Voucher Fail?

Liberals appear to be happily stomping on what they presume to be the tomb of the voucher movement. This celebration is predicated on the failure of vouchers to be the silver bullet for Milwaukee's educational needs. The Milwaukee voucher pilot demonstrated modest gains at a cost per pupil less than than public schools average expenditure for student. It just seems odd to label something as an outright failure when it yields a slightly better product at a lower cost. Most folks would call that an improvement, not a panacea or silver bullet, but an improvement.

PeP Links: Education

Cato Unbound is having a discussion on Education. The Lead Essay is by Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute. The thrust of his essay was that "A Nation at Risk" got it wrong and we should approach education with the mindset that we could be doing better in contrast with a "the sky is falling mentality".

Slate has a ten part series called "Fixing It". The education component is written by UVA law professor Jim Ryan and he has some sensible recommendations: amend NCLB to have tests at less regular intervals but in more subject areas, nationalized standards, and use Teach for America or a similar vehicle to transform teaching into prestigious profession.

City Journal had a forum a while back amongst right-of-center education reform advocates as to whether school choice or institutional reform was the proper way forward.

Local Control Destroying U.S. Schools?

Matt Miller has an interesting article over at the Atlantic on Education. He asserts that local control of the schools is the causal element of the inferiority of public education in the US. The problem with this assertion is that he concedes until the 1960s that US schools were quite good in comparison to other OECD countries. He briefly touches on some shifts in American society that occurred would make local control detrimental such as funding issues; prior to WWII suburban commutter communities were less prevalent, thus property taxes were a force of equity instead of inequity in education. However, he concedes that this is mitigated in large part by the increasing share of state funding of schools (about 50%). Ironically he then complains that the grossest violator in fueling funding inequities is Title I funding (i.e. federal) which is apportioned not on a strict per capita basis but rather on how much was spent previously by the state (this same perversion occurs with Medicaid).

He then goes on to confuse correlation with causation by asserting that America is unique amongst OECD countries in that local control features so prominently in the U.S. where it is mostly absent in other countries and thus determines that local control is the causal factor for American educational ineptitude. Yet again, looking at correlations and ascribing causality to them I could do the same and make the opposite point. Iowa has one of the best school systems in the country both on the basis of performance and cost-effectiveness and it has one of the most decentralized systems in the country. Ergo, the consolidation of school districts over the last 50 years is the primary cause of the decline in American public education.

Miller does touch on the folly of our attempts at national standards, i.e. by making them voluntary or optional and thus not national. And he highlights the basic problem with NCLB in so far as it lets states set their own standards, thus you are not really able to make an apples to apples comparison of state achievement. It was also interesting to see him make the argument that school boards are effectively captured by teachers unions given that he works for the Center of the American Progress which is the nation's flagship liberal/progressive think tank. I found his arguments to be severely lacking which is a shame because it was a bold thesis and would have been interesting to see if he could marshal some evidence to support it.

Tuition

I am always bemused by politicians "solutions" to the problem of the costs of higher education. In general there seems to be two schools of thought (raise taxes or create more tax breaks/credits) as to how make college more affordable and no challenge to the underlying premises that college isn't affordable or that the sending more people to college is optimal as opposed to another vehicle for improving human capital.

With regards to the solutions my main problems with either increasing state subsidies to universities and/or creating new tax breaks for college tuition is that I think that it actually causes price escalation as opposed to mitigating it. Say Minnesota raises property taxes or some form of sin tax to increase public funding to Minnesota's institutions of higher education so that tuition can be reduced or frozen, in practice this doesn't appear to occur. Over the last 25 years increases in state subsidies and tuition increases have tracked each other. And this is entirely predictable, universities get a wad of taxpayer cash ostensibly to offset tuition but decides it would be better spent on any number of other worthy or dubious projects (new science building, updated fitness center, better mess hall, maybe even a healthier COLA for professors, new departments, or more professors), then turns around and raises tuition again shortly thereafter. My basic problem with operating through the tax code, unless it is in the form of a nonrefundable tax credit (or is it a refundable credit?), is that the benefits primarily inure to the wealthy. If I sock away a $1000 a year in a Coverdell account and my marginal tax rate is 10% then I have merely saved a hundred dollars, whereas if my marginal tax rate is 35% then I have saved $350. Those that need the assistance the least get the most. This doesn't seem to do much to spur affordability and actually can exacerbate the problem by making the wealthy even less price sensitive.

I would like to see States attempt to deal with the tuition problem in two ways, which I dub: the administrative solution and the market solution. The administrative solution is essentially wielding a big stick. Simply legislate that your state's public universities (and any private universities receiving state funds) cannot increase tuition beyond inflation. I think this while seemingly clean will be circumvented by ginning up increases in housing costs and whole myriad of new user fees (a $500 library card, maybe). The market solution would be to shift public funding away from institutions and instead have the funds follow the students. I think this would incentivize cost control.

The Utah Voucher Vote

VoluntaryXchange has a really interesting post on some of the dynamics behind the Utah voucher vote (which failed).

Archduke Comments, Xtra Offers Tepid Response

Archduke has engaged in a long and thoughtful comment on why he thinks vouchers are crap. I disagree with him that they are crap but thus far I don’t think the evidence bears out that vouchers are a silver bullet. So let me go ahead and address some of his points (he was commenting on a post by Megan McArdle that I linked to).

"First, she doesn't give, nor does she link to, any conclusive study that says that vouchers work. She gives no evidence other than that she says that they do, so we should believe her."

I guess this goes with the medium which is informal and immediate but here is one study from GAO on the Cleveland and Milwaukee programs (which I believe are the longest running publicly funded programs). Their finding are that the difference of achievement of students who take the vouchers is from negligible to a modest improvement. Not much there and to the extent that I have looked at other studies, consistent with the literature. That said, this finding should be put in context, the vouchers provided are always less than the per capita expenditure per student and often significantly less. Thus, less money= same result. I would say this is a good alternative to more money= same result. But maybe that’s just me.


"Second, and this may just be from my own experience, but the reason that private school costs less per student than public school has a lot to do with the fact that, unless it's an elite private school, the teachers don't make jack shit. My college roommate went to a private school where two different pairs of married teachers were living in the same house, sharing the same car, because they couldn't afford their own."

This is interesting point, not so much as it is an effective rebuttal, which it is not, but it does present a question of scalability. The reason that I am glib on its merits is that it doesn’t address the central question, which is how to educate our kids? (really, the lower income kids that are trapped in crappy urban school districts). If teacher A is willing to teach for 25k at a private school and ends up achieving the same outcome as teacher B who gets 10k more, is that bad? Well, for teacher A but not for the taxpayer. I think where it is problematic is the question of scale, can vouchers scale to a massive program. Maybe, maybe not. I have my doubts, but the status quo is certainly not tenable.

"Why do these teachers do it, if it's so crappy financially? I'm playing a guessing game here, but I think it's the quality of the students. Private schools are allowed to select whoever they want and deny whoever they want. Public schools, of course, are forced to take anyone within their district, no matter how much trouble they cause or how far behind their grade level they are."

Ah, the creaming theory. This one has always seemed so counterintuitive to me and I would refer you to the GAO study because it is also untrue. Just think of it in real terms. What does a parent say when their child is excelling in school, probably one of two things : "Johnny is a fricking genius, I need to send him to Brainiac and World Beaters Prep." or "Johnny is doing really well at School, we are happy with the status quo". I think most parents opt for the latter. I have always thought the more plausible scenario is “Johnny is failing, he needs a different school”.

"If vouchers become commonplace, either the public schools will become even worse--since only the unacceptable students will go there--or the private schools will start taking crappy students. Teachers, of course, will hate this and start demanding more money, which will lead to a raise in teachers' salaries, which will in turn cause a rise in tuition, which will price out the smart, good, poor kids whose parents can't afford to go above and beyone the vouchers, which will lead us back to where we were in the first place."

First, let’s restate where we are in the first place. Lower income inner city kids are receiving absolutely piss poor educations and can’t exit the system except for on the heroic efforts on the parts of parents and the community and charity from private schools. So where we are now sucks. The question is, will public schools become worse necessarily because students exit the system. Possibly, but they could also improve, by actually being, what’s the word I am looking for…Competitive. As it stands now, public schools have a monopoly and they deliver piss poor service. I do however think you could have a good deal of screening for students occur if it were a full blown program and this has in fact occurred in Chile where they do have a full blown voucher program.

"Another problem, irrespective of the ones I've outlined above, is that unless the vouchers are for full tuition price, there's no way lower middle-class parents could afford them. Even if my parents wanted my siblings and I to go to private school, they wouldn't have been able to afford even 1000/year per student. When you're running a deficit and only catch up in the summer, it's pretty unlikely that you'll be able to afford to apportion enough money for kids to go to school. Living paycheck-to-paycheck (which a significant portion of the middle-class does, even though their income is in the 40-50 K range) isn't conducive to paying school tuition when your kids can get educated for free at the public school."

This seems like a self-defeating argument as to the extent that vouchers have been implemented they have been means-tested (typically between 175-200% of the poverty line and below). Somehow people are doing it. And we have to remember, not every private school is an Exeter or Andover. Most private schools are parochial schools that do a pretty good job on a shoestring budget.

I don’t think Vouchers are the solution, but I think they are part of the solution, along with Charters, and decentralizing school administrations, accountability that makes sense unlike NCLB, and paying teachers more so that eventually teaching becomes a prestigious profession and attracts brighter bulbs (there are some really good teachers and their efforts are heroic but we can’t build a system on the basis of the expectation of heroism).

Vouchers

Megan McArdle has a great post on Vouchers here.