Analysis: “School Choice” is the modern name for school vouchers.  Essentially, the idea is that money for schooling should follow a student wherever they go.  If they go to public school – great!  The public school gets the money.  But it is also fine if they go to a private school.  The private school will just get the money that would have gone to the public school.

Once upon a time I was in favor of this, and there are a lot of conservatives who favor this approach for a number of reasons.  I will also say that most of the criticisms of School Choice being brought out by either the public or the public school system almost completely miss the mark and misunderstand what is happening and what the goal is.  However, there is a deeper criticism of School Choice that I have come to recognize. 

My goal in this essay is to both dispel many of the bad criticisms of School Choice so that people will better understand what the aims of School Choice programs are as well as offer what I think is the fundamental problem with trying to fix our school systems with School Choice.

However, I am going to make a linguistic change.  “School Choice” is a bit of a misnomer because it makes it sound like you don’t get choices without School Choice.  I think “vouchers” is a better descriptor for what these programs do, so I will refer to them as voucher systems.

Why Is There a Push For Vouchers?

So, to begin with, we need to first look at what it is that vouchers are trying to solve, and why (and how) people think that vouchers will solve for it.  The fact is that there are a lot of problems in the public school, and the public at large feels fairly powerless to fix the problems.  If you were a parent of a child in a problematic school, who would you turn to?  The curriculum is set by the state, the policies are set by school boards which have a reputation for not listening to parents, and teachers are generally just following the program laid out for them.  Therefore, parents feel like they have no voice and nowhere to go.  Whether it is bullying, gender madness, bad curriculum, or bad teachers the fact is that parents feel powerless to help their children.

The option that they see is private schools, but they can’t afford them.  The parents are thinking, “well, my child’s education is essentially being paid by my own taxes, so why should the money go to public schools which are not handling my child’s needs?  Why can’t the money go to a school that works for our family?”

Essentially, the goal of voucher programs is to empower parents, and let them vote with their feet as to what programs best meet the needs of their children.  If they live in a great district with great public schools – that’s fantastic!  But if the school is problematic, then this gives them a way to get out of the failing system and into one that works.  It means that good schools will get funded automatically by parents’ choices, and bad schools – whether public or private — will get defunded by the same means.

It also means that the states can fund experiments in public education without having to manage it themselves.  The goal is to provide money into the system for entrepreneurs to invent all sorts of new ways to educate – microschools, online schools, whatever winds up working!  If it doesn’t work, parents won’t send their kids.  If it does work, the market will bring new answers that the legislators could not have imagined.

Some Bad Criticisms of Voucher Programs

Before presenting my own criticism of voucher programs, I want to point out some common criticisms and why they fall short.  If we criticize a system for the wrong reasons, we won’t get a better system.  So let’s first take time to understand why common criticisms of School Choice fall short.

The first criticism is that even if students have the money, the current private schools won’t let them in – either because of social prejudice or simple lack of space.  Now, it is true that the current private schools probably won’t let in a lot of new students.  But the goal is not that students should all go to the private schools we have today, but that the availability of money will cause a whole new crop of school choices to emerge.  It isn’t that St. Sainthood’s Prep School is now going to take new kids, it’s that Jim down the street, who was always excellent at tutoring, will now, because people have money to pay, scale up his tutoring into a full-time school.  This won’t happen immediately, as it takes time (probably 1-5 years) for the market to recognize the existence of new money and take full advantage of it.

The second criticism I often hear is that the money will go to the rich kids who can already afford private school. The private schools will merely raise their tuition by the amount of the voucher, and this will keep new students out.  Now, I don’t doubt that this would happen, but it isn’t really a criticism of the voucher program.  First of all, if the student went to public school (and trust me, a lot of kids of rich parents go to public schools), then the state is already paying for rich kids to go to school.  So that’s not actually a real argument.  It is an unfortunate fact that private schools will raise their tuition to maintain their level of elitism, but it isn’t a systemic problem.  Again, the state would have paid that money anyway if the student were in public school.  This is only a fundamental problem with voucher systems if they new private schools that vouchers are supposed to encourage don’t eventually come into existence.  It is true and unfortunate that the initial group helped by vouchers probably will be rich kids who didn’t need the money anyway, but, if the voucher program is successful long-term, that would actually be a small price to pay for the success of all students state-wide.

A somewhat more realistic (and relevant) criticism is that these new schools would be outside the regulation of the state’s educational system (at least to the extent that private schools are).  Of course, this is the entire point of the voucher system.  The state educational system has failed a number of students, so the vouchers are a ticket to leave the system.  If you are against private schools in general, this would be a valid criticism.  Otherwise, it is actually the entire point of the voucher system.

The Present and the Future

Humans have a fundamental problem when thinking about legislation.  We tend to only think about people using the system the right way and only about things going according to plan.  However, if things always went the right way and according to plan, we wouldn’t be in a situation that requires vouchers to get out of.

The way to think about vouchers is this — the state has decided that it is itself fully incapable of the internal controls required to administer education properly, and therefore is allowing you a way out of the system altogether.

But there’s a catch — you have the state’s money, which is someone’s taxes.  This means that the state is responsible for making sure those tax dollars are spent well.

Let us imagine ourselves 5-10 years in the future.  Do you think that all of the microschools that  pop up are legitimate?  Do you not think that someone will get the idea to pretend to educate people and just take the state’s money, perhaps giving kickbacks to parents?  Our current educational establishment is awash with grift, do we not think that if the dollars flow elsewhere the grifters will not follow?

So, what happens 5-10 years down the road when state money is being squeezed out to schools that don’t really exist which are only pretending to educate students who might not exist either?  I’ll tell you what happens — the state will have a necessary crackdown on educational spending.  The state departments of education will be tasked with oversight for all the money sent out.  Additionally, since everyone receives vouchers, that means all educational institutions would now be under this state crackdown.

So in this scenario, what is our situation now?  We thought we were given a lifeboat out of the system, but, in reality, the flow of money from the state actually means that the state is inevitably going to draw everything back under itself once oversight is required.  It is only if all actors were good actors that this situation can be avoided.  However, it is the fact of the prevalence of bad actors that got us in this situation in the first place.  We tried to get out but wound up just increasing the size and scope of government to the point that even the private schools that existed before the voucher program came online now fall under its umbrella.

Additionally, if the state imposes regulations and administrative overhead, this will increase the costs of the new schools, possibly raising their tuition outside of what was originally allotted.  Now, everyone who was previously in a state-funded private school has to actually pay into the system.  This is essentially what happened with college funding — the availability of free money did not cause the price of education to go down or the accessibility to go up, instead, everything just costs more, and the state loses more money.

This Has Happened Before

For those who think that my story is far-fetched, let me tell you a true story of The Little Light House — a non-profit preschool for special needs children in Tulsa.  You can read the full story in the book Milestones and Miracles, but let me give you an abbreviated version.

The Little Light House is a Christian private non-profit preschool for special needs children.  When the legislature passed laws requiring that school systems provide support for disabled children ages 3-5, they didn’t know what to do.  They had no teachers and no infrastructure — nothing that could support what was being required of them.  So, they asked the Little Light House to do it and the state would pay for it.

The Little Light House said, “we are an explicitly Christian school — everything we do is Christ-focused.”  The state said, “that’s fine, we just need you to take care of it.  Take the money.”  So, the Little Light House increased its staff by an order of magnitude and bought a new building to accommodate the new students.  However, after a few years, the state came back and said, “actually, you can’t preach the gospel and take state money.”  However, the Little Light House had already invested (in teachers, in equipment, and in the building) in order to handle the state’s influx of students.  If they didn’t comply with the state, they might go bankrupt. 

Thankfully, the Little Light House decided not to take the state money any more, and took many emergency measures (including firing many teachers) to stay out of bankruptcy.  However, I don’t think that most school administrators would have the courage and moral character to do the same.

My point here is that the situation I’m painting of the state handing out “free money” and then adding restrictions and trying to strong-arm private schools into doing their bidding is not an abstract idea.  It happens.  It happened here.  You can read their story.  This is the natural consequence of the state handing out money to private businesses.

Where We Should Go

So, if our schools are problematic, and we can’t give lifeboat funding without bringing in worse consequences, what should we do?

First of all, we should be sure to keep a segment of our schools completely outside of government control and influence, and we should try, as best we can, to expand that segment.  Homeschooling should not take any government funds.  Churches should try to start schools where their parishioners can attend for free.  Charities should start schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods that educate those who want to learn for free.  We need to be intentional about growing this segment.

Second, the state needs to be more intentional about reigning in schools.  If President Trump has shown us anything, it is that intentional, disciplined, fearless action can actually accomplish results in government.  Our problem has been that we have been insufficiently assertive regarding our institutions.  We need to take a note from Trump and look at ways in which we can deliver accountability of the school systems to their local communities.

Part of this can be expanding the charter system.  The state needs to clear the way for more charter schools to rise up and flourish.  The benefit of charter schools over voucher programs is that their relationship to the state is clear and unambiguous.  In the voucher situation, the private schools began under the presumption that they were free and independent, and the parents likewise enrolled their children on that basis, but it wound up being a ruse.  In the case of charter schools, their relationship to the state is clear — they work under the authority of the state, but get to try out new ideas.  If you don’t want to be under the state, you should choose other options.

These two prongs — the expansion of privately-funded education and the disciplined action of the state to fix their own problems — are not complicated, but they are not easy.  We live in an age where we want easy answers and someone else to fix our problems.  The answers here are straightforward but require courage and sacrifice of all involved. 

Will we step up to answer the call?

About the author: Jonathan Bartlett is a writer, educator, and software developer.  He has authored textbooks on computer science, calculus, electronics, and other STEM-oriented subjects that have been used everywhere from high schools to Princeton University.  Jonathan has educational experience at the high school and college level, and is currently adjuncting with Oklahoma Wesleyan University and also teaches at local high-school homeschooling co-op programs.  Jonathan has also written extensively for MindMatters News and Classical Conversations on how to improve education.  He is the current president of Homeschool Oklahoma, the state’s oldest and largest homeschool advocacy group.