Tuesday, April 14, 2009

School Choice

I'm pro-choice ... pro school choice, that is.

I'm passionate about school choice so I get into many heated debates about it. Here are some common objections I encounter along with my responses.

It's just a way to subsidize the rich leaving the public school system. Certainly a poorly structured voucher system would have this property, so let's make vouchers large enough to matter (e.g, $20,000 per year), and mandate that acceptance of the voucher constitutes complete payment (i.e., no additional tuition allowed).

It would lead to balkinization. Common fears include promoting racial segregation or the teaching of creationism. I would prevent this by holding voucher receiving institutions to the same curriculum and admissions requirements as public schools.

People are unable to make this decision. Sometimes I hear claims that the working poor are too busy for the cognitive load this decision demands. No one is brazen enough to admit to me that they think people are just plain too stupid to make this decision, although I suspect they think so. Even if you grant that, a reasonable automatic default works well for 401K plans and could work here as well (i.e., default to the geographically closest public school, since public schools can still take vouchers). I also suspect that many low income parents would find the time to research their children's education.

Special needs children would be neglected. So let's let the voucher system reflect the increased costs of educating special needs children. For instance, one certified special needs, the size of the voucher could double to $40,000 per year.

I'm throwing around some big numbers for the vouchers, but I'd be willing to pay vastly more in taxes for education if the tax increases were combined with significant reform. Fundamentally I think education is an excellent investment for society, not just in pure economic terms but also for the health of our democracy. However my wife is a former elementary school teacher (now a practicing attorney), and the inside look at the public school system I got during her tenure convinced me that the current system is unable to effectively absorb a radical increase in funding without systemic overhaul.

No comments:

Post a Comment