Vouchers and Government Control

Many libertarians cannot contain their enthusiasm over the Supreme Court’s decision last Thursday in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris. This 5-4 decision allows Cleveland, Ohio parents to use federal education money, otherwise known as vouchers, to send their children to private (and religiously-based) as well as public schools. It has been described as a major victory for school choice. Some writers are even comparing this decision to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

For example, Joseph Bast of the Chicago-based Heartland Institute wrote: "This is a major victory for civil liberties and for low-income families who are trapped in under-performing public schools. From now on, school vouchers are now clearly the preferred way to improve the quality of schools for all children. This decision is one of several recent developments, among them Florida’s first state-wide voucher plan and Secretary of Education Rod Paige’s advocacy of vouchers, showing the growing momentum for the school choice movement. Government schools cannot remain islands of centralized government control in a world of free markets and private innovation. Change is coming, and not even teacher unions will be able to block the door much longer."

Likewise, Clint Bolick, of the Washington-based Institute for Justice and the author of a forthcoming book Voucher Wars to be published early next year by the Cato Institute, stated that "[n]early half a century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court made a sacred promise of equal educational opportunities for all school children. On Thursday, June 27, it made good on that promise." Bolick adds that the Court has "recognized … that school choice is not about establishing religion, but expanding educational opportunities for children who need them desperately."

Libertarian enthusiasm for vouchers is not a new development. A few years ago, in What It Means to Be a Libertarian, Charles Murray wrote: "I side with those who are prepared to accept government funding…. Parents of every school-age child would be given a chit worth of a certain sum of money that they could take to any school they wanted… How big should the voucher be? About $3,000 a year seems right, though the amount is open to discussion…. The point of the voucher is … to give parents options…. If $3,000 turned out to be too low to achieve the desired effects, it could be increased."

Murray’s remarks are interesting, given their implications. Let’s do some quick arithmetic. With roughly 53.1 million school-age children, suppose there was a voucher of $3,000 for each child. That would add $159.3 billion per year to the federal education budget and make it five times what it is now! A libertarian who would expand instead of contract the federal budget? Surely something is amiss here.

Libertarian philosopher Tibor R. Machan expresses a far more cautious endorsement. In a forthcoming article he singles out the notion that in a society characterized by ever-expansionist government we achieve "a very minimal victory" given that the Supreme Court was persuaded of the justice for parents of having "the state give them (back?) some funds so as to pay instead for the private education they select for their children." Professor Machan observes that the one "vital favorable aspect of the court’s decision is that citizens will have an easier time to get out of the tyranny, the one-size-fits-all, the indoctrination filled public education system." Despite inherent faults in the voucher idea we should support it because "a small step will have been taken toward removing the state from its position as the sole word on history, civics, religion, biology, sex, marriage, social science and what have you. The voucher programs, despite their marred nature, encourage diversity, something that is much closer to what a free education system would provide than what we have via public education. And they do not prohibit going out a fully private educational alternative for those who can afford being double billed."

Professor Machan is in effect saying, given that we must choose between vouchers and complete government monopoly, let us choose the lesser of two evils. Why does he see the nature of vouchers as "marred"?

He answers: "I recall way back in the 1970s there were those who argued that any kind of voucher program is useless, indeed, dangerous, because, among other things, getting private education supported this way will have intolerable government strings attached…. [O]nce the government’s fingers have touched the dough, it can then insist that certain ‘standards’ its bureaucrats lay down be followed. This, then, deprives the private schools of their autonomy or independence, thus corrupting them irreparably." Professor Machan appears to believe that this danger is outweighed by the victory won in that parents can use government money to send their children to private schools if they wish.

I beg to differ. The first rule of federal funding is that with every dollar there are strings attached, and this is a much bigger danger with vouchers than any of the above writers would have us believe. It seems very odd to me that only Professor Machan seems to have noticed this. Some of the strings may not be apparent at first; bureaucrats may be inherently power-hungry, but rarely operate in an all-at-once fashion (the initial effects on our paychecks of the progressive income tax instituted in 1913 were negligible, after all). But eventually they do become apparent, and then the problem Professor Machan identified becomes manifest. Educrats are able to use the fact that the money is coming from the federal government – i.e., from taxpayers – to assert control. Federal education money means federal education control. Just ask leaders at colleges such as Hillsdale and Grove City who had to fight major lawsuits to keep free of federal interference; one of the upshots of these lawsuits is that no student attending either can accept a single federal dollar – for anything.

Vouchers mean control. I fear this will become evident should vouchers ever become established, in which case it will be too late. There are warning signs now, if one is aware of them. The most recent School Liberator (published by Marshall Fritz’s Alliance for the Separation of School and State) quoted Peoria, Ill. school board member John Day stating, "If [a voucher proposal] does happen, educators want to ensure any school receiving tax dollars must follow the same rules and be held accountable to the state, including accepting any student and administering standardized tests. Currently private schools do not have to do those things." Day made no secret of what would be the goal of the educrat in a voucher-dominated educational system: a power grab. "If public funds are to be used to support private schools, then private schools should be held accountable to the same laws and statutes that public schools must abide by."

We absolutely must realize that with government money comes government control. Home school and private Christian school advocate Rev. E. Ray Moore of the Exodus Mandate project, in his just-published book Let My Children Go, makes this point forcefully in a section entitled "Vouchering Toward Gomorrah." Rev. Moore argues that vouchers threaten the autonomy of private Christian schools. Citing Marshall Fritz, he singles out three problems with the voucher idea. First, vouchers help trivialize private education by making it easier to obtain. "If parents must work extra hours … to send their children to a private school, this sends the message that quality education is important to them." Education should not be simply dropping Johnny off on the doorstep of a private school instead of a government school. Second, private religious schools will eventually be compelled to accept every student whose parents present the voucher. Thus they lose control of their admissions policies and find themselves facing many of the same troublesome students that subsist in the government schools.

In the hands of the John Days of the educratic world, they will soon lose control of their curriculums as well. Third, because they do represent easy money coming from the government, vouchers have more in common with welfare than their proponents recognize. Lew Rockwell, author of the most important current article connecting vouchers with welfare, wrote some time back, "Vouchers represent not a shrinkage of the welfare state but an expansion, the equivalent of food stamps for private schools." Rev. Moore accordingly refers to them as "school stamps." He fears that if the voucher movement spreads and becomes established, parents will come to expect vouchers. They will become just one more entitlement.

This will open the door to left-liberal control over vouchers. Rev. Moore quotes Jonathan Rauch as having chastised his fellow liberals back in 1997 for their opposition to vouchers. Rauch stated that "[v]ouchers are … a classic opportunity to equalize opportunity. Why should the poor be denied more control over their most important means of social advancement, when soccer moms and latte drinkers take for granted that they can buy their way out of a school (or school district) that abuses or annoys them…. By embracing school choice … liberals could at one stroke emancipate the District’s schoolchildren …" This further illustrates the welfarist nature of vouchers and shows how they mean a very short term victory for "school choice" but are really a long-term instrument of control that could well erode the independence and hence the effectiveness of private schools.

Vouchers are indeed tempting. Easy money always is. Most defenders of vouchers are sincere, I am sure. They believe they are doing the right thing for parents and for children. But the case against vouchers outweighs the case in their favor, which seems limited to Tibor Machan’s observation that vouchers offer a small island of choice in a vast sea of government expansionism. This, however, is a rear-guard action against the inevitable trend, which would be eventual federal control over all forms of education in this country.

Government money is always trouble. First, it must come from somewhere, and there are only two places it can come from: out of all our pockets in the form of tax dollars, or from inflating the currency and continuing to mortgage the country’s future in the ever-expanding ocean of debt. Second, whether the money goes to individuals in the form of direct welfare handouts, to corporations in the form of "investments," or to parents as educational vouchers, it threatens to create more dependency than we have now. Third, and most important, it will increase the spiral of government control by extending this control to private schools. Eventually it be impossible for parents to send their children to autonomous religion-based schools. Sure as I am sitting here, once children are attending such schools via vouchers, some atheist will challenge them on the grounds provided by the First Amendment’s separations clause. The case will again be fought all the way to the Supreme Court, and this time the outcome might be very different.

Let us stop the "school stamp" juggernaut while we can, before we wake up one day and discover that federal educrats have connived their way into the same control over private schools as they have long had over so-called public ones – the result being that private schools would be private in name only.

no required student testing, no mandated curriculum, no certified teachers required, etc.

Even without vouchers, I think you will find that "private" schools have many many regulations on them by governments.

No. Not in FL. I am going to have to do a thread, because this is about the 3rd thread I have been on saying the same thing over and over. I am not yelling at you, BTW, but I am really tired of people here inventing laws for FL that do not actually exist in FL.

FYI -- The info below is from the FL Dept of Education, and can be found by clicking HERE.

"General Requirements for Non-Public Schools

Legislative intent not to regulate, control, approve or accredit non-public educational institutions, churches, their ministries, religious instruction, freedoms or rites, is explicit. The Department of Education does not have jurisdiction and there are very few references to private schools in Florida law. The owners of private elementary and secondary schools in Florida are solely responsible for all aspects of their educational programs....."

See post #24, and I will ping you to a future thread on this. There is so much misinformation that goes out on these threads, and FR really has a much higher quality of info than what I have read on this particular topic. (And, my comment here has nothing to do with varying opinions expressed.)

From the Grove City site:

Benefits of Independence

Grove City College teaches and advocates free market economic theory. By putting that theory into practice, the College maintains competitively low charges and a superior academic program. Grove City College operates on a balanced budget, refuses federal aid and remains virtually debt-free, thereby proving that higher education can operate responsibly by providing an affordable, first-rate education without government funding or mandates. Demonstrating its commitment to freedom, Grove City challenged federal regulation during the 1980s. The College successfully argued its landmark case, Grove City College v. T.H. Bell, Secretary of the Department of Education, before the United States Supreme Court. Grove City exemplifies the American ideals of individual liberty and responsibility. In other words, Grove City College practices what it teaches.

In 2001-2002, charges for all academic programs (notebook computer/printer and room & board included) will remain under $13,000. Source: http://www.gcc.edu/aboutgcc/benefits.htm

As long as the money goes to the parents and not the schools directly, I don't see this happening. The reason there are so many controls and mandates on public schools is because the funds go directly to the school districts.

"Money" won't go to anyone - it will be a piece of paper or a coupon of some kind that the school can redeem from the government.....provided they meet the government's "accredited private school" definition, which is where the controls will come in. No one's going to give anyone actual cash - if they did, you'd be right.

Thanks for taking a look at that info, LiberT. (BTW, very clever screen name you've got there!)

Also, as I mentioned on another thread: when you consider the fact a private school student in FL has to meet NO state requirements, then, it is actually true that a FL homeschooler has more state requirements to meet than a private school student (since the private school student must meet ZERO state requirements).

Finally - I don't know if the situation will change in FL. Time will tell....

The arguement that vouchers will lead to government control, or mandates, of private schools is used by the left as a scare tactic

Liberals are using that line a lot now on TV. Vouchers are very controversial, many conservatives fear government control of private schools...yadda...yadda...yadda.

They will do or say anything to stop vouchers.

Vouchers are very controversial, many conservatives fear government control of private schools...yadda...yadda...yadda.

I'm not a liberal and I'm concerned about further government control of private schools.

Summer, students with Florida vouchers DO take the assessment.

The Florida Opportunities Scholarship page contains the following information:

https://www.opportunityschools.org/Info/OSP/responsibilities.asp

Scroll down to: Public School Responsibilities:

State Assessment Local school districts must also provide locations and times for all students in the district participating in the Opportunity Scholarship Program to take all statewide assessment tests.

A visit to the Frequently Asked Questions page, look at question #5:

What obligations do I have as a parent of a student eligible for an Opportunity Scholarship?

Answer: (among other things) Parents or guardians must ensure that their child takes all required state assessments.

Source: https://www.opportunityschools.org/Shared/faqs.asp?prgmtype=1

From that site:

5) Q: What obligations do I have as a parent of a student eligible for an Opportunity Scholarship?

A: Parents or guardians must ensure that their child takes all required state assessments and must comply fully with the private school's parental involvement requirements, unless excused for absence or good cause. A student who chooses to use an Opportunity Scholarship to attend a participating private school must:

Remain in attendance throughout the school year, unless excused for illness or good cause

Comply fully with the school's code of conduct

Notify the Department of Education and the local school district if the decision is made to return to a public school or to transfer to another private school.

And, no state assessment is currently "required." I know that kids are not taking these tests -- that's why it became an issue, with the teachers union complaining there was no "accountability." In the eyes of the teachers union, the parents of private school students do not count as the ones providing the accountability.

Since this question keeps coming up over and over on all these voucher threads, I will try to find more definitive info and get back to you.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.