From: wicklund@intellistor.com (Tom Wicklund)
Subject: Re: =>School Vouchers (Amendment 7)<=
Keywords: Education
Organization: Intellistor, Inc.
Distribution: co
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 92 00:15:24 GMT

In <1992Oct8.022147.19845@colorado.edu> youngm@mica.Colorado.EDU (Matthew Young) writes:

>Amendment 7 grants a voucher for each K-12 student in Colorado, 
>to be redeemed by their parents at the school of their choice, whether
>public, private, or in-home.  Competition will improve our public
>schools in the long run; alternatives will liberate our students today.
>This may be the only way to fix our government's failure in education.

Rather than respond directly to vouchers, this posting has some
comments on school reform and information on experiments in other
parts of the country.

Please note this is from memory, so I probably have errors in the
exact timeframes and references.  I can (with a fair amount of
searching mover packed boxes) find any of these if you're really
interested.

This has ended up rather long, but I've tried to include some actual
data to give some background.

First, a few facts about schools to set the context (if you disagree
with these, then the conclusions will change).

  -  The public schools have been (on average) getting steadily worse
over the last 40 years and are in need of reform.

  - Do the public schools need more money?  The public schools
(national average) spend 2-3 times more per pupil (adjusted for
inflation) today than they did in the 1950s.  If the schools need more
money, then the fundamental cost of good education has increased by
more than 2 to 3 times.

  - The traditional answers to school reform (longer hours, smaller
classes, etc) have mixed results.  Private schools aren't necessarily
better than public either.  Nobody has found a simple answer to fix
the schools.

Now a few examples and opinions (with references where I remember
them):

  - One place where school choice has succeeded is East Harlem (part
of New York City public schools).  The East Harlem district
implemented school choice "unofficially" -- they ignored the central
office as much as possible and went ahead with reforms.  East Harlem
started out with some of the worst schools in the country.  They
implemented school choice by allowing parents to choose which school
within the East Harlem district their children would attend.  Parents
didn't always get their first choice if the school filled up.  East
Harlem also created magnet schools -- different schools had different
emphases -- sciences, music, arts; very structured or unstructured,
etc.

If a school in the East Harlem district didn't attract many students,
it was shut down.  Note that a "school" isn't a building in the
traditional sense.  Some buildings had two or three "schools" within
the building.  If a school closed, the building re-opened with a new
school with a different emphasis or different staff.

East Harlem schools have improved greatly.  The schools are ranked
close to the national average (up from being near the bottom).  School
choice is one of the reasons, though they also had some good leaders
working for excellence since they had to fight central office
bureaucracy.

You can find more information on East Harlem schools from the
Manhattan Institute in New York (they have published at least one
study about it).  I've also seen newspaper references and I'm sure
they've been written up elsewhere.

  - Another Manhattan Institute paper gives a very interesting
comparison of bureaucracy.  About 8 years ago the author contacted the
New York City public schools to find out how big their central
administrative staff was.  After convincing somebody that this could
be revealed to the public, he was given a figure of about 5000.

He then contacted the Catholic schools with the same question.  New
York's Catholic school system is about 1/4 the size of the public
schools.  The person answering the phone said "just a minute", started
counting, and said about 50.

A 100:1 difference in staff for a 4:1 difference in student population
says something about where the money is going.

  - The largest number of new private schools opening during the 1980s
were not expensive schools for the rich or very intelligent.  The most
new schools opened in the inner cities, so called "street acadamys",
operating on shoestring budgets.  These schools were opened and
operated by the poor in the ghettos because they were fed up with
fighting poor quality local schools which didn't care about educating
children.  I'm afraid I don't remember any references for this off
hand, though I think the Cato Institute (Washington, DC) published at
least one study on this a few years ago.

  - The people who pushed school choice through in Milwaukee, WI were
not the wealthy.  A major group in the coalition was from the inner
city.  They were fed up with public school "reform" promises and saw
this as the only way out.

  - Vouchers already exist.  According to an article in Reason
magazine several years ago, Vermont has had a voucher system for many
years.  It at least allows choice between public schools, I think it
also allows private schools but it's been a while since I read it.
Vermont's voucher system has been running without a lot of publicity,
yet it also hasn't ruined the schools (I don't recall seeing Vermont
either near the top or the bottom of state education rankings).

  - Why are the schools worse?  Charles Murray in "Losing Ground"
(according to some summaries I've read, I haven't read the book)
argues that it's the social programs of the 60's.  He gives two main
arguments on this are:

    - Traditionally people had to pull themselves up if they were poor,
      uneducated, etc.  With the new programs of the 60's people were
      told that it wasn't their fault that they were poor, rather it
      was society's fault (especially with Blacks who were first
      slaves then discriminated against).  Thus "society" must fix
      things.  This discourages people from trying to better
      themselves.
    - Traditionally, a troublesome student would be expelled from
      school or sent to a reform school.  There's more tendency to
      keep the student in school (remember, it's "society's fault"),
      so schools are disrupted and other students suffer.

  - The "mainstreaming" of students with mental or physical
disabilities, while done for very good reasons, often isn't followed
up with support for the school.  The result is that teachers can end
up spending most of their time with one student, to the detriment of
the rest.  I've heard some anecdotal comments on this from teachers
but haven't seen any studies.

  - Education "theory" has gotten out of hand.  Find the book "The
Leaning Tower of Babel" (I don't recall the author's name).  It's a
collection of essays from the Underground Grammarian, a newsletter put
out by a professor at a New Jersey college decrying the
"educationists".  For example -- current education theory emphasizes a
child's self esteem, often at the expense of actually teaching the
child anything.


Some comments on public schools:

  - The trend in public schools is toward more centralization.
Decisions and standards are set more and more at the state level and
many want the federal government to set standards.  During this time,
school quality has been getting steadily worse.  Standardized schools
have become "least common denominator" schools, removing anything
resembling controversy or excellence.

  - For a scathing review of state wide standardized textbook
selection, see Richard Feynman's autobiography "Surely You're Joking,
Mr. Feynman".  He describes being on the Califonia state textbook
selection board.

  - If you look at the public schools in an economics or business
sense, what you find is a classic monopoly.  The incentives in a
public school aren't necessarily excellent education.  Teacher tenure
creates near guaranteed employment, while the goal is often to become
an administrator.  School administration staffs have exploded in the
last 10 years, some mandated by federal and state regulations, others
by the natural tendency of bureaucracies to grow.  Quality education
isn't an incentive unless parents revolt.

Before you say that parents can change the public schools, look at our
society.  Especially look at stereotypes which are exagerations of
fact.  What institutions get the most ridicule for poor service, not
caring about the customer, downtroding the poor, etc?  The Post
Office, the phone company, government planning and zoning commissions,
Military cost overruns, cable TV, etc.  All are monopolies.  Public
schools are about as hard to change as any other monopoly institution.
And the bigger public schools get, the harder they are to change.
Parent complaints of poor textbooks today will be told "the state
mandates it".  In the near future it'll probably be "the federal
government mandates it."  A wonderful copout and to fix it you have to
kick out a large number of members of Congress.
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