New Athenian Academy

Recently the local newspaper wrote an editorial about the school voucher debate (I prefer to call it a debacle, not sure where the real debate is).  The article was… interesting…  I don’t really know what to take from the article other than the newspaper is against school vouchers.  So where does that leave us?  Not really sure where that leaves us. I would like to take a minute to summarize the article and share my opinion. Stay with me, it’s going to get a little ranty… (look I just made up a word)

Let’s start back at the beginning: school vouchers or school choice was proposed by Milton Friedman (economist from the 1950s, remember your U.S. History class’ chapter on the origins of the Cold War, yeah we talked about him).  In a 1955 essay, Friedman stated “Let the subsidy be made available to parents regardless where they send their children–provided only that it be to schools that satisfy specified minimum standards–and a wide variety of schools will spring up to meet the demand.”  Okay so the idea is nothing new.  But we (the American public) have never been as serious about the idea until now.  (I know this idea was put forth in the 1970s, but it didn’t really get off the ground, so I’m going to focus on today).

Currently, the Indiana House Speaker is coauthoring a bill to create a school voucher program.  And many are calling foul.  The article puts forth two back issues with the proposal: no positive results from existing programs and no public call for.  I am not going to get into the religious aspects of the proposed program or the politics behind the program.  Instead I want to look at the purely educational.

Results

The article highlighted the two longest running choice programs (Milwaukee and Cleveland).  Studies done have show no positive results from the choice programs.  Well, that’s entirely possible.  Too many variables go into getting positive results in schools; school choice alone may not be any better than the current system.  But it might also not be any worse.  What are our criteria for success?  What exactly are the terms?  Every time I read a study looking at school achievement, I want to know the specifics…. Taking many psych, poli sci, and soc classes has taught me that people can create horrible studies and people can skew results just about any way they want.  So again, what are the specifics?  Unfortunately even the best educational studies are inherently flawed.  We are dealing with human beings (and in this case, children) who don’t like to behave as you would think they would.  Like I always teach my economic students, all the theories in the world may notbe enough when you throw messy humans into the mix.  We just love to mess things up… So I am a bit suspect of the results (or lack of results) for school voucher programs.

Public Outcry

The article points to a few polls that have shown little to none public interest in a school choice program.  But here’s one thing I’ve learned from studying America, we are a fairly apathetic bunch.  Only a small part of the population will ever speak up with their opinions.  The rest is content to sit back and take whatever they get.  Oh sure, people complain, but that doesn’t mean that they will ever offer a solution or get off their butts to do anything about it.  Instead, we are content to let “other people” take care of things like education.  Again I am suspect that this reason means anything…

Conclusions (or not…)

Reading my responses, it seems like I am pulling for school vouchers.  But in reality, I am not for school voucher programs, but I’m not against them either.  I see them as another option to attempt to reform our school systems.  Like I ranted in a post a couple of weeks ago, I just want a change.  I want us to try something, anything.  Because keeping everything the same, doesn’t seem to be working.  So I guess I have no problem with Indiana attempting some version of the school vouchers.  It would be an interesting change. And who knows, maybe it really would make a difference?  Arguing about it stops any change and reform.  Maybe we just try it in an area or on a limited basis.  So I’m not going to write a huge editorial letter supporting the program, but I won’t bash on the lawmakers who support it either.  Just something to think about…

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Education Problems by Tobe