Learning opportunities - school choice - includes related article

National Review, Sept 12, 1994 by David Boaz

The solution is simple: allow school districts to exempt themselves from receiving out-of-district students. The analogy would be to emigration and immigration. International public opinion roundly condemns countries that prevent their citizens from leaving but grants much more leeway with regard to immigration policy. Similarly, a choice plan should insist that districts allow unsatisfied families to "emigrate," using the voucher to attend different schools, but it could let districts set their own immigration policies. Private schools would still provide plenty of options for dissatisfied students.

A stronger safeguard would be to limit vouchers to private schools. Each student could attend her local public school or take the voucher and attend any private school of her choice--but there would be no public-school choice beyond what districts might adopt internally.

Some choice supporters, such as John Coons of the University of California at Berkeley Law School, refused to support Proposition 174 because it provided for a voucher (which it called a scholarship) of only about $2,600, more than the average cost of private school but in Coons's opinion insufficient to allow the most educationally deprived students to find a suitable private education. A state choice group might propose a full-value voucher, worth whatever the state currently spends on a child in public school. (The national average is about $6,000.) This would mean no cost savings from vouchers, but it might attract support from liberal and minority voters.

On the other hand, the false claim that vouchers would cost the taxpayers money has been used effectively against choice initiatives, which failed in both Colorado (in 1992) and California while fiscal conservatism prevailed in other initiatives. Teachers' unions and their allies make protaxpayer arguments with a straight face and to great effect. They claim that vouchers will cost the taxpayers money because the 10 percent of students now enrolled in private schools will get them immediately. That's true, but if the voucher amount is about half what the state spends on public school students and if at least 10 percent of the students leave the public schools, then the taxpayers are ahead of the game. Since it's difficult to get that message across, advocates might propose an initiative that would apply only to first-graders in the first year, adding a grade each year. That way no current private-school students would be eligible, and it would be easier to explain how low the cost of choice would be.

ANOTHER WAY to hold down the cost would be to provide means-tested vouchers. A state might offer a full voucher for students from families below the poverty level, phasing it out as family income rose toward the median income, or even up to 200 percent of the median. This proposal is appealing in several ways: it would cost less; it would appeal to liberals who want to help poor and minority students without subsidizing middle-class families; and it would suggest that paying for a good education is the responsibility of families unless they can't afford it.