This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Dr. Roy Cordato, Vice President for Research and Resident Scholar at the John Locke Foundation.
Before beginning I should point out that opinions expressed here are my own, and are definitely not those of the John Locke Foundation. In fact, my position on school vouchers is in direct opposition to the position taken by many of my colleagues, and contrary to the views typically associated with the Foundation. But this is one of the reasons why working at the JLF is so enjoyable; vigorous and open debate on fundamental questions of policy is not only tolerated, it is encouraged.
For most conservatives, “school choice” has become the centerpiece of education reform. And while charter schools and the right of parents to send their kids to the public school of their choice generally fall under the rubric of school choice, the holy grail for conservatives is government-funded private school vouchers.
Such vouchers are seen as a way of introducing real competition into the education system. As parents take their taxpayer-funded vouchers and choose private over public schools, the public schools will improve. Competition will do for public schools what it does for goods and services throughout the economy – lower costs and improve quality.
On its face, the idea of education vouchers appears to spring from a host of bedrock conservative principles. Vouchers decentralize decision-making; they introduce market mechanisms and competition into a system that is currently dominated by a government owned and operated monopoly; and they seemingly give more power to the private sector in determining what the education system will look like.
After all, heavy-handed bureaucracies, teachers’ unions, and silly teacher certification requirements do not typically dominate private schools. For example, in private schools a Ph.D. in mathematics can be hired to teach high school math, whether or not she is certified by the state Board of Education.
But in fact I believe that the typical alliances with respect to education vouchers are misaligned. Ultimately education vouchers are much more consistent with promoting the agenda of the liberal education establishment than they are with advancing the conservative principles of limited government and private markets.
The focus of conservative school choice advocates has been on improving public education. And I agree competition from private schools, via tax-funded vouchers, probably would improve public schools, much like competition from Fed Ex and UPS has led to improvements in the U.S. Postal Service. But in order to obtain this improvement, conservatives seem perfectly willing to sacrifice the integrity and autonomy of private schools.
In North Carolina and in much of the rest of the country, there is a distinct “wall of separation” between private and public schools. With the exception of some minor requirements meant to define “a school” for the purpose of complying with compulsory attendance laws, private schools can conduct themselves in any way that is consistent with their values and the wishes of parents that choose to patronize them.
It is the flexibility that this wall of separation has created that allows private schools to specialize, to economize where appropriate, and to make changes in response to parental concerns. Private schools can hire the most qualified teachers regardless of whether they have taken the correct sequence of courses at a university school of education or have been certified by the state bureaucracy.
They can decide how much money, if any, they want to put into competitive athletics. They can decide the kinds of methods they want to use in teaching reading or math, and they are not constrained by the textbook selections of a state-run committee. They are also not forced to deal with teachers’ unions or constrained in their curriculum by having to teach to a state-created “end of grade test.”
In essence, private schools operate in what could be referred to as the liberated sector of the education market. And while it is admirable that conservatives want to improve the quality of public schools, it is more fundamental to conservative principles to want to preserve and even extend the freedom that is currently embedded in education’s private sector.
Unfortunately, government vouchers will, in the long run, seriously erode and undermine this autonomy and freedom. It will do this by breaching the wall of separation between private and public education. Government money will be the road over which government regulation of private schools travels.
On what basis could conservatives oppose “accountability standards” for those private schools receiving government funds? Indeed, it is the lack of accountability that often leads many conservatives to oppose such government programs in other areas. Below are some requirements that most people including many conservatives would find reasonable. Several of these programs are already being implemented in states with voucher or tax credit programs.
• To monitor learning, students attending voucher schools should take the same end of grade test as public school students.
• To ensure that teachers are “qualified,” private schools receiving voucher money should be required to hire only state-certified teachers.
• To ensure that state money is not being used to promote religion, vouchered students attending religious schools not be required to attend classes in religious instruction.
• To ensure that government money is not going to schools that “exploit” teachers, force the private schools to pay salaries equivalent to the going rate in public schools.
• To ensure that private schools receiving vouchers are not teaching “junk science” (for example intelligent design) and are not using “faulty” teaching methods, require them to use only state-approved text books.
• To ensure gender equity and to prevent discrimination, require that voucher schools, like government-funded private colleges, have to comply with federal “Title IX” regulations giving equal access to girls and boys in athletic programs.
Of course, in the early stages of a voucher program very few of these regulations would be in place. One would hope, although I am not convinced, that most conservatives would oppose voucher legislation that included a heavy-handed dose of private school regulations. On the other hand many school choice advocates have expressed a willingness to accept or even advocate regulations as a way of gathering support for voucher proposals.
But as “problems” arise, or are at least alleged, the regulations will come. (This process has already begun in the states of Florida and Wisconsin, where school choice in the form of tax credits and vouchers are already in place.) The clamor for “accountability” will come from every corner of the education establishment, and the public will demand that its tax dollars not be wasted on schools that are not acting in the “public interest.”
Little by little, the true distinction between public and private, between free and controlled, will dissolve. Ultimately the “choice” that parents face will be between the white bread labeled “public school” and the white bread labeled “private school.”
In Europe, where government-funded private schools have been the norm for many years, this process is complete. As the Center on Education Policy has reported, “[European] countries that heavily subsidize private schools also regulate and inspect them…[for] course content, testing policies, student admissions, tuition levels, teacher hiring and salaries, and composition of governing boards.”
This brings me to my original proposition—liberals should support vouchers. Under a voucher system, the liberal education establishment will have the opportunity and perfect excuse to take de facto control, if not ownership, of private schools. In essence, vouchers will give liberals the opportunity to create the system they’ve always wanted, where all schools, public or “private,” are regulated in the public interest by enlightened educrats.
As for conservatives, they need to be reminded of the timeless and ever-accurate words of Ringo Starr, “everything the government touches turns to ****,” and that includes private schools.