Libertarians are full of shit (on this): School Vouchers
When I first voted Libertarian back in 1988, their position on education was basically to eliminate the Department of Education and devolve authority to its lowest level: the district, or even school. Some time during the 1990s, though, they added school vouchers to their list of reform policies for education, and I had my first serious, reasonably defensible objection to the party's platform. So with another round of elections coming up, and another LP candidate for Colorado governor, I thought I would add to this blog my objection to school vouchers.
The first problem with vouchers is the fundamental disconnect between taxes paid per child and actual expenses per child: per capita computation of costs in public education is a myth. It costs the same to build and maintain a school building, whether there are 1200 or 1199 students in it; it costs the same to pay a teacher, whether there are 30 or 29 students in his or her class; it costs the same to run buses, whether they pick up every child on the route or one less than every child. One more or less textbook does not represent the bulk of a school’s, or school district’s, budget: rather, it is the facility, payroll and other mass costs that do not vary with the addition or subtraction of a student. Costs are reduced at the school and district level only if an entire class can be eliminated, or if bus routes can be consolidated, which means the vouchers paid out on a student basis deplete the budget without equivalent reduction of costs for the absence of the child.
Further, public education is not primarily intended to educate my child, or your child, but to educate the electorate and the workforce. It is a public good from which we all derive benefit, regardless of whether or not we have school-aged children. After all, it behooves a democracy to have an electorate sufficiently educated to eschew dogma and demogogues; it behooves a free market to have individuals sufficiently educated to either work in the jobs available or run their own businesses. Arguably, those most requiring such instruction are those whose families could least afford to pay for it, which is why there must be provision for free public education. At any rate, it’s a given that some individuals contribute less, in property and other taxes, than the average per capita revenue, and the difference between the two values constitutes a subsidy, or welfare, for such individuals accepting a voucher.
It is at best problematic to collect taxes to provide a service that does not benefit all who pay the taxes on an equal basis, so a subsidy to one person’s child to give him or her an advantage over the other children we educate out of public necessity is questionable at best. Should we grant vouchers to pay for private security for those individual’s dissatisfied with our police? Should we grant vouchers to pay for private vehicles for individuals dissatisfied with the school bus? How about vouchers to pay for better copies of a text book than the school provides?
Public education represents an intersection of the citizen’s responsibility to support necessities and the parent’s responsibility to provide the best possible for his or her child. One parent’s dissatisfaction with what is publicly provided does not exempt him or her, as a citizen, from paying for it. If that parent wants more for his or her child, it’s quite frankly his or her problem, because the public school system was not created for his or her child alone.
What voucher proponents should do, instead of trying to support handouts to public school refugees, is sit in on school board meeting and even run for board themselves. I was told that the school board was the smallest unit of representative government in our system, a laboratory for viewing debate, compromise, and governance in action at a level of immediate importance to at least all of us with children. The problem is that many of the most arden voucher supporters want the money because they are hostile to science and objective analysis, and want their children instead to be inculcated with the dogma of their parents' beliefs. Those of us who went to public schools know that it is possible, of course, to fail and slip through the cracks; but it is also possible to achieve a thorough education, even in the worst of schools. Poor quality schools merely put the burden on the individual student (and, of course, the parents) to proactively exploit the resources of the school, rather than receiving enlightenment on a silver platter. The so-called crisis in public education has always been trumped up to justify public subsidy of private and home schooling. But vouchers are no different than food stamps or corporate welfare: it's just using money taken from you and me to benefit somebody else.
The first problem with vouchers is the fundamental disconnect between taxes paid per child and actual expenses per child: per capita computation of costs in public education is a myth. It costs the same to build and maintain a school building, whether there are 1200 or 1199 students in it; it costs the same to pay a teacher, whether there are 30 or 29 students in his or her class; it costs the same to run buses, whether they pick up every child on the route or one less than every child. One more or less textbook does not represent the bulk of a school’s, or school district’s, budget: rather, it is the facility, payroll and other mass costs that do not vary with the addition or subtraction of a student. Costs are reduced at the school and district level only if an entire class can be eliminated, or if bus routes can be consolidated, which means the vouchers paid out on a student basis deplete the budget without equivalent reduction of costs for the absence of the child.
Further, public education is not primarily intended to educate my child, or your child, but to educate the electorate and the workforce. It is a public good from which we all derive benefit, regardless of whether or not we have school-aged children. After all, it behooves a democracy to have an electorate sufficiently educated to eschew dogma and demogogues; it behooves a free market to have individuals sufficiently educated to either work in the jobs available or run their own businesses. Arguably, those most requiring such instruction are those whose families could least afford to pay for it, which is why there must be provision for free public education. At any rate, it’s a given that some individuals contribute less, in property and other taxes, than the average per capita revenue, and the difference between the two values constitutes a subsidy, or welfare, for such individuals accepting a voucher.
It is at best problematic to collect taxes to provide a service that does not benefit all who pay the taxes on an equal basis, so a subsidy to one person’s child to give him or her an advantage over the other children we educate out of public necessity is questionable at best. Should we grant vouchers to pay for private security for those individual’s dissatisfied with our police? Should we grant vouchers to pay for private vehicles for individuals dissatisfied with the school bus? How about vouchers to pay for better copies of a text book than the school provides?
Public education represents an intersection of the citizen’s responsibility to support necessities and the parent’s responsibility to provide the best possible for his or her child. One parent’s dissatisfaction with what is publicly provided does not exempt him or her, as a citizen, from paying for it. If that parent wants more for his or her child, it’s quite frankly his or her problem, because the public school system was not created for his or her child alone.
What voucher proponents should do, instead of trying to support handouts to public school refugees, is sit in on school board meeting and even run for board themselves. I was told that the school board was the smallest unit of representative government in our system, a laboratory for viewing debate, compromise, and governance in action at a level of immediate importance to at least all of us with children. The problem is that many of the most arden voucher supporters want the money because they are hostile to science and objective analysis, and want their children instead to be inculcated with the dogma of their parents' beliefs. Those of us who went to public schools know that it is possible, of course, to fail and slip through the cracks; but it is also possible to achieve a thorough education, even in the worst of schools. Poor quality schools merely put the burden on the individual student (and, of course, the parents) to proactively exploit the resources of the school, rather than receiving enlightenment on a silver platter. The so-called crisis in public education has always been trumped up to justify public subsidy of private and home schooling. But vouchers are no different than food stamps or corporate welfare: it's just using money taken from you and me to benefit somebody else.
posted by heavynettle at 15:20
5 Comments:
Home educators generally don't want any kind of subsidization from the government, because with the money would come strings. We would much rather be left alone to raise our children as we see fit.
And since we take no government money, can you concede that we have no accountability to other taxpayers and/or the government?
Hi, daryl cobranchi.
Home educators are not a homogenous group; but those who call for vouchers are calling for de facto subsidization. A voucher is not a refund, because it's value is not derived from the taxes paid, but the mythical PPOR or whatever. It may actually be less than the portion of the recipient's taxes that went to education, but I would bet that it's probably more, because tax is assessed without regard to child headcount, while vouchers are based per capita. It is reasonable to conclude that the majority of voucher recipients are receiving more through the voucher than they paid in taxes for public education, and it is therefore a subsidy.
Even if you don't take vouchers, don't fool yourself: you do take federal money, and state money, because you probably get a deduction per child. That's a subsidy, in the same manner as tax breaks for corporations. The more children you have, the more money is taken from revenues to give to you. That child deduction affects the anticipated revenues, and therefore the base rates we all pay, so although it is not necessarily true that removing the deduction would lower the tax rate, it is clear that meeting expenditures with the deduction means that, all other things being equal, persons with few or no children are subsidizing those with more children.
As to being left alone to raise your children as you see fit, there's just the slight problem that "your children" are sovereign beings with rights that supercede your right to rear them. So, if "as we see fit" includes abuse or neglect, you have no right to be left alone, and it is in the community's interest and the state's responsiblity to intrude upon your family and extract the abused or neglected child.
Anyway, I do not concede that you take no government money, so your dependent clause is moot. You have the same responsibilities as everybody else: to pay taxes to support that which has been deemed by the community to be necessary. That's slippery, I know, but that's why we have politics. Otherwise, your accountability to me is based only on your actions that affect me (although, again, see above on deductions).
I thought this would be the first comment, because it usually takes a while for readers to notice my posts, but there you go.
I got some rapid validation after posting the original article: an NPR story about the relative performance of public and private schools, which validates my assertion about public schools. Woo hoo.
If there has ever been a more obvious case of enlightened self-interest than funding public education, I can't think of it. Roads, police protection and prisons, and, uh, skools, are about as basic as it gets when it comes to public services. Public education has been a longer tradition in this country than a standing army for God's sake. Aside from studies showing the longterm savings for prisons, victims of violence, and increased economic output you get for each dollar you put into education, educating the next generation is quite simply one of the bedrock tenants of all human society. Sorry, you can't opt out in favor of just protecting your own.
And for the DINK crowd that bitches about "but I don't have any kids in skool why should I pay??? Wah!!!", well, consider your taxes a repayment on the loan you took out when you went to school. Personally, I was home skooled for a couple of years, but the teacher who taught me (mom) got her education from a bible college partially funded with federal money. So people, stop with the whole "I'm an island, I owe nuthin to nobody" schtick. It's tired, and wrong:
Goods, guns, and government programs built this country, starting with the Pennsylvania turnpike and the Erie canal through cavalry beef contracts, hand-outs to railroads and the commie-stopping CCC.
Hmm. . . I sense quibble room. . . .
I got really, viscerally annoyed about vouchers and tax breaks when I was at ASU. The Phoenix metro area has at least two large retirement communities, and their residents regularly bitched about having to pay for schools when the kids they had had went to schools in other states. My response to them, at least in the cavernous echo-chamber of my mind, was that they were paying for schools so some poor kid didn't grow up to be unemployable because he got no education and had to rob their fucking houses; or so some under-educated mob didn't vote in a government that expropriated their cush little retirement savings to give to the poor. Fucking short-sighted sub-humans.
Your turn, daryl cobranchi.
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