From: fcrary@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Frank Crary)
Subject: Re: =>School Vouchers (Amendment 7)<=
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 17:32:49 GMT

In article <1992Oct9.053354@eklektix.com> rcd@raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn) writes:
>>...It seems to me that a far more relevant analogy is the existing use of
>>state and federal funds, through grants and subsidised student loans,
>>used to help college students in higher education.

>It's an interesting analogy, but the analogy actually brings into focus one
>of the more unreasonable aspects of the voucher proposal.  College student
>loans are granted primarily on the basis of need: if you need the money,
>you should be able to get it.  The voucher system *reverses* this:  Because
>a voucher will only pay (very roughly) half the cost of a private school,
>you can only use the voucher if you're *not* poor.

Where do people get this idea? As someone posted earlier, the average
private school tuition in Boulder county is $2400, about the value of
the voucher.

>The amount of subsidy to private colleges that actually is pure
>subsidy, not loans (which must be repaid) nor research grants (which repre-
>sent pay for work), is pretty small.  Public financing of private colleges
>is a small fraction of what it costs them to operate.
 
Nor is the voucher system a subsidy: It is payment for services rendered
(an education). The only organization getting subsidies under the 
voucher system would be public schools: Half of their budget would
be completely independent of vouchers, and they would get these
funds no matter what they did, or how many students they educated.
 
>I don't see any
>similar check on the voucher system, and it looks to me like the drain on
>my own pocket could be large.

Nor is there a check on public K-12 education spending, and it is 
_already_ a huge drain on my own pocket.

>Something I don't know about (and would be glad to hear) is what sort of
>standards are required of private schools.  What is the "accreditation"
>process, and does it work reasonably well?

I'd have to say no: Many _public_ schools are acredited even when they
fail to educate their students. There isn't a problem, however, with
private schools being accredited without educating their students.

>But to a good approximation, most low-income students *do* end up at public
>universities.  It doesn't seem to have hurt too much.

Public universities have such things as independent boards of regents,
tenured professors, etc... As a result, they are not subject to 
political pressures over what they teach. This goes a long way
toward improving the quality of education.

>I can't see any evidence for this.  (I don't mean it doesn't exist; I mean
>I can't see it.)  What is sacred about competition? 

It works.

>Again, I can't see any evidence of the value of "competition".  It's a nice
>word, but what I see instead is splintering of resources and duplication of
>effort.

You might want to ask a German: They have had a recent comparison of
single, centrally-planned organization versus several, competing  
organizations. One was clearly more effective that the other.

>I don't object to people experimenting with private schools.  I object to
>spending *my* money on the experiment, the same way I object to the middle-
>school idea (massive expenditure just to relabel things and move students
>around).  I also can't see the point of a new approach, untried on the
>scale proposed by the voucher system, instead of simply trying to fix
>something that *did* work in the recent past.

When in the recent past did the public schools "work"? They haven't 
for at least two decades. And since efforts to "fix" the public
schools go back this far, I presume they hadn't "worked" for
even longer.

                                                  Frank Crary
                                                  CU Boulder


                                                  
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