D.C. (School) Vouchers: Better Results at a Quarter the Cost | Hacker News Reader

D.C. (School) Vouchers: Better Results at a Quarter the Cost

cato-at-liberty.org

24 pointschaostheory69 comments

* Read the executive summary. Half of the subgroups did not have improved performance. Math performance did not improve. Reading scores did improve, but this specific improvement cannot be meaningfully be attributed to the public vs. private nature of the schools. And, the study does attempt to figure out if the reading improvements could be replicated within the public school system by copying the reading programs used in the private schools.

* In the third year, over 83% of the participating students were attending schools where they were forced to endure continuous daily religious indoctrination. This is completely unethical.

* No attempt was made to measure the performance of students that attended a school designed for religious indoctrination against the students who attended a school designed expressly for education.

* According to the study, many parents (19%) turned down the vouchers they received after their students were accepted to public charter schools. It seems like parents are showing a strong preference for charter schools over private schools. IMO, this warrants further investigation into the funding of public charter schools instead of public funding of private education.

* According to the study, many parents of special needs students were not able to use their vouchers because the private schools were not able to provide the necessary services. The public schools are bearing nearly all of the costs of caring for special needs students whereas private schools are mostly punting on the issue. Similarly, if you get kicked out of a public or private school for behavioral or criminal reasons then you will be sent to a public alternative high school. Cost comparisons need to be made using comparable student populations.

* All measurements in this study suffer heavily from selection bias. Much of the data comes from voluntary surveys that were filled out by parents. It was basically a competition between political groups to convince the most parents on their side to return the surveys. Parents and students who were not interested in their students' education and/or the political ramifications of the survey are likely severely under-represented.

It is silly to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of private schools vs. the effectiveness of public schools by Cato's summary or my summary of the study. A summary of a summary of a study can be easily spun however the writer wants to spin it. AFAICT, the study report itself has very little actionable information in it; at best, it points out areas that need more study before any conclusions can be drawn.

Perhaps but your conclusions are equally silly (and not based on logic).

Voucher programs are very new and rare. Why would you expect them to function at the same level as established (and well funded) public schools after a very short time.

For comparison, imagine if FedEx were allowed to deliver residential mail -- would you expect 100% coverage of every US address overnight? Of course not. The ramp-up will take time, and with voucher money entrepreneurs will invent better schools and existing schools will be able to ramp up due to network effects long enjoyed by the public monopoly.

Also, you are right that parochial schools enjoyed a bump in enrolment that they may not have deserved, but they benefit from having had (for a long time) other sources of funding, namely donations. Also, I think you exaggerate the "indoctrination" quite a bit. Are public school students not indoctrinated that FDR and Henry Kissinger were great men? I'm not sure why you have to draw the line and say that only indoctrination about the supernatural is distasteful!

Cato's article claimed that this study showed that private schools were clearly better at educating students than private schools. My point about performance was to show that the study itself says that isn't the case, based on the executive summary of the study itself. How was that silly or illogical?

My point regarding special ed and alternative schools is that these programs make averge-cost-per-student and average-performance-per-student metrics incomparable between public and private schools. The statements are derived directly from the study report. How is that silly or illogical?

I didn't say that only indoctrination about the supernatural is distasteful. Indoctrination--religious or otherwise--is unethical. You bring up FDR and Henry Hissinger as examples of public school indoctrination, but there are many public schools (like mine) that presented those men in an objective manner. There is no doubt that some teachers in some public schools may engadge in some kinds of (often religious, nationalistic, or otherwise political) indoctrination. However, it is something that can be identified and corrected within the public school program without changing any fundamental aspect of the public education system. The only way to rid religious schools of the indoctrination--for which they were created and which is one of their main selling points--is to close them or transfer them from religious organizations to secular organizations (which is something I fully support).

Cato meant better per dollar -- one can only imagine the outcome if the kids were able to keep the extra $20K per year of savings and apply it to future college tuition, room and board, travel around the world, etc.

Your second point is somewhat true, but special ed represents a small enough portion of the overall population that it doesn't inflate the numbers too much.

I'd argue that the public schools are by design indoctrination machines -- imagine if, say, the Taliban creates an official Taliban school, would you claim that it isn't intended to indoctrinate students in the ways of the Taliban?

US Public schools are (with the exception of affluent suburban public schools) mostly just factories intended to crank out vocational workers while providing free daycare for the K-12 years so that the family can more easily sustain two breadwinners.

Think about what is taught in public schools: Punctuality, obedience, spelling, phys-ed, basic math, basic reading comprehension, home-ec, government, state/local history, US history, etc. Huge emphasis is placed on sports and athleticism, and in the typical high school the "jocks" rule the halls, abusing and intimidating anyone they choose.

The food served in most public schools is below the quality served in fast food restaurants, and many feature soda and candy machines in abundance.

For all but the few who are extremely academically gifted, public school is little more than minimum security prison through the 12th grade, at which point most individuals either join the military or go to work at Wal-Mart.

Below, another commenter said that special education consumed 25% of the public budget. I don't know where he got that statistic, but if it is true then clearly we can't consider it to be a "small portion" of anything.

The Taliban is a religious organization that indoctrinates people similar to other religious organizations. What does it have to do with public schools? Are you suggesting that public schools are not secular enough and not objective enough? If so, I totally agree with you. But, it can be fixed. Religious schools are fundamentally broken as they have indoctrination of children at their core.

You make a lot of unsubstantiated claims in the rest of your message. I don't even know how to respond to them. If you have a claim with some substance then maybe I can respond to it.

I'm not sure where the commentator got the figure that special ed is 25% of the budget. Numbers I've seen indicate that special ed students cost perhaps 3 times what regular ed students cost per year, but there are a lot fewer special ed kids in most districts.

I am an atheist, fyi, but the reason I don't have a problem with parochial schools is this: Suppose an atheist like me has a kid and gets a voucher and must choose between a parochial school and a public school. I may rationally conclude that the hour spent each day on theological subjects is a worthwhile sacrifice to make in exchange for an overall superior academic environment. Yes, the hour is (in my opinion) time wasted, but in my mind it's equivalent to an hour wasted in, say, a poorly taught chemistry class. If anything, should my child be the sort of person likely to become an atheist, having to sit through a boring class about theology would likely only reinforce his atheism. I certainly don't think he'd come home from school one day and start trying to convert me.

I think the point you keep missing here is that all education is indoctrination. Even teaching kids to think rationally is indoctrination in the rational method. It's fine to say, "I think we should indoctrinate kids only in rationality," but most people will disagree with you. There is a sort of truce in our society: people don't hate each other for holding different viewpoints (as long as those viewpoints are societally acceptable, which varies from place to place.) Part of this truce is that people are allowed to shape the beliefs of their own children.

You can't say "we should never indoctrinate kids." That would be the same as saying "we should never educate kids." You can say "we should only tell kids the truth," but then, whose truth do we tell? The problem is not so simple. It's dishonest to say "no indoctrination" when what you mean is "indoctrination should be more along my lines."

It is not true that "all education is indoctrination." If I teach you how to make a fire then have I somehow coerced you into a fire-based belief system? If I teach you how to add two numbers then have I introduced you to the religion of numbers? No, I've just given you some facts. If I teach you a process by which you can educate yourself then have I somehow brainwashed you? I don't see how.

It is hard to keep indoctrination seperate from education. But, it isn't impossible.

You're right, and I'm wrong, of course. The problem is that it's hard to know who gets to decide what a fact is. There are many people for whom creationism is a fact. Is it okay for them to teach it to their children? If not, why is it okay for you to teach your children about evolution?

The fact that evolution is correct is sort of immaterial. There is no knowledge in the absence of cognition. For something to be known, it must be known by someone. We know that evolution is correct, but the creationist "knows" that creationism is correct.

> I didn't say that only indoctrination about the supernatural is distasteful. Indoctrination--religious or otherwise--is unethical.

Here is a question for the voucher program. Are parent's forced to send their children to schools that is founded on a religion? Or do the parents voluntary send their children to these schools?

As I understand it, parents are the legal guardians of their children. It is up to them to teach the children their value system and the religion (or no religion) of their choice.

What alternative do you propose? State enforced atheism?

> The only way to rid religious schools of the indoctrination--for which they were created and which is one of their main selling points-

Again – were the parents forced to send their children to these schools?

I don't think that it is up to you (or the state) to determine to which school a child should be sent.

Also, bear in mind that as far as private tuition goes – in the university system private universities vastly outperformed public universities in quality. Also check how many of the truly great universities were found as religious schools/backed by religious groups. Would it have been better if the state did not allow private universities? (The following universities had a religious affiliation when it was founded; Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Columbia, Brown University, Dartmouth college).

As for your comments about educational quality: In my country there exist a private religious schooling group. In all metrics they performed better than public schools. They did this even though they received no money form the state. A few metrics such as pass rate, teacher to pupil ratio, distinctions, drop out rate, etc... is all better than public schools (which are a mess). Children in those school actually got individual attention and academics was the focus point (they sucked in sport though).

One problem they faced was this: their school fees was a little higher than government schools (since they did not have government support). Some parents who had children with learning problems or behavioural problems sent that child to the private school but kept their other child in the public school. It got so bad that they enacted a new policy – a parent must put all his children or none of them in the school.

> --is to close them or transfer them from religious organizations to secular organizations (which is something I fully support).

I suspect that your sentiments in private schools have nothing to do with the quality of the education and everything to do with your bigotry towards religion and religious people. You would have children learn what you feel is acceptable rather than their guardian/parent.

You bring up a core point and that is exactly why I am so against indoctrination. If a child is brainwashed into a religion, and then they grow up and send their kid to get brainwashed the same way, did they really choose to have their kid brainwashed? The whole point of brainwashing is to force people to act a certain way. Did the law force them? No. Did their religious leaders and upbringing force them? In many cases, yes.

Keep in mind that I am not against religious people. But, I believe everybody should have their right to choose their own religion. Indoctrination fights free choice of religion and that is why I am against it. And, public dollars should never go to religious organizations or anti-religious organizations. Otherwise, people are effectively forced to support financially religions that they oppose on moral grounds.

Again, I am not against religion but I am against someone imposing their religion on others--even their own children.

However, the system you object to actually exists in the real world, in the country of the Netherlands, and several of the worries you have about that system don't seem to appear. In the Netherlands, by that country's constitution for the last century, schools are funded on a per-capita basis, and they can be wholly secular, religiously affiliated (with several different religions well represented by large numbers of schools), or affiliated with specialized approaches to educational philosophy (e.g., Montessori or Waldorf). Grown-up Dutch people seem every bit as able to make up their own minds about what to believe as grown-up American people. In view of this empirical reality, it wouldn't worry me if willing learners obtained funding for education on a basis of all schooling providers being on an equal footing, with parents free to choose for their minor children which educational program was the best fit for the child. See Choice of Schools in Six Nations

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordD...

for history and current data on schools in the Netherlands in other countries.

> or affiliated with specialized approaches to educational philosophy (e.g., Montessori or Waldorf).

That is true. Private schools can sidestep disastrous education philosophies that the government introduces through the public school system.

A good example is my country's experiments in [Outcome Based Education](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcome-based_education#OBE_aro...) (South Africa).

It destroyed a fairly good (under the circumstances) education system in less than 5 years. People who now receive matriculation cannot spell, construct sentences or even do basic mathematics.

I was involved in engineering education in 2007. The standards were dropped and even then the failure rates were astonishing (60%+ for single subjects). It is incredibly sad that a country's future was gambled on a failed education philosophy (which was chosen because it is politically acceptable).

If a parent can home school a kid and spend 2/3 of the day reading the bible, how can you even think that a voucher that may optionally be spent at an established parochial school even registers on the radar screen?

If a parent can have a child's genitals mutilated just after birth (for religious or secular reasons), how can you say that allocating voucher money to a parochial school (a school which the parent is free to send the kid to w/o the voucher) even remotely registers on the radar screen for children's rights?

I don't disagree with your points, but I think you are picking the wrong battle. The best antidote for religion is critical thinking, and an educational system with more choice will only help to engender such mental functioning on the part of students. Vouchers will also result in an influx of less faithful people to parochial schools and will create a wave of secularization, turning private schools less into religious orgs and making them more like regular businesses.

Think about it this way, at present only the most faithful are willing to scrimp and save to send their kid to the parochial school, while with vouchers there would be a lot more secularists attending simply to get a better education.

I am completely against home schooling for exactly that reason. And, I am against circumcision when it isn't done for medical reasons.

I agree with having choice in schools. I support vouchers and I support private schools. But, I don't support religious schools and I particular am against giving vouchers and other public money to religious schools.

By the way, many (most) parochial schools already have their own financial aid systems. For example, my sister went to a Catholic high school for a year where she only paid $1,500 or so, whereas the wealthy students were paying many times that much in order to subsidize the less wealthy. Sometimes church funds go towards those scholarships too. That is why I am against public funding of religious schools; they effectively increase the church's general fund. Everybody should be free to contribute to their own church but nobody should be forced to pay even a penny to a church they oppose.

On the subject of "public money", would you also vehemently oppose allowing a welfare recipient to spend money out of his/her welfare check at a church bake sale? Such behavior only increases the church's "general fund" and would seem to be equally distasteful to you.

What about spending money from one's tax rebate on a church raffle?

Also, how is anyone being forced to contribute money to a church they oppose? Are you saying that if my tax dollars went partially to the $0.50 someone used to purchase that donut at a Presbyterian bake sale, that my tax dollars are now being used to support a church I oppose?

The cost (financially and ethically) of policing those things is not worth the cost of accepting them. I am not advocating a police state where every transaction is monitored. Instead, I am promoting individual freedom--the freedom for people to spend their money on only their own religion (if any).

You keep using the word "distasteful" as though this is an issue of style instead of substance. It isn't; freedom of religion and the separation of church and state fundamental to our democracy.

You didn't answer my question, though. It would seem that in theory you would oppose (or find offensive) the bake sale example, even if you didn't advocate enforcement.

The question is, if I pay taxes and someone gets a school voucher or tax rebate, have they violated my freedom of religion by spending it at a Church? That seems to be the essence of your argument and I want to be sure I am clear on it.

Please also note the US constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...".

So you would have to argue that by giving the recipient of the school voucher or tax rebate freedom to spend it at a church, congress has attempted to establish a state religion or prevent free exercise thereof.

Items at a church bake sale are usually marked up to extreme levels. Purchasing these overpriced goods is not fiscally responsible. Anytime our tax money is wasted we should be offended.

You bring up a good point; maybe allowing people to use tax rebates for parochial schools is illegal. I can't say for sure as I don't understand the law enough.

It's a slippery slope... should government employees (whose salaries are paid by taxpapers) be allowed to buy goods at church bake sales?

Should people be allowed to buy goods at church bake sales with the proceeds from US Government Savings Bonds?

Should recipients of Federally subsidized student loans be allowed to use some of that loan money to buy church bake sale goods?

These are all (in my opinion) equally absurd examples, yet they are perfectly analogous to your objection to vouchers being spent at parochial schools.

In all your examples, the person receiving the cash either earned it (bonds, government employees) or will pay for it (student loans). A voucher is a gift from the government (taxpayers) to an individual. That's the key difference.

Usually, people earn their cash. When they earn it, we don't get to control what they do with it. In fact, we don't even get to know what they spend it on. That is the beautiful thing about cash. To restrict people from spending their money on their religion illegally restricts their expression of their religion.

When feasible, the government shouldn't be giving cash to people who didn't earn it. That is a core principle of welfare and that is why we have WIC, food stamps, government-subsidized housing, and school vouchers. It isn't feasible to have coupons for everything so we have to give people cash for some things.

> And, public dollars should never go to religious organizations or anti-religious organizations.

You are acting as if these children's parents did not pay tax. They only get their own tax money back to spend it on their children's education as they see fit.

What you propose is that we remove money from parents (through taxation) and force them to sent their children to school that you (or whoever) approved.

> Again, I am not against religion but I am against someone imposing their religion on others--even their own children.

You use the word indoctrination rather funny. It looks like to you, indoctrination is any teaching of anything which is not approved by you.

A parent should have the full authority to teach his child whatever values and beliefs it is he wants the child to believe. It is not the responsibility of the state or you or anyone else to determine what a parent should teach his child.

You are against a religious person teaching his beliefs onto his children. Yet you are for imposing your beliefs onto the children of other people.

If you want to educate children in your beliefs then you can get your own children or adopt some – but do not try to force other parents what to do.

It is not true that they "only get their own tax money back". A tax rebate would have that effect. I am not opposed to refunding people's tax money; I am opposed to giving them somebody else's tax money to support their religion. The voucher program is not a tax rebate because the people that stand to benefit most from the voucher program do not pay enough property taxes to cover the cost of private schools if they those property tax payments were refunded to them.

I never suggested that we force people to do anything. My whole argument is that we shouldn't force people to pay for religions they don't subscribe to.

I never said that the state should force parents to raise their kids secularly. What I said is that we shouldn't give them money to raise them religiously. I am not trying to impose my beliefs on anybody, and I am not asking anybody for money to help me impose my beliefs.

You keep trying to reframe my argument as anti-choise and anti-religion. It isn't the case. My argument is that the law should ensure that people should be able to choose NOT to support religious organizations they aren't members of, and we shouldn't take people's tax money and give it to religious organizations they oppose.

(I do believe that parents should give their kids a serious means of choosing their own religion. But, I didn't say the state should force them to do so.)

> people that stand to benefit most from the voucher program do not pay enough property taxes to cover the cost of private schools

How do you know how much tax they pay? I can bet you that most people pay more taxes than the value of the voucher program. Why not then abolish the education part of taxation completely and let everyone else decide where to school their children with private money? Or would that lose its coercive effect that you desire?

> My whole argument is that we shouldn't force people to pay for religions they don't subscribe to.

What if a tax payer opposes not sending children to schools of their choice? If 10% of the tax payers are of a certain religion then logic dictates that about 10% of children's parents would belong to that religion.

Religious people can choose religious schools, secular people can choose secular schools or (what happens more often) they choose the same private school and religious people choose religious classes.

> I never said that the state should force parents to raise their kids secularly.

What you said was “I am against someone imposing their religion on others--even their own children.”. The only way you would be able to accomplish that is with state interference (i.e. policing parents to ensure that they do not impart any religion on their children).

> I am not trying to impose my beliefs on anybody, and I am not asking anybody for money to help me impose my beliefs.

If you tax the public and use that money to provide education that fits your specified view (e.g. totally secular/irreligious) then you are imposing your beliefs on someone else.

That is because if a parent wants their children to have a religious education, they would have to pay double for it (once through taxation and once through school fees). The only thing that these vouchers do is preventing parents from paying double for their children's school fees.

When I said "I am against someone imposing their religion on others--even their own children," I meant exactly what I said and no more. In particular, I didn't say anything about the government policing parents regarding their religious practicies.

I totally support a tax rebate program that could be used for both religious and secular private schools. That way parents do not have to "pay double" to send their kid to private school. But, that is not the effect that the voucher program has, because of our progressive tax system.

Interesting. A few things stand out about your view:

You support public financing of education, but only when there is also public delivery of education services.

The objective of public financing of education is economic egalitarianism -- why should a kid not be able to go to school just b/c his parents can't afford it or don't consider it a worthwhile expenditure.

By objecting to some cases of public financing of education (such as vouchers) you seem to think that a kid whose parents are poor or who do not value education should have only one option, public school. I'm curious why you feel the need to limit the choices of the poor kid so much, but not the rich kid -- why shouldn't all parochial schools be banned?

It may be the case that you oppose the public funding of k-12 education. If that's the case, your argument is at least consistent. But you would then need to admit that since most people pay quite different amounts of property taxes, etc., that some deserve a refund and some deserve to have to pay extra even for public school.

As I said in other comments, I support vouchers for most non-parochial private schools.

I am willing to give parents of parochial school students tax rebates as a compromise to make voucher program implementable. Anybody that pays enough in property taxes to have the rebate cover the parochial school tuition can afford to send their kid to parochial school anyway. So, my support for tax rebates is purely tactical/political.

> * According to the study, many parents (19%) turned down the vouchers they received after their students were accepted to public charter schools. It seems like parents are showing a strong preference for charter schools over private schools. IMO, this warrants further investigation into the funding of public charter schools instead of public funding of private education.

Umm, why should the preferences of 20% be a reason to exclude an option prefered by 80%?

Fortunately, we don't have to make either group unhappy. We can have both public charter and vouchers for private schools. If the money goes with the kid, both will get funding proportional to the demand. I suspect many of the parents who weren't offered the choice would go for one of those two options and DC has a lot of students. So I believe that we can have "enough" public charters and enough private schools in the DC area.

That 19% represents some subset of the people that received vouchers but didn't use them AND said that the reason they didn't accept the voucher was because their kid got accepted into a charter school. The "other 80%" also didn't use the voucher, for some other reason. We can't use this statistic to say that 20% of people prefer charter schools and 80% prefer private schools. In particular, we don't know how many people sent their kids to private schools without applying for charter schools, and we don't know how many people applied to charter schools without accepting private school vouchers.

The definition of the population wasn't clear in the quote. Note that the actual definition doesn't support the "more public charters" conclusion because the breakdown of the turn downs tells us nothing about the relative number of accepts and turn downs. (Of course, the preferences of the "turn downs" are likely to be at odds with the preferences of the folks who accepted.)

Still, the fact that 20% of the folks who turned down vouchers did so because their kids got into public charters doesn't imply that we shouldn't have vouchers.

I happen to think that we should have more public charters. Since vouchers can let parents choose public charter schools for their kids....

What would be interesting is looking at the performance of specific students who transitioned from public school to private schools or charter schools.

Selection bias. If your parents care enough to send you somewhere, they'll care enough to make you do your homework.

Read the article:

"The evaluation is based on a randomized controlled trial design that compares the outcomes of eligible applicants randomly assigned to receive (treatment group) or not receive (control group) a scholarship through a series of lotteries."

Now, given lottery status parents might help their kids with HW or otherwise (b/c they don't want to waste an opportunity). I am still reading on how they control for that, but I suspect they have a TON of observables on the parents, income, location, etc. School voucher studies these days -- particularly those read and "approved" by those in the list of acknowledgements -- will go nowhere without either randomization or a suitable instrumental variable that correlates with the voucher, but not with educational outcomes. No need to throw around econometric criticisms until you read at least part of the article.

That might be true, but that doesn't make them a bad idea. From a fiscal perspective, why spend 4x if the kid is going to get the same performance via voucher?

High spending on education is a a feature, not a bug. It buys the support of public teachers unions, which will support the reelection of politicians whose sole idea for school reform is "more money".

Another factoid that Cato likes to throw out is that public education spending has doubled on an inflation adjusted basis since the early '80s, yet scores on certain standardized tests have stayed constant. Still, listen to any presidential debate. Every candidate calls for more money for schools, more teachers, more computers, etc. It doesn't occur to them that the system is broken when scaling up the input produces no additional output.

http://www.heritage.org/research/Education/images/b2179_char...

"From a fiscal perspective, why spend 4x if the kid is going to get the same performance via voucher?"

Same performance as (presumably) measured by one standardized reading test and one standardized math test...

Good point. The parents of students that participate in school choice programs also report much higher satisfaction with the education their children receive. That ought to be taken into consideration as well when considering how education is produced.

While it is impossible to isolate variables in social data, each new study does add a drop to the ocean of evidence in support of school choice initiatives. I thought this overview of available evidence was also illuminating:

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/03/17/american-prospect-...

When you add that a priori economic reasoning is firmly on the side of school choice over public monopoly - well I'm convinced. I'm a little surprised popular wisdom isn't on my side.

Good point. Popular wisdom is biased by the fact that most people went to public school and tend to think things like "well I went to public school and I turned out just fine".

That's like saying "well wikipedia didn't exist when I was a kid and I turned out just fine" to argue that Wikipedia should be banned -- after all voucher proponents don't want vouchers to be mandatory, just optional!

Very true. And don't forget that everyone is entitled to a public "education". --Including kids who are vegetables and have to have someone watching them all the time.

Editing to add more detail:

Based on my reading, they're spending more then $300 million on special education, around 25% of their budget.

$62 million goes to the university $46 million goes to the public libraries ~$100 goes to early education and ESL initiatives.

Those are all expenses private schools never have to worry about.

Vouchers are a public education. It is just the delivery mechanism that is private.

Nope. "Public" education implies that everyone can have it. Vouchers don't provide admission, just a means to pay tuition if you are accepted.

Public schools can't guarantee admission to everyone either. Admissions are restricted to people in a certain geographic area. To go to a nice public school, instead of tuition, you pay the premium for a house in an area with good schools.

"entitled"? That implies a choice. In the US, education is compulsory for certain age groups.

Rather, school attendance is compulsory absent a government-approved alternative, but one can attend school throughout childhood without ever being educated.

Very true -- I should have said compulsory attendance.

Blithely asserted.

But suppose it is correct. Do you think parents might start caring more about managing their kids' educations if they could see that caring more actually made a difference?

I'd say that the converse is also true: If one has no choice then even if one cares there is no reason to care.

If your parents care enough to send you somewhere, they'll care enough to make you do your homework

That statement may or may not be true. It's simply speculative. It also seems specious to me. Making a commitment for an hour or two that involves signing a couple of papers is nowhere near the level of making a commitment to follow and monitor schoolwork.

I think the issue is even a bit more subtle -- if you have no choice then why bother caring even if you would care.

One great example is this: I never cared about china patterns until I got engaged and was asked which one I preferred. Suddenly I had all sorts of strong opinions.

With vouchers people would start caring a lot more about what they were getting, and schools would have to frame their role less as daycare and more as a value proposition... as in "come to school A and our research shows you will earn $10K more per year after college", or "our students learn three languages fluently during grades 6-10", or "we offer all vegan food and teach set theory before algebra, and 50% of our students end up majoring in math in college".

I think better teachers is more likely than selection bias. Teachers who are rewarded on merit will always outperform those rewarded for their seniority.

How do you measure merit?

By seniority, of course! Or that is what the teachers' unions would have us believe.

Is measuring merit all that hard? It's done successfully higher ed. The bottom line is that we shouldn't worry so much about the concept of merit b/c we don't need a one-size-fits-all system. For example, some people prefer to go to a large public university where profs are "meritorious" if they publish and are at the cutting edge of research -- while others prefer to go to smaller schools with more of a focus on teaching and small class sizes.

Chances are with widespread voucher availability, K-12 education would become less cookie-cutter and would better address the diverse definitions of merit that exist.

Of course, states/cities could require certain curriculum, teacher SAT scores, etc., but such things would represent a floor rather than a ceiling on what "merit" is.

How do you measure merit?

I would let the learners have power to shop, and we will know soon enough which teachers are doing a good job.

This is also indicated by the fact that those who were offered vouchers but didn't use them seem to have had similar increases in reading scores, compared to the applicants who were not offered vouchers. Sounds like voodoo science to me (or some variation of the Westinghouse effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_effect#Westinghous... )

Not at all. There is both a market-based and a psychological explanation:

Market based: If the student didn't use the voucher but might use it next year, then the school will try harder to meet the student's needs this year.

Psychological: If you perceive something as simply mandatory, you will take it for granted. While if you had a voucher and choose a public school, then you have made the decision that you have the best opportunity in the environment you chose, and you'll try to extract value from it.

That's part of the argument! That is: Parents who care to look into a selection of schools will be more involved in the schools they send their children to and will raise children who are better students. Involved parents will force schools, public and voucher backed, to compete producing better students and curriculum.

The idea that parents should be able to choose where their children go to school should be a given in America. I understand and accept everyone paying into the education system as a good idea, I don't understand or accept that people with school aged children have to pay into the school system even when they have chosen to send their children to private schools.

This is kinda disingenuous.

1) Vouchers do not cover the cost of most DC area private schools. They provide approx. $7500, but most top tier schools cast approx $20k, so the school is expected to kick in the remainder.

2) If vouchers became universally available it would simply inflate the cost of all private schools by the voucher amount, with no increase in student achievement.

3) A largely overlooked element is that private schools get to /choose/ whom they accept. This allows them to preselect the voucher recipients that they think would succeed.

private schools are not allowed to deviate significantly from the idiot producing processes of public schooling: * Teacher Certification: Children instructed in private full-time day schools by "persons capable of teaching" are exempt from public school attendance under the compulsory education law. Cal. Educ. Code § 48222.

The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing must forward to private schools on a monthly basis a list of all teachers who have had their state teaching credential revoked or suspended. The Commission must also send on a quarterly basis a complete and updated list of all teachers who have had their teaching credentials revoked or suspended, excluding teachers who have had their credentials reinstated, or who are deceased. Cal Educ. Code § 44237(g). Private schools may request information regarding the fitness of any applicant for a teaching position from the Commission. Cal Educ. Code § 44341(d).

Curriculum: Students attending private schools are exempt from California's compulsory attendance law if the schools offer instruction in the several branches of study required in the public schools of the state. Cal. Educ. Code § 48222.*

is it a shock that performance remains the same when you have the same teachers and the same curriculum?

On the teacher thing, I was under the impression that private schools could hire and fire credentialed teachers as they saw fit, plus could generally afford to pay better to attract better teachers, whereas public schools are handicapped by powerful teachers unions. Granted, my knowledge of the subject is pretty much limited to this paragraph :)

On the curriculum thing, it sounds like they just have to offer instruction in the same branches of study, which I'm assuming is things like Math, Reading, Science, etc. Not sure how that equates to the "same curriculum".

"credentialed teachers"

see pg's essay on credentialism for my feelings.

you have state certified teachers teaching a similar curriculum in the way that they were taught (the state certified way). This is a far cry from a truly independent education that is accountable to no one but the customers.

subsidizing private schools doesn't help as long as the taxation structure supporting public schools are still in place. all that will happen is private school tuitions will increase the way college tuitions have.

Deleted comment

It's nearly impossible to discuss education, but ignore politics.

It's political policy that mandates compulsory education, forces taxation to pay for said education, and outlines what is taught in public schools. Politics play a role in acceptable curriculum for home and private schools, what age children are forced into these institutions, and what drugs & vaccines they must take to participate in the public system.

Politics can certainly play a role in vocalizing opposition to these policies.

Feynman actually voiced his frustration over school textbooks, because education was so politicized:

http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

And what do you do? Reject those, and choose books that your parent-friends are using? Pay tutors?

(Hey, davetufts, I'm a Jumbo too.)

Public education is politicized because, being public, it is controlled by political institutions. Contrast this with a private service or commodity, like grocery stores. Nobody lobbies for which food items will be carried in grocery stores, rather the stores respond to the will of their customers.

And that is true even if some low-income customers shop with food stamps ("food vouchers").

And I might note for the record that pg, the kind founder of this forum, appears to have quite a strong interest in education issues.

http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html

http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

http://paulgraham.com/college.html

http://paulgraham.com/wisdom.html

http://paulgraham.com/credentials.html

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