the truth although that leaves a big whole in education for kids with special needs. Here’s a question about style, Malcolm Kirkpatrick, and I certainly don’t think I’m above writing style reproach, but why do you favor writing things up in such a bureaucratic style, with the whole numbered sub-part deal? Who’s your audience there?”
1) Why not use the money which currently supports K-12 schooling to get that plus more?
2) PPC involves less new administrative machinery than virtually any other proposal which offers “something that made sure that taxpayers were getting something for their money”.
3) We agree about the risk of fraudulent schools. PPC creates strong safeguards with minimal new administrative machinery.
4) The PPC dos not directly address special education. Two responses:
4.1) Many sp-ed conditions are iatrogenic (or, nosocomial).
4.2) PPC does not address the threat to Earth posed by Earth-crossing asteroids. Must every proposal be universal in scope to merit consideration?
5) I find numbered paragraphs contribute to precision in the discussion. You can refer to point 4, for example.
NDC (12:07pm) complains that vouchers would entail “taxing people and handing the money over to other individuals do with the money what they please with zero accountability other than parental preference”. This is simply untrue. Private schools already have a great deal of accountability. Here’s a lightly-edited copy of a comment I made at Megan McArdle’s site, in reply to Kevin Drum’s similar allegation:
Does Kevin Drum really think that “taxpayer oversight” and “minimum state curriculum requirements” don’t already apply to private schools? Private schools in my state (N.C.) are visited regularly by fire inspectors who check the exstinguishers and the placement of exit signs and time the fire drills. I believe there are also health inspectors taking a look at the kitchens and bathrooms. There are strict requirements on immunization. Academically, there are specific state rules on required courses that must be passed before a student can be given a high school diploma: biology, 4 years of English, world history, 3 years of math, 3 years of foreign languages, of which at least 2 have to be the same language, and so on (I may be off on some of the details). Every school must give a standardized test every year to all 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 11th-graders and keep the results on file for state inspection. (My school gave the Iowa tests to all students every spring.) I’m sure there’s more, and I have no objection to any of these, but if I’m required to join a union or take some stupid ‘education’ courses to continue teaching in private and charter schools, I’ll move to another state or another line of business.
By the way, my previous school was not accredited, but graduates have had little trouble getting into decent colleges. (When the accreditors came around, they said it would be very difficult to get accredited as a high school, given the lack of ‘education’ credentials in the faculty, but accreditation as a college would be easy, since most of the faculty had Ph.D.s in their fields, and just about all the rest had a Masters. They weren’t joking.)
1) because expanding the system expands the sense of entitlement. Even if we start out with the expectation that only students who graduate ahead of their k-12 plans are eligible to continue with direct taxpayer subsidy, I think it would quickly become a universal expectation. Can you name a social program that it was easily contained at its inception level?
4.1) I think it’s possible that some are, but I don’t think it’s many.
4.2) I wasn’t ruling the plan out because it didn’t cover special ed. But you probably do need to consider that special education parents are a pretty powerful lobby, and that special education is one of the most complicated and costly areas of public education. Not building in a way for special education students and parents to benefit will prove problematic as will building it in without bankrupting your system.
Beyond that, most of what you would demand in return for the money is unnecessary. Even your restrictions on including students who had committed crimes is kind of odd considering that if they wanted to they could stay in public school and are entitled to instruction even if imprisoned.
If the program delivers academically and doesn’t involve anything illegal itself, why would we need to demand more than that, assuming we decided that we wanted to continue taxpayer subsidized education for any but the poorest students?
5) I think the format makes you look kind of wacky and bureaucratic, or maybe worse yet, like an frustrated underemployed lawyer. Remember that you’ve got to convince people to support something wildly unfamiliar; setting up your argument in a way that reminds them of the contracts they signed at their house closing or their grandma’s will may not be the way to go. But maybe your thinking entirely of a legislative audience?
Dr. Weevil,
Other than the health inspector and fire code, I don’t think any of what you’ve described applies to private schools in Georgia. You can set up your own little private academy and offer whatever the people are willing to pay for, with no academic oversight. I think most private schools require about what you’ve described for graduation, but I believe that it’s much much about college entrance requirements than anything else.
Now, if you want accreditation, you’ve got to jump through the hoops of the accreditation body, but lack of accreditation won’t shut a private school down if people still want to enroll without it. And as home schooling is more and more popular, I doubt colleges are going to hold lack of high school accreditation against anyone.
Dr. Weevil,
Are you sure that the academic requirements for private school graduation are set by the state in NC and that testing is required? Can you give me a link to see the requirement? Is there funding tied to doing so?
I’m sincerely surprised to hear it. How do you all handle home schoolers?
http://www.ncdnpe.org/
I found it. We ain’t got one of them in Georgia.
It doesn’t mention required courses and it gives schools the power to determine their own cut score for graduation for the test giving in the 11th grade year.
So, you’ve got to test kids and keep the tests on file. Is that enough academic accountability? I’d probably say no, that we ought to consider the results of the test, but only if we’re kicking in tax dollars.
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/RegPrivSchl/georgia.html
Georgia’s
Sorry about posting a bunch of times in a row. I wish I had realized this page was around first.
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/RegPrivSchl/index.html
Click through. How academically accountable are private schools in general would you say? I wouldn’t accept that schools who meet most of the requirements outlined would be good enough for me to pay for based on that alone.
Say what we will about public schools, but we know what the curriculum is and we know what the test score cut scores are, as low as they might be.
(malcolm): “1) Why not use the money which currently supports K-12 schooling to get that plus more?”
(NDC):”1) because expanding the system expands the sense of entitlement. Even if we start out with the expectation that only students who graduate ahead of their k-12 plans are eligible to continue with direct taxpayer subsidy, I think it would quickly become a universal expectation. Can you name a social program that it was easily contained at its inception level?”
This objection applies with equal strength to the current system, which started with two or so years of compulsory attendance.
(NDC): “the part about kids testing at grade level standard …leaves a big whole in education for kids with special needs.”
(malcolm): “Two responses:
4.1) Many sp-ed conditions are iatrogenic (or, nosocomial).”
(NDC): “4.1) I think it’s possible that some are, but I don’t think it’s many.”
The two largest categories of sp-ed in Hawaii are “emotionally handicapped” and “specific learning disability” (usually reading and Math).
Hyman and Penroe, Journal of School Psychology.
Clive Harber
“Schooling as Violence”
Educatioinal Review V. 54, #1.
Clive Harber
“Schooling as Violence”
Educatioinal Review, V. 54, #1.
Kohn
“Constant Frustration and Occasional Violence”
American School Board Journal, September 1999.
Brockenbrough, et. al.
“Aggressive Attitudes Among Victims of Violence at School”
Education and the Treatment of Children, V. 25, #3
Linda M. Raffaele Mendez, et. al.
“Who Gets Suspended From School and Why: A Demographic Analysis”
Education and the Treatment of Children V. 26, #1
Justice Clarence Thomas,
ZELMAN, SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION OF OHIO, et al. v. SIMMONS-HARRIS et al.,Concurring.
Richard Rhodes
Why they Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist
Roland Meighan
Home-based Education Effectiveness Research and Some of its Implications
Educational Review
(malcolm): “4.2) PPC does not address the threat to Earth posed by Earth-crossing asteroids. Must every proposal be universal in scope to merit consideration?”
NDC): “…you probably do need to consider that special education parents are a pretty powerful lobby, and that special education is one of the most complicated and costly areas of public education. Not building in a way for special education students and parents to benefit will prove problematic as will building it in without bankrupting your system.”
PPC removes no currently available options, By subsidizing escape options at a rate less than the current regular-ed budget, the busget which remains in the system for the students who remain in the system goes up.
(NDC): “If the program delivers academically and doesn’t involve anything illegal itself, why would we need to demand more than that…?”
I anticipate the objection that parents might not properly supervise their kids. I don’t think it’s a real concer. Quite the contrary.
> Say what we will about public schools, but we know what the curriculum is and we know what the test score cut scores are, as low as they might be.
How about we judge private and public schools by exactly the same standard, namely the difference that they make in student achievement and nothing else.
Andy, that sounds great to me as long as you mean student achievement in meaningful subjects like reading, math, science, history, literature, etc, rather than student achievement in sports, cooking, social justice, etc.
Malcolm, I think the idea that you seem to be advancing, that most of the students’ disabilities are brought on by the school staff is crazy talk. I’m not particularly convinced by your out of context quotes. I think that bad methods in early grades may contribute to over-labeling kids with learning disabilities, but the social and emotion claims you quotes are outrageous.
This exactly the kind of stuff that makes school choicer seem crazy.
You have a pretty nice idea but you try to sell it with information that will seem absurd to most of the people who read it. To every graduate of public school who didn’t experience the kind of things you are claiming, you’ve discredited yourself completely.
“Approximately 16.2% of high school students nationwide reported involvement in a physical fight at school during a 30-day period, and 11.8% reported carrying a weapon on school property (Kann et al, 1995).”
I’m calling BS on these numbers unless this was from some pre-zero tolerance study or definition of physical fight and weapon were seriously expansive.
The problem is that anytime a white parent refuses to put their children in public school, they are called racist. We lived in a very white blue-collar area but put our daughter into private school, because the majority of the other parents did not care about education. We now live in an urban area, and yet again put our daughter in private school. For the most part, Public School parents don’t care about education all that much. It’s a class, not a race issue. Educated people do not want to send (sacrifice)their kids to schools where the poor and ingnorant send theirs.
Megan’s argument basically boils down to “if you can afford something yourself, it’s hypocritical to oppose a government subsidy so everyone else can afford it.” We’re seeing the same argument elsewhere regarding health care.
And yet even though I can afford to eat at a nice restaurant occasionally, I don’t consider it hypocrisy to oppose “restaurant vouchers” which would allow poor people to eat at nice restaurants. Do you?
Wahoofive,
The taxpayers already subsidize school. Vouchers expand the range of options available to parents for the use of that subsidy. A better analogy would be Food Stamps which recipients can redeem at A&P alone (by analogy with the current system) versus Food Stamps redeemable at any qualified grocery store (tuition vouchers).
Sorry for the delay, NDC, but I think you’re getting a bit mixed up.
Let’s separate theory from implementation: I’m primarily interested in the theory – that is, is there any reason not to let let all kids have vouchers. Put differently, is there any reason to not have the money follow the kids? I don’t think so, and I’ve yet to see a strong arument against it.
By implementation, I mean how do we get there from here. That’s a very different question, and not one that particularly interests me. I’ve already voted with my wallet. FWIW, I think that charters and the leading edge of the end of the public school system as we know it, and it can’t come a moment too soon for me.
BTW, I think your criticism of Malcolm’s writing style was over the top.
“I think the format makes you look kind of wacky and bureaucratic, or maybe worse yet, like an frustrated underemployed lawyer. “
Come on! It would be quite easy to pick apart your writing!
Oh, I know my own writing has its own problems, but if I’m already pretty interested in the topic, and I’m annoyed and turned off by Malcolm’s choice in presentation, I can only imagine how it probably turns off people who aren’t already interested.
I’m not in complete agreement with his ideas, but they’re interesting enough that they should find a wider audience and I don’t think the format will help at all with that. (Nor do I think repeating the suggestion that a significant number of public school children suffer PTSD as a result of interactions with teachers will establish his credibility, but that’s not a question of format.) Of course, it’s up to him.
I’m very interested in implementation because without a good plan the theory is pretty useless. And not knowing how the system will work (and whether the outcome is likely to be better or worse, cheaper or more expensive) is a pretty good reason for the money not to just follow the kid.
In theory the money could, but who knows whether enough schools could function in such a system to actually educate the kids presently served by the public school system?
But even establishing that in theory the money could follow the kid doesn’t mean it really ought to follow the kid.
In theory our common public schools could be a lot better and could probably better serve our educational and cultural needs. Having a high percentage of the population attend schools that taught common core beliefs and values in addition to delivering solid academic instruction appeals to me more than a system of everyone doing their own thing in isolation. There’s some cultural danger, I think, in sharing no public institutions, and schools are one of the few that we do have.
And in theory, tax payers providing one institution to all in the community is a much different concept than providing everyone a check to purchase what they want. I’m not sure that vouchers are theoretically superior.
In theory improving the public schools we have seems great, and yet, I think you doubt it could be implemented. The theory is much easier than the implementation, you’ve got to admit.
“Theory” and “plan” in social policy often refer to nothing more than dominance fantasies.. One reason to prefer local control of education, and many other service industries, is that there are too many idiosyncratic variables for detailed central planning to work. We don’t conduct State-wide referenda on next week’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu. If we all had to wear the same size shoes, someone’s feet would hurt whatever size shoes we wear; but what theory implies that society would be better off if we all wore the same size shoes? If we voted on what size shoes to wear, insiders would rig the vote so as to reduce their discomfort, guaranteed.