While there are a variety of arguments advanced in favor of school choice of the sort that transfers public money to private schools, many of them focus on the benefits to those able to chose to leave public schools. Those left behind seem to be largely ignored. This, I contend, is a problem.
One stock argument in favor of school choice is based on the claim that it allows students to escape from dangerous public schools. It is true that public schools can be violent places and protecting children from violence is laudable. This approach is analogous to moving away from high-crime areas, ideally to well-policed gated communities. While this is obviously beneficial to those who can chose to escape, it does nothing to address the underlying problems of school violence—it merely allows some to escape, while leaving the rest behind.
It could be argued that school choice can still solve the problem. However, the easy and obvious reply is that even if all children are (for example) given vouchers, this will merely recreate the problematic public schools—thus undercutting the safety argument for school choice. To use an analogy, it would be like trying to solve the problem of high crime neighborhoods by creating gated communities—and then moving everyone within the gates. This shows the basic problem with trying to create safety by moving some people away from unsafe areas: it does nothing for those left behind.
One could counter that the solution would be dilution: if the problem children could be identified and distributed among various schools, they would be more manageable. This does have some merit, but this could obviously be done without school choice programs.
It could be argued that what matters is securing the safety of some, be it in private schools funded by public money or in gated communities. As such, school choice is good—for those who matter. Those left behind do not matter. While this might be appealing to those on the right side of the gates, the obvious problem is that they do not (yet) exist in total isolation from those left behind—so failing to address the underlying safety issues still leaves people unsafe. To use an analogy, this argument is like arguing that public roads are unsafe because of poor maintenance, so the solution is to provide some drivers with publicly funded road vouchers so they can drive on the safer private roads. While this can be great for those who get the vouchers, it does nothing for those stuck with the supposedly dangerous public roads. It would make more sense to use the public money to make the public roads safer.
A second stock argument, the quality argument, in favor of school choice is that private schools perform better than public schools, so parents who want their children to get a good education should favor programs that permit their children to avoid or leave public schools in favor of private schools. This assumes that, in general, public schools will be inferior schools. Let us suppose that is true—the higher quality of private schools is a reason to provide public funds to allow some parents to remove their children from the inferior public schools.
Looked at from the perspective of those leaving, this seems like a good argument. Who would not want to be able to choose a better education for their children? However, there arises the question of what happens to those left behind, such as those who do not get vouchers. They, obviously enough, remain in what are claimed to be inferior schools. What about them?
It could be claimed that the choice programs can be expanded to allow more children to escape the bad public schools. But diverting more money to school choice programs will result in less funding for public schools, thus resulting in a spiraling decline in quality.
It could also be argued that the choice program can be funded without taking money from public schools, so public schools would also be well-funded. However, this creates something of a problem for the quality argument. If public schools are bad, then it would make more sense to use public money to make them better rather than diverting funds to private schools. If public schools are properly funded and become good schools, then the quality argument would be undercut—using public money so children can “flee” a good school to attend another good school has little appeal. So, the quality argument is essentially self-defeating if one considers it.
While school choice is clearly appealing to those who wish to have their children escape public schools, it does nothing to address those left behind. This is a serious failing of school choice and makes one suspect that its proponents do not really care about the good for all children, just what is good for certain people.
So the argument boils down to: since we can’t save them all, we shouldn’t save any.
Bravo! No doubt I will come back later to add more, but that gets to the heart of Mike’s argument beautifully, in one line.
No; we should save everyone we can. School vouchers, as they are generally implemented, seem to be high cost and aimed at transferring public money to private schools. Often religious schools. One suspects they are more a political payoff for certain religious voters and private school owners than a serious effort to improve education.
This is, of course, just one moral position.
School vouchers, as they are generally implemented, seem to be high cost
is not a moral position; it is factual – or not factual. And that is my problem with this entire series.
In principle, this should be a factual discussion: do we get better results from spending $9 taken from every adult in Florida by putting the money into the existing public school system, or do we get better results by removing pupils from the public school system to pay for private schooling?
Along the way, we will have to make some value judgements on what constitutes a better education, and perhaps who should be chosen to receive the vouchers, but other than that it is a pure cost/benefit analysis – and it is irresponsible to make that analysis without specifics.
Certainly, we all come to the discussion with biases and preconceptions – for example, it is my understanding that on average, giving a voucher for private education costs less – LESS, not more – than the average pupil cost in public education. I’ve just been trawling the National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics tables, and it seems to confirm my belief that on average, the private sector educates at a lower cost per head, but I acknowledge that there are more complications and considerations there than I have absorbed.
(While the elite private schools are pricey indeed, 2/3 to 3/4 of them have annual tuition fees below the average capitation for public schools. That much I can see from the statistics)
I have no objection to either religious or for-profit schools, as long as they teach the recommended curriculum effectively; I don’t understand why you see them as objectionable. Religious schools kept education alive long before there was public education in the US – and long before there was a US, for that matter.
One suspects they are more a political payoff for certain religious voters and private school owners than a serious effort to improve education.
And another one suspects that an unprincipled opposition to any encouragement for independent education is a political payoff to Teachers’ Unions for their megabucks in coerced donations.
We cannot allow suspicions of possible motivations to distract from the actual question: which use of that $130M gets the best result?
Sorry – I thought I closed that italics tag at the end of the first line.
My position, that we should save everyone we can, is a moral position.
Also, the cost is technically a moral position as well-judging high or low cost is a matter of value and, as Mill claimed, economics is a branch of moral philosophy.
But you are right that the dollar amount is a matter of fact; it costs X dollars per student or not. But whether that is high or low cost is a matter of value judgment. I’m not going to say it is subjective, since I accept Pojman’s classic argument that relativism collapses into subjectivism which collapses into nihilism which entails that there ain’t no ethics.
What is “saving”? Is it some kind of crusade, like “saving” the heathens by forced conversion to Christianity?
We’ve swung in the opposite direction these days, placing a premium on intellectualism vs religion, so now “saving” has to do with education and college – but it’s not really education, is it? No more so than shouting “I confess!!”, seemingly to save one’s mortal soul, but really just preserving the power of the Pope and the Divine Right of Kings.
And so today we “save” the poor folk who don’t know how to diagram sentences or cant’ stop fidgeting in the lunch-line by allocating more and more funding by raising taxes and looking to our city council, our state government and our federal “Education Czar” to make sure that we are on the moral high ground.
There is a huge disconnect between the idea that “We Cannot Compete” with China, India and other foreign countries when it comes to intellectual success, inventiveness, medicine, research, mathematics, physics … and the approach we take to “fix” education in the US by lowering standards, raising up the bottom and increasing numbers rather than increasing quality.
We have to be careful about inflicting our moral values on others to the point that it becomes legislation.
Excellent comment. However you’re forgetting that the new woke approach to education of minorities and such is not to educate them at all because education itself, diagramming sentences, doing math, the scientific method, is white supremacy.
See:
https://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2019/05/world-of-woo-2.html
And the numerous links in the comments and back to the first edition of that topic.
That took me by surprise, and shocked me a bit. In my school years I found it natural to consider that the taxonomy of our modern fields had a pretty smooth line of descent from what were considered branches of philosophy – moral philosophy, natural philosophy – but it seems incredibly jarring to me now. I spent some time reading along that line, and it still feels jarring and unnatural. I don’t know why that is. I’m going to read some more.
On the question of high or low cost, I wasn’t arguing with adjectives. I was pointing out that the cost per pupil appears to be lower on average in private schools than in public. This has implications for the effective use of funds. Of course, as with all matters of accounting, we need to know where the lines are drawn and the pockets are hidden before final judgement.
“…private schools perform better than public schools, so parents who want their children to get a good education should favor programs that permit their children to avoid or leave public schools in favor of private schools. This assumes that, in general, public schools will be inferior schools.”
I disagree with this analysis, or at least I don’t think it goes far enough.
First of all, what is the metric for defining “Better”? Does my definition differ from the government’s? It clearly does.
“If public schools are bad, then it would make more sense to use public money to make them better rather than diverting funds to private schools.”
Same argument. Who says what’s “bad” and what’s “good”? What’s the metric? I would argue that the ideas that the government has about making bad schools better are totally different from the ideas that make the good schools good.
It’s a different set of problems – but if one is concerned about “fairness”, one must consider meeting the needs of ALL the citizens, not making some judgement call about who has had enough and who has too much and who has to pay and who gets to receive. I think that students should get an education that meets their own abilities and needs, and allows them to establish their own starting point when establishing a measure of success.
We have many government programs, including “No Child Left Behind” and “Common Core” and others, each defining “Quality” in their own terms. Mostly that comes down to a minimum pass-rate for students, a mathematical equation that looks at average test scores, average retention rates, and other averages that can afford to ignore the high-performing students, but need to focus on the low-performing ones so that they can get enough of them over that bar to qualify for additional funding – and as an additional little compliance threat, justifying teacher’s salaries.
This totally makes sense from a political point of view – these are the numbers that mean success for a school funding program. And in order to quantify the results, one has to homogenize the delivery – hence “common core” and other initiatives.
But the “child left behind” is the A or B student – the one who seeks to go to college, to become a doctor or engineer or some other professional. In the equations above, these are the ones that don’t need to be considered. They’re already in the “plus” column, statistically. So they tread water in a public school while the money is spent on students who are less likely to put their education to good use, whose value in the system is statistical, which will support the agenda of whichever Democrat or Republican is basing his campaign on “Saving our Schools”.
For parents of the high-achieving students, we aren’t concerned with the average scores of the school system. While in some ideal sense we might be concerned about retention in our district, we aren’t willing to sacrifice our own kids’ education for the “greater good”. And so we seek a “better” education for our son or daughter. And when we pull our kid from the public school, we begin to see the patent unfairness of our tax dollars being spent on programs that do not even remotely benefit us our our children, that we have consciously and completely opted out of. Michael, you might as well have some of your local Florida tax money being diverted to snow-plowing costs in North Dakota for all the return you’ll get on your “investment’.
And “better” for us is not the same as “better” for the City Council or the governor. We seek different, more personal results that frankly aren’t coming any time soon. Certainly not when it would be most meaningful for our sons or daughters.
So for a marginal school district to make best use of funding, it’s obvious that they would pour that funding into remedial education, test preparation classes, and other strategic plans to get the district up to snuff.
It will be a long time before any of that funding goes to AP classes or “Gifted and Talented” programs, or even expanded foreign-language or humanities curriculum. And to build a state-of-the-art biology lab would just be a waste of money – at least in the next few funding cycles.
Politics plays another, more hidden role in all of this. When my kids were in public school, the high school district was in an area that was transitioning from rural farmland to gentrified development. Population grew rapidly, creating an immediate need for new middle-schools and high-schools. So the township would float a bond bill and put it up for a vote – but the childless population in town would vote it down, and an emergency spending bill would be passed to build a smaller school than required just to get something built … then classes would have to be put in trailers, but by law they can’t do that for long – so another budget was floated and voted down by the childless, another emergency spending bill was passed for an extension on the school that wouldn’t go far enough – and so on and so on.
For the parent of an A or B student who wants to go on to college – who needs this crap?
So does the federal government step in with their checkbook? They don’t do that without requirements. They will gladly hand over cash in exchange for compliance … curriculum that involves history re-writes that support their agenda, perhaps, or adoption of “Common Core” that supports an individual politician, or adherence to and focus on the minimum standards that look just good enough to get certain people re-elected.
I’m sure their hearts are in the right place, but I repeat – in terms of my own child’s education, “Who needs this crap?” It might improve the numbers for statistical reasons, and allow for the school to be called “Better” (thanks to increased funding), but it does NOT further the needs of my budding surgeon!
I want a school that doesn’t have to worry about minimum standards, that doesn’t have to rely on some bureaucrat’s definition of “quality education”, who can spend their money on MY kid, not the mass of great unwashed from the other side of the tracks.
But the “child left behind” is the A or B student – the one who seeks to go to college, to become a doctor or engineer or some other professional. In the equations above, these are the ones that don’t need to be considered.
Exactly! Public schools spend 80% of their effort on the underachievers and leave the good students behind.
You do raise a good general point about the allocation of resources. A moral case can certainly be made to focus more resources on the better students and leave the others behind. After all, the return per dollar will be greater.
But, there remains the question of what we, as a society, owe the underachievers. The answer could, of course, be nothing.
More correctly, the question is relative rather than absolute: do we owe the underachievers more than other children? The system and culture at the moment is to neglect high-average and high achievers in favour of underachievers. Is that fair?
The high achievers seem to be doing well in most areas-in a way, by definition. 🙂
You are right to note that this is a matter of value and the question is what we owe to each, if anything.
One argument for assisting the underachievers more is analogous to medical arguments: those who are worse off need more treatment; the healthy need far less. Of course, one could also go with a sports analogy: if you are a coach who wants to win, you put your effort on your best to make them better. There are good arguments for either approach.
As a professor, I’m split on this. On the one hand, it does make good sense to focus on my better students. On the other hand, they often benefit less than the bad students would. To illustrate, for the same effort I might be able to help a 92 student get to 96 or get a 59 student to 70. Then again, sometimes the effort put into a 59 student amounts to nothing.
In general, parents (and the general public) know better schools from worse schools. That is why parents who can afford it tend to buy houses in the good school districts and avoid the bad.
We can, of course, debate the finer points of what makes a good school or a bad school. But we already know the difference when it comes to where we want our kids to go.
So much to discuss here … I guess that’s why this has been an ongoing problem for so long. A few quick hits …
” … there remains the question of what we, as a society, owe the underachievers … “
My gut tells me that primarily we, as a society, owe them a little honesty, and perhaps a little respect. The entire “system”, in its own haphazard way, is setting people up for failure by putting a premium on academic achievement, and treating any other path as substandard and worthy of disdain and derision. And all kinds of political machinations and public funding.
A middle-school or high-school student may be a veritable genius when it comes to troubleshooting, diagnosing, and fixing automobiles – but if he gets a 60% on his English Lit final, he’s labeled an “Underachiever” – triggering all sorts of faux-concern, and if they play their cards right, some fat public funding.
And this mentality snowballs, as I’ve said in my earlier post.
“…A moral case can certainly be made to focus more resources on the better students and leave the others behind. “
Again, there’s that judgement, and lack of respect. “Better”? In what way? “More academically inclined”, maybe, but talent and achievement come in many forms. God forbid we should become one of the “others” (cue hand-wringing here).
When I was in middle school, we had a pretty robust vo-tech program, which served the needs of the blue collar community I lived in. (I’ve already said that I grew up on the “other side” of those tracks, but that’s a different story). I had a friend named Billy F. His dad was our mailman, and did odd-jobs on the side. I’ll never forget how downright awkward I felt when my dad hired Billy’s dad to come put up the awnings around our sun-room one spring, and Billy came along to help. I couldn’t wrap my head around the social dynamics of the situation (of course, I didn’t think of it in those terms back then). Billy was my pal – we hung out in school, we gawked at the same girls – but now here he was as some kind of employee …
Anyway, I went off to prep school and Billy stayed behind and went to the local “pub-high”; never went to college. Years later I ran into him at an ice-cream shop. He was the owner. He also owned two gas stations and three rental properties. But Billy was an “underachiever”, and by today’s standards, one of those who is unfairly denied the “opportunity” afforded his wealthier counterparts, and he is looked upon with disdain. Had he been treated more “fairly” and given the “opportunity” to go to college, chances are he’d have skated by at the bottom of his class, gotten a diploma, and bought an ice-cream shop and two gas stations and three rental properties a few years later. Or maybe he wouldn’t have had that “opportunity”, because his college debt would have prevented the first purchase.
Once again,
“…A moral case can certainly be made to focus more resources on the better students and leave the others behind. “
Does it have to be one or the other? Can there not be the “Vo-Tech” and “Academic” paths in public school again?
I honestly don’t know if the public high school my friend attended had vo-tech classes or curriculum in basic entrepreneurship – but if it had, then I’d say it was on its way to being a “good” school.
So my definition evolves. A “good” school isn’t one that meets the numbers set forth by politicians, but one tthat allows students to develop a realistic sense of themselves, and that teaches to the student, not the test. One that doesn’t buy into a definition of “success” that is dictated by politicians with singular, if not distorted, perceptions and goals, and that is able to understand that “achievement” is more than a test score or college admission, and doesn’t necessarily include either.
“We can, of course, debate the finer points of what makes a good school or a bad school. But we already know the difference when it comes to where we want our kids to go.,”
Exactly. Except I don’t necessarily agree that there are any “finer points”. For politicians and government, it’s a numbers game – and never mind the details. Increase retention. Establish standards. Increase the number of students meeting those standards. Show the statistics in a chart, and get elected.
Except that in the classroom, creativity and real pedagogy give way to “teaching to the test”, and on the other side, the standards get modified so that more students can pass.
And when more students pass, they are told that college is necessary, and college is an “entitlement”, and they go because they’re told that this is “better”, and that they don’t want to be “left behind”. And they spend four years struggling as their self-esteem erodes, while the administration scrambles to figure out how to retain them and pass them and get them a diploma because they have their own retention numbers to meet.
And thus we have a graduating class made up of 50% “Billys”, who now, saddled with debt, can’t figure out how to make the down payment on that first franchise, and 50% “Academic Achievers” who have been cheated out of the excellence they have been promised because of the focus on “Billys”. Ironically, many of these shell-shocked graduates, unable to find a job in their industry because they lack the qualifications the industry requires – end up working for the “Billys” who did not buy into this college myth, who now own contracting businesses and gas stations and retail stores, and are only too happy to hire degree-wielding, debt-laden, under-educated but highly credentialed individuals to manage one of their businesses while they go out and buy another.
And here’s the real irony. These entrepreneurs, the ones that are “left behind” because too much funding went to the private or charter schools, the ones who have worked their asses off building businesses and figuring out how to achieve the American Dream – these are the ones who are the “deplorables” who fill those baskets, the un-educated (ugh!) Middle Americans who are looked on with disdain because of their lack of a college degree, and who bear that innuendo-laced epithet, “Trump Supporter” (double-ugh!).
Circling back, we as a society owe these “underachievers” a different adjective and a different attitude. And we owe them a real education – one that teaches that there is honor in hard work, and that “academics” is only one direction to go, and that a “good school” is one that is able to determine the needs, the attitudes, and the aptitudes of all of their students without the lofty pretense or judgment that forces them down a path for which they are ill-suited. This attitude robs them of a different, but no less valuable education that is tailored to them as individuals – not “remedial”, but “other” – and it also robs the academically-inclined from the excellence they deserve, by diluting the curriculum to accommodate “Billy” – simply because we have fostered the belief that to do otherwise is somehow unfair.
And, of course, if “Billy” happens to be non-white, we can throw “racist” in there just for good measure.
So once again,
“We can, of course, debate the finer points of what makes a good school or a bad school. But we already know the difference when it comes to where we want our kids to go.,”
I know my kids better than any school-board member, better than any teacher, and certainly better than any Senator or Representative. If my kid struggles with academia but has talent that lies elsewhere, I will not allow the public school to label him as an “underachiever”. Likewise, if my kid can understand trig functions like most of the rest of us understand Facebook, I’m not going to let him be a pawn in a school system trying to be what it is not.
It’s precisely those like Billy the Dems have left behind.
The Dems have made a big bet on identity politics, and their internal contradictions are tearing them apart. It will be impossible for them to check all the intersectional boxes. Just look at the trans vs. feminist cat fight going on right now. And the fact that two old white guys are leading in the polls is causing no end of angst among the wokesters.
You may be right. Maybe. But I would not put so much faith in logic and reason to carry the day. Many at the leading edge of the Dark Ages probably had a similar feeling that things cannot go on like they were at the time. And they were right as well.
There was an op-ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal (written by the editorial board) titled, “Do Charter Schools Replicate?”
The main premise is this:
“One critique of charter schools is that while a few energetic principals show success, it’s impossible to replicate. Not so, says a new study of Boston’s charters, which doubled from 16 schools to 32 in four years, even as they maintained their effectiveness.”
The article continues to indicate that expansion charters generate achievement gains comparable to those of their parent schools, which is pretty big news.
The point that is relevant to this conversation is that the charter schools have not been selective in their enrollment, rather, applications have exceeded available space to the extent that a policy of open enrollment has become subject only to a lottery system for acceptance, which randomizes acceptance so that it effectively mirrors population.
“Comparing the outcomes of students who receive lottery offers to those that do not,” the authors write, “shows large positive impacts of charter attendance on test scores.”
This would seem to indicate that the problem with public school systems is the public school systems themselves. It may not be a matter of funding, but rather one of how funding is used – of pedagogy vs politics.
From a logical, philosophical point of view, the issue is one of “Foregone Conclusion”, as is so often the issue in these conversations. In this case, the “foregone conclusion” is that “Government is Better”,or that “Public Schools are Better”, and that by depriving them of funding or that by even trying an alternative is somehow harming the students that are “left behind”. It’s quite possible that the opposite is actually the case – that by holding firm to this foregone conclusion, the government is harming more students than it is attempting to help.
“Notably, the charter spinoffs were equally successful “while enrolling students that appear more representative of the general Boston population.” Compared with peers at Boston Public Schools, these pupils had lower previous test scores, were more likely to qualify for subsidized lunch and had similar rates of special needs and limited English.”
That statement alone seems to say it all – but in the spirit of critical thinking & analysis, certainly bears further investigation. This further investigation, however, is hampered by the sentiment expressed in the conclusion of the article:
“With results like these, politicians should be fighting to help charters expand to meet the demand. But charters are public schools that operate independently and often free of union constraints, and that makes them a political target. [boldface mine] In Boston, charter schools are capped at 18% of the district’s spending, which has left more than 8,000 students on a waiting list.
A Massachusetts referendum in 2016 would have allowed the state to authorize 12 new charters a year outside these spending caps. Unions backed a scare campaign saying this would “siphon” money to “a select few,” as if Boston’s predominantly poor and minority charter students needed to check their privilege. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a supposed champion of the dispossessed, opposed the ballot measure. [boldface mine again] It failed, 62% to 38%.
The story is similar in New York and other states with charter caps. Rather than welcoming student achievement at competing schools, teachers unions are trying to stop the success from spreading. They care about their power and money, not students.
Vouchers seem to be just another attempt on the part of parents – “Please give us a way out of this political mess so we can provide for our children!”