In the previous essay, I considered some arguments in favor of school vouchers. Another set of arguments focus on the choice aspect, that vouchers allow parents to select the education that best fits their children and that will cultivate the desired values. For example, choice proponents claim that vouchers enable parents of children with special needs to pick a tailored program not available in public schools. An obvious reply to these arguments is that the main reason public schools lack tailored programs is that they are underfunded. Schools could offer tailored programs if they had the funding and diverting public money to vouchers makes less sense than funding these programs. This would be like arguing that public money should be diverted from community rec centers to private gyms because the rec centers lack the variety of equipment possessed by private gyms. If the equipment is critical for the community, then the funding should be used to get that equipment for the rec centers rather than funneling money into private gyms.
A third set of arguments focus on economic efficiency and accountability. The gist of the arguments is that private schools will be more economically efficient and more accountable than public schools. While I will not deny that public schools can be inefficient and lack accountability, the same is true of private schools. Look at the nightmare of for-profit colleges to see what can go wrong in the private education sector. There is no public sector curse and private sector magic, one can have bad or good in either. If a school district is inefficient and not accountable, going private is not an automatic fix. It just leaves all the problems in place in what remains of the public sector. Rather, the solution is to increase efficiency and accountability in the public sector, as has been done with many very good public schools. In the case of for-profit schools, there is always the obvious question about how they can do all that a public school would do for less yet still make a profit. At the college level, the answer was that they did not.
A final set of arguments focus on how vouchers and similar programs improve schools by offering competition. While, as a runner and gamer, I do recognize that competition can result in improvements, this does not seem to apply in education. First, consider the disastrous for-profit colleges. If the competition hypothesis held true, they should have been better than public schools and helped improve them. However, they ended up being vacuums for public money and disasters for their students. Public schools mainly responded by doing what they could to help their victims. After the for-profit college debacle I attended meetings about what we could do to help the “refugees” from the failed for-profit colleges. Second, public schools operate at an incredible disadvantage in the competition. They are more accountable than private schools, they must meet far more requirements than private schools, they are subject to state assessment and grading, they must accept everyone, and their funding is limited. Arguing this way for vouches is like arguing that giving places like Disney and Six Flags public money from the state park system would improve the state parks because of the competition. This would not improve the state parks—they are far more limited than the private operations and already have far less funding. If we want better state parks, taking away money is not the way to make that happen. Likewise, taking money from public education is not going to make it better.
In sum, while vouchers are good for some people, they do not benefit public education. The arguments in their favor are problematic, while those against them are strong. As such, vouchers (and similar programs) are a bad idea.
I think your arguments/objections are sound, although my experience and knowledge in this area is limited. I strongly agree, specifically, with what you say on the argument for competition. In my primary and secondary school education, students were more interested in making good grades and learning for their own futures, not trying to out learn and perform better than classmates. The competition claim, in my opinion, was and remains a ruse. Or a smokescreen. Or, as often posited and exposed by philosophers, a fallacy. I can’t claim private schools are oversold, because I have more hearsay and puffery than facts upon which to offer are cohesive assessment…I don’t KNOW that private schools offer better education than public schools. Perhaps that is true for some of their students. I doubt that this truth adheres to all…the outcomes depend upon commitment, dedication and determination. As usual, Professor, you do good work.