I would classify philosophical frameworks for education into two categories: the romantics and the realists. Though I have been tending towards the romantics in recent months (which is most uncharacteristic of me) it is essential to bear a certain deference to realism when this realism begins to conform with observed reality. This is to say that we must all possess a certain reverence to what Kipling called "The God of Things as They Are", and never allow our aspirations and optimism to lure us into chasing fantasies in defiance of increasingly undeniable facts. Ignoring unpleasant realities while chasing wishes and dreams has always ended badly; and that is one thing that will never change.
The Romantics
There are (basically) two schools of thought concerning educational romanticism, which I call the conventional and the radical. Both claim that American education can be vastly improved from its current state. The Conventional romantics are those who think that it can be done withing the framework of the American K-12 system, claiming that all this system needs is an injection of whatever reform elements the particular romantic in question happens to endorse. Conventional romantics probably constitute the largest proportion of education advocates and activists, and they come from a wide range of institutional backgrounds and political orientations. In fact, they so often and so vehemently disagree with each other that most would be shocked that anyone could put them in the same classification. E.D. Hirsch, James Banks, the 1990s incarnation of Diane Ravitch, Rod Paige, Linda Darling Hammond, G.W. Bush and Barack Obama all fall into this category, simply because they believe that with the help of a few pet reforms, the existing K-12 educational structure could be vastly improved. Where they differ (immensely) is in the nature of the reforms they endorse, with E.D. Hirsch endorsing a curriculum geared towards promoting cultural literacy, James Banks promoting a radically "politically correct" ethnic pride curriculum, Page professing to promote accountability and standards through testing, Hammond promoting classic "progressive" methods and Ravitch (until recently) endorsing select bite-size samples of charters and choice.
I don't bother discussing the ideas of any element of this faction because their basic premise is dumb; and just the fact that all of these factions exist and are vying for control of the public school curriculum should be enough to demonstrate the impossibility of generating any meaningful improvements in education within the framework of the current system. Frankly, any centralized education bureaucracy is going to be inundated with such interest groups vying for influence over not only curriculum, but all facets of education. And as in all bureaucratic infighting, the winner will not be whoever has the best ideas, but whoever has the strongest organization, the most clout, the best propagandists, and the least scruples. Schools have been the target of reformers for over 100 years, and virtually all reform efforts have left schools slightly worse off. This is simply because any authentic efforts at reform get co-opted by a thousand interest groups who use the momentary activist energy to engender changes that entrench themselves even further under the guise of reform.
Radical Romanticism, the school with which I am most sympathetic, claims John Taylor Gatto as its greatest exponent, offering the strongest argument for the most optimistic vision of education that exists. In Gatto's own words:
I have come to the conclusion that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress it because we haven't figured out how to manage a population of educated people. My solution is simple; let them manage themselves.
The radicalism of Gatto works on two avenues. First, while the conventional romantics talk about raising American test scores so that they compare with other countries, and making other modest gains in performance, Gatto enters in full force and claims that it is possible to unleash a massive well of suppressed genius, and asserts explicitly that it is the school system itself that is suppressing human genius. Thus, he is massively optimistic about the potential of American students. Second, Gatto claims unequivocally that the only way to unleash the full power of student potential is to release them from the oppressive grip of their local public school; which is to say that the entire K-12 apparatus has to be obliterated and replaced with private ventures and the private initiative of students.
It is here where I most agree with Gatto. While I would not go as far as Gatto in asserting that genius is "as common as dirt", I do agree that that the modern K-12 apparatus plays a large role in discouraging whatever intellectual curiosity, intellectual initiative, individualism, and enterprise students indeed possess, and produces a generally mind-numbing effect on students through its constant insistence of conformity and obedience, and through its atmosphere of relentless compulsion. By never impelling the student to take the initiative in his own education, students quickly get the impression of education as consisting of arbitrary rules, facts, and subjects to be learned by shutting up and listening to a professionalized bureaucracy of teachers who are in many cases alarmingly ignorant of the subject they are teaching. What the schools are engaged in doing is in fact a perpetual defamation of the life of the mind. And the only way this can be combated is by breaking the education monopoly and letting as many truly independent schools as possible flourish without the burdens of having to comply with the soul-crushing directives of the modern education bureaucracy.
The Realists
Realists can also be subdivided into two categories: the coherent and the incoherent. The incoherent realists we can dispense with quickly, since they are few in number and basically claim only one prominent exponent: the 21st century version of Diane Ravitch. Ravitch, in her book, The Death and Life of the Great [sic] American School System, portrays herself as undergoing a conversion, claiming to have realized that she was naive about the effectiveness of Charter Schools and other "free market" reforms. This would be defensible if not for her conclusion that the right way to move forward would be to push her desired reforms through the existing school system, these reforms including a robust curriculum, somehow forgetting that she had spent 20 years of her life chronicling that it was this very centralized public institution that has proven incapable of producing the sort of strong curricula that Ravitch has always desired because of its susceptibility to political pressure groups and educational fads. Ravitch contradicts herself in innumerable other ways, such as insisting forcefully that test scores are bad measures of school quality, and then relying heavily on such test scores to demonstrate the disappointment of Charter Schools. But her most dishonest tactic is the absurd description of highly centralized Charter school developments as "market reforms", when she knows full well that a real market reform allows for independent entrepreneurial ventures, not public school spin-offs that the local political bodies deign to tolerate.
The Principle exponent of coherent realism is Charles Murray, who wrote in his Real Education that it was high time that education activists abandoned romanticism and drastically lowered their expectations. Murray's position on the potential of American students is the polar opposite of Gatto's, as he claims that the schools are already running up against the limits imposed by biology of student performance. Just as we can't teach dogs to play poker (the analogy is actually Greg Cochran's) and just as we can't teach the average person the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle or General Relativity (in its most rigorous terms), there is a certain limit that human genetics places on the potential of the average student, and we have hit it. It is time that American education activists radically lowered expectations and stopped trying to compel kids to outperform their IQs, which is impossible, irresponsible, and abusive.
Murray does not go into the organization of American Education in his book, which is mostly about curriculum, but I have a hunch that he would be as radical as Gatto in his prescription of what to do with the American way of schooling; (Gut it). Also, his emphasis on curriculum is one that is echoed by Gatto and even Ravitch. Put more substance in the curriculum. Saturate the kids with captivating tales of larger than life mythical and historical figures and intrigues. Enough with this inundation of Dick and Jane and sterile standardized tests.
Which is why the school reformer, even should he disagree with Murray on the potential of the American student body, has nothing to fear from him. I disagree with Murray in many respects. History shows that children and adults alike used to be far more literate, more serious, and better educated than they are now as recently as 150 years ago, and this cannot be the function of genetics. And much of what Murray attributes to lack of natural ability I would argue to reflect an acquired numbness to the life of the mind and disinclination to think (especially think for oneself) that the public school inflicts on children.
But what we must understand is that nature does indeed impose limits on all of us. The question is simply a matter of what those limits are. Murray himself has acknowledged (and given name to) the Flynn Effect, which reflects a general increase in IQ, such that the average IQ of 1980 would actually have made the top 35% in 1920. (I use 1980 as a benchmark since the Flynn Effect has been weakening more recently.) Furthermore, while IQ does measure something real and central to the concept of intelligence, it does not measure everything. Even the most hardened IQ-imperialists must concede that IQ appears to be unrelated to creativity, to cite just one example. I would also venture to speculate that IQ does not factor in nearly as much when dealing with things in the realm of the concrete rather than the abstract, meaning that if schools should arise that establish a more vocational hands-on approach, IQ would be less of a decisive factor of school success. There is much danger in overstepping our boundaries regarding how much we know about human general intelligence. Thankfully, we can let those questions answer themselves once we free the students from the stranglehold of the state and let them and their parents take charge of their own education, so that they can discover for themselves if they have a genius and where their genius lies. The public school system is not doing it; that is for certain.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
The Plea of the Teacher
When the education industry finds itself under attack from budget hawks and fiscal conservatives, the teacher usually responds with a variation of a certain plea, which generally involves their stern objection to the perceived slight on the legitimacy of their profession. "They think that anyone could do our job", they say. "They think that we are lazy, that we are overpaid babysitters, that we don't deserve the money we earn. They have no idea how taxing this work is! They complain of tenure, but without it, we would be at risk of utterly arbitrary and capricious firings!"
There is, in my opinion, a much more solid defense of the teacher than this argument, which is easily refuted simply by noting that the first contradicts the maxim "No one s fit to be the judge of his own cause" and the second can be answered by a simple "Shit happens"--note how there is no caveat that exempts teachers from either law. If we were to pay all professionals what they thought they deserved, we would never finish counting the zeros; and if all employees were absolutely protected from unfair personnel decisions, we would all need our own private attorneys on retainer.
The better case in favor of the teacher goes like this:
Look, we know that this industry is a jumble of rackets siphoning money needlessly from taxpayers, but so is every other industry! Wall Street banks loot hundreds of millions of dollars every day from private industry, and they no longer even perform a legitimate economic function. It is a casino for the super-rich that periodically tanks the entire global economy to reap a windfall; and they've just stolen over 9 TRILLION DOLLARS. Why don't you go after THEM?
Or do you think the lawyers are contributing to society in any meaningful way? All they do is put all sorts of legal obstacles in the way of any and all transactions so that every activity requires the services of a lawyer. That's a racket too. The corporate world is just an unending barrage of rackets designed to bestow favor on select few corporations that engage in anti-competitive hustles. The government is raising taxes, house prices and gas prices are constantly rising. Food prices are rising; college is becoming unaffordable. Do you think that teachers are living in luxury? Do you think it's just us in the hustle?? It's ALL a hustle. In the United States in the 21st Century, you don't survive unless you are part of some hustle. Why do you come after US? Ours is a relatively small-time scam.
This is, in my estimation, the most compelling case that teachers have against the reforms that are being put in place now. In the current economic environment, union perks are not cushy luxuries, but survival rafts in the face of hostile economic forces facing all of us at every turn. Furthermore, it is a fallacy to insist that teachers should be paid less simply because it is possible to pay them less without sacrificing quality. (The logic is a bit stronger when considering the fact that teachers are paid by the taxpayers, but Goldman Sachs is paying its employees bonuses in the tens of millions with taxpayer money.) There is nothing American about paying our workforce as little as possible.
Indeed, if the central issue were simply that schools were providing a quality (or even decent) education that happens to be highly overpriced, or even if the quality of education were poor and highly overpriced, teachers would be a far more sympathetic party to this controversy than they are now. But the problem is deeper than this. What we are paying through the nose for in New Jersey (although this situation could easily apply to any other state) is a very high quality, and very expensive diseducation. Teachers' salaries and benefits are not the issue, nor is efficiency. The American K-12 model is indeed highly effective and efficient as a means of ensuring that most children never attain an education or a meaningful livelihood, while perpetuating existing class divisions and stifling opportunity and mobility. A more potent ant-education system has arguably never been devised. (Future posts will make clear why.)
I have no qualms with teachers getting paid money. If the American K-12 model of education were in any way a benefit to students, I would not be clamoring to lay the schools on the chopping bloc during a budget crisis. I loudly advocate the destruction of the school system as we know it as an end in itself. The budget crisis is just an opportunity.
There is, in my opinion, a much more solid defense of the teacher than this argument, which is easily refuted simply by noting that the first contradicts the maxim "No one s fit to be the judge of his own cause" and the second can be answered by a simple "Shit happens"--note how there is no caveat that exempts teachers from either law. If we were to pay all professionals what they thought they deserved, we would never finish counting the zeros; and if all employees were absolutely protected from unfair personnel decisions, we would all need our own private attorneys on retainer.
The better case in favor of the teacher goes like this:
Look, we know that this industry is a jumble of rackets siphoning money needlessly from taxpayers, but so is every other industry! Wall Street banks loot hundreds of millions of dollars every day from private industry, and they no longer even perform a legitimate economic function. It is a casino for the super-rich that periodically tanks the entire global economy to reap a windfall; and they've just stolen over 9 TRILLION DOLLARS. Why don't you go after THEM?
Or do you think the lawyers are contributing to society in any meaningful way? All they do is put all sorts of legal obstacles in the way of any and all transactions so that every activity requires the services of a lawyer. That's a racket too. The corporate world is just an unending barrage of rackets designed to bestow favor on select few corporations that engage in anti-competitive hustles. The government is raising taxes, house prices and gas prices are constantly rising. Food prices are rising; college is becoming unaffordable. Do you think that teachers are living in luxury? Do you think it's just us in the hustle?? It's ALL a hustle. In the United States in the 21st Century, you don't survive unless you are part of some hustle. Why do you come after US? Ours is a relatively small-time scam.
This is, in my estimation, the most compelling case that teachers have against the reforms that are being put in place now. In the current economic environment, union perks are not cushy luxuries, but survival rafts in the face of hostile economic forces facing all of us at every turn. Furthermore, it is a fallacy to insist that teachers should be paid less simply because it is possible to pay them less without sacrificing quality. (The logic is a bit stronger when considering the fact that teachers are paid by the taxpayers, but Goldman Sachs is paying its employees bonuses in the tens of millions with taxpayer money.) There is nothing American about paying our workforce as little as possible.
Indeed, if the central issue were simply that schools were providing a quality (or even decent) education that happens to be highly overpriced, or even if the quality of education were poor and highly overpriced, teachers would be a far more sympathetic party to this controversy than they are now. But the problem is deeper than this. What we are paying through the nose for in New Jersey (although this situation could easily apply to any other state) is a very high quality, and very expensive diseducation. Teachers' salaries and benefits are not the issue, nor is efficiency. The American K-12 model is indeed highly effective and efficient as a means of ensuring that most children never attain an education or a meaningful livelihood, while perpetuating existing class divisions and stifling opportunity and mobility. A more potent ant-education system has arguably never been devised. (Future posts will make clear why.)
I have no qualms with teachers getting paid money. If the American K-12 model of education were in any way a benefit to students, I would not be clamoring to lay the schools on the chopping bloc during a budget crisis. I loudly advocate the destruction of the school system as we know it as an end in itself. The budget crisis is just an opportunity.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Ed Collision: The Proposition
The Inaugural Post of this site simply lays out what I feel to be the most simple and potentially effective solution to the education crisis (and there is indeed a crisis; and it has been building for some time) brought to a head throughout several states in the U.S., but which is truly a national crisis for reasons I will get to soon. It is not a new idea, but a new take on an old one--essentially a modified voucher proposal that is designed to be more effective, efficient, rapidly reformative, and politically acceptable than conventional voucher proposals.
Conventional Voucher Proposals, such as those criticized in Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great [*cough*] American School System have had very mixed results and have not proven to be nearly as effective as proponents had hoped. However, that is because they have tended to by burdened by crucial compromises that defeat the entire reasoning behind them. A conventional voucher (and there are many variations of the theme) simply allows parents to choose from schools in various school districts in order to have the choice to leave failing districts. A suggestion that seems only human, but was, of course, fiercely opposed by the education establishment. (More on them in a minute.)
The problem with this is that failing school districts only represent a small part of the problem. They are few in number and can generally be reformed so as to achieve mediocrity by fairly straightforward means. (The fact that such reforms are straightforward does not mean that they are easy to accomplish, however.) The problem is the successful schools; or to be precise, the problem is the dreary mediocrity that passes for success in the school system. The conventional voucher fails because in large part because it makes the mediocre school the standard of performance. But it fails for other reasons as well. The conventional voucher ignores the dilemmas faced by a family that must choose between keeping their child in a sub-optimal school (again, few schools are truly terrible) and bussing them away from their communities to a school in a distant district about which they have little information. Furthermore, traditional vouchers keep intact the bodies that provide information about the various "competing" school districts, resulting in information that is uninformative, jargon-laced, and unclear. And finally, it fails because it sidesteps the issue of general school quality. Most schools in most districts are very similar, and converge to a common standard of mediocrity that is the inevitable result of the constraints and organizational structures under which almost all schools operate. The "school-choice" movement too often amounts to giving parents a choice between McDonald's and Burger King, between Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, or between the Republican and Democratic party equivalents of public schools. It is significant that Diane Ravitch, in her thoughtful, but ultimately disingenuous book, misleadingly portrays these top-down measures as "market-based" school reforms, when they are obviously no such thing, in that they do not conform to the very purpose and spirit of the market-based reform: to decentralize control of American schools and promote truly independent entrepreneurial ventures.
In addition, vouchers are also politically volatile because of the connection between a school district's perceived quality and property values. Parents move to expensive suburban neighborhoods in large part because these neighborhoods boast of high-quality school districts, and while it is considered impolite to say so publicly, these parents also understand that the main determinant (some say the only determinant) of the quality of a school district is the quality of the student population.
This is how you resolve the contradiction between the contention that most schools are very similar in quality and the contention that high property values are a function of good schools. It is not the schools that are of high quality in the coveted districts, since the schools generally add the same value as those in supposedly bad districts. What is different is the baseline of the students upon which the schools are called to add value, which does vary greatly. In effect, the parents of high-quality students are paying through the nose to surround their kids with other high-quality students. And they are not amenable to risking severe drops in their property values that might result from opening their district to lower achievers (and thus hurting the school's graduation rates, college placements, and other superficial and misleading metrics that their school uses to promote itself).
To fix this, I propose four simple adjustments to the conventional voucher proposals:
1.) Rather than issuing a voucher as a license to attend the public schools across various districts, the voucher should be what the name implies: a credit for a fixed amount of money (that amount being the average per-pupil expenditure in a given state) that can be that can be spent for any educational purpose.
2.) Allow the vouchers to be redeemed only for private schools, private tutoring, or in the public school to which the student would have been assigned regardless. Moving a student to another public school district would still entail all of the difficulties that it does under the current regime.
3.) This is crucial. If an educational institution or collection of private tutors should charge less than the amount of the voucher, the balance is redeemable in cash, contingent upon the ability of the parent to demonstrate a good-faith effort made to provide the student with an education. If the student happens to be a brilliant autodidact, and can teach himself without the aid of teachers and tutors, the parent has the right to redeem the entire voucher for cash.
4.) Again, this is crucial. The market for private schools that is bound to emerge from this setup shall not be encumbered with any of the regulatory apparatus of the modern public school system (short or basic safety standards, perhaps). This means that they will be outside the purview of union contracts, certification requirements, class size mandates, special education mandates, restrictions on disciplinary measures, and any other mandates you can think of. Meanwhile, the public schools would continue to operate in accordance with the current regulatory framework.
5.) Restrictions on the rebate would have to be limited in order to avoid a situation in which women bear multiple children only to redeem more vouchers. Although such behavior is unlikely, since the parent would have to wait five years for the child to become profitable, the risk of perverse child-bearing incentives is real. Thus, the rebate would be limited to two children in a family. The third child would still be provided the voucher, but would not be eligible for rebate money. Other restrictions could apply, given the political imperatives. If the state wishes to combat illegitimacy, the rebate could only be applicable to two-parent families, giving women a huge incentive to bear children in wedlock, or to get married once they have a child, and to stay married until their children reach adulthood, when the social consequences of divorce are lessened considerably. Such a proposal would not be discriminatory, since all children are given the voucher, and their right to a "free" education, regardless. All it means is that extra privileges are tied to responsibilities. Recall that illegitimate children would still have the right to attend their local public school just as they do now in addition to retaining their rights to the voucher. It is merely the unmarried mother who would not be eligible for the rebate. Note also that while it is probably necessary to limit rebate privileges to two children, the other conditions, while in my view desirable, are not necessary. This is to say that if feminists find the idea of denying rebates to unmarried mothers abhorrent, the plan could function without such a measure, although my personal view is that it's high time action was taken to discourage illegitimacy.
The principle advantage of this idea is that it has a built-in failsafe mechanism. The very worst thing that could happen is the perpetuation of the current system, since the public schools would continue to operate exactly as they do now. And this feature has a twin component in that it would pit the modern public schooling apparatus in direct competition with an open- market alternative. This is to say, that if the maze of regulations, union contracts, and mandates that are tied to public education is truly good for the students, as is claimed by the propaganda organs of the industry, it should give the public schools an advantage over the open-market alternatives, thus placing them in no real danger. If, however, the current collection of regulations and contractual laws is not good for the children, but rather represents a thousand species of graft designed to feather the nests of sundry parasitic industries that mooch off of education money, such as professional development committees, task-forces, workshop hucksters, lawyers, education schools, and publishers, then the open-market schools should be able to provide a far superior education at the fraction of the price, eventually forcing the public education apparatus to reform its fiscal ways or face certain extinction.
Politically, this plan should work to the benefit of huge numbers of constituencies. First of all, the suburban would have nothing to fear, since her public schools would still be protected from the infiltration of low-performing "urban" students by prohibitive real estate costs. However, should certain schools open that promise a better education at a lower cost, the parents would have a choice in deciding whether it would be best for themselves and their children to keep their children in the public schools, insulated from "urban" kids, or whether it would be best to send their kids to the private school, where their child may come in contact with kids from the other side of the tracks, but which might be run in such a way that such a heterogeneous student population would not hinder their child's education, while they would get what would effectively be a significant property tax rebate. The expectation is that in the event of the ideal outcome--the near-total replacement of the public schools by leaner and more effective alternatives--the suburban communities would no longer have the advantage of an exclusive public school district, and might see property values decline as a result. But that would be offset by the increased efficiency of the open-schools and the monetary rebate that would result, not to mention the superior education for their kids.
Furthermore, such a plan would be an enormous incentive for entrepreneurs to put together the most effective education system at the lowest cost possible, since they would attract business from parents eager to ease their tax burden. Teachers would not be significantly hurt by the proposal, since the newer schools would need teachers to man them, although the salary scales might get bumped down a peg. Of course, the children of teachers would be eligible for the voucher rebate as well, which could easily be enough to offset any loss of income.
There are, however, constituencies that would be hurt by the implementation of such a program. The schools of education would suffer a blow, since the open-schools would be exempt from any and all certification requirements. The lawyers who specialize in educational litigation would be significantly hurt because the maze of regulations in which they specialize in maneuvering would not apply to the new schools. The professional development and teacher-workshop rackets would only be employed by the new school if these schools were to find their services necessary, which is to say that they would never be employed. The Teachers Unions would be hurt, since all laws compelling union membership would not apply to these schools, which would undoubtedly choose to hire an underemployed liberal arts major than a much more expensive unionized teacher who, despite his or her surfeit of credentials and degrees, such as teacher certification, the masters in education, the MA+30, the professional development credits, and countless other pointless and expensive trimmings of credentialism, would not do the job any more effectively.
In other words, the army of parasites and bloodsucking leeches that are drowning out the education budgets of every state of the union have a lot to lose, and we can expect them to combat this with full vigor. In future posts, I will address a couple of issues related to this: first how to defeat the political efforts of the parasites, and second, substantiating why these entities in fact are parasitic, and exactly why our public schools are corrupted beyond redemption and need to be replaced by a constructive alternative. In addition, I will regularly post links to the crucial literature on the matter, and verifying my claims with evidence.
Conventional Voucher Proposals, such as those criticized in Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great [*cough*] American School System have had very mixed results and have not proven to be nearly as effective as proponents had hoped. However, that is because they have tended to by burdened by crucial compromises that defeat the entire reasoning behind them. A conventional voucher (and there are many variations of the theme) simply allows parents to choose from schools in various school districts in order to have the choice to leave failing districts. A suggestion that seems only human, but was, of course, fiercely opposed by the education establishment. (More on them in a minute.)
The problem with this is that failing school districts only represent a small part of the problem. They are few in number and can generally be reformed so as to achieve mediocrity by fairly straightforward means. (The fact that such reforms are straightforward does not mean that they are easy to accomplish, however.) The problem is the successful schools; or to be precise, the problem is the dreary mediocrity that passes for success in the school system. The conventional voucher fails because in large part because it makes the mediocre school the standard of performance. But it fails for other reasons as well. The conventional voucher ignores the dilemmas faced by a family that must choose between keeping their child in a sub-optimal school (again, few schools are truly terrible) and bussing them away from their communities to a school in a distant district about which they have little information. Furthermore, traditional vouchers keep intact the bodies that provide information about the various "competing" school districts, resulting in information that is uninformative, jargon-laced, and unclear. And finally, it fails because it sidesteps the issue of general school quality. Most schools in most districts are very similar, and converge to a common standard of mediocrity that is the inevitable result of the constraints and organizational structures under which almost all schools operate. The "school-choice" movement too often amounts to giving parents a choice between McDonald's and Burger King, between Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, or between the Republican and Democratic party equivalents of public schools. It is significant that Diane Ravitch, in her thoughtful, but ultimately disingenuous book, misleadingly portrays these top-down measures as "market-based" school reforms, when they are obviously no such thing, in that they do not conform to the very purpose and spirit of the market-based reform: to decentralize control of American schools and promote truly independent entrepreneurial ventures.
In addition, vouchers are also politically volatile because of the connection between a school district's perceived quality and property values. Parents move to expensive suburban neighborhoods in large part because these neighborhoods boast of high-quality school districts, and while it is considered impolite to say so publicly, these parents also understand that the main determinant (some say the only determinant) of the quality of a school district is the quality of the student population.
This is how you resolve the contradiction between the contention that most schools are very similar in quality and the contention that high property values are a function of good schools. It is not the schools that are of high quality in the coveted districts, since the schools generally add the same value as those in supposedly bad districts. What is different is the baseline of the students upon which the schools are called to add value, which does vary greatly. In effect, the parents of high-quality students are paying through the nose to surround their kids with other high-quality students. And they are not amenable to risking severe drops in their property values that might result from opening their district to lower achievers (and thus hurting the school's graduation rates, college placements, and other superficial and misleading metrics that their school uses to promote itself).
To fix this, I propose four simple adjustments to the conventional voucher proposals:
1.) Rather than issuing a voucher as a license to attend the public schools across various districts, the voucher should be what the name implies: a credit for a fixed amount of money (that amount being the average per-pupil expenditure in a given state) that can be that can be spent for any educational purpose.
2.) Allow the vouchers to be redeemed only for private schools, private tutoring, or in the public school to which the student would have been assigned regardless. Moving a student to another public school district would still entail all of the difficulties that it does under the current regime.
3.) This is crucial. If an educational institution or collection of private tutors should charge less than the amount of the voucher, the balance is redeemable in cash, contingent upon the ability of the parent to demonstrate a good-faith effort made to provide the student with an education. If the student happens to be a brilliant autodidact, and can teach himself without the aid of teachers and tutors, the parent has the right to redeem the entire voucher for cash.
4.) Again, this is crucial. The market for private schools that is bound to emerge from this setup shall not be encumbered with any of the regulatory apparatus of the modern public school system (short or basic safety standards, perhaps). This means that they will be outside the purview of union contracts, certification requirements, class size mandates, special education mandates, restrictions on disciplinary measures, and any other mandates you can think of. Meanwhile, the public schools would continue to operate in accordance with the current regulatory framework.
5.) Restrictions on the rebate would have to be limited in order to avoid a situation in which women bear multiple children only to redeem more vouchers. Although such behavior is unlikely, since the parent would have to wait five years for the child to become profitable, the risk of perverse child-bearing incentives is real. Thus, the rebate would be limited to two children in a family. The third child would still be provided the voucher, but would not be eligible for rebate money. Other restrictions could apply, given the political imperatives. If the state wishes to combat illegitimacy, the rebate could only be applicable to two-parent families, giving women a huge incentive to bear children in wedlock, or to get married once they have a child, and to stay married until their children reach adulthood, when the social consequences of divorce are lessened considerably. Such a proposal would not be discriminatory, since all children are given the voucher, and their right to a "free" education, regardless. All it means is that extra privileges are tied to responsibilities. Recall that illegitimate children would still have the right to attend their local public school just as they do now in addition to retaining their rights to the voucher. It is merely the unmarried mother who would not be eligible for the rebate. Note also that while it is probably necessary to limit rebate privileges to two children, the other conditions, while in my view desirable, are not necessary. This is to say that if feminists find the idea of denying rebates to unmarried mothers abhorrent, the plan could function without such a measure, although my personal view is that it's high time action was taken to discourage illegitimacy.
The principle advantage of this idea is that it has a built-in failsafe mechanism. The very worst thing that could happen is the perpetuation of the current system, since the public schools would continue to operate exactly as they do now. And this feature has a twin component in that it would pit the modern public schooling apparatus in direct competition with an open- market alternative. This is to say, that if the maze of regulations, union contracts, and mandates that are tied to public education is truly good for the students, as is claimed by the propaganda organs of the industry, it should give the public schools an advantage over the open-market alternatives, thus placing them in no real danger. If, however, the current collection of regulations and contractual laws is not good for the children, but rather represents a thousand species of graft designed to feather the nests of sundry parasitic industries that mooch off of education money, such as professional development committees, task-forces, workshop hucksters, lawyers, education schools, and publishers, then the open-market schools should be able to provide a far superior education at the fraction of the price, eventually forcing the public education apparatus to reform its fiscal ways or face certain extinction.
Politically, this plan should work to the benefit of huge numbers of constituencies. First of all, the suburban would have nothing to fear, since her public schools would still be protected from the infiltration of low-performing "urban" students by prohibitive real estate costs. However, should certain schools open that promise a better education at a lower cost, the parents would have a choice in deciding whether it would be best for themselves and their children to keep their children in the public schools, insulated from "urban" kids, or whether it would be best to send their kids to the private school, where their child may come in contact with kids from the other side of the tracks, but which might be run in such a way that such a heterogeneous student population would not hinder their child's education, while they would get what would effectively be a significant property tax rebate. The expectation is that in the event of the ideal outcome--the near-total replacement of the public schools by leaner and more effective alternatives--the suburban communities would no longer have the advantage of an exclusive public school district, and might see property values decline as a result. But that would be offset by the increased efficiency of the open-schools and the monetary rebate that would result, not to mention the superior education for their kids.
Furthermore, such a plan would be an enormous incentive for entrepreneurs to put together the most effective education system at the lowest cost possible, since they would attract business from parents eager to ease their tax burden. Teachers would not be significantly hurt by the proposal, since the newer schools would need teachers to man them, although the salary scales might get bumped down a peg. Of course, the children of teachers would be eligible for the voucher rebate as well, which could easily be enough to offset any loss of income.
There are, however, constituencies that would be hurt by the implementation of such a program. The schools of education would suffer a blow, since the open-schools would be exempt from any and all certification requirements. The lawyers who specialize in educational litigation would be significantly hurt because the maze of regulations in which they specialize in maneuvering would not apply to the new schools. The professional development and teacher-workshop rackets would only be employed by the new school if these schools were to find their services necessary, which is to say that they would never be employed. The Teachers Unions would be hurt, since all laws compelling union membership would not apply to these schools, which would undoubtedly choose to hire an underemployed liberal arts major than a much more expensive unionized teacher who, despite his or her surfeit of credentials and degrees, such as teacher certification, the masters in education, the MA+30, the professional development credits, and countless other pointless and expensive trimmings of credentialism, would not do the job any more effectively.
In other words, the army of parasites and bloodsucking leeches that are drowning out the education budgets of every state of the union have a lot to lose, and we can expect them to combat this with full vigor. In future posts, I will address a couple of issues related to this: first how to defeat the political efforts of the parasites, and second, substantiating why these entities in fact are parasitic, and exactly why our public schools are corrupted beyond redemption and need to be replaced by a constructive alternative. In addition, I will regularly post links to the crucial literature on the matter, and verifying my claims with evidence.
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