The Problem That Vouchers Won't Solve

U.S. education is an unending struggle against certain hard-to-solve problems, with the frequent eruption of innovations and reforms that are sold based on the notion that these will solve a particular problem.

Some problems are rarely directly addressed by their actual name, either because to name them would be to claim them and then we'd have to sweep away a bunch of foolishness in order to have a real conversation, or because the problems look different from another vantage point. 

Here's a problem that has been with us since before we were even an actual nation:

Too many wealthy people don't want to pay for a quality education for poor people. And too many white people don't want to pay for a quality education for non-white people.

We have a bad system, worsened by school district gerrymandering, that links funding to real estate so that-people in East Egg don't have to pay for schooling in That Neighborhood. To the extent that state and federal taxation tries to mitigate the problem, certain folks fight state and federal government. 

Objections boil down to things like, "That much??! Surely we don't have to spend that much of my money to get Those Peoples' Children an acceptable level of education." and even "This is a big scam! Somebody is soaking me for way too much money--I bet it's that damn union."

Because from another vantage point, the problem is that state and federal government keep trying to take too much of your money to pay for a quality education for Those Peoples' Children. And if that's what you think the problem is, vouchers as currently envisioned are a pretty good solution.

Vouchers let you strip state and federal government out of the equation. There's no accountability and no regulation, so you can reassure the private education vendors that they will be allowed to conduct business as they see fit. If they want to discriminate against certain types of students or families, if they want to teach God created the Earth flat, if they want to use a reading curriculum that their Uncle Bob the podiatrist concocted in his spare time--well, they can do all of that, untroubled by anyone telling them to stop. 

You can sell vouchers by telling folks that with a voucher, they'll be able to choose the education of their dreams. They won't, private education vendors don't have to accept them as students, and their voucher money won't be enough to get into top private schools. But by the time they figure that out, they won't have any other options available. Guys like Josh Shapiro can say that they want vouchers so that others can have the upscale private school option he grew up with, but that school is not going to be accepting just any student who shows up voucher in hand. 

Wealthy folks will still have all the options they want. They just won't have to pay for those kinds of options for Those Peoples' Children. Because a voucher program is set up to avoid adding any more revenue to the education system. In fact, by funding students and not schools, vouchers will make it easy to shrink school funding as well as slamming the door on any kind of capital improvements and upkeep.

Meanwhile, as currently structured, vouchers are like a rescue at sea, where the lifeboat rides up to a floundering ship to rescue the people on board, only there's a limited number of seats on the lifeboats, and only some select people will be allowed on the lifeboats, and some of the lifeboats turn out to be sinking fast, and every time someone gets onto a lifeboat they punch another hole in the hull of the floundering ship. And all the while, a nearby luxury cruise ship's passengers watch and say, "Well, they've got lifeboats. They aren't our problem."

Vouchers do solve a problem, but it's not the problem of inequity. It's the problem of people who are tired of the government trying to make them help pay for Those Peoples' Children to get a quality education. 

Okay--here's my usual caveat. There are voucher supporters who sincerely believe in the power of a voucher system to fix things. They're closely related to the people who really believe in the power of the free market to fix education. I think these people are wrong, but I want to acknowledge that they exist.

I will also acknowledge that state and federal government has not done a great job of fixing the problems of educational inequity, though I'll argue that this ineffectiveness is largely the result of the two truths I led off with above. 

Wealthy parents have always had choice, exercised via the real estate they buy. Some school choice supporters have focused on extending that same kind of choice to non-wealthy parents. But what we've got under modern choice systems doesn't do the job. "You can choose between a microschool or a mediocre computer program or a school that's run by people who don't know what they're doing but they have good marketing or even--oops, sorry, your kind aren't welcome at that choice and also we are simultaneously defunding your public school option" is not the same as "You can choose to live in East Richville or Downtown Buckston." 

A true, functioning choice system that finally served the underserved in this country require a big infusion of money. Those students whose education underfunded and under-supported now will not gain that funding and support just because they are shuffled around, nor will market forces suddenly make the funding and support either appear or become unnecessary. A true choice system would require more money than we spend if for no other reason than a true choice system would require a whole lot of excess capacity--otherwise every student would be locked in place.

And no, I'm not convinced by examples of charter or choice schools that do "more with less," because every one of those models depends either on carefully de-selecting students who would be costly to educate or cutting corners or both.

This is one of the ongoing internal tensions of the choice movement--people who want the same choices for poor kids that rich kids have are allied with people who feel that they don't want or need to spend a bunch of money to educate Those Children. The people who say "This child deserves the same rich opportunities as that child" teamed up with the people who say "This child is not going to make a huge contribution to society, so why waste a bunch of money on his schooling?"

I'll say it again. Too many wealthy people don't want to pay for a quality education for poor people. And too many white people don't want to pay for a quality education for non-white people.

Vouchers don't change that. As currently envisioned, they enable it.

And since this post is already turning out to be long, we might as well move on to the next obvious question.

What should we do?

We could have a full choice-supporting voucher-type system, I suppose, but unless we are going to openly reject as a nation the mission of a quality education for every child, we'd need a few tweaks to what voucher fans push these days. 

Regulation and oversight, so that every education provider is proven and certified to be of high quality. No discrimination. Safeguards for the rights of parents and students. If you are part of the publicly funded system, you live by public school rules. Nor should public tax dollars be funding a private religious operation; it's bad for taxpayers and bad for religion. And adequate funding. When a voucher is issued to a student from an underfunded school, base the amount not on what that school currently spends, but on what it ought to be spends. Nor can funding be simply a money-follows-the-child-model, because that excess capacity has to be funded somehow. Buildings have to be maintained somehow. State and federal investment in education would have to be increased. 

And if you say, "Well, if we are going to spend all that money, wouldn't it be more efficient to have one school instead?" Well, I agree. I also believe that it's entirely possible, even preferable, to provide a variety of choices under one roof. But if you believe that having a choice between different buildings and schools is important in and of itself, then argue for funding it. Don't pretend that the money that wasn't enough to run one school will somehow be enough to run five. 

What else could we do?

Fix the boundaries. No more school districts bult along the same red lines that segregated housing. No more splinter districts seceding to make a tiny district that blocks Those Peoples' Children. Redraw boundaries to be inclusive and diverse. End educational gerrymandering. I know-- finding leaders with the will to do it would be a heavy lift. 

And we could, of course, simply fully fund all schools--even the ones in Those Neighborhoods. But that would run against the "I've got mine, Jack" spirit of our times, and takes us right back to our problem, the difficulty in convincing some folks to help pay for educating Those Peoples' Children. So it becomes a challenge of advocacy and political will.

Funding public ed and confronting this foundational problem isn't very sexy or shiny, but burning down the house and building a new, cramped, limited structure on the exact same foundation doesn't solve the problem. It just buries the old problem under a whole mess of new ones. We need to do better.