Why I worry about vouchers

Alex (my co-blogger) and I have been arguing for years, it is perhaps no surprise that now we do it in the blogosphere. He is more optimistic about the performance of school vouchers than I am. He notes that housing vouchers have worked well, better than government housing, I think that school vouchers are more problematic than housing vouchers for several reasons:

First, government must define which schools are acceptable recipient of vouchers. In the short run it is fairly clear, it is far less so if we have vouchers in place for twenty years and schooling evolves. What about schools that teach black supremacy? Radical Islam? Creationism? Remember how controversial a few supposedly obscene NEA grants were? Not all those grants went directly to the artists either. What if an educational program involves home schooling plus ten hours of class time a week? Would that qualify for a voucher? Defining “suitable housing” does not involve a problem of nearly this magnitude.

Second, school vouchers could become the new middle class entitlement, as I mentioned in my New Zealand post earlier today. Imagine politicians upping the voucher amount and coverage to win votes each election cycle, just as they are now extending senior health coverage to prescription drugs. Again, we have not seen this with housing vouchers but “parents” are a much bigger and stronger constituency.

If I had my finger on the vouchers button, I would press it and allow experimentation at the state and local levels. So many American urban public schools are a disgrace. But few partial deregulations have worked better than promised. Most have created perverse incentives and occasioned considerable backlash, we all know that electricity “deregulation” has been a mixed bag at best, although the idea in principle makes sense.

If we are going to move forward with vouchers, I would like to know what the plan will look like, once it gets through the political meatgrinder. I don’t know any voucher proponent who has done this.

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