The Edgewood Voucher Program: Some Preliminary Findings

In 1998, a unique voucher program began in the Edgewood District of San Antonio, Texas. Unlike the other privately funded programs, the Children's Education Opportunity (CEO) Foundation will pay the full tuition of virtually every nearby private school. Unlike the other U.S. voucher programs, nearly every student is eligible. (1) As a result, the program could significantly raise private schools' market share. The stakes are high. Since nearly 80 percent of the school district's funding comes from the state on a per pupil basis, the Edgewood District suffers a large revenue loss per student departure; perhaps more than the cost reduction per student departure (Texas Education Agency). (2) In other words, the marginal cost avoided when a student uses a voucher to enroll in a private school may be less than the per pupil state funding. The unusually high stakes raise the probability that the voucher program will prompt changes in district policies, either because of competitive pressures or budget cuts. Unlike other U.S. voucher programs, the Edgewood program establishes the nearly universal choice that is a key element of the genuine competition that virtually everyone agrees would significantly alter the K-12 education system. This article compares the Edgewood program to a competitive education system with low entry barriers, market-determined prices, and a critical mass of informed, mobile consumers, and to the other U.S. cities with prominent voucher programs. In addition, it identifies key issues for further research and tentatively assesses some of the program's early results. Background In 1955, and again, more prominently in 1962, Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman urged policymakers to allocate government funding of K-12 education through a universal voucher program. He argued that the profit motive and the resulting competition would invigorate schooling practices. With the surging civil rights movement and the 1957 launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellite, which highlighted the woeful science and math skills of U.S. high school graduates. Friedman's reform proposal drew considerable attention. The strongly worded 1983 Nation at Risk report (National Commission 1983), and disappointment with previous reform efforts, provided an additional surge of interest. The voucher idea appealed to conservatives eager to scale back the size of government and "liberals" concerned about the especially serious plight of children from low-income families (Jencks 1966; Singal 1991; Viteritti 1999: 55). But it was not enough to prompt the implementation of even highly restrictive, distant cousins of Friedman's proposal until 1990 when Milwaukee offered vouchers to approximately 1,000 low-income families. Additional distant cousins now exist in Cleveland, Florida, and Colorado, and in various cities through private funding. Because those programs cap participation at a tiny fraction of the student population, they can only transfer a few children among existing schools within a little changed school system. Commentators, including many academic scholars and prominent school choice advocates, frequently overlook that critical limitation and hype even modest escape-hatch programs as insightful experiments (Merrifield 2001: chap. 3). Milwaukee and Cleveland have the oldest publicly funded voucher programs. Both programs limit participation to a small fraction of the city's low-income families. For example, starting with Milwaukee's 1998-99 program expansion, the maximum number of vouchers rose to 15 percent of enrollment, still far below the number of low-income families. The expansion added church-run schools to the eligible schools, but the demand for private school seats still exceeds the supply. The Milwaukee program contains other competition-killing rules. Private schools cannot cash vouchers unless they accept them as full payment. In other words, the law bans private co-payments. …