Funding school choice programs: "… vouchers or tax credits … not only will give children access ti better education, [they] will unleast the power of constructive competition that will lead to dramatically improved outcomes in the future." - Education

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Nov, 2003 by David F. Salisbury

SCHOOL VOUCHERS have garnered increased attention as more states have adopted programs allowing families to have a choice of private or public--rather than just public--schools. The idea of school choice traces its history at least as far back as political essayist Thomas Paine, who, in The Rights of Man (1791), proposed providing financial support to parents who could use those funds to send their children to private schools. However, it was not until Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman discussed the idea in his 1962 classic, Capitalism and Freedom, that the concept began to receive serious consideration in modern America. Interest in school choice accelerated in 1983 following the release of A Nation at Risk, a report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education that identified a rising tide of mediocrity in American education, and forced reformers and policymakers to take a serious look at the situation.

A comprehensive survey of public and private schools published by John Chubb and Terry Moe in 1990 gave strong support to the growing belief that centralization and bureaucracy are the main causes of inefficiency. As evidence that government learning institutions are overcentralized and bureaucratized, they detailed the difference in administrative overhead between public and private schools. For example, it was noted that there were 6,000 administrators in the New York City public school system, yet a mere 25 in the Catholic schools--the latter serving nearly one-fourth as many students. Other scholars also have documented the consistent trend over the last several decades toward larger, centralized school districts. In 1945, there were more than 100,000 school districts in the U.S. By 1993, the number had fallen to 14,881. During this same period, the enrollments in public schools increased from about 25,000,000 to over 46,000,000.

As districts became larger, school bureaucracies increased in proportion to the number of teachers in classrooms. Today, 51.6% of school employees are teachers. In 1950, nearly 70% were. In 2000, 62% of public school spending went for instruction. Administrative costs consumed 15%, or nearly one-fourth, of what schools spent on instruction. It wasn't only free market intellectuals that pointed to monopoly and centralization as the core malady of public schools. In 1989, Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, stated, "Public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and them are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy."

In addition to causing massive inefficiencies and waste, instructional monopolies tend to serve many or most of their clients poorly, especially in a large and diverse society. As economist Walter Williams observes: "A state monopoly in the production of a good or service enhances the potential for conflict, through requiring uniformity; that is, its production [necessitates] a collective decision on many attributes of the product, and once produced, everybody has to consume the identical product whether he agrees with all the attributes or not...."

During the past 20 years, an increasing number of activists and policymakers have fought for reforms that would break the government monopoly in K-12 education. To date, 11 states have implemented school choice programs that permit families to choose between public and private schools. However, many of these programs are restricted in a number of ways that have prevented a fully competitive education market from developing. Virtually all have student quotas, or restrict participation to children from the community's poorest families or schools. Such restrictions dilute the potential benefits that would arise from a fully competitive education market. Although limited school choice programs such as these provide help to some youngsters, they are not large enough to unleash the entrepreneurial forces necessary to create a major revolution in educational quality.

An ideal school choice program would give every child a voucher or tax credit to be spent on educational services at any public or private school in the state. The amount of the voucher or tax credit should be nearly equivalent to the amount of tax funds already being spent per student in the government schools. In 2000 (the most recent year for which data is available), average private elementary school tuition in the U.S. was less than $3,500. Private secondary schools cost $6,052. Since the average tuition for all private schools, elementary and secondary, is $4,689, a voucher amount of $5,000 probably would be adequate to cover the cost at the majority of private schools. Taking into consideration the mean per-pupil spending for public schools is now $9,354, most states could propose an even higher voucher amount and still realize substantial savings.