Debate:Education Vouchers

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Should a voucher system be used to introduce choice and competition between schools?

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Background and Context of Debate:

A voucher system is an alternative method of funding education. Instead of tax revenue being distributed to state-run schools, parents are issued directly with vouchers, which can be spent on education in any school, privately or publicly run. Schools therefore compete for pupils and the funds that come with them. Such a scheme was originally put forward by Milton Friedman in the 1950s and now systems of voucher funding are in place in several American states and European municipalities. The idea was also briefly the basis for a reform of UK nursery funding. The debate asks what role the state should play in the education system. Should parents have more choice over where their children are educated? Or should state funds remain under state control?[1]

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Students: Would a school voucher system provide a positive escape valve to students that are locked into unfortunate circumstances?

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Yes

• Students who opt out are more likely to graduate than those who remain at their assigned schools. Cullen, Julie Berry, Jacob, Brian and Levitt, Steven D., "The Impact of School Choice on Student Outcomes: An Analysis of the Chicago Public Schools," NBER Working Paper No. W7888 (September 2000).

• The truly revolutionary potential of vouchers lies in public school voucher plans that open predominantly middle class suburban public schools to urban children of color. Morgan, Denise C., "The Devil is in the Details: Or, Why I Haven't Yet Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Vouchers," Annual Survey of American Law, Forthcoming.

• Untargeted vouchers may be equity-enhancing under some institutional settings. Nechyba, Thomas J., "Public School Finance in a General Equilibrium Tiebout World: Equalization Programs, Peer Effects and Private School Vouchers," NBER Working Paper No. W5642 (June 1996).

• Strong migration effects are shown to significantly improve the likely equity consequences of voucher programs. Nechyba, Thomas J., "A Model of Multiple Districts and Private Schools: The Role of Mobility, Targeting, and Private School Vouchers," NBER Working Paper No. W7239 (July 1999).

• There may be small achievement gains in mathematics for the African-American and Hispanic children who use vouchers. Rouse, Cecilia E., "School Reform in the 21st Century: The Effect of Class Size and School Vouchers on African-American and Hispanic Students", Industrial Relations Section, Working Paper No. 440, (June 2000).

• Many state schools are failing, and a voucher system provides an escape valve for students that would otherwise be locked into unfortunate circumstances: Children are locked into bad schools, particularly in inner-city and under-privileged areas. Parents must be given the opportunity to escape from bad state education systems if educational standards are to improve.[2]

• The U.S. University system has succeeded relative to the K-13 system because it has adopted mechanisms more akin to a school voucher system: The key difference between a k-12 and a University system is that the U.S. University system receives a substantial portion of its funding from students and subsidies to students in the form of scholarships, government grants, and subsidized loans. This is argued to be conceptually equivalent to school vouchers because the money is provided ultimately to the student and in such a way that the student's ability to choose between schools is maintained. Because choice is maintained, universities must compete harder to attract students, which many proponents argue is the key ingredient in the relative success of the Universities system over the K-12 system. Thus, some argue that a similar competition-inducing approach should be taken with the K-12 system through school vouchers.[3]

• New Zealand's education vouchers worked The voucher program in New Zealand benefited students in both the private and public schools by putting funding in the hands of students instead of bureaucracies. Parents will almost always make a better decision in choosing a school than a government bureaucrat. The success of education vouchers in New Zealand is a good example of what it can achieve elsewhere in the world.

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No

• Vouchers take funds away from the schools that need them most: Professor Helen Ladd of Duke University co-wrote a book about education in New Zealand, where a voucher system is in place, and concluded that schools "were even worse off than they were before [the implementation of the voucher system], because motivated parents took advantage of the opportunity to move their children ... and left behind in the traditional public schools even greater concentrations of disadvantaged students."[4]

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Increased parental involvement? - Would a school vouchers program have the effect of increasing parental involvement in a child's education?

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Yes

• Parents who have greater choice are more likely to be involved in their children's schooling. Hoxby, Caroline M, "What Do America's 'Traditional' Forms of School Choice Teach Us About School Choice Reforms?," Economic Policy Review, Vol. 4, No. 1 (March 1998).

• Vouchers demand that a parent choose and control paying for the education of their children, thus initiating their involvement in their child's education:[5]

State-run schools are more expensive per head than private equivalents. Large government-run bureaucracies are notoriously inefficient. Even without voucher schemes many private schools currently charge less per head than the funding state schools receive - evidence that education can be provided more efficiently by the private sector.[6]

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No

• Private sector schools require extra funds as the profit motive has to be met. Taxation should be used to fund the education of our children, not to line the pockets of corporate investors.

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School independence: Would school vouchers damage school independence?

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Yes

• Educational libertarians argue that vouchers would come with regulations that would damage the independence of private schools:[7]

• A voucher system is a form of "educational welfare", and subsequently bad (a libertarian argument):[8]

• Giving the state full control over children’s education is inappropriate. State-run schools can become agents of government propaganda and restrict community diversity.[9]

• As in every market, some regulation will be necessary - for example, to prevent fraud and to guarantee every school-age child a place in a school. However, this can and should be separated from the larger question of whether the state should be a provider of education.[10]

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No

• Incentives to improve schools can be introduced without removing the whole system of publicly run education: Competing to attract pupils just encourages schools to invest in popular, cosmetic changes, rather than dealing with the core problems of educational low attainment.[11]

• The curriculum is not a private matter between school and pupil: Education is used to inculcate values that the society believes in and to promote social and civic awareness. Religious schools promoting anti-female policies, for example, should not be receiving taxation revenues. In the USA the use of government money through vouchers to fund private religious schools violates the constitutional separation of church and state. State funds cannot be separated from state control.[12]

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Private-public school gap - Will school vouchers help narrow the gap between private and public schools?

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Yes

• Choice threats in Florida embedded within accountability regimes can moderate educational inequalities by boosting achievement at the lowest-performing schools. West, Martin R. and Peterson, Paul E., "The Efficacy of Choice Threats within School Accountability Systems: Results from Legislatively Induced Experiments," Economic Journal, Vol. 116, No. 510, pp. C46-C62 (March 2006).

• [[The inclusion in 1998 of religious private schools in the Milwaukee voucher program led to more than a three-fold increase in the number of private schools and almost a four-fold increase in the number of choice students, and to a further improvement of the public schools]]. Chakrabarti, Rajashri, "Can Increasing Private School Participation and Monetary Loss in a Voucher Program Affect Public School Performance? Evidence from Milwaukee," FRB of New York Staff Report No. 300 (September 2007).

• A Florida-type voucher program, that offers school vouchers only to students at low performing public schools, will unambiguously improve education quality, exceeding the improvement of an unconditional Milwaukee-type program. Chakrabarti, Rajashri, "Impact of Voucher Design on Public School Performance: Evidence from Florida and Milwaukee Voucher Programs," FRB of New York Staff Report No. 315 (January 2008).

• In Chile, attending a private school subsidized by vouchers is associated with increased standardized test scores, but the apparent impact is relatively small. Contreras, Dante, "Vouchers, School Choice and the Access to Higher Education," Yale University Economic Growth Center Discussion Paper No. 845 (June 2002).

• Vouchers can end the social split between private and state education, which entrenches social divisions.[13]

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No

• [[In 22 years of a nationwide school voucher program in Chile, there was no evidence that school choice improved average educational outcomes as measured by test scores, repetition rates, and years of schooling, only leading the best students to leave to the private sector]]. Hsieh, Chang-Tai and Urquiola, Miguel S., "When Schools Compete, How Do They Compete? An Assessment of Chile's Nationwide School Voucher Program," NBER Working Paper No. W10008 (October 2003).

• Public schools are unlikely to be able to respond to increased competitive pressure generated by vouchers.Barrow, Lisa and Rouse, Cecilia E., "School Vouchers: Recent Findings and Unanswered Questions," Economic Perspectives, Vol. 32, No. 3, 2008.

• Schools will simply ask for more money on top of the voucher allowance, thus continuing the gap between schools for the rich and schools for the poor. We should be working to limit this division, not placing it at the heart of a “free-market” education system. A market system further rewards parents who understand the system and are engaged with their children’s education, and ignores marginalised and disadvantaged groups.[14]

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Schools as market: Should school systems be subject to market forces within a voucher system?

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Yes

• Schools that face choice-based incentives demand teachers who raise a schools' ability to attract students. Hoxby, Caroline M, "Would School Choice Change the Teaching Profession?," NBER Working Paper No. W7866 (August 2000).

• In the US, traditional school choice improves the quality of schooling by increasing competition amongst schools. Hoxby, Caroline M, "What Do America's 'Traditional' Forms of School Choice Teach Us About School Choice Reforms?," Economic Policy Review, Vol. 4, No. 1 (March 1998).

• The introduction of charter school competition in North Carolina caused an approximate one percent increase in test scores, one quarter of the average yearly growth. Holmes, George M., DeSimone, Jeffrey S. and Rupp, Nicholas G., "Does School Choice Increase School Quality?," NBER Working Paper No. W9683 (May 2003).

• Demand response at high-performing schools would be larger than the response at low-performing schools, leading to disparate demand-side pressure to improve performance under school choice. Hastings, Justine S., Kane, Thomas J. and Staiger, Douglas, "Parental Preferences and School Competition: Evidence from a Public School Choice Program," Yale Economic Applications and Policy Discussion Paper No. 10 (November 2005).]

• Public school students' achievement rose significantly and rapidly in response to competition in the charter school states of Michigan and Arizona, and most dramatically in the school voucher state of Milwaukee. Hoxby, Caroline M, "School Choice and School Productivity (or Could School Choice be a Tide that Lifts All Boats?)," NBER Working Paper No. W8873 (April 2002).

• Greater competition between public school districts promoted by school vouchers may spur public schools to improve student outcomes. Brasington, David M., "Public and Private School Competition: The Spatial Education Production Function," (May 2005).

• School choice improves academic outcomes for those who use it, improves outcomes at nearby government schools, and has other positive effects. Forster, Greg, "Vouchers and School Choice: The Evidence," Economic Affairs, Vol. 28, Issue 2, pp. 42-47, June 2008.

• School voucher program increased secondary school completion rates by 15-20% in Colombia. Angrist, Joshua D., Bettinger, Eric and Kremer, Michael, "Long-Term Consequences of Secondary School Vouchers: Evidence from Administrative Records in Colombia," NBER Working Paper Series, Vol. w10713 (August 2004).

• Milwaukee Parental Choice Program appears to have had a positive effect on the math achievement of those who attended a private school; but had no benefits for reading scores. Rouse, Cecilia E., "Private School Vouchers and Student Achievement: An Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program," NBER Working Paper No. W5964 (March 1997).

• School vouchers lowered the cost of private schools in Italy. Brunello, Giorgio and Checchi, Daniele, "School Vouchers Italian Style," IZA Discussion Paper No. 1475, (January 2005).

• [[Vouchers allow individual school cultures to develop, enabling teachers to choose schools that promote teaching approaches that match their teaching styles, and enable students/parents to choose schools that match the students learning styles and abilities]].

• Vouchers not only encourage efficiency, they also promote innovation and specialisation. As schools work to attract particular kinds of pupils, variety and choice within the education system is increased.[15]

• Without incentives, schools will not improve. Vouchers introduce market forces into the education system. Schools have to attract pupils in order to attract funds and are thus forced to provide attractive and effective services.[16]

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No

• In Chicago, there is little evidence that attending school choice programs provides any benefit on a wide variety of traditional academic measures, including standardized test scores, attendance rates, course-taking, and credit accumulation. Cullen, Julie Berry, Jacob, Brian and Levitt, Steven D., "The Effect of School Choice on Student Outcomes: Evidence from Randomized Lotteries," NBER Working Paper No. W10113 (November 2003).

• In the Netherlands, where parents are free to choose the school for their children, higher competition is associated with lower student achievement in upper secondary education. Dijkgraaf, Elbert, Van der Geest, Stephanie and Gradus, Raymond H. J. M., "School Choice and Competition: Evidence from the Netherlands," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper 08-109/3 (November 10, 2008).

• Education cannot be a market as it shouldn't fit into a fungible supply/demand system: Supply cannot adjust fast enough to changing demand (schools cannot be built, or expand, overnight as parents change their minds) so some pupils will always end up stuck in dying, under-funded schools because over-subscribed schools cannot expand fast enough. Such pupils need to be helped, not ignored.[17]

• Variety within the education system is not always a good thing: National curricula exist to facilitate transfer between schools and comparisons of different pupils and schools, as well as enforcing basic standards.[18]

• Every child has a right to an education: Under a 'market' system there is no guarantee that school places will be provided in isolated areas where there are not enough pupils to justify private investment or that schools will accept disabled pupils, whose education may require more funds than the voucher provides.[19]

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Public money to private schools: Would the possible effect of public money from school vouchers going toward private schools be positive?

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Yes

• Counter that government control will not necessarily follow the flow of public money into private schools: Virgil Blum, Freedom of Choice in Education, 1958 - "The doctrine that government control invariably follows the public dollar is not a valid objection to the certificate plan. This doctrine has been rejected in all our social security programs, in all our educational programs for veterans, and, recently, in our educational program for war orphans. And since freedom of the mind must be preserved, it must be rejected in future legislation in the field of education."[20]

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No

• Concern that government controls will inevitably follow public funding of private schools, resulting in the loss of their independence, quality, and efficiency:[21]

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References:

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Motions:

• This House would introduce vouchers for school.
• This House believes the government should get out of education.
• This House believes in free markets.

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In legislation, policy, and elsewhere:

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See also on Debatepedia:

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External links and resources:

• Cato coverage of the debate: Policy Analysis - Vouchers and Educational Freedom: A Debate
• Wisconsin Education Association Council (collection of resources)
• The Secular Web: American papers on church-state separation
• Economic Policy Institute
• Information for parents on current US voucher schemes

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Books:

• Free to Choose: A Personal Statement ^{Milton Friedman}
• Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public ^{Terry M Moe}
• Politics, Markets, and America's Schools ^{John E Chubb}
• School Choice: Why you need it, how you get it ^{David Harmer}
• The Economics of School Choice _{Caroline M. Hoxby}
• School Reform Proposals _{Alex Molnar}
• School Choice: The Moral Debate _{Alan Wolfe}
• School Choice: The Struggle for the Soul of American Education _{Peter W. Cookson}
• School Choice: Doing it the Right Way Makes a Difference _{Brookings Institution}
• School Choice: The Findings _{Herbert J. Walberg}