School Vouchers and Catholic Schools

[CPA2]

Catholic schools cannot compete with “free” public education. The answer to better education and higher teacher salaries is competition.

“Public” education does not need more money; it already has too much money, even in poor states. The United States spends more money per student than most other countries in the world; however, the academic performance is worse than other countries. More money for education is not the answer. “Public” education is inefficient and ineffective.

The answer is to take the power from the state governments and give the power to the parents in the form of universal vouchers. Friedman proposed vouchers as a way to separate government financing of education from government administration of schools. The “public” schools would now have to please the parents instead of the state legislature. Viva la competition!

I see universal school vouchers as inevitable. School vouchers are a 50 year-old idea that is backed by solid economic research. Means-tested vouchers for poor families and failing school vouchers have already been tried with great success. All we need now is a test of universal school vouchers.

The only real opposition to universal school vouchers is the education bureaucracy and teachers’ unions. When people strongly support universal school vouchers, they come up against the teachers’ unions and the educational bureaucracy, the government civil service.

I am not advocating shutting the doors of public education, just opening more doors of private education.

The parents will vote with their school vouchers. They will decide which public schools will stay open and which public schools will close. Additionally, many new private schools will open. New schools will give parents even more choices. Why should the state have a monopoly on education?

Seven possible objections to the school voucher plan and Milton Friedman’s answer to those objections:

1.                      The **church-state issue**.  “…Vouchers would go to parents, not to schools.  Under the GI bills, veterans have been free to attend Catholic or other colleges and, so far as we know, no First Amendment issue has ever been raised.”

2.                      **Financial cost**.  **“…(There is) present discrimination against parents who send their children to nonpublic schools.  Universal vouchers would end the inequity of using tax funds to school some children but not others.”**

3.                      The possibility of fraud.  ‘…The voucher would have to be spent in an approved school or teaching establishment and could be redeemed for cash only by such schools.”

4.                      The racial issue.  “Discrimination under a voucher plan can be prevented at least as easily as in public schools by redeeming vouchers only from schools that do not discriminate.”

5.                      The economic class issue.  “Some have argued that the great value of the public school has been as a melting pot, in which rich and poor, native- and foreign-born, back and white have learned to live together.  That image…is almost entirely false for large cities.  There, the public school has fostered residential stratification, by tying the kind and cost of schooling to residential location.  It is no accident that most of the country’s outstanding public schools are in high-income enclaves.”

6.                      Doubt about new schools.  “What reason is there to suppose that alternatives will really arise?  The reason is that a market would develop where it does not exist today…The one prediction that can be made is that only those schools that satisfy their customers will survive…Competition would see to that.”

7. The impact on public schools. “The threat to public schools arises from their defects, not their accomplishments. In small, closely knit communities where public schools, particularly elementary schools, are now reasonably satisfactory, not even the most comprehensive voucher plan would have much effect…But elsewhere, and particularly in the urban slums where the public schools are doing such a poor job, most parents would undoubtedly try to send their children to nonpublic schools.”

 

[WatchingMedia]

Many public school teachers and their Unions do not want vouchers.
Vouchers might help some poor kids get a better education.
Parents would send their children to wherever they could get the best education. - competition.
If the public schools were doing their jobs, there would be no issues, since then many parents would not use vouchers.

 

[pnewton]

You know I would be happy if I could at least deduct my Catholic school tuitition from my school tax. Even an income tax deduction would help. Right now, lower income and some middle income families are given no educational choices.

I know that the public school has burdens placed on them by special needs children that will always mean they cost more, but treating tuition like the same as a purchase of a boat for tax purposes is ridiculous. This sort of inequity can only exist because of the politcal pressure of an education system that looks after its own interest primarily and the interest of the children secondarily.

 

[manualman]

I think the way to defeat the NEA storm troopers on this issue is with basic economics. You simply prove that EVERYBODY wins with modest vouchers. Public schools spent an embarassing amount of money. By me, the average is $14,500 per student on average (total revenue divided by kids). Now I grant that special needs kids skew this number drastically, so let’s say for the sake of discussion that the public school system spends about $7,000 a year for regular students. Offer a $2,800 voucher for private schooling. If the District currently has 10,000 regular ed kids and there are 600 kids in local private schools, the District is spending $70 million a year.

Implement the program and in the first year all the private schools max out their capacity and take in 1,000 kids. Now the District is spending $67.2 million on their own expenses and $2.8 million on vouchers. Revenue nuetral.

The next year a new school opens due to the program. Now 1,300 use private schools. District spends $3.64 million on vouchers and is now left with $7,135.48 per student in the public schools.

That’s right! Vouchers, if modest at first, would actually result in LARGER funding levels for students remaining in the public school system. The voucher amount could be increased as more private schools opened and still leave big funding increases for the remaining public students.

Everybody wins - except the empire building NEA types who want a monopoly on indoctrinating our kids.

 

[JohnDamian]

Coming from England; I think this would be a great idea (although I was temporarily confused; because here when we say public school we mean a private one (seriously))

It does not seem unreasonable that since the state already pays X amount of money per pupil that instead of spending this on a uniform type of school it would be able to distribute this in the form of vouchers - many private schools function better purely because of a lack of overal control. It also frees up parents to choose where to send there children. Of course, such measures would have to be regulated (same exam boards) to make sure qualifications meant the same from all areas.

I also think this would lead to smaller schools, with less beuracracy and a more social feeling. Coming from a high school that had only 250 pupils from ages 5 to 18 I can say it was much better than the anonymity and lack of unity in many “normal” schools.

I know this from experience, because I was privatly educated in an Anglican school - which acheives 96% 5 A-C Acheivement including (Maths, English) which is over twice the national average (about 45%) – even though the school fees were less than the average state allocated funds for “normal” high schools.

It would be great if more parents had the freedom to choose where to send pupils - why should politicians decide?

 

[Brendan]

My main concern about vouchers is that it’s the camel’s nose under the tent.

I see what happens in Canada. There, a person can choose if they pay property tax to the public school system, or the Catholic school system.

It has really opened the door for governmental control over what is taught and how. It’s been a real fight for the bishops to do re-take control over the curriculum. Case in point is a recent attempt by the government of Ontario to add positive portrayals of homosexuality and sodomy to the the requried sex ed curriculum.

On the colegiate side, the courts have said that universities that accept collegiate vouchers, such as Pell grants, affect who colleges may and may not hire.

 

[pnewton]

My main concern about vouchers is that it’s the camel’s nose under the tent.

I see what happens in Canada. There, a person can choose if they pay property tax to the public school system, or the Catholic school system.

It is a concern. However, if the vouchers went to the parents, I think it would provide insulation from this intrusion. Better yet, if a tax credit (even partial) against school taxes were permitted, no money would go to the school.

 

[stinkcat_14]

It is most certainly not the government’s job to provide Catholic Education. It is the church’s job.

 

[pnewton]

It is most certainly not the government’s job to provide Catholic Education. It is the church’s job.

Yes, which is why I would like to see Catholic Education made more available as a parental option. “The government” is us. We pay taxes. Where is the justice in having to paying twice for the education of one’s child in accordance with one’s conscience?

 

[stinkcat_14]

Yes, which is why I would like to see Catholic Education made more available as a parental option. “The government” is us. We pay taxes. Where is the justice in having to paying twice for the education of one’s child in accordance with one’s conscience?

The just solution would be to take education totally out of government control. Government has no business paying for or providing education. Close down the government schools and force parents to pay for their own kids education. Perhaps we can jail them if they don’t.

 

[CPA2]

I’ve always liked what Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple Computers)had to say about vouchers. This is from an interview in 1996, so adjust dollar figures accordingly. Link to complete interview is at the bottom.

Q: Could technology help by improving education?

A: I used to think that technology could help education. I’ve probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I’ve had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What’s wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent.

It’s a political problem. The problems are sociopolitical. The problems are unions. You plot the growth of the NEA [National Education Association] and the dropping of SAT scores, and they’re inversely proportional. The problems are unions in the schools. The problem is bureaucracy. I’m one of these people who believe the best thing we could ever do is go to the full voucher system.

I have a 17-year-old daughter who went to a private school for a few years before high school. This private school is the best school I’ve seen in my life. It was judged one of the 100 best schools in America. It was phenomenal. The tuition was $5,500 a year, which is a lot of money for most parents. But the teachers were paid less than public school teachers - so it’s not about money at the teacher level. I asked the state treasurer that year what California pays on average to send kids to school, and I believe it was $4,400. While there are not many parents who could come up with $5,500 a year, there are many who could come up with $1,000 a year.

**If we gave vouchers to parents **for $4,400 a year, schools would be starting right and left. People would get out of college and say, “Let’s start a school.” You could have a track at Stanford within the MBA program on how to be the businessperson of a school. And that MBA would get together with somebody else, and they’d start schools. And you’d have these young, idealistic people starting schools, working for pennies.

They’d do it because they’d be able to set the curriculum. When you have kids you think, What exactly do I want them to learn? Most of the stuff they study in school is completely useless. But some incredibly valuable things you don’t learn until you’re older - yet you could learn them when you’re younger. And you start to think, What would I do if I set a curriculum for a school?

God, how exciting that could be! But you can’t do it today. You’d be crazy to work in a school today. You don’t get to do what you want. You don’t get to pick your books, your curriculum. You get to teach one narrow specialization. Who would ever want to do that?

These are the solutions to our problems in education. Unfortunately, technology isn’t it. You’re not going to solve the problems by putting all knowledge onto CD-ROMs. We can put a Web site in every school - none of this is bad. It’s bad only if it lulls us into thinking we’re doing something to solve the problem with education.

Lincoln did not have a Web site at the log cabin where his parents home-schooled him, and he turned out pretty interesting. Historical precedent shows that we can turn out amazing human beings without technology. Precedent also shows that we can turn out very uninteresting human beings with technology.

It’s not as simple as you think when you’re in your 20s - that technology’s going to change the world. In some ways it will, in some ways it won’t.

wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html

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[Major_Tom]

I think the way to defeat the NEA storm troopers on this issue is with basic economics. You simply prove that EVERYBODY wins with modest vouchers. Public schools spent an embarassing amount of money. By me, the average is $14,500 per student on average (total revenue divided by kids). Now I grant that special needs kids skew this number drastically, so let’s say for the sake of discussion that the public school system spends about $7,000 a year for regular students. Offer a $2,800 voucher for private schooling. If the District currently has 10,000 regular ed kids and there are 600 kids in local private schools, the District is spending $70 million a year.

Implement the program and in the first year all the private schools max out their capacity and take in 1,000 kids. Now the District is spending $67.2 million on their own expenses and $2.8 million on vouchers. Revenue nuetral.

The next year a new school opens due to the program. Now 1,300 use private schools. District spends $3.64 million on vouchers and is now left with $7,135.48 per student in the public schools.

That’s right! Vouchers, if modest at first, would actually result in LARGER funding levels for students remaining in the public school system. The voucher amount could be increased as more private schools opened and still leave big funding increases for the remaining public students.

Everybody wins - except the empire building NEA types who want a monopoly on indoctrinating our kids.

One thing not taken into account in that example is that, for the public schools, when enrollment goes down, upkeep and maintenance costs for buildings remains the same. So that per-student multiplier you used does not paint the entire picture.

No one likes to see neighborhood schools close. It’s very difficult to keep schools open at an optimal rate of students-to-teachers, and students compared to building capacity.

 

[Major_Tom]

Most of the stuff they study in school is completely useless.

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I’d love to hear some specific examples of this “uselessness”. Did your fabulous school utilize a “uselessness-free” curriculum?

You’d be crazy to work in a school today.

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I’m in the middle of a career change, and plan on working in schools. I know there are problems with them, and would like to be part of the solution. That’s crazy?

 

[manualman]

One thing not taken into account in that example is that, for the public schools, when enrollment goes down, upkeep and maintenance costs for buildings remains the same. So that per-student multiplier you used does not paint the entire picture.

No one likes to see neighborhood schools close. It’s very difficult to keep schools open at an optimal rate of students-to-teachers, and students compared to building capacity.

While this is very true, it is far less a problem than you paint it to be. Building maintenance is a tiny fraction of District budgets. If enrollment declines to the point where a school closing is necessary, it is likely because those students have moved to either a brand new school or a school that a private entity bought from the District when it previously closed. In either case, no big deal.

In my area, the District redraws school boundaries about every 2-3 years anyway due to capacity issues and their constant attempts to jerrymander boundaries to “increase diversity.” It seems to me that this would just be more of the same.

Thank you for your efforts to educate our kids. I am not anti-public schools. I just fail to see any inherent reason for public and private schools to be enemies. All reasons cited that I’ve ever heard are revealed to be mere tribalism when examined closely.

 

[CPA2]

Parents, voting with their school vouchers, will determine what schools close.

Most of the insane amounts of money that the state pays for education never reaches the teacher. I toured the new education building in our state capital. I did not see any teaching going on in that “education” building!

Government education (K-12) is a failure and a joke. Many of the state’s colleges are now nothing more than glorified high schools.

The real educating is going on in homeschooling. Homeschooled children are better educated and better socialized than their government schooled counter parts.

 

[tafan]

The just solution would be to take education totally out of government control. Government has no business paying for or providing education. Close down the government schools and force parents to pay for their own kids education. Perhaps we can jail them if they don’t.

While there is much to condemn about today’s public education, it should not force us into a dichotemy which leaves us with two bad choices. It is perfectly legitimate for the community as a whole to accept the responsibility for educating the next generation. The idea that only the parents are respobsible is quite silly.

Of course, keeping in mind the principal of subsidiarity, there is no reason for any federal government support/involvment.

As to vouchers for cahtolic schools: in a reasonable political environment, I would definitely support the idea. I like the idea of local/state funded education with complete parental choice over the means of the education. However, the old dictum, “with money, comes control” seems to inevitably come into play and it leaves me decidedly undecided on the issue.

 

[Elizabeth502]

While there is much to condemn about today’s public education, it should not force us into a dichotemy which leaves us with two bad choices. It is perfectly legitimate for the community as a whole to accept the responsibility for educating the next generation. The idea that only the parents are respobsible is quite silly.

But they haven’t been responsible enough.

I’m a multi-credentialed, and degreed, teacher and educator. I thank my lucky stars that I never had to join a union. I would never be part of a teacher’s union, any more than if I were a lawyer (which I almost became before standing firm to God’s call in childhood) or a physician would I join a union. I consider myself a professional and always have. When I was a beginning teacher we worked late on our own time out of ethical/moral commitments to the job, just as lawyers & doctors do not punch clocks (most of them). Therefore, you will find no more passionate anti-teacher-union person than myself. You will also find me in strong agreement that government has messed up the system as well, especially in regard to values and societal assumptions which control the very classroom conditions, and thus control (limit) the product. I’m not going into curriculum here at the moment, although I share some of those concerns about forced teaching of some controversial populist “values,” many of which stand in direct opposition to essential beliefs of a very many religions.

But I’m beginining at the beginning: the subject of basic classroom conditions, i.e., control and authority. I am a product of both Catholic and public school teaching, but both were vastly different than what either is today, which was not that long ago. Even the public schools I attended were much more organized (overall, and in individual classrooms) and cohesive than the zoo-like chaos existing in many U.S. state school systems today. The teacher was in charge – and unless he or she was a buffoon or an incompetent – the teacher was respected – both by students and by parents. Today, a classy teacher can easily be thoroughly disrespected by students and parents alike. Dare to assert your legitimate authority as the head of the classroom, dare to enforce consequences for misbehavior, and parents object and even sue. Ditto if you’re an administrator in that public school or system. Dare to suspend or expel, and you practically have a riot on your hands. Authority has completed shifted to parents and students, while responsibility has not. This is an unworkable model.

When I was a public school student, incorrigible behavior was solved by suspension if it was minor, expulsion if it was chronic. (Typically this meant boys with Anger Management issues – always acted out physically – or it meant any child who was chronically uncooperative/disrespectful of rules and authority.) It’s very simple: when there’s no control, there’s no learning. If students have psychological issues that need to be treated and spill over into the classroom, those need to be addressed outside of the classroom. The classroom is not a psychiatric ward or a therapy session; it’s an academy. Yet the modern public school has taken on the roles of social services, psychological services, and even legal/court services, to the detriment of its stated purpose. It is not up to a credentialed teacher to figure out, and solve within the 4 walls of the classroom, why Johnny is unhappy, obnoxious, and toxic to the classroom environment. It’s up to Johnny and his family to deal with it and help him heal, so that he can become a productive participant in the classroom and in society. And if his family is the source of the problem, they need healing, but not at the expense of the other students and the teacher himself/herself.

 

[Elizabeth502]

Continuing…

The second issue, parenting-wise, has to do with educational priorities, and the lack of them, in the home. Many more educational opportunities (particularly in the early years) occur at home than at school, simply from the mathematical fact that the child spends much more time with his parents than in a classroom. The non-reading, non academically interested parents (of which there are far too many in many school districts now) are passively defaulting on their parental responsibility. Only boarding schools, and schools consisting of a very, very long school day, can provide the academic immersion than otherwise unwilling or incapable parents can provide.

About 10 years ago or so there was an educational experiment in the U.S. rural Deep South which brought in crack teachers into an impoverished, functionally illiterate population of Americans. It was funded both by public and private sources, but as I remember, mostly by private – in that the educators themselves were committed and so raised the money among their own network; there might have been some matching public funds. The best people were recruited, including some from several states away, and including people who could speak to this population. I watched their lessons in action, which were fabulous. There was no question they knew what they were doing. The result? At the end of the project there were tiny gains in reading, which mostly vanished the following years. Why? (They figured out, but I predicted) Because the parents weren’t able to read well enough to assist their children beyond 3rd/4th grade. And because there were no books at home. Books were not part of the parental world, any more than sports DVDs or soap operas are a part of mine.

Separately, a few posters have brought up the important aspect of curriculum, which, when government-driven, can amount to just as much of an imposition of values from an institution as any values imposed by private schools. Therefore, that argument against vouchers has a faulty premise: it presumes that government-issued (or approved) textbooks and instruction, are value-free. They are not. And in my state they are loaded iwth politically correct “morality.”

However, here’s the big practical problem: the issue of vouchers would have to be qualified by a clause that acknowledged that vouchers do not guarantee admission to a private school. Otherwise, what you do is to force the private schools to accept inappropriate, unprepared students into their school or network, which defeats much of the point of private schools: to be free to set the agenda and to be free to select their student bodies (and importantly, parents) which agree with that agenda. Vouchers cannot be an admission ticket. And you would also find (certainly in my region) far more families holding vouchers for private schools than the number of available seats.

I actually want for my state to be limited to the testing function, which they do well. I want administration and curriculum to be controlled by communities (through charters, which can set terms for discipline, and choose curriculum), or by a system of privates which are funded publicly but controlled privately.

 

[CPA2]

While there is much to condemn about today’s public education, it should not force us into a dichotemy which leaves us with two bad choices. It is perfectly legitimate for the community as a whole to accept the responsibility for educating the next generation. The idea that only the parents are respobsible is quite silly.

Of course, keeping in mind the principal of subsidiarity, there is no reason for any federal government support/involvment.

As to vouchers for cahtolic schools: in a reasonable political environment, I would definitely support the idea. I like the idea of local/state funded education with complete parental choice over the means of the education. However, the old dictum, “with money, comes control” seems to inevitably come into play and it leaves me decidedly undecided on the issue.

We have yet to have universal shool vouchers without government restrictions. I favor universal, unrestricted school vouchers.

We need to get state governments out of the school administration business. Let governments do what governments do best, collect taxes.

 

[tafan]

Elizabeth502, as I stated, I think there is much to condemn about today’s public education. Another education thread, so I am sure I will be msinterpreted, let me be very clear. My points, as pertains to this thread are as follows:

1. My point is simple, the idea that all funding for education should only come directly from the parents of the child is an extremely bad idea. Please do NOT read this as any type of endorsement for out current public education system.
2. I agree wih CPA2, I like the idea of vouchers and let parents decide what to do.
3. I am very skeptical about vouchers in our country because I think they would come with lots of strings attached.