Why libertarians are not in enamored with charter schools

Hal Young just sent me a link to a Nevada Policy Research Institute study, which argues that homeschoolers are saving the Nevada public schools millions of dollars each year. To me one of the most interesting aspects of this study came in an ancillary conclusion of the study. This conclusion affirms an important problem that libertarians, as opposed to conservatives, have with charter schools, namely that they will draw primarily from people who would otherwise be sending their kids to private schools. First of all, this harms education’s private sector–where all schooling belongs–plus it means that the charter option is being taken by students who would otherwise be choosing alternative, non-government schooling anyway. Here is what the NPRI study concludes:

“The drop in the private school enrollment growth rate coincides partly with the growth of charter schools, suggesting this growth primarily came at the expense of private school enrollment?The tentative conclusion that charter school growth came largely out of private school enrollment is at least partially supported by the trends in county private school enrollment?Had private school enrollment in 1997-98 continued to grow at the same rate as during the previous four years there would have been an additional 3,329 private school students during 2003-04. This coincides closely with the rise in charter school enrollment, which reached 3,803 in 2003-04. In Washoe County, where eight charter schools are located, private school enrollment showed a drop of some 300 students between 2001 and 2004?The growth of charter schools affected private school enrollment mostly in the Reno metropolitan area where most of the charter schools are located. The complementary suggestion is that the growth in charter school enrollment did not significantly slow the enrollment growth of traditional public schools. To the extent that charter schools drew their students from private schools, this required an increase in total taxpayer expenditures on public education.”

This has been the problem that libertarians have had with so-called school choice all along. The primary concern has been with how best to improve the government sector with little concern about what the unintended consequences might be for private schools–or maybe we should call it the liberated sector.