My adopted state of Florida recently passed a school voucher program that would pay $130 million to private schools to pay the tuition for 18,000 students. If the voucher plan is not ruled unconstitutional (as it was in 2006), the state plans to expand it to include families with ever higher incomes. This plan has been praised by conservatives who support it by appealing to the benefits of school choice.
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While strong support for public education has been bi-partisan at times, it is currently split along ideological grounds. As such most opposition to vouchers comes from the left and they advance a variety of stock arguments. First, it is argued that the voucher system is intended to transfer public money to private businesses, thus making it a form of “wealthfare” in which public money benefits businesses that are already well-off. Second, it is argued that vouchers take money from underfunded public schools that desperately need funding. Florida, while not the worst, is near the bottom for spending per student and teacher pay. There are many unfilled teaching positions, schools with broken air-conditioning, and teachers routinely must buy their own classroom supplies. Third, it is argued that vouchers are often a tool to channel public money into religious institutions through their schools. Fourth, it is argued that the voucher system is intended to undermine public education to maintain the existing class system and to undermine the bedrock of democracy. While I do agree with these arguments, it is worth considering the proposed merits of vouchers. After all, to simply embrace or shun something solely on ideological grounds would be to reject critical thought. As such, I will consider some of the reasons advanced in favor of voucher programs.
One set of reasons can be grouped under what I will call the “better student argument.” The gist of this argument is that vouchers are good, because it results in better students. To be specific, choice advocates point out that private schools have better safety, better academic performance and better graduation rates than public schools. From this, they contend, it follows that vouchers are beneficial.
It certainly makes sense that the private schools have better students than public schools—this is because they can select their students and public schools must take everyone (with some limits). There is also the fact that parents who would use the voucher program would tend to be more engaged. To use an analogy, comparing the two is like comparing intramural teams which must take everyone and varsity teams that have strict tryouts and cuts. The varsity teams will almost always be better teams. But it is not being varsity that makes the varsity team better—it is the selection process. The fast runner is not fast because she is on the varsity team, she is on the varsity team because she is fast. The same holds for the private schools—they get better students because they are free to reject the ones they do not want.
One could also use an analogy to public health: the private schools are like hospitals that can select their patients and exclude those they do not want. Public schools are like hospitals that must take everyone. Such exclusionary hospitals would have far better outcomes than the public hospitals—because they would select the better patients and would be getting more money. However, this would hardly be a good solution to public health.
On the one hand, if your child is a good student and can get accepted by a private school, then the voucher program would be appealing. You can get your child into a school with a better class of students. On the other hand, if your child is the problem child or bad student that other children are trying to escape, then the voucher program will not help you—your child will be stuck in an ever-declining public-school system. While this might be seen as just a problem for the children who cannot escape and their parents, these children are part of society and are thus everyone’s concern even if the concerns are purely pragmatically about crime and employability. Using a public health analogy, abandoning people into a declining public health care system puts everyone at greater risk.
If it is replied that the problem students will also get vouchers, then the obvious problem is that private schools will no longer be better or safer. Going back to the sports analogy, this would be like varsity teams trying to still claim to be better while responding to criticism about leaving people out by opening the teams up to everyone. They would soon cease to be better. Likewise for the voucher program: if it is open to all children, then the public schools would simply be replicated in private form. If the schools are exclusionary, then people will be left behind in what are acknowledged to be more dangerous and inferior schools. As such, the better student argument is problematic. Excluding the “problem” students so that the private schools are better means abandoning these citizens to declining public education—which will hurt everyone. Opening the schools up to everyone would mean they would be the same as public schools, so they would not be better. The discussion continues in the next essay.
If you look at countries like France, Belgium, and Holland that allow school choice, the quality of the education is much higher than the public schools in the U.S.
I’m surprised Mike doesn’t like school choice because it would allow a poor kid to go to school in a rich neighborhood.
It seems to me there are a few things left on the table here, and at least one argument that is somewhat flawed …
…”Using a public health analogy, abandoning people into a declining public health care system puts everyone at greater risk.”
This points to a major argument that’s missing from this essay. Abandoning students into a declining school system compromises education opportunity for everyone. That’s the point, isn’t it? That if the school system sucks, it should suck for everyone. No one gets out.
One logical flaw stems from an argument that isn’t really yours – just one you are anticipating –
…”If it is replied that the problem students will also get vouchers, then the obvious problem is that private schools will no longer be better or safer. “
Not true. The vouchers would give them the money to pay for the private schools, but they still have to be admitted on the basis of merit.
The logical flaw I see is that money is perceived as the answer. If you have money, you can send your kid to private school, and that’s not fair to the people who don’t have money. And to give money to the people who can afford the private school just doubles down on the unfairness. And somehow, then, by extension, we conclude that …”If only the public school systems had more money, these problems would go away.”
I fundamentally disagree with this premise. It’s true that more money …can fix a whole host of problems – better maintenance, cleaner halls, more classrooms, even higher teacher salaries – but until the government stops making centralized decisions about curriculum and stripping teachers from their own ability to devise creative, motivating lesson plans, the problems will persist.
My kids went to public schools in a community that was by no means a “poor” community. Not the Hamptons, of course, but a good K-12 school system by many measures. My son, in particular, was very bright – when he was in kindergarten he was in charge of all the high finance of the milk-money collection and milk distribution; he would read to the other students in the class during free time. When he was in first grade, we had a conversation about an ongoing weekly assignment called “Spelling Words Three Times Each”, where they would be given a list of words and they just had to write them three times each to learn how to spell them. My son, of course, knew (and had known for a while) all of the words on the list. “Is there some other exercise he can do?” “No.” “Can he get a list of more challenging words for him?” “No”. The homogenized education of the grammar school had been devised by bureaucrats with zero focus on individual achievement – so my wife and I sought a way out for our son.
Unfortunately, the choice we made was not ideal either. As is the fear of many, despite the pedagogic promises the school made to us, it turned out to be little more than a school for rich kids – which is a problem in itself. I can see how this problem might be mitigated substantially if vouchers were given to families across-the-board, taking “money” and “affordability” off the table, and leveraging the private nature of the school toward curricular choice and academic freedom. That’s something that happens in Charter Schools, but they have a different set of issues.
More recently, I was working with a company that manufactures hands-on STEM education “kits” for grades 8 – 12. Our project was to identify ways in which digital media could broaden the scope and experience of these kits. I spoke to a few high-school science teachers in some schools across the state, and the overarching opinion was the same –
…”We have a bunch of those kits. We really love them – but we don’t use them. We can’t – there’s just not enough time. We have to spend so much time on the material that’s on the test that our day to day activities have to be pretty rigidly timed out.”
And the tragedy of that was that that attitude trickled down to the students. On 10th grade biology teacher put it this way …
“It’s almost impossible to teach these kids anything. By the time they get to me, they’re like little robots. The first question out of their mouths is, “Is this gonna be on the test? and if it’s not, their eyes glaze over and they shut down.
“The power of the purse” is wielded by government in ways that further political ends, but can do great damage to simple principles like “freedom of choice”. Barack Obama was able to pass his landmark healthcare bill in some states by threatening to withhold welfare dollars. Colleges that refuse to accept federal money have more freedom to design their own curriculum than their federally-funded (and thus wealthier) counterparts. And parents who use their vouchers to take an active role in school choice can have more say in the direction and content that their children receive.
There’s a big difference between saying, “Here’s a coupon – go to the restaurant of your choice”, and “I have built a restaurant for everyone. Come and eat free – but you have to eat what I serve”.
I am not saying that this is the only answer – only that it has to be considered as a part of the solution. It seems as though “Public School” is the premise we need to accept before even entering the argument, which immediately stifles a broader, more creative discussion.
I don’t see how this can be resolved by any argument-in-principle. In both cases, the State is taking money for its citizens in general to fund the education of children. Both the provision of state school places and the assignment of scholarship grants serve the stated purpose.
Decision on this issue can be made only on the basis of balancing fairness with efficacy, and neither degrees of fairness nor quantification of efficacy is made clear by any of the material I have read.
I read the 2006 decision. AFAICS, the Florida Supreme Court majority simply misinterpreted the plain language of the Constitution. The Florida Constitution requires the state to provide public schools, but does not exclude other means of furnishing education. SC04-2323 Bush v. Holmes. This case is stated in the minority dissent, section 2, and is simply correct, with no possible counter. That ruling should be overturned, and if the citizens of Florida really want to prohibit scholarships, they need to write it in to their constitution, as other states have.
We can discuss claims of gairness and efficacy, of course, but I’ll save that for the next post.
We can discuss claims of gairness and efficacy, of course
Well since you raise the subject of efficacy, I’m curious what purpose you think discussion with Mike about this subject, or any subject for that matter, will serve. I know this sounds snarky and such but after years upon years upon years of witnessing and partaking in such discussions, I think you’re missing the fundamental issue. There’s a meta-problem here and it is a general obtuseness (and I think I’m being generous describing it that way for the moment) to logic and reason. Failure to address that problem undermines pretty much any other argument. Wipe it. Like with a cloth. Ya feel me?
If you think it’s not worth arguing here, then don’t load the page.
For myself, I find some of the posts make me look up some US facts and ideas I find interesting. If you think Mike is resistant to reason, you really can’t have met the New Intersectional Left.
Not what I’m saying. I am saying that there is something very, very much worth discussing here. Believing that this is about reason or that reason is a path to any sort of truth in this regard is in itself rather unreasonable. If you think The New Intersectional Left, or whatever label that we try to hang on to such to give it a sense of being something, is not at its base about the degeneration of the very liberal culture on which it is based, you’re burying your head in the sand. This NIL or whatever it is called in its current incarnation is probably the greatest threat to our liberal western culture. What I am saying is that such a thing is probably the most important thing to be discussed. And it gets dodged with every post. Thus, Groundhog Day.
The true anti-intellectualism, the skirts of which Mike and his leftist academic ilk hide behind, is the perversion of the truth seeking tools of reason. That to me is a greater threat to our society…especially coming from those in publicly funded “academia”. Especially from those who teach ethics.
I agree that what I’m calling the NIL has the potential to be one of the greatest threats to civilisation if it grows and spreads. However, Mike does not repudiate reason, causality, and evidence, and he is not part of that. In these posts, he puts forward a heavily biased view, sure; but we’re all biased. I can live with bias.
I like the label “New Intersectional Left” and its acronym “NIL.”
The question I have is why there is so little pushback by mainstream Dems against the NIL.
I think the answer can be found in a story that appeared yesterday in which 3 billionaires were interviewed.
Billionaires Bill Gates, Charlie Munger, and Warren Buffett were interviewed on CNBC this morning, and it wasn’t surprising to hear the three men defend capitalism. But it was surprising to hear Gates make a really good point about socialism. Or, at least a good point about how socialism is defined in the U.S.
Gates pointed out that the current surge in pro-socialist rhetoric in the U.S. isn’t really socialism by any strict definition of the word. The so-called “socialist” policies we’re hearing from politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders are largely just capitalist policies with a strong social safety net. And that’s okay!
So even though Bernie spends his honeymoon in the Soviet Union, and lefties swoon over Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, they aren’t *real* socialists because they don’t immediately want to seize the means of production!
It is all clear now.
I also suspect that every time a member of the NIL knocks a MAGA hat from someone’s head, it will translate to thousands of more votes for Trump in the next election.
However, Mike does not repudiate reason, causality, and evidence, and he is not part of that. In these posts, he puts forward a heavily biased view, sure; but we’re all biased. I can live with bias.
Mike, and more importantly his ilk, repudiates reason and causality and such with virtually every failed response to reasoned criticism by using vague language, pretending to acknowledge certain points but then diluting those minor, vaguely worded concessions in volumes of more leftist BS, much of it denying what he previously conceded. And if that doesn’t work, ignoring the issue. And if even that doesn’t work, the clown nose comes out.
Yes, everyone has their bias, including the MSM and academia. See if you can get Mike to concede that the MSM…outside of “the fine folks at Fox” of course…has a significant left bias or anti-Trump bias. And were we talking about just a media bias here or the bias of any private individual, hey, I would not care. But this is bias, profound bias, on the part of a man who is supposed to be teaching philosophy not sophistry. And ethics on top of that. And even were that being the case at a private institution funded by private dollars, I would agree with you, it’s a bias I can live with. But I challenge you to provide an argument justifying bias to this degree being taught to young people at a publicly funded academic institutions. I will concede that the only saving grace here, based on two of his ex students and based on Mike’s very own complaints, is that students only take his course for an easy grade and that it is virtually a no-show situation. Still, that does not justify any of this. Again, THIS is the argument. THIS is the root issue. Everything else, all the leftist and whatever topics, are meaningless unless addressed on a level of honest inquiry, not “Wipe it? Like with a cloth?”
BTW TJ, you’re behind the times. The new argument that they’re floating in the hive is no longer that Cuba and Venezuela and such were not TRUE socialism, but that Castro’s Cuba and Maduro’s Venezuela were actually capitalism. Or capitalism failures. Granted I only encountered this sort of BS in comments but it’s out there. They’re floating the trial balloons. Because WORDS ARE MEANINGLESS. This is the problem.