Thanks for your responses, Edward. That helps me to understand where your positions are originating, and yes, I believe that we are on similar pages for similar reasons.
I do not flat out dispute her, but look at it like this: what gives better consumer results? A monopoly or capitalism? In theory vouchers for various private schools create a competition between schools forcing each school to strive to out do the other.
The reduction of education to a commodity is simply incorrect, in my opinion. My parallel with the healthcare system was deliberate, because this is another sector in which viewing the 'goods and services' as a simple economic construct is a false equivalence.
If I wish to purchase a pair of shoes, buy a nice dinner, hire a musical ensemble, or read a particular book-- those are all subject to those sorts of economic evaluations. They are transactional, and I can have either good, not-so-good, or bad
choices in front of me, and I can choose on the basis of my purchasing power and those choices.
In that instance, giving me a voucher to use costs my neighbor absolutely nothing, except perhaps in the end, it could cause inflation in the sector, I suppose.
However, if I am having a heart attack, "hospital choice" means very little. This is why encouraging patients to be "responsible consumers" has failed to rein in costs in that sector, at least in part. It's not the same as other commodities. If you close the local hospital because you incentivize non-emergent care to OTHER settings, you've effectively gutted something that served a unique role in the community.
Education, similarly, is not the same as other commodities. I have a pretty clear idea what Angie meant about her local magnet school.
ANY siphoning of funding from public education is going to shave "extras" which are not
legally obligated from the public system. It will not "improve" public schools-- but it could serve to make them environments where only low-income, transportation-limited, and disabled children are educated. THOSE are the children that private schools don't have to accept or accommodate. So they don't.
Looking at school funding as a simple "let the dollars follow the child" is very simplistic, and it ignores something fundamental. It's patently ridiculous to expect equal "achievement" from diverse individuals, yes?
Well, it is likewise patently ridiculous to expect that each child requires $10,000 annually to educate. Maybe that is what a funding allocation
gives to the local school for each student. But the reality is that an "average" student may cost only 6,800 and some medically fragile, 2e students might cost that same school 45,000 annually.
Private schools
will not take on such students. What happens when public schools are left
only with students whose needs can't realistically be met for the funding that they receive?
Magnet schools, enrichment, specials for all kids-- all of that WILL go, because they are legally
obligated to that medically fragile child.
Classmates who CAN leverage other options
will at that point.
That is how vouchers endanger public schools.
Make it illegal for private schools to accept vouchers unless they comply with non-discrimination, disability accommodation and LRE requirements that public schools
have to follow, and then I might support vouchers.
I probably still wouldn't support them for religious instruction, from a non-establishment stance, but that is me personally. Economically, I might be more on board if the playing field were level. As it stands, however, letting private schools cherry-pick lower-cost students is a horrible idea.
I am not entirely opposed to vouchers in instances where both the local public school
and parents jointly, and unanimously decide that a child's needs may be better met in another setting-- be that home school, private, or a charter.
Charter schools (mostly) already DO have to do those things that public schools must under the law. Some of them find ways to skirt those laws, however, in order to juice their stats and-- at least in some cases-- to siphon money from local educational provider (LEP) to a corporate contractor who provides a turnkey "system" for the charter's use on some annual/term-by-term basis.
So they take on children who are disproportionately
not low-income, disabled, etc. The kids who cost 6800 annually to educate, in my example above. Only the corporate partner gets all of the 10K that "follows the child" in such cases.
I don't know what the answer is, and I agree that the system as it is now fails a fair number of students-- but--
it also provides for an even larger number of them. That is why I think that undermining it or 'radical disruption' is a bad idea in this sector-- much as it would be in healthcare.
If you're having a heart attack, you don't want to be turned away from the nearest hospital because "we're rebuilding a better hospital, the old way wasn't working."
