I regretted last week raising this issue once again, but as long as high-profile and well-intentioned people like Friedman (*subscription: see update) keep promoting it, the tendency to overlook the Lesson in the voucher scheme will persist. One wants to do well by these children, but we should heed Hazlitt (not a Nobel winner) and look at all groups, not just one, and the long as well as the short run.
Absolutley, we need competition in education–all education–and real competition. John Merrifield’s analysis, with which I have much sympathy even though he likes one approach to vouchers, critiques the specific voucher programs in place as similar to ‘a choice of government-run stores in the Soviet Union.’ I don’t think even his best proposal can eliminate the reduction in freedom to some consumers if implemented, however. I heartily endorse the final observation in School Choices: true and false. Discard compulsory attendance law. This does not mean abolish schools, just the mandatory attendance provision. And yes, I thnk parents are overwhelmingly capable of making good choices for their kids—or what’s the choice movement driven by? We don’t want to call parents morons or incompetents in one setting but fully competent otherwise, I assume.
Once we agree that parents are responsible choosers, it’s only a matter of making sure there are market forces at work that will give parents what they want. Voluntary attendance does that, whether in the publicly-funded school or the private. If school taxes eventually have to adjust to the market reality (whatever it be)–good! And as I’ve said before somewhere here, employers and institutiions of higher ed can establish acceptances and entrance requirements that reflect what they actually expect graduates to know. If this doesn’t give the student an incentive to get an appropriate education, and do the best at it that they can, what would be a stronger motivation?
No guaranteed clients would move schools of all sorts to align themselves with client needs and wants?and to keep them there. Truancy is by definition eliminated, but idleness is unlikley to replace it. There will be a competitive market out there for the skills graduates can offer. Doubtless taxpayers will exert an influence on how many dollars get collected for education, and where and how they are spent. And good teachers will have no worries; they’ll be employed regardles of by whom.
Interestingly, Merrifield supposes that this situation will reduce the incidence of home schooling, something he views as a bit of an aberration due to the poor quality of public schools (and the burdensome additional expense of private ones).His work is worth a look in light of Friedman’s reform proposal for New Orleans.
UPDATE: Need we say this over and over?
*Friedman is proposing that all students from New Orleans schools now attend schools (wherever they are) under a government-funded voucher program. From the article: “New Orleans school system, should take this opportunity to empower the consumers, i.e., the students, by providing parents with vouchers of substantial size, say three-quarters of per-pupil spending in government schools, usable only for educational expenses. Parents would then be free to choose the schooling they considered best for their children, rather than simply rebuild the destroyed schools.”
