Comments on: Vouchers in Milwaukee

By: carla

carla — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 15:45:50 +0000

One of the things I find most distressing about this whole conversation is that it elides the problems facing public schools and the people who attend and teach at them. A country—or locality—that does not maintain a strong commitment to a high-quality, free public education is willing to write off some of its citizens. We are failing in that, in many places, for many reasons. But the solution is not to further fragment the funding and further reduce the commitment. And I also believe that (a) teachers should be highly qualified and well-compensated (right now, the best way for a good teacher to make more money is to become an administrator, not stay a teacher), (b) teachers should have more say in teaching, (c) school should not have a three-month break in the summer, and (d) there should be some basic national standards (reading level; mathematical competency; historical knowledge, for example) that all students should learn. There’s plenty of room for local/state variation after that. Once we have achieved that, once we have built and put in place the mechanisms for maintaining a public education system throughout the country, then we can talk about vouchers and “school choice.”

By: maurinsky

maurinsky — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 04:21:08 +0000

I live in Connecticut, where there are vast divides between schools in the suburbs and schools in the city, in academic achievement, test scores, graduation/drop-out rates, etc. There are so many social problems (divorce/single parent homes, drug/alcohol abuse, poverty/hunger, crime rates, etc.) that feed into these divides that I doubt simply moving children from the city schools to the much better performing suburban schools will really help these kids achieve more. Still, something has to be done. Maybe vouchers will help, but I would like to see a well designed plan before I would vote for throwing money into vouchers.

By: Brian Wilder

Brian Wilder — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 03:06:27 +0000

Traditionally, schools have been organized around a system in which student achievement has been measured, and school achievement has not. The “best” schools are the ones, which attract the best students, not the ones that actually do the best job of educating. A voucher program, married to serious testing of school achievement, could work a revolution, by focusing school administration on substantive educational achievement, while removing the enormous regulatory burden. Don’t count on it, though. A conservative academic, who praises vouchers, while poo-poo’ing serious testing, however, is probably engaged in undermining public education, and shifting resources from poor to rich.

By: MQ

MQ — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 00:17:52 +0000

and P.S.—yes, one should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. Perhaps an only somewhat liberal voucher program could improve on our current system in the worst inner city districts (important point). But could it be held to those districts? And I believe that voucher proponents often overestimate how bad the schools are even in the bad districts—or to be more exact, how much of the poor quality of those schools can be attributed to the very difficult student body that they have to work with, which would be a challenge for any school. Also, a voucher program where the quality of private contract providers was not well policed could very easily be worse than our current system. See some of the charter school scandals if you don’t believe me. We now have a fair amount of worldwide experience with voucher-type systems. Hard to tell whether they have improved things or not, but it’s difficult to argue that they have produced transformative positive results.

By: MQ

MQ — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 00:03:08 +0000

Matt Yglesias was right that the Mathematica study was really not at all comparable to what Hoxby was trying to do in this somewhat rhetorical review article. Would have helped if I had actually read the article first rather than assuming its contents from some other stuff of hers I had seen. Anyway, to respond to Harry’s very good points above, there is no theoretical reason at all why a “liberally designed” voucher program would not meet liberal purposes better than the current system. Liberally designed means highly progressive vouchers and limits on the ability of schools to screen out students. But I wonder if he quite appreciates how tough it would be to get that. In particular, the ability to control the makeup of their student body is critical to what private schools are about, for legitimate effiency as well as segregation reasons. And progressivism has been a tough sell in the U.S. recently.

By: push

push — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 22:47:11 +0000

Iink here to the Funding Gap 2003 report. It’s pretty scary differentials http://www2.edtrust.org/edtrust/Product+Catalog/sheets+tools

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 22:30:48 +0000

I think quite a few of you guys are overstating the problem of unequal funding in a district. In most of the larger states this has been taken care of through one mechanism or another. Are you reading old studies perhaps? I know that California switched over to equalized funding in the late 1980s for example.

By: push

push — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 21:56:46 +0000

I understand Carol Propper at Bristol has a paper coming out on the effects of school choice on performance which show that there has been no attributable difference. The issue of whether, if vouchers had no inequitable effects they should be supported by the left divides me. If I thought choice was simply about equal but diverse schools that would be fine. But choice through vouchers is not that. Educational attainment is dependent not just on school but upon other factors, family and community-related that joined up local services could address. Enhancing pupil mobility would make that more difficult. Secondly, it’s my old fashioned belief that the service ethos of teachers and heads lends itself much more to collaboration than competition.

By: Mcwop

Mcwop — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 21:07:11 +0000

Some pretty broad statements on unequal school funding in the U.S. Here in Maryland the funding is pretty equal across districts. Baltimore City has higher school funding than neighboring wealthy counties. The cost of living in Baltimore is not more than many surrounding counties. City students perform poorly because of rampant neighborhood crime (Crime which city leaders continuously fake plans to address), uninterested parents, and inept public school administrators. It is not because of a lack of money (in fact the school budget keeps increasing although enrollment is decreasing). Link to info: Data link

By: snorlax

snorlax — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 20:36:17 +0000

you comments about the research’s author is interesting. I live in DC which is going though its own voucher debate, and I interviewed for an apartment with someone close to the issues, both locally and nationally. She said that she was hoping that DC’s program would go through so she could produce the study on it with a colleague of her’ s at some NY university (I can’t remember which one). I remember her saying that she and her colleague was firmly anti voucher and I asked her if she thought that would compromise her research and she said no, but the would never put something out that be considered favorable to vouchers…

By: harry

harry — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 20:01:18 +0000

Bill, this is where context makes a difference. The first quote was supposed to apply to state schools only in the UK context (which is where I’ve proposed it, and even then only in London). Schools admit at age 11 there, so criminality isn’t a big issue. I’d be happy for them to select against (serious) criminals later on, but I suspect the person related to me who also advocates this idea wouldn’t (but I am not his mouthpiece). Neighbourhood schooling is the system whereby children attend their local school. In the US, but not the UK, it is combined with local, and highly unequal, funding.

By: Bill Carone

Bill Carone — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 19:40:36 +0000

Harry, “Some people (me, and people not distantly related to me) argue that schools should no longer be allowed to select students” All schools, or just taxpayer funded ones? What about criminal students? “The US neighbourhood schooling system gives it to the wealthy.” I can’t make out what you are saying here; does the “neighborhood schooling system” just mean that particular neighborhoods go to particular schools, so the wealthy can just buy their way into any neighborhood and school they want? Do you mean that the funding for a school comes from the neighborhood, so wealthy neighborhoods have better schools?Or do you mean something different?

By: dsquared

dsquared — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 17:56:35 +0000

If not, then I’m wondering why choice programs should not be the default, with limitations on choice only in situations where it is being applied unfairly Basically, there’s non-negligible overhead cost associated with a vouchers program, plus the uncertainty makes forward planning of school provision difficult.

By: harry

harry — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 16:49:15 +0000

rv: Yes, I realise that liberal legislators are more unified on this than I suggested (though, as I said above, much more lax about other, more inegalitarian, versions of choice). Though Laura’s example is good, and the same was, of course, true in Wisconsin when the Milwaukee scheme was passed. What you failed to add was that numerous of the people who voted against the DC program send or sent their own children to very expensive elite private schools. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. My point was that voters are not with them on this, as the Republican advocates of choice know. I’m sorry you interpreted my comment as meaning that ‘vouchers may be supported when imposed under ideal conditions, if they are not done perfectly they are worthless’. I don’t think that. What I should have added is that the specific design of voucher schemes and alternatives to them, including the status quo, matter. So, a badly designed voucher scheme is worse than a well-designed status quo. A flawed voucher scheme is better than a very flawed status quo. Etc. My point was directed at a certain kind of voucher supporter who just thinks they are always good, and is not interested in the details. I spend most of my time discussing this issue with people who, equally wrongly, think they are always bad, no matter the details. But in the UK (where I direct a gfair bit of my attention) there is a growing band of ‘voucher’ supporters who invoke the Milwaukee scheme in support of what would, in effect, be a subsidy for wealthy people to send their kids to the elite schools they already afford. No sensivity at all to details. I agree with Laura about the disappointing nature of the evaluation debate (though would speak up for John Witte’s excellent and non-partisan book on Milwaukee). But, trained as a philospher not a social-scientist, I love reading these detailed evaluations despite that… I hadn’t noticed the withdrawal from vouchers, Laura, but now you mention it it kind of hits me in the eye. Interesting.

By: Laura

Laura — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 16:41:53 +0000

DC is an unfair example to look for partisanship or lack of it. Republicans and Democrats can afford to be ideologically pure, since none of them will be elected by the residents of DC. Instead look to the states. In PA, where vouchers were narrowly defeated, they had a large number of Democrats from Philadelphia who were in favor of vouchers. And a number of Republicans from rural areas opposed it, since vouchers would have no benefit for them and because they didn’t want to spend one extra cent on money going to the city.