Privatization and the History of Vouchers in Education

1
Privatization and the History of Vouchers in
Education
2
Three Educational Innovations

• Private School Choice Vouchers (today)
• Public School Choice Charter Schools

3
Questions to Ask

• Who promotes these programs? What are the ideas
  that shape these innovations?
• Who benefits from these programs? What is the
  effect on social inequality? What is its effect
  on quality of teaching and learning in school
  classrooms?

4
Neo-liberalism

• Competitive private enterprise is likely to be
  far more efficient--producing the most at the
  lowest cost--than government-run enterprises.
• People will spend their money at the business
  where they get the best product for the smallest
  cost.

5
Neo-Liberalism

• This view of the world has affected not only
  educational policy, but also health policy, the
  proposal to change social security so that
  individuals can set up private accounts, and the
  way that the government does business through
  sub-contracting (military, accounting services)

6
Milton Friedman

• A neo-liberal economist (who graduated from
  Rutgers University, 1932)
• First proposed vouchers in an article, The Role
  of Government in Education, 1951.
• Government has a monopoly over education no
  wonder the education system is in terrible shape!

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Governments should finance education, but not
administer it

• Governments could require a minimum level of
  education which they could finance by giving
  parents vouchers redeemable for a specified
  maximum sum per child per year if spent on
  approved educational services. Parents would
  then be free to spend this sum and any additional
  sum on purchasing educational services from an
  approved institution of their choice.

8
The educational services could be rendered by
private enterprises operating for profit or by
non-profit institutions of various kinds. The
role of the government would be limited to
assuring that the schools met certain minimum
standards such as the inclusion of a minimum
common content in their programs, much as it now
inspects restaurants to assure that they maintain
minimum sanitary requirements.
9
Government has appropriately been concerned with
widening the opportunity of young men and women
to get professional and technical training, but
it has sought to further this objective by the
inappropriate means of subsidizing such
education, largely in the form of making it
available free or at a low price at
governmentally operated schools.
10
A Definition of Vouchers

• Education vouchers are tuition certificates that
  are issued by the government and are redeemable
  at the school of the students choice. Their aim
  is to make the education system operate as much
  like a free market as possible.
• --Laura Hersh Salganik, The Fall and Rise of
  Education Vouchers, Teachers College Record
  (1981) 832.

11
Cleveland Scholarship and Testing Program, 1996

• Gives students a scholarship which can be used to
  attend an alternative school (registered private
  school or a public school in another district) or
  to hire private tutors
• Scholarship depends on income level of student,
  but cannot exceed 2,500

12
Other Voucher Programs

• Milwaukee Voucher Program, 1990
• Florida Voucher Program, 1999
• Small, privately-run programs in Washington, DC
  (1993), New York City (1997), Dayton (1998), and
  San Antonio (1998)
• All aimed at low-income students
• Vouchers ranged from 1,200-4,000

13
Free-Enterprise Supporters of Vouchers

• Private sector works better than public sector.
• Competition breeds innovative programs and the
  diffusion of best practices in teaching and
  management.
• Families more likely than the state to make
  educational decisions that benefit children.

14
Parental Supporters of Vouchers

• Parents in urban areas who feel that the
  neighborhood schools are failing and seek other
  options
• Parents who seek religious education for their
  children
• Parents whose children already attend private
  schools

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The push for school vouchers has created some
strange bedfellows. Free marketers not known for
their sensitivity to the plight of the poor find
themselves allied with disadvantaged urban
parents and community organizations that are
simply fed up with the abysmal quality of the
schools their children must attend. For urban
parents, vouchers loom as offering an escape
hatch for at least some of their
children. --Edward Fiske and Helen Ladd, After
Zelman The Need to Focus on the Core Education
Issues, Teachers College Record (2002).
16
Black Ministers Council backs school vouchers

• Headline in the Courier Post, Friday, February
  11, 2005
• Mainly the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey
  supported vouchers because of dissatisfaction
  with the local public school systems

17
Philosophical Opponents of Vouchers

• Doubt a market system can be equitable and
  efficient
• Vouchers would require well-informed consumers
  who have equal bargaining power and a variety of
  schools, with diverse programs and well-measured
  quality

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Institutional Opponents of Vouchers

• Teachers unions concerned about the loss of
  jobs, benefits, and pay
• Private schools concerned about government
  regulation (special education, standardized
  tests)

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Unequal Education with Bill Moyers (1994)

• Jon Chubb and Jonathan Kozol on school vouchers

20
No Child Left Behind (2001)

• Although the Republicans are generally for
  vouchers, they could not implement completely a
  voucher program because of the need to craft a
  compromise that would pass Congress.
• Congress did pass a voucher program in the
  District of Columbia (2003).

21
No Child Left Behind (2001)

• Students in schools identified for improvement
  must be allowed to attend a better public school
  (including a public charter school) within the
  district.
• Low-income students in persistently failing
  schools must be allowed to use Title I funds to
  obtain supplemental educational services from a
  public or private school selected by the student
• Schools must use 20 of their Title I funds to
  provide school choice and supplemental
  educational services

22
No Child Left Behind (2001)

• Promotes public school choice (district charter
  schools, magnet schools, and state-wide,
  inter-district transfers) in addition to private
  tutoring choices for low-income students.
• Mandates greater accountability, which makes
  private schools more wary of participating.

23
Philadelphia Inquirer,December 16, 2004

• Fewer than 2,000 students are getting free
  outside tutoring this year in Philadelphia,
  although there are more than 110,000 children
  enrolled in underperforming schools that are
  required to offer this service.
• 155 schools out of 267 schools fit the category
  of missing their academic improvement goals three
  years in a row.

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Who benefits from the privatization provisions of
No Child Left Behind?
25
Questions regarding Vouchers

• Are vouchers constitutional if public money is
  going to religious private schools?
• Do vouchers boost student achievement?
• Issues of equity are private schools open to
  all? Will this increase or decrease racial or
  class-based segregation? Are those who use
  vouchers the most well-educated and involved
  parents?

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Are Vouchers Constitutional?

• In Cleveland in 1999, 96 of voucher students
  were enrolled in religious private schools.
• For low-income families, because of tuition costs
  and the amount of the scholarship (generally
  under 3,000 per year), the only private schools
  available to them will be religious.
• Private schools in Cleveland admitted voucher
  students without regard to race or religion.

27
Zelman vs. Simmons-Harris (2002)

• In a 5-4 decision, on June 27, 2002, the US
  Supreme Court held that neutral educational
  assistance programs that
• . . . offer aid directly to a broad class of
  individual recipients defined without regard to
  religion are constitutional.

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Majority opinion

• Rather than being a direct grant to a school,
  vouchers is a true private choice by a parent.
• The program is neutral in regards to religion,
  allowing all schools in the district to
  participate, both religious and non-religious.
• This is a broader undertaking to assist poor
  children in failed schools, not. . .an
  endorsement of religious schooling in general.

29
Dissenting Opinion

• No public funds should be used to support
  educational programs run by religious
  institutions, because it will pay for religious
  teaching the covenant with Israel and Mosaic
  law, primacy of the Apostle Peter and the Papacy,
  truth of reformed Christianity, and revelation of
  the Prophet Mohammed.

30
Colorado, 2003

• Colorado first in the nation to pass a school
  voucher law as a result of the Supreme Court
  decision
• 4,500 vouchers to be offered to K-12 students to
  help offset private school tuition
• 11 districts with 8 or more schools that received
  low or unsatisfactory academic performance
  ratings required to participate

31
Do Vouchers Boost Student Achievement?

• Vouchers seem neutral in terms of student
  achievement, with no significant differences
  between voucher students and those who remain in
  public schools (from studies done of Cleveland,
  Dayton, Washington DC, New York City, Chile, and
  New Zealand voucher systems).

32
Do Vouchers Boost Student Achievement?

• However, African-American students who switched
  to private schools did do better than their
  counterparts who remained in public schools but
  the difference was not consistent across cities
  or grade levels (Dayton, Washington DC, New
  York).
• As a comparison, a Tennessee experiment to reduce
  class size helped African-American students far
  more.

33
Educational Innovation?

• There is no strong evidence that vouchers promote
  educational innovation or the diffusion of
  best-practices management.

34
Issues of equity

• Private schools are less likely to have a
  library, a nurses office, a cafeteria, and
  counselors.
• Private schools rarely have programs for
  non-English speakers or students with special
  needs (disabilities, learning difficulties).

35
Issues of Equity

• When faced with increased enrollment, schools
  tend not to expand, but choose their students for
  the spaces available, based on academic ability,
  test scores, discipline records, interviews with
  students and parents, and parents willingness to
  volunteer at the school.

36
Issues of Equity

• Even in programs serving low-income students,
  those who use vouchers tend to be the most
  advantaged of the disadvantaged those with
  higher parental educational levels and fewer
  special needs.
• Only 1/3 of voucher students in Milwaukee and 1/4
  in Cleveland came from public schools.

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Why Vouchers May Not Matter

• High dropout rates from voucher programs
• Little gain in student achievement or educational
  quality
• Vouchers are low subsidies, comparable to tuition
  costs
• With greater push to accountability, private
  schools may not want to participate

38
Henigs Conclusion

• The how matters more than the what. How is the
  program put in place? Is it sensitive to issues
  of social inequality?

39
Other Forms of Privatization

• Home-schooling privately funded, privately
  provided, and almost completely privately
  regulated (about 800,000 students in 1999).
• Tuition tax credit for private school tuition
  (currently about 1,000 in six states) reduce
  government revenues, subsidize private education,
  and unlike vouchers, only help those who pay taxes

40
Why has the privatization of public schooling
become so popular over the past three decades?