Category: Policy

I was surprised at the response when I expressed my interest in introducing school choice to the public school system. It was suggested to me that people may have thought I was recommending some sort of voucher system, so let me dispel that idea and clarify the policy I advocate. Then, I’ll address some of the arguments.
The public schools here are divided by districts, and students must attend the school at the appropriate level within their district. In fact, they are looking to strengthen the restrictions to prevent parents from using relatives’ addresses to qualify their child to attend a school in another district. What I suggest is that, if you have a student enrolled in the public school in your district, and you want them to attend another public school in the county, you can send them to the other school, as long as you can provide transportation to the school outside of your district. Students who are attending the prescribed school in their district would still be able to take advantage of busing. Now, to some of the arguments:

• What about the students whose families cannot afford to transport them to a better school outside of their district?
  First, this argument seems to assume that families would have to pay some third-party service for transportation, like getting their kid an Uber every day. It costs nothing but time and gas for the parents to drive their children to another school themselves. Alternatively, a grandparent, uncle, cousin or even a friend of the family could provide that transportation, free of charge. If you’re worried about a two-tier system of education, where the wealthy families get a better education than poorer families, that system already exists, since wealthy families can afford to send their children to private schools. There are many more families, however, that cannot afford to send their children to private school but can afford to spend an extra 30 – 45 minutes every morning and/or afternoon to take their kids to a neighboring district for a better education. Though, the simplest response to this argument is:  For the families who cannot afford to transport their children to a better school outside their assigned district, their situation has not changed. They are attending the same school that they attended before the option was given. To oppose is to believe that it is worse for all people to be given an option that some cannot exercise than for none to have the option.
• Won’t the worst schools end up with fewer students?
  Hopefully. I fail to understand why this is a problem. In fact, if the worst schools ended up with no students, I calculate that is an improvement. However, some kind of equilibrium would eventually be reached. All else being equal, personal attention has a positive impact on the education of a student, and as students filter out of the worst schools, class sizes would reach a level where there was some advantage to attending those schools. Additionally, if schools are funded based on enrollment, positive pressure would be placed on the schools to compete with each other to provide a better education to draw more students… and that leads to the next contention.
• Shouldn’t the schools that are performing the worst get more/the most funding?
  While I understand the logic of this assertion, it creates perverse incentives to provide more funding for failure. Like many government programs, you have incentivized the status quo by making it more beneficial to continue to fail, rather than to improve the outcomes. The incentives in any system should be given for providing higher quality services. If a school performs poorly, replace staff until it succeeds. If there is no improvement over time and the school fails, so be it.
• What if the best football/basketball/baseball players all go to the same school?
  This is a possibility, but unlikely. There is some advantage for an athlete to be a big fish in a small pond. The two best quarterbacks in the county are not going to attend the same school, because they both want to play all of the snaps. I think school choice is more likely to create greater parity between the schools. Regardless, I don’t think it’s relevant. The issue only concerns high school students, and I’d be surprised if varsity athletes represent 10% of students.
• We should be able to make all the schools equal.
  Define equal. How would this be evaluated, since equality can only be assessed through things which can be objectively measured? Total enrollment? Student to teacher ratios? Total spending? Spending per student? Graduation rates? Failure rates? Even if you were somehow able to make all of these data the same across all schools in the county, the human factor leaves them inherently unequal. If you provide the same curriculum to two schools with identical objective measurements, there will still be inequality, since students and teachers are individuals. Some students respond better to some teachers’ styles than other students, who will respond better to other teachers. When applied to social institutions, equality is simply a buzzword which can be neither defined nor implemented. “And the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw.”

My argument is simple:  Do you believe that people should be permitted to make their own choices about their lives? Do people have the right to choose for themselves how they will raise their families? If so, does that apply to what school those people attend or send their children? There is only one moral answer to those questions.