 |
EDUC 201 School & Society |
 |
|
What is a "Voucher"?
"Voucher" is a term that covers several possibly
rather different things. That
is, exactly what form a voucher program might take if it were
written into law depends on what the legislators and lobbyists behind
it want it to do. In
some cases, voucher proposals involve only money from the state; in
other variations, they include both state and local money.
Conceivably, they could also include state, local and federal
monies. It just depends on what politicians decide
to write into the laws that permit vouchers. Right now, it is a game without rules, because, except for
a couple of trial programs, such as the one in Washington, DC, schools,
they don't exist.
What the proposals to enact vouchers all have in common is
that they permit transfer of state school funds to schools other than
the schools to which they would otherwise go -- public or private.
Essentially, they are promissory notes, or signed checks with
the payees" names left blank.
These "checks" would be given (figuratively speaking)
to parents to pay toward their children"s education at the school
of their choice, public or private.
You would enroll your child in a private school. The school would bill the state for the money for your kid.
The state would deduct that money from the money it was going
to send to the public school where your child was supposed to go and
sens it to the private school instead.
In order to understand vouchers, you need to understand how
schools are currently financed.
The majority of the money comes from two sources:
the state treasury and local property taxes.
In Illinois, for instance, approximately $4,500.00 per child
($2,250 from the state, $2,250 from local property taxes) is given
from the state treasury to the public school the child attends. Which school the child is permitted to attend is also defined
by state laws which define "attendance zones." Basically, attendance zones are based
on school districts and neighborhoods within districts -- where a
child lives determines where he or she goes to school (or, at least,
is supposed to go to school). So,
if a child lives in the attendance zone for Steele Elementary School,
the money goes to Steele Elementary School. If the parents opt to send the child to some other school besides
Steele, the $4,500.00 still goes to Steele; it does not follow the
child. A voucher would,
essentially, permit the $4,500.00 to follow the child, rather than
go to the school in his/her attendance zone.
And, currently, the money only goes to public schools. If a child goes to a private school, no
state money goes with him/her.
(That's part of the reason why they're called "private"
schools; they're not state funded.)
The idea that is most commonly argued in support of vouchers
is that parents should be able to choose which school they want to
send their children to, whether it is in their "attendance zone"
or not, and whether it is a public or private school.
Obviously, from the point of view of those parents who don't
want their children to go to their assigned schools, that would be
a good thing. However, from the point of view of parents who can't, for whatever
reason, send their kids elsewhere, it's problematic. In low income families in which both parents
work, transportation problems, for instance, might make it impossible
for them to get their children to another school. (And note that none
of the voucher proposals that have surfaced so far include transportation,
though George Bush often kind of tosses it into his discussions.)
The way a voucher would work is something like this. Say the state allocates $4,000.00 in education support for
each child of school age in the state.
As it now stands, that money goes to the public school district
in which the child lives, and specifically to the public school to
which the child is supposed to go.
If the child enrolls in some school other than the one in which
he or she is supposed to enroll, the money does not follow him or
her. For instance, a child who lives in District 205 cannot enroll
in District 208 without paying tuition, which is usually at least
the equivalent of the actual expenditure on education per child in
that district. Thus,
if District 208 spends $9,000.00 per child on education, the child"s
parents would have to pay all of that $9,000.00.
On the other hand, with a voucher for the money that would
originally have gone to the child"s neighborhood school, parents
would have to pay several thousand dollars less.
I caution you that those numbers are relatively meaningless,
because local districts set their own tuition rates (what they charge
"out of district" students to attend) and establish their
own criteria for them. So
it doesn't necessarily work exactly that way:
the numbers can vary a lot.
What is important to understand is that when a student leaves
his or her district, the tax money doesn't follow him or her.
One of the intents of vouchers is to let some or all of the
tax money follow the student.
Currently, if parents want to send their children to parochial
schools, for instance, the state and local tax dollars do not go with
them. The reason for this is that the U. S. Supreme Court has held
that giving state tax money to parochial schools constitutes a violation
of the "Establishment" clause in the U. S. Constitution,
which calls for a separation of church and state.
In some of the voucher scenarios, the money would go to the
parochial schools if parents chose to send their children there. A large portion of the existing private schools are church
related. (In fact, 72%
of private schools in Tucson, AZ, are church-related, according to
the Arizona Daily Star
.)
Much of the political hype surrounding the issue of vouchers
concentrates on the question of choice.
But the issue is not that simple, in my opinion. In a democracy, an individual"s choice is limited by the
needs of the larger society.
One cannot choose to do things that hurt others, such as yell
"fire" in a crowded theater, or smoke tobacco in public
buildings, or drive while intoxicated, or commit "hate"
crimes. If you choose to do something that hurts
the society or other individuals, the rest of us in the society can
restrict your ability to exercise your choice by fining you, putting
you in prison, or even killing you.
So, we can also deny you choice of schools if we (the society)
think it would hurt the society to let you have that choice, and we
have decided that state support of religion would hurt the society.
Neither can one legally segregate the races.
One of the problems with vouchers is that they would at least
contribute to de facto resegregation of the schools. We need only look at the racial
balances in most urban areas of the country to see that whites live
mainly in certain parts of town and minorities live in other parts. And that situation did not occur by accident.
Whites, who make, on the average, more money than minorities,
can afford to live in the more expensive neighborhoods.
Minorities, who don't make as much money as whites, on the
average, can't afford to live in those neighborhoods.
People who live in those wealthier neighborhoods not only pay
in more dollars in school taxes, but can also afford to contribute
more money to their local schools, so their schools tend to have better
facilities.
Since they have better facilities, the cost of education is
higher in those areas. So,
if one of the richer areas were to set tuition rates for "out
of district" students, those rates would have to be higher than
tuition rates for poorer schools. So, again, the people who make more money
could afford to pay for their children to go to the better schools,
while people who make less money could not.
Since income correlates with race and ethnicity, the schools
would tend to serve particular ethnic groups and we would be headed
back to segregated schools.
People who don't have the income to take advantage of "choice"
don't really have a choice.
The ones who would benefit most from school choice are the
wealthier, and the wealthier are usually Whites.
People whose wages are low are less likely to be able to afford
either the time or money to drive their children from one side of
town to the other every school day and back every evening, or to pay
the additional tuition they would have to pay beyond the state money,
so they couldn't exercise that choice if they had it.
The vouchers for the Washington, DC, schools are for $2,700.00,
yet the average expenditure per student in DC schools is nearly $9,000.00. The children's parents are going to have to come up with the
difference in order to take advantage of the vouchers. Thus, it seems really unlikely that low
income families will benefit from vouchers. To say that a voucher for $2,700.00 gives them the option to
send their kids to a private school is silly if they don't have the other $6,300.00 necessary to pay the rest of the tuition for that school!
Another problem with vouchers is that they will tend to move
money from poorer districts to richer districts.
If a $4,000.00 student leaves a $1,000,000.00 district, the
loss hurts the district more than if a $4,000.00 student leaves a
$5,000,000.00 district. (Remember: one of the basic tenets of commercial economics is that it
is cheaper to do business in volume.)
And it seems a pretty safe bet to me that most of the moves
will be from poorer schools to richer schools instead of vice versa.
Thus, vouchers contribute, not only to segregation, but also to the
economic gulf between poor and rich.
(Can you imagine any parent deciding to use a voucher to send
a child to a worse school? I can't!)
Similarly, vouchers will contribute to making academically
low schools lower. Students who move will mainly be moving
from schools with lower academic ratings to schools with higher academic
ratings, and the students who move will be the academically better
students. Thus, there
will be a growing dichotomizing of schools into the "good"
and the "bad," thus
adding to the problem of unequal education instead of fixing it.
It may fix the problem for an individual student, but it will do so at the expense of all the other
students in the school he or she leaves.
That doesn't sound very democratic to me! Democracy (as I understand it) is based
on sharing, not hoarding!
It has become popular in recent years to say the answer to
school problems is NOT money. There is a grain of truth to that, but only a grain. If the money is just being wasted, then
more won't help. But,
most of the money that is going to schools is not being wasted.
So, what is the good side of vouchers?
Some argue that vouchers will offer parents "choice"
in where they send their children to school and that in turn will
force failing public schools to be more "competitive."
This argument assumes that public schools are doing a worse
job than they could be.
It would probably be worthwhile to confirm that before instituting
a voucher system. I have seen no evidence to support the
notion that any such thing is happening.
Furthermore, few proponents of vouchers seem to consider that,
given the laws and regulations within which public schools are forced
to operate, they are doing the best they can.
(Though, oddly enough, most "charter school" legislation
exemts charter schools from certain regulations. Why don't they also exempt the public schools from them if
they want real competition?)
This same "choice" argument assumes that parents
don't currently have "choice."
In fact, they do. Not
only do they have the right to move to another attendance zone or
district, they also have the right to send their children to any school, public or private, that they are willing to pay for.
Some argue that vouchers would permit children who "want
to" to get a good education.
This position argues that some children are held back from
fulfilling their potential by their families" inability to afford
"better" schools and by other children"s misbehaviors.
Vouchers would probably have this effect to some extent. But, as noted above, it would only help
those who can afford the rest of the money. I think that if voucher proponents were serious about helping
all children they would cover the whole cost associated with changing
schools, including tuition and transportation. As long as they're unwilling to do that, then their motives
are suspect.
Some argue that vouchers would decrease governmental interference
in their lives. It probably
would in some respects. The
issue, though, is whether that is a good thing or not.
Where one stands on that argument depends on one's general
philosophy about the role of a "society" and the purpose
of school. Is the issue individual benefit, or group benefit? Many people believe that government should, among other things,
protect the weak from the strong.
Though I have not heard or read this argument any where, vouchers
would probably also have the positive effect of supporting the existence
of good private schools. That
is, with tax money coming in, their continuation would probably be
more certain. However, I also think that if they want
to be "private" such school should take care of themselves.
If I could think of any other arguments in favor of vouchers,
I would present them. However,
these are all I can think of. Whichever side you're on, it's an issue worth giving some very serious thought to. |
|
Last updated by Jim Vandergriff 6/13/02 10:51 AM jvanderg@knox.edu |