Education in America: The Tuition Voucher Issue

The idea of the voucher and the voucher program has been around since 1955 when free-market economist Milton Friedman "suggested that the government give parents who sent their child to a private school the same amount of money as that spent on a public school student."[1] The movement, however, wouldn't gain ground until the 1980's when the U.S. Department of Education turned a critical eye on America's education system and found it sorely lacking. According to a report entitled A Nation at Risk released by the agency, "America's public schools had so deteriorated that the country's economic, industrial, and technological future was in jeopardy."[2] The educational system was thrown into a tailspin that caused, over the course next ten years, educational standards to be raised and led to attacks on the public school system in general. It was during this period that the voucher movement made a come back.[3]

The voucher programs that made a showing at that time, which we still see lobbying for today, weren't exactly Friedman's voucher program. Essentially, they were designed to use taxpayer money, which had typically been set aside for public education, to pay for "part or all of a child's tuition at a parochial or other private school."[4] Unlike Friedman's ideal, today's vouchers are supposed to offer parents the opportunity to send their children to private school when they might not otherwise be able to. They are not designed to 'repay' parents who would have sent their children to public school anyway.

For the most part, these voucher programs have been struck down every time and in every venue in which they were proposed. Voucher programs, however, are alive and well in Florida and Colorado, as well as Cleveland, Ohio and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. All of these programs are considered 'targeted programs' which basically means that a child's eligibility is limited in some way, though the limitations are not uniform between programs. Friedman, the father of the voucher movement, would have preferred that the voucher programs be what are termed 'universal programs'. In a universal program, "any child - regardless of family income, residency, or the school currently attended - would be eligible for a tax-funded voucher."[5] There are, however, quite a few problems with this notion and with the voucher movement in general.

The basic idea behind contemporary voucher programs, which is to enable all children to have access to the best education possible, is a good one. Every child and every family should have access to education and every child and family should have access to good education. But is shuffling all our children off to private schools really the solution when we find our public schools lacking? I do believe that these voucher programs could offer underprivileged children the ability to attend private schools when their families would otherwise be unable to afford it, but these vouchers also allow parents to be reimbursed when their children are already attending private schools.[6] In fact, current voucher programs do not limit eligibility to low income families; they merely give preference to low income families.[7] This means that our tax dollars are going to fund the educations of children whose families may or may not need the government assistance when they should be going to improve public schools so that children and their parents won't need the vouchers in the first place.

Current voucher programs also fail to limit private schools' eligibility in accepting vouchers to non-sectarian private schools. Since "About 85 percent of private schools are religious" this essentially means that "vouchers tend to be a means of circumventing the Constitutional prohibitions against subsidizing religious practice and instruction."[8] This is no small issue, considering that taxpayer dollars are being used for these programs. Beyond the obvious Constitutional issues, this undermines the American taxpayer's right to have a say in how their tax dollars are spent.

Then there is the issue of using tax dollars for these programs in the first place. This might not be an issue if the money funneled into these programs were cut from tax increases or lottery revenues or some other such agency, but this is not the case. The tax dollars used for the programs is generally diverted from money that would have otherwise gone to the public school system.[9] It's a situation of robbing Peter to pay Paul. If voucher programs were created and implemented because of lousy public schools, how could we possible believe that taking funding away from those schools would alleviate the problem? It may solve the problem for that one child, but what about all of the other kids still in those public schools? It seems to me that the better answer would be to do away with these voucher programs all together and funnel that money into improving the public school system and raising the standards of education.

Supporters of voucher programs insist that the competition for students created by this ability to 'choose' where a child goes to school will actually force public schools to improve. They argue that because public schools will want to get those students back, they will miraculously get better on their own. But how can the schools improve when the funds that would make those improvements possible are going to private schools which are not required "to adopt the academic standards, ensure the highly qualified teachers, or administer the assessments required of public schools."[10] The truth is that public schools don't need competition in order to improve; they need funding and the motivation and determination of families, faculty, and politicians.

In the end, voucher programs really seem to be doing much more harm than good. At the very least, they are not improving the educational experience of the children who use them. After all, current research says that "There's no conclusive evidence that vouchers improve the achievement of students who use them to attend private school."[11] In fact, in some situations, children are actually doing more poorly. Some students who had been achieving at higher levels than their peers at public school prior to using vouchers were achieving on the same level as their public school peers after they began attending private school.[12] So, if the children aren't receiving any staggering benefit from a program that is robbing public schools of the funding needed to secure a proper education for other children, what real use is it? It seems to be just another wasteful use of taxpayer money.

[1] Keep Public Education Public: Why Vouchers Are a Bad Idea. Chapter 1.pp. 5. http://www.nsba.org/site/docs/32500/32418.pdf. Accessed November 29, 2006

[2] Keep Public Education Public: Why Vouchers Are a Bad Idea. Chapter 1.pp. 5. http://www.nsba.org/site/docs/32500/32418.pdf. Accessed November 29, 2006

[3] Keep Public Education Public: Why Vouchers Are a Bad Idea. Chapter 1.pp. 6. http://www.nsba.org/site/docs/32500/32418.pdf. Accessed November 29, 2006

[4] Keep Public Education Public: Why Vouchers Are a Bad Idea. Chapter 1.pp. 3. http://www.nsba.org/site/docs/32500/32418.pdf. Accessed November 29, 2006

[5] Keep Public Education Public: Why Vouchers Are a Bad Idea. Chapter 1.pp. 3-4. http://www.nsba.org/site/docs/32500/32418.pdf. Accessed November 29, 2006

[6] Keep Public Education Public: Why Vouchers Are a Bad Idea. Chapter 1.pp. 4. http://www.nsba.org/site/docs/32500/32418.pdf. Accessed November 29, 2006

[7] Keep Public Education Public: Why Vouchers Are a Bad Idea. Chapter 1.pp. 4. http://www.nsba.org/site/docs/32500/32418.pdf. Accessed November 29, 2006

[8] Vouchers. http://www.nea.org/vouchers/index.html. Accessed November 29, 2006

[9] Keep Public Education Public: Why Vouchers Are a Bad Idea. Chapter 1.

[10] NEA on Vouchers: Opposed. http://www.nea.org/lac/vouchers/vouchposition.html. Accessed November 29, 2006

[11] Five Talking Points on Vouchers. http://www.nea.org/vouchers/talkingpoints.html. Accessed November 29, 2006

[12] School Vouchers: The Emerging Track Record. http://www.nea.org/vouchers/02voutrack.html. Accessed November 29, 2006