I live in Wisconsin and there has been some heated discussion over the voucher issue, again. This is thanks, in part, to the Journal Sentinel article on the issue. While the article is interesting, it seems apparent from the comments on both sites that people really need some talking points. Here they are, with longer descriptions below the fold:
- There's no apple-to-apple comparison
- The limits on public education expenses don't apply to vouchers (in Wisconsin, it's the QEO)
- Free market will never work because there's no selfish interest.
- There is a substantial "urban problem."
- There is no control on curriculum
- The real source of the problems is the home
1) You'll never get an apple-to-apple comparison. A number of commenters have cited public educations unwillingness to disavow certain students like the habitually tardy, the bullies, the poor kids that need free or reduced lunch, the blind, the handicapped, the ill, etc. Well... hate to break it to you, but public schools can't because then they wouldn't be public. Unlike the voucher schools, public schools have no means to deny an education to anyone: special needs, "tough children", etc. At some point, some school has to take the child. If a public school could, the face of public education would be very different.
2) Public and private schools funding limits are different. In Wisconsin, we have the QEO. It's another "great" invention of our then Republican governor. It limits spending on perhaps the second most important part of the public education system--the teachers (children would be the first). It is the proverbial ties-that-bind. If public schools could attract better teachers, maybe we wouldn't even have this discussion. Again, this is just another apples-to-apples comparison problem.
3) The free-market approach doesn't work real well without selfishness. It doesn't take a genius to realize when a group of people are given a choice over their child's education you'll get a bell curve. That is, most won't do any better than average in picking their school. Free markets work on principles of selfishness and access to vital information. In this case, it's doomed to failure because of a lack of information and a lack of personal economic incentive. Moreover, while choice might be good for the two or three that come out ahead, the whole social system suffers from the two or three that end up worse. It's a real problem that is often overlooked by voucher folks.
4) There is an "urban" problem. No no, not the problem you think. The urban areas are filled with more dense residential housing and far more property is devoted to commericial property. That means few dollars are generated per person in property taxes which are allocated for public schools in Wisconsin. That means to be on par with non-urban schools, urban folk are often taxed at a higher rate to achieve the same balance. Jonathan Kozol has great books about this, if you're really interested.
5) It's about the curriculum, stupid. I really do think that this is a conspiracy to get conservative curriculum into pseudo-public education. The very same complaints over abstinence only education, prayer in school, and creationism that appear throughout liberal discussions should be echoed again in any discussion of vouchers.
6) All problems start in the home. We can talk all we want about the schools, but the real problem is almost always from the home. In a great majority of communities, parents are very happy with their schools. Heck, the ones that would do well in a "free choice" market already pick (or at least take a passing interest in) communities for the schools. So voucher do not serve them in the aw-shucks-feels-so-good kind of way. Rather, vouchers will never address the core problem because it can't (and frankly, doesn't care to): that parent's do not, or cannot, always act on their child's best behalf. This is, perhaps, key. Any sort of public education system needs to work for the children regardless of the parents. That is a child whose parents do not put them into a voucher program should not be punished compared to a parent who does send their child to private school subsidized with voucher money. This problem goes to the inequities of the public education system in general.
Anyway, once someone can fix the 1) funding, 2) the parents, and 3) the misinformed lunatics, let me know!