What is a
"Voucher"?
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"Voucher" is
a term that covers several possibly rather different things. That is, exactly what form a voucher
program might
take if
it were written into law depends on what the legislators and lobbyists behind
it want it to do. In some cases,
voucher proposals involve only money from the state; in other variations,
they include both state and local money.
Conceivably, they could also include state, local and federal
monies. It just depends on what
politicians decide to write into the laws that permit vouchers. Right now, it is a game without rules,
because, except for a couple of trial programs, such as the one in What the proposals to
enact vouchers all have in common is that they permit transfer of state
school funds to schools other than the schools to which they would otherwise
go -- public or private.
Essentially, they are promissory notes, or signed checks with the
payees' names left blank. These
"checks" would be given (figuratively speaking) to parents to pay
toward their children's education at the school of their choice, public or
private. You would, for instance,
enroll your child in a private school.
The school would bill the state for the money for your kid. The state would deduct that money from
the money it was going to send to the public school where your child was
supposed to go and send it to the private school instead. In order to understand
vouchers, you need to understand how schools are currently financed. The majority of the money comes from
two sources: the state treasury
and local property taxes. In The idea that is most
commonly argued in support of vouchers is that parents should be able to
choose which school they want to send their children to, whether it is in
their "attendance zone" or not, and whether it is a public or
private school. Obviously, from
the point of view of those parents who don't want their children to go to
their assigned schools, that would be a good thing. However, from the point of view of
parents who can't, for whatever reason, send their kids elsewhere, it's
problematic. In low income
families in which both parents work, transportation problems, for instance,
might make it impossible for them to get their children to another school.
(And note that none of the voucher proposals that have surfaced so far
include transportation, though George Bush often kind of tosses it into his
discussions.) The way a voucher
would work is something like this.
Say the state allocates $5,500.00 in education support for each child
of school age in the state. As it
now stands, that money goes to the public school district in which the child
lives, and specifically to the public school to which the child is supposed
to go. If the child enrolls in
some school other than the one in which he or she is supposed to enroll, the
money does not follow him or her.
For instance, a child who lives in District 205 cannot enroll in
District 208 without paying tuition, which is usually at least the equivalent
of the actual expenditure on education per child in that district. Thus, if District 208 spends $9,000.00
per child on education, the child's parents would have to pay all of that
$9,000.00. On the other hand,
with a voucher for the money that would originally have gone to the child's
neighborhood school, parents would have to pay several thousand dollars less. I caution you that
those numbers are relatively meaningless, because local districts set their
own tuition rates (what they charge "out of district" students to
attend) and establish their own criteria for them. So it doesn't necessarily work exactly
that way: the numbers can vary a
lot. What is important to
understand is that when a student leaves his or her district, the tax money
doesn't follow him or her. One of
the intents of vouchers is to let some or all of the tax money follow the
student. Currently, if parents
want to send their children to parochial schools, for instance, the state and
local tax dollars do not go with them.
The reason for this is that the U. S. Supreme Court has held that
giving state tax money to parochial schools constitutes a violation of the
"Establishment" clause in the U. S. Constitution, which calls for a
separation of church and state.
In some of the voucher scenarios, the money would go to the parochial
schools if parents chose to send their children there. A large portion of the existing
private schools are church related.
(In fact, 72% of private schools in Much of the political hype
surrounding the issue of vouchers concentrates on the question of choice. But the issue is not
that simple, in my opinion. In a
democracy, an individual's choice is limited by the needs of the larger
society. One cannot choose to do
things that hurt others, such as yell "fire" in a crowded theater,
or smoke tobacco in public buildings, or drive while intoxicated, or commit
"hate" crimes. If you
choose to do something that hurts the society or other individuals, the rest
of us in the society can restrict your ability to exercise your choice by
fining you, putting you in prison, or even killing you. So, we can also deny you choice of
schools if we (the society) think it would hurt the society to let you have
that choice, and we have decided that state support of religion would hurt
the society. Neither can one legally segregate
the races. One of the problems
with vouchers is that they would at least contribute to de facto re-segregation
of the schools. We need only
look at the racial balances in most urban areas of the country to see that
whites live mainly in certain parts of town and minorities live in other
parts. And that situation did not
occur by accident. Whites, who
make, on the average, more money than minorities, can afford to live in the
more expensive neighborhoods.
Minorities, who don't make as much money as whites, on the average,
can't afford to live in those neighborhoods. People who live in those wealthier
neighborhoods not only pay in more dollars in school taxes, but can also
afford to contribute more money to their local schools, so their schools tend
to have better facilities. Since they have better facilities,
the cost of education is higher in those areas. So, if one of the richer areas were to
set tuition rates for "out of district" students, those rates would
have to be higher than tuition rates for poorer schools. So, again, the people who make more
money could afford to pay for their children to go to the better schools,
while people who make less money could not. Since income correlates with race and
ethnicity, the schools would tend to serve particular ethnic groups and we
would be headed back to segregated schools. (Though, according to Kozol and
others, that train has already left the station!) People who don't have the
income to take advantage of "choice" don't really have a
choice. The ones who would
benefit most from school choice are the wealthier, and the wealthier are
usually Whites. People whose wages are low are
less likely to be able to afford either the time or money to drive their
children from one side of town to the other every school day and back every
evening, or to pay the additional tuition they would have to pay beyond the
state money, so they couldn't exercise that choice if they had it. The vouchers for the Another problem with vouchers is
that they will tend to move money from poorer districts to richer
districts. If a $4,000.00 student
leaves a $1,000,000.00 district, the loss hurts the district more than if a
$4,000.00 student leaves a $5,000,000.00 district. (Remember: one of the basic tenets of commercial
economics is that it is cheaper to do business in volume.) And it seems a pretty safe bet to me
that most of the moves will be from poorer schools to richer schools instead
of vice versa. Thus, vouchers contribute, not only to segregation, but also
to the economic gulf between poor and rich. (Can you imagine any parent deciding
to use a voucher to send a child to a worse school? I can't!) Similarly, vouchers will
contribute to making academically low schools lower. Students who move will mainly be
moving from schools with lower academic ratings to schools with higher
academic ratings, and the students who move will be the academically better
students. Thus, there will be a
growing dichotomizing of schools into the "good" and the
"bad," thus adding to the problem of unequal education instead
of fixing it. It may fix the
problem for an individual student, but it will do so at the
expense of all the other students in the school he or she leaves. That doesn't sound very democratic to
me! Democracy (as I understand
it) is based on sharing, not hoarding! It has become popular in recent
years to say the answer to school problems is NOT money. There is a grain of truth to that, but
only a grain. If the money is just
being wasted, then more won't help.
But, most of the money that is going to schools is not being wasted. So, what is the good side of
vouchers? Some argue that vouchers will offer parents "choice" in where they send their children to school and that in turn will force failing public schools to be more "competitive." This argument assumes that public schools are doing a worse job than they could be. It would probably be worthwhile to confirm that before instituting a voucher system. I have seen no evidence to support the notion that any such thing is happening. Furthermore, few proponents of vouchers seem to consider that, given the laws and regulations within which public schools are forced to operate, they are doing the best they can. (Though, oddly enough, most "charter school" legislation exempts charter schools from certain regulations. Why don't they also exempt the public schools from them if they want real competition?) This same "choice" argument assumes that parents don't currently have "choice." In fact, they do. Not only do they have the right to move to another attendance zone or district, they also have the right to send their children to any school, public or private, that they are willing to pay for. Some argue that vouchers would
permit children who "want to" to get a good education. This position argues that some
children are held back from fulfilling their potential by their families'
inability to afford "better" schools and by other children's
misbehaviors. Vouchers would probably
have this effect to some extent.
But, as noted above, it would only help those who can afford the rest
of the money. I think that if
voucher proponents were serious about helping all children they would cover
the whole cost associated with changing schools, including tuition and
transportation. As long as
they're unwilling to do that, then their motives must be
questioned. Some argue that vouchers would
decrease governmental interference in their lives. It probably would in some
respects. The issue, though, is
whether that is a good thing or not.
Where one stands on that argument depends on one's general philosophy
about the role of a "society" and the purpose of school. Is the
issue individual benefit, or group benefit? Many people believe that government
should, among other things, protect the weak from the strong. Though I have not heard or read
this argument anywhere, vouchers would probably also have the positive effect
of supporting the existence of good private schools. That is, with tax money coming in,
their continuation would probably be more certain. However, I also think that if they
want to be "private" such school should take care of themselves. If I could think of any other
arguments in favor of vouchers, I would present them. However, these are all I can think of.
Whichever side you're on, it's an issue worth giving some very serious thought to. |