Accountability vs. Vouchers: The Achilles' heel of school choice.

National Review Online ^ | July 16, 2002 | John J. Miller

[xsysmgr]

The American Federation of Teachers has just announced its strategy to destroy school choice: regulate private schools to death.

On June 27, the Supreme Court declared educational vouchers to be perfectly constitutional, even if they're used at religious schools. The Zelman decision has invigorated the school-choice movement. Advocates now hope to expand school choice outside Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Florida, which currently pay for the education of about 20,000 kids through vouchers. House Majority Leader Dick Armey is promoting a school-choice bill for the District of Columbia, similar to the one Bill Clinton vetoed five years ago.

This is all worth doing, but conservatives must be cautious. The Left will continue to oppose school choice vigorously at every opportunity. When it fails, it will try to subvert — and it will use the current accountability movement as its primary vehicle.

AFT president Sandra Feldman announces as much in her current "Where We Stand" column, which is published as a paid advertisement is several publications. Her July commentary (not yet available on the web) announces, "Voucher schools that refuse to be held accountable to the public must not get public dollars."

Accountability can mean many things. Private schools are already held accountable to the public in a number of ways. Their buildings must abide by fire codes, for instance. In terms of the education they provide, however, they're by and large exempt from government meddling. They can design their own curricula, determine their own teaching methods, and hire their own staff. This freedom is an important part of the reason why private schools outperform public ones.

Feldman and the AFT, however, want to change this. "Parents and the public have a right to know how well students are doing in any school that receives public funding," writes Feldman. "Public schools are now required by law to test their students and to report the results of these tests to the public. ... Voucher schools do not have to meet any of these standards. They are free to be excellent, but they are also free to fail."

Feldman would have private schools accepting vouchers conform to the same "accountability" standards that the public schools increasingly face. She would also force these schools to hire "certified" teachers.

These are both very bad ideas. Private schools, even those accepting vouchers, should be able to set their own scholastic standards, including testing standards. Some may conform to various accountability requirements imposed on public schools, while others may not. Parents with educational vouchers can decide for themselves how much these decisions matter.

The same goes for teachers. Private schools should be allowed to hire anybody they want to teach their students. Education degrees are vastly overrated — history majors without degrees in education graduate from college having taken more history courses than education majors who go on to teach history. It makes no sense to exclude these people from the teaching professions. Public schools currently do this; many private schools rightly view these people as a tremendous resource.

One of the primary goals of the school-choice movement is to privatize a portion of the public-education system — and thereby improve the education kids receive. What the teacher unions will now try to do, however, is the reverse: impose regulations that have hurt public schools upon private ones currently immune to them. Vouchers financed by tax dollars will be their wedge.

School choice remains a worthy pursuit, but conservatives will have to guard against the creep of regulation — otherwise they will contribute to the destruction of something they now look to for salvation.

[goldstategop]

It would better to bypass the government altogether and set up foundations to accomplish the same objective. With vouchers you get government regulations and that ends up defeating the whole intent behind privatizing public education in the first place.

[isthisnickcool]

Vouchers should have no strings attached.

[BufordP]

When legislators begin attacking private schools, the parents of the children who attend those schools will, maybe for the first time, become a little more discerning on election day.

Establishing the constitutionality of vouchers will prove to be the first domino. Watch them fall.

[ladtx]

Public schools are now required by law to test their students and to report the results of these tests to the public...

And look how well the public schools have performed.< /scarcasm >

[BruceS]

This is more of the left's misunderstanding of free markets. Since they are basically socialists, they do not understand that the market will impose standards on each of the private schools. If they do not result in a better "product" (a child whose education allows them to compete in the marketplace) than the public schools, then consumers (parents) will take their business elsewhere.

That said, private schools will have to demonstrate that they are outperforming public schools to survive, vouchers or no vouchers. They will have to pursuade parents that sending their children to a particular private school will result in their children learning more. This will probably mean that the private schools will give the same state-wide tests now being given by most states. They will then have to demonstrate that they have taught the children in their care more that public schools (or other private schools). Fortunately, that will not be hard in many cases.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Any bets that parents of private school students are more liberal than conservative?

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

If vouchers are set up similarly to the G.I. Bill, I say go for it.

[LarryLied]

The way to counter this is to hit first and hit hard. We need voucher bills introduced in every state in the Union. Not one bill, a dozen bills in each state. When one fails, the GOP needs to introduce another.And another. And another.

This will cost conservatives virtually nothing but will bleed the left dry. The left wins in liberal courts. They cannot compete across the nation except through judicial rulings.

Liberals are fighting on turf conservatives dominate. Waiting for Sandra Feldmen to attack makes no sense. We need to force her run around to every district she controls trying to stop voucher bills. That way she won't have time or the money to lobby for restrictions on private schools.

And, as an added bonus, every dollar liberals spend trying to stop vouchers is a dollar they can't spend on ads opposing Republican candidates this fall.

[Free the USA]

Index Bump

[BJungNan]

The whole idea of school choice is to let parents regulate the schools their children attend. We don't need the government to do this. The whole idea is to get away from the government and the mess is has made of education.

Teachers need to get one with doing their jobs. If they are such professionals they should have no trouble competing. From what I see and hear though is that teachers are nothing but complainers.

Just recently a friend that is a teacher gave me the same tired mantra, oh I am so underpaid. I only get $60,000 a year and if it was not for the 3 months I get off each summer I would go insane.

[BufordP]

Any bets that parents of private school students are more liberal than conservative? Yes. You're making my point. Figured it out yet?

[F16Fighter]

I wish someone would point out the Amendment in the Constitution which decrees the right of a Leftist Government to indoctrinate and brainwash American children with unconstitutionally confiscated taxes.

[Lizavetta]

Voucher schools do not have to meet any of these standards. They are free to be excellent, but they are also free to fail."

But Ms. Feldman, your government schools are also free to fail with no loss of funding. How wonderful that when a private school is a failure, IT WILL GO AWAY, unlike your schools.

[justshutupandtakeit]

States clearly have the right to tax residents for anything not forbidden by the U.S. Constitution or the State constitution. How you come up with the idea that taxation for public schools is "unconstitutional" is a mystery to me but is obviously false particularly since the first sales of U.S. land tracts required land be set aside for schools. Of course, those buffoons who wrote the constitution and passed the Northwest Ordinance didn't know what they were doing, right?

[justshutupandtakeit]

You mean the liberals are going to wake up and vote? If that is your point it was very obscure if not it is even more obscure.

[Texaggie79]

Another rule of the free market is that the customer is always right. Since the money is coming from the Fed, the fed will be able to attack strings. Do you honestly believe that the fed wouldn't?

[F16Fighter]

"States clearly have the right to tax residents for anything not forbidden by the U.S. Constitution or the State Constitution."

"Clearly"?? The only thing that's "clear" is the federal government's so-called "right" to confiscate from it's citizens not only funding for whatever they deem fit (i.e. public school sanctioned religious Secular Humanism, national and international wealth redistribution, etc.) without consulting the people, but for whatever d@mn reason they please.

Want to donate to Africa's AID fund? Don't want your 14 year old taught to stretch a condom over a banana? Sorry pal -- you havent much choice in the matter, do you? This kind of rationale about taxation must be what so-called constitutional scholars as yourself mean by the loophole known as a "living constitution"...

So much for the quaint, archaic term "taxation without representation". The "buffoons" who wrote the Constitution are spinning in their graves at the way this great document and in it's true spirit has been subverted only to eventual further political agendae.

[BufordP]

Okay. I said:

When legislators begin attacking private schools, the parents of the children who attend those schools will, maybe for the first time, become a little more discerning on election day.

Establishing the constitutionality of vouchers will prove to be the first domino. Watch them fall.

Now what could I possibly have meant? Whether you are a liberal, conservative, or whatever and your child is attending a private school that is being threatened by candidate/incumbent "A" with regulations that are antithetical to your child's best interest, will your political affiliation matter much when it comes time to vote? Or will you pull the lever for the candidate/incumbent "B" who has promised or has a track record of not meddling in the affairs of private citizens?

Sure, there will always be those who shoot themselves in the foot when it comes time to vote. But for the most part, a shift will occur to voting for legislators who will not interfer with a parents control in the education of their child.

Now that the door has opened to allowing vouchers, those legislators who attach strings to those vouchers may succeed in the short run. But in the long run it will prove to be politcal suicide. Given the constitutionality of vouchers one of two things will occur: 1) Conservative/Libertarians will win more elections or 2) Liberals will lay off education regulation.

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And I thought I said it so much more succinctly the first time. :-)