Are School Vouchers (and Charters) Really the Free Market at Work? Does the Free Market Include Government Funding/Regulations?

School "choices".

Andrew Coulson from CATO writes about the idea of "choice" and why many "choice" proponents who espouse "free market" are actually promoting unconstitutional ideas.  We at MEW have some rather spirited discussions the last several days with "choicers" about our recent articles on "choice" questioning whether this "choice" actually is free market or markets propped up by tax dollars.

Education is free market when the government doesn't fund it and regulate its operation.  Coulson wonders how government funded vouchers can be considered free market by the choice movement.  How can does a government funded "choice" in education containing the same mandates as traditional public school be classified as free market?  Coulson explains why vouchers are not really choice at all in Obama, Romney, Teachers, and Choice:

Posted by Andrew J. Coulson

 

Jay Greene has an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal this week revealing that the teacher workforce has grown dramatically over the past forty years—and at enormous cost—without improving student achievement by the end of high school. And he rightly disparages President Obama for arguing that even more teachers would somehow do the trick. Even better, Greene notes that American education will not reverse its productivity collapse and become efficient until we allow it to benefit from the freedoms and incentives of the marketplace.

But then Jay cites Governor Romney’s goal of “voucherizing federal education funds so that parents can take those resources and use them to send their children to schools of their choice,” and he does so with apparent approbation. Even ignoring the fact that the Constitution does not empower Congress to run education programs, this is a very dangerous idea.

There has been no civilization in the history of humanity in which governments have paid for private schooling without ultimately controlling what was taught and who could teach, erecting barriers to entry and thereby crippling market forces.

For that reason, I recommended against a federal voucher program under the Bush administration. Since then, additional evidence has come to light. When I studied the regulatory impact of U.S. private school choice programs last year I found that even the small existing U.S. voucher programs do indeed impose a heavy and very statistically significant additional burden of regulation on participating private schools.

Perhaps a way will be found to enact and maintain minimally regulated voucher programs in the coming years. Until that time comes, it would be the height of folly to introduce a federal voucher program whose regulations would suffocate educational freedom from coast to coast.

In my statistical study of choice program regulation, I found that K-12 tax credit programs do not impose a statistically significant extra burden of regulation on private schools. But even a national K-12 tax credit program would be far too dangerous. By leaving education policy to the states and the people, we can see which programs flourish and which become sclerotic. We must encourage and learn from that policy diversity, not squelch it with federal programs or mandates.

Coulson has the correct idea about educational delivery and the only solution that is constitutional:  leave education to the states and the people.    Don't try to sell the federally funded voucher idea as a viable alternative to traditional public schools when the private schools will have to conform to the same mandates and regulations of the traditional public schools. 

He doesn't mention charter schools in this CATO article, but I wonder if he would make the same argument when scrutinizing the free market argument made in favor of charter schools.  In this 2001 article from thefreemanonline.com critiquing a book on charters, he raises concerns about taxpayer funding of charters and understanding that once the government funds these schools, they lose their autonomy:

The risks and shortcomings of charter schools are several. For one thing, whenever the state rather than the consumer pays for a service, we have the breeding grounds for fraud and corruption. Parents cannot be duped into paying for children they do not have, but the same can’t be said of government agencies. The authors describe several fraudulent abuses, but fail to acknowledge that the problem is intrinsic to the separation of payment from consumption.

Allowing the government to hold the educational purse strings also draws the attention of charter schools away from families and toward the state. In a market, producers increase their income either by cutting costs or demonstrating improved services for which consumers are willing to pay more. Charter schools will only be able to raise revenues by lobbying the state. The 14-fold increase in inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending that has occurred in government schools over the past 75 years is a sobering harbinger of what to expect under charter schooling. The authors provide evidence of this lobbying already occurring among the country’s nascent charter schools, but seem not to understand its importance or inevitability.

Finally, charter schools preclude the direct financial responsibility of parents that history shows to be crucial for the maintenance of parental involvement in, and control over, their children’s education.

Based on historical and contemporary precedents, charter schools are likely to be re-regulated to the point where they are indistinguishable from traditional government-run schools. The authors are aware of this “ominous threat,” but can offer no solution.

The downside of charter schooling would be of negligible importance if their impact were limited to charter schools themselves. Charter schools would still constitute some improvement over traditional public schools. The real concern is that previously independent private schools are being lured into the charter fold. If large numbers of private schools adopt charter status, the eventual re-regulation of charter schools will expand the government education monopoly. The authors make no mention of this Damoclean sword hanging over the charter movement.

Don't try to pass charters off as free market when they are taxpayer funded.  Don't privatize education via charters where taxpayers and parents have no decision making abilities and mandates (not laws) dictate how and what standards/assessments will be taught to students and pre-determined vendors cash in on supplying the curricula and systems needed because of the mandates.  

If your state legislators espouse "choice" as conservative and free market ideas, send them a copy of Coulson's article.  These "choices" as they are currently constructed are neither. 

Successful Swedish For-Profit Schools and a Letter to Cato.

Cato has an interesting article today about successful Swedish for-profit schools. Andrew Coulson writes:

In 1992, Sweden introduced a nation-wide public and private school choice program. Private schools went from enrolling virtually no one to enrolling about 11 percent of the entire student population–a figure that continues to grow with each passing year. Moreover, recent research finds that these new private schools outperform the public schools. And which private schools are growing the fastest? The chains of for-profit schools that are in greatest demand, and that have an incentive to respond to that demand by opening new locations. The popular non-profit private schools tend not to expand much over time.

Given that Sweden is universally regarded as a liberal nation, and the U.S. is seen as a bastion of capitalism, one wonders why they got to the brass ring first, and why it is taking us so very long to get there now that they’ve shown us the way.

The results are promising but I was curious how Swedish schools were structured in terms of mandates and nationalized curriculum, and if for-profit schools could be successful in the United States as well.

Read the Cato article first and then my letter sent to Cato with questions on if this is something that could realistically be accomplished in the United States because of federal mandates and common core standards:

****************************************

I am responding to the piece on the Cato blog by Andrew Coulson: "Sweden Profits from For-Profit Schools".

The statistics look promising for educational results for those students, and I am assuming the article was implying this would be a good alternative for American public educated students. I was curious on how exactly how Swedish for-profit schools operated in terms of mandates and nationalized assessments and curriculum.

It seems by reading this description of Swedish schools, they have quite a bit of autonomy in the upper grades in educating students, rather than the "one size fits all" plan touted by Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, NGA, CCSSO and others. However, in the lower grades, there is not much choice and there apparently have been critics of tailoring the curriculum to a "common" level as it seems to hold high achieving children back:

Students in Swedish primary schools have very limited choice in their education. For instance, advanced mathematics courses are available only during the spring term of the seventh grade (the year students will turn 13); until then, all students take the same basic mathematics courses. A similar situation applies to most other subjects. This is the result of a concerted effort to streamline education, in the hope that this will favor students from families with lower levels of educational attainment. Critics claim it has lowered results significantly among talented students without raising them within other groups.

This reminds me of the common core standards being pushed through by Arne Duncan. The article then addresses the various options available to the students as they age:

At the age of 13 (sometimes even 12), more choices become available: the student is allowed to pick from a more demanding course in higher math, chemistry/physics, biology, art and music. However, this varies from school to school. Sometimes more practical courses are also available for students to elect, such as carpentry or electronics. All students between 12–15 years old take math, English, Swedish, foreign language, NO (physics, chemistry, biology, technology), SO (social studies, history, religion, geography), physical education, art, music, carpentry or sewing and a course in home economics.

After students graduate from the nine-year compulsory school, the selection of education, both private and state owned, becomes much broader. As all education is publicly funded, all students have a large selection of choices, which are quite different from some other western nations, where some education costs more money than others, thus limiting the choice for those with a less fortunate background.

The Swedish School Plan also highly encourages an individualistic education in which each student has their specific means met. The students are also encouraged not only to participate in student councils, but also to actually form the education they desire together with their teachers, choosing what books to read and how to balance practice with theory depending on which the individual students find most enjoyable to learn from.

Perhaps if our schools were allowed to teach children based on ability and interest, rather than a "common" educational plan, we could have successful for profit schools as well. If we are seriously interested in providing great education for American children and if the answer is to provide it through for-profit schools, then those schools cannot be operated under the same restrictive mandates as traditional public schools. Otherwise, the "choice" is false. The delivery of the services may be different, but the educational foundation is the same and real "reform" cannot be realized.

Why aren't politicians and the DOE putting plans into place that will truly educate children instead of trying to "privatize" education that is still under federal mandates which really makes it no different from a public school education? Who and what are they trying to serve? Students or for-profit schools that cannot operate in an autonomous manner? For-profit schools might just work in the United States, but maybe what would make them successful is they are not constricted with common core and Race to the Top like mandates.

And I'm just curious: Sweden does not allow homeschooling in most situations. Is that a bothersome law to you at Cato?

Perhaps Homeschooling Parents Should be Heading Up the Department of Education. They Spend Less Money for Better Test Results.

We are highlighting two articles tonight regarding educational expenses and test scores with the expenses noted. One article, from Homeschooling United gives statistics from homeschooling expenses and test scoring, and the other is written by Andrew Coulson from Cato, tracking Department of Education spending and resultant test scores.

Homeschooling United states the following:

In 2009, Dr. Brian Ray released a study on the progress of homeschooled students compared to their publicly schooled counterparts.

Drawing from 15 independent testing services, the Progress Report 2009: Homeschool Academic Achievement and Demographics included 11,739 homeschooled student from all 50 states who took three well-know tests–California Achievement Test, Iowa Basic Skill, and Stanford Achievement Test for the 2007-08 academic year. The progress Report is the most comprehensive homeschool academic study ever completed.

National Average Percentile Scores
Subtest Homeschool Public School
Reading 89 50
Language 84 50
Math 84 50
Science 86 50
Social Studies 84 50
Core-a 88 50
Core-b 86 50
Core-a is a combination of Reading, Language, and Math
Core-b is a combination of all subjects that the students took on the test.

There was little difference between the results of homeschooled boys and girls on core scores.

Now we'll focus on some information published by The Cato Institute entitled "The Impact of Federal Involvement in America's Classrooms:"

For over half a century, a succession of Congresses and presidents has sought to do two things for American elementary and secondary education: raise overall achievement, and narrow the gaps between high- and low-income students as well as between minority and white students. The federal government has spent roughly $2 trillion on these efforts since 1965, adjusting for inflation.¹


Math and Reading scores at the end of high school are unchanged over the past forty years, while Science scores suffered a slight decline through the year 1999, the last time that test was administered. Data from another nationally representative test series show a continuing decline in 12th grade Science between 1996 and 2005, the last year for which we have trend data.²


We spent over $151,000 per student sending the graduating class of 2009 through public schools. That is nearly three times as much as we spent on the graduating class of 1970, adjusting for inflation. Despite that massive real spending increase, overall achievement has stagnated or declined, depending on the subject.

Why is the difference in test scores so marked between homeschooled students and public educated students? How is it that even families who spent less than $600.00 annually on homeschooling performed at an 86% level while public educated students at almost $10,000.00 per year only scored at a 50% level?

One could make the assumption that homeschooling parents have higher level of education and income than parents of public educated students and that's the reason they outperform publicly educated students . Here's more information from Homeschooling United:

Household income had little impact on the results of homeschooled students.

$34,000 or less – 85th percentile
$35,000 – $49,999 – 86th percentile
$50,000 – $69,999 – 86 percentile
$70,000 or more – 89 percentile

Educational level of parents:

Neither parent has a college degree – 83rd percentile
One parent has a college degree – 86th percentile
Both parents have a college degree – 90th percentile

Whether either parent was a certified teacher did not matter.

Certified (i.e. either parent ever certified)-87th percentile
Not certified (i.e., neither parent ever certified)-88th percentile

Andrew Coulson of Cato reports on the importance of the level of parental education for public education student testing results:

But what of the federal government's other educational goal: narrowing the achievement gaps by income and minority status? Test score breakdowns by family income are not available, but we do have something close: a breakdown by parents' level of education. This allows us to compare the children of high school dropouts to those of college graduates. In Reading and Science, the gap between these students has not narrowed in 40 years. In Math it has narrowed by barely one percent of the test score scale.³ So, here again, federal appropriations and the programs they have funded have failed to achieve their goals.

So what are we to make of this? It's obvious that parents having a higher degree impacts homeschoolers' test results. It seems obvious this fact impacts public school students as well. But the 33%-36% difference in test scores between homeschooled students and public school students is staggering. What causes such a huge difference between homeschooled scores and public educated student scores?

If you follow the last four decades of educational thought and spending, you might believe if the government just throws more money at the problem, the problem will be resolved. Coulson writes:

To sum up, we have little to show for the $2 trillion in federal education spending of the past half century. In the face of concerted and unflagging efforts by Congress and the states, public schooling has suffered a massive productivity collapse — it now costs three times as much to provide essentially the same education as we provided in 1970.

So throwing money at the problem isn't the answer. Federalized standards aren't the answer. Homeschoolers test better than publicly educated students....how do we provide better education to public school students, then? What is it that homeschooling students receive from their education that apparently is missing from public education? Coulson gives us an idea on what has worked with a small section of public education students:

But amidst this bleak overall record, there is one federal education program that has been proven to both improve educational outcomes and dramatically lower costs. That is the Washington, DC Opportunity Scholarships Program. Research conducted by the Department of Education finds that students attending private schools thanks to this program have equal or better academic performance than their peers in the local public schools, and have significantly higher graduation rates. This, and very high levels of parental satisfaction, come at an average per pupil cost of around $7,000. By contrast, per pupil spending on k-12 public education in the nation's capital was roughly $28,000 during the 2008-09 school year.⁶

The OSP program is thus producing better results at a quarter the cost.

What do the homeschooling community and the private school industry have in common? Little to no governmental interference, no common core standards, innovative curriculum and autonomy in teaching to each child. Now those are radical educational practices; but really, they are not all that radical, are they? Those educational practices have been proven to work for students vs the school "choice" currently being pushed by million dollar lobbyists. Those programs such as trigger options and charter schools are not "choice": they are still controlled by common core mandates and assessments present in traditional public schools. What exactly do you call a choice that is not a choice? An educational version of musical chairs?

Why isn't the DOE studying the successes of homeschooling and private schools and adapting and adopting what they are doing right to truly reform public educational systems? Why aren't local communities allowed to use their tax dollars to provide educational opportunities that work for their district children instead of having standards and assessments dictated to them? How much more money and control will be wrested from taxpayers and states to refine federal programs that haven't worked for at least the last forty years?