7 ms·

I can't wait for more states to adopt school vouchers.

mentos 5y ago
Hopefully we're still not debating this 25 years from now.. The Steve Jobs 95 Interview on Education - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-8JiOQOe6U&t=6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-8JiOQOe6U&t=6s
mensetmanusman 5y ago
What happens after vouchers is interesting from a game theory standpoint. Do people scatter to the wind? Do they create ultra-specific schools? Etc.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  The elephant in the root is that the US already experimented heavily with a hybrid public/private model for educational delivery in its higher ed (colleges/universities) sector. Perverse competitive incentives on all fronts drive prices through the roof, quality stagnates/declines, and the downmarket options make impossible promises while offering curricula with such terrible outcomes as to be borderline fraudulent. When public funding is cut, it's replaced with debt, and people are deep under water to the investment class before they even start life. I'm not here to defend the status quo, but reformers should carefully consider "how do we prevent turning American K12 into American higher ed."
  - MengerSponge 5y ago
    Everyone who wants to understand this should read Tressie McMillan Cottom's Lower Ed: https://thenewpress.com/books/lower-ed https://thenewpress.com/books/lower-ed
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    > Perverse competitive incentives on all fronts drive prices through the roof I don't think it's been established that competitive incentives are driving the price through the roof. There are other theories, e.g. that massive increases in subsidization via guaranteed loans and other mechanisms are driving the price from the demand-side.
    - brewdad 5y ago
      Sure, but if you are a private school charging $20k a year now, why wouldn't you charge $25k when every potential student gets a $5k voucher? Then we need to increase the size of the voucher to meet the original goals of the program. Rinse. Repeat.
      - coffeecat 5y ago
        Every child must either meet some government-mandated educational standard, or enroll in a program which brings some threshold percentage of its students to said standard. $VOUCHER_AMOUNT is adjusted on a per-region basis based on the average tuition within each region. If the institution's tuition is higher than $VOUCHER_AMOUNT, the parents pay the difference out of pocket. If the tuition is less than $VOUCHER_AMOUNT, the parents keep the difference. Parents obviously want to minimize the amount they're paying out of pocket, and they'd like to keep some of the voucher money, so high-end schools as well as low-end schools are incentivized to keep their costs down.
        brewdad 5y ago
        Parents putting their kids in K-12 private school aren't optimizing for cost. They are optimizing for exclusivity and educational "quality". If their school just became more affordable to the unwashed masses, they will gladly pay the premium to keep them out.
        coffeecat 5y ago
        That is true for some subset of wealthy parents, and if they want to pay extra for exclusivity, that's their choice. But I think it's reasonable to assume that the parents of the 90% of K-12 students who attend public or charter schools [1] are prioritizing cost over exclusivity. It's true that many families will pay more to buy a house in a good school district, but I suspect that the school itself isn't the whole story: rather, many people interpret the school district's reputation as a proxy for the safety of the neighborhood and socio-economic status of its residents, as well as a proxy for their own socio-economic status. Ulimately, I suspect that with the free market voucher system I described in my parent comment, legacy private schools would continue to charge outrageous tuition. But I think we'd also see some new, possibly virtual "bang for your buck" schools which would compete on price and which would be exclusive due to entrance exams and high academic expectations for enrolled students. [1] https://www.edweek.org/leadership/education-statistics-facts-about-american-schools/2019/01 https://www.edweek.org/leadership/education-statistics-facts...
  - analog31 5y ago
    >>> The elephant in the root is that the US already experimented heavily with a hybrid public/private model for educational delivery... And also for health care delivery. And for the reconstruction of Iraq after Desert Storm.
  - mbg721 5y ago
    An additional outcome in higher-ed was the perceived dilution of the religious characteristics of Catholic universities (a large portion of the prominent private universities) who took the money; the more-religious types complain about Jesuit schools, Notre Dame, etc. for being beholden to the whims of the state for so much of their funding that they cease to serve their mission, and their remaining supporters are mostly the ones who care about sports and the brand-value of the school name. For charter-schools at the secondary level, I'd expect the same kind of thing, only much faster.
  - landemva 5y ago
    In the college sector, the price ramped after Clinton signed law to prevent student loans being discharged in bankruptcy. And now parents co-sign and the parent's social security is sometimes taken to pay the child's non-dischargeable student loans. K-12 public school is government paid.
- MengerSponge 5y ago
  We know what happens. Educational outcomes drop. There's a strong bloc of hard-right ultra-religious conservatives who don't care if Jonnie or Jayden or whatever learns how to read or add, and they really don't want Kayden or Charlotte or whatever to learn any biology or autonomy. They vote with their vouchers for truly terrible schools. It siphons a tremendous amount of money from "traditional" public schools and delivers a hugely negative return. It's a mistake, but it's a mistake we can't help but keep making because we're so determined to make everything function like a pseudo market.
  - mannerheim 5y ago
    Is there any empirical evidence for educational outcomes dropping? The ultra-religious types would be homeschooling with or without the financial incentives to send children to private schools.
    - MengerSponge 5y ago
      Vouchers don't improve student achievement (Stanford, 2017) https://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-student-achievement-stanford-researcher-finds/ https://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-st... Students in Louisiana's voucher program showed a decline in scores, especially math: https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_3bd354cd-6fae-5fa1-a978-6908eb9f5395.html https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/artic... Not every hard-right ultra-religious parent has the means to homeschool their kid or to enroll them in private school. Vouchers really help lower that barrier.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - mannerheim 5y ago
        > Vouchers don't improve student achievement (Stanford, 2017) So not worse, then. > Students in Louisiana's voucher program showed a decline in scores, especially math: Let's see... > Any changes in the second year of reading were unclear. Hmm. > Past research on Louisiana’s school-voucher program came to a bleak conclusion: Students who used the program to transfer to a private school saw their test scores plummet. > A new study complicates that narrative, finding some good—or at least, less bad—news about the closely watched program. > The research shows that, for students who received a voucher at the middle or end of elementary school, there were no statistically significant effects on their math or reading test scores by the third year in the program. That’s a boon for voucher advocates who have argued against judging a program by its initial impacts. > The research shows that, for students who received a voucher at the middle or end of elementary school, there were no statistically significant effects on their math or reading test scores by the third year in the program. That’s a boon for voucher advocates who have argued against judging a program by its initial impacts. They deliberately cut the results off in the second year because the study was conducted by those whose livelihoods are threatened by vouchers. https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/532137/ https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/532137/
- analog31 5y ago
  I have some thoughts about this: 1. The state has to remain in the school business as a back-up for schools that fail, kids who get kicked out, and regions that have insufficient capacity because it's not profitable to run schools there. The public schools need to provide excess capacity so the private ones can operate at capacity and take financial risks. As a result, the state bears the risk. 2. A fleet of SUV's hit the road at 6:00 AM every day to carry kids to the far flung schools that their parents managed to get them into. 3. A shortage of available capacity, turnover in administration and ownership of schools, statistical variance, and opaque metrics make it impossible for parents to actually make an informed choice based on the quality of schools. It will be a crap shoot.
  - danans 5y ago
    > opaque metrics make it impossible for parents to actually make an informed choice based on the quality of schools. It will be a crap shoot. Nope, people will probably figure out the "best schools" via their private social networks and cloistered communities, and find ways to pull up the ladders behind them.
    - notacoward 5y ago
      ...or they'll send their kids to evangelical-Christian "schools" that don't really teach much except counter-factual history and creationism and of course their own particular ideology. The very same people who have totally fabricated a panic about teaching CRT in public schools are more than happy to do far far worse in their own schools. Most of my cousins spent at least some years in such schools. They were worthless money sinks even long ago, and I don't imagine they've gotten any better.
      - analog31 5y ago
        In my view the worst thing is that those schools can be well funded, and easily price secular schools out of the market. When I was living in Texas, it was before we had kids, but I noticed that among private schools, the secular ones were absolutely priced out of our reach. Religious hospitals and medical clinics can do the same thing in rural areas.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  The vouchers won't be enough for normal people to buy private education. They'll only be used by rich people to avoid subsidizing public education.
MengerSponge 5y ago
Yes, I also enjoy watching states adopt policies that are expensive and harmful. I am very smart. Vouchers don't improve student achievement (Stanford): https://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-student-achievement-stanford-researcher-finds/ https://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-st... Students who received vouchers in Louisiana learned less than their peers: https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_3bd354cd-6fae-5fa1-a978-6908eb9f5395.html https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/artic...
- bitshiftfaced 5y ago
  > Students who received vouchers in Louisiana learned less than their peers: https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/artic https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/artic... Looks like that study wasn't peer-reviewed, and compared voucher students with those of the general population. A later study compared voucher students with those who applied for vouchers but didn't win the vouchers, and the bad effects largely disappeared: https://www.chalkbeat.org/2017/6/26/21107301/students-given-vouchers-in-louisiana-do-worse-than-their-peers-but-new-research-shows-some-kids-catc https://www.chalkbeat.org/2017/6/26/21107301/students-given-... With school choice, bad schools are finally allowed to die and be replaced with good schools.

Hopefully we're still not debating this 25 years from now.. The Steve Jobs 95 Interview on Education - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-8JiOQOe6U&t=6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-8JiOQOe6U&t=6s

mensetmanusman 5y ago

What happens after vouchers is interesting from a game theory standpoint. Do people scatter to the wind? Do they create ultra-specific schools? Etc.

throwawaygh 5y ago
The elephant in the root is that the US already experimented heavily with a hybrid public/private model for educational delivery in its higher ed (colleges/universities) sector. Perverse competitive incentives on all fronts drive prices through the roof, quality stagnates/declines, and the downmarket options make impossible promises while offering curricula with such terrible outcomes as to be borderline fraudulent. When public funding is cut, it's replaced with debt, and people are deep under water to the investment class before they even start life. I'm not here to defend the status quo, but reformers should carefully consider "how do we prevent turning American K12 into American higher ed."
- MengerSponge 5y ago
  Everyone who wants to understand this should read Tressie McMillan Cottom's Lower Ed: https://thenewpress.com/books/lower-ed https://thenewpress.com/books/lower-ed
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  > Perverse competitive incentives on all fronts drive prices through the roof I don't think it's been established that competitive incentives are driving the price through the roof. There are other theories, e.g. that massive increases in subsidization via guaranteed loans and other mechanisms are driving the price from the demand-side.
  - brewdad 5y ago
    Sure, but if you are a private school charging $20k a year now, why wouldn't you charge $25k when every potential student gets a $5k voucher? Then we need to increase the size of the voucher to meet the original goals of the program. Rinse. Repeat.
    - coffeecat 5y ago
      Every child must either meet some government-mandated educational standard, or enroll in a program which brings some threshold percentage of its students to said standard. $VOUCHER_AMOUNT is adjusted on a per-region basis based on the average tuition within each region. If the institution's tuition is higher than $VOUCHER_AMOUNT, the parents pay the difference out of pocket. If the tuition is less than $VOUCHER_AMOUNT, the parents keep the difference. Parents obviously want to minimize the amount they're paying out of pocket, and they'd like to keep some of the voucher money, so high-end schools as well as low-end schools are incentivized to keep their costs down.
      - brewdad 5y ago
        Parents putting their kids in K-12 private school aren't optimizing for cost. They are optimizing for exclusivity and educational "quality". If their school just became more affordable to the unwashed masses, they will gladly pay the premium to keep them out.
        coffeecat 5y ago
        That is true for some subset of wealthy parents, and if they want to pay extra for exclusivity, that's their choice. But I think it's reasonable to assume that the parents of the 90% of K-12 students who attend public or charter schools [1] are prioritizing cost over exclusivity. It's true that many families will pay more to buy a house in a good school district, but I suspect that the school itself isn't the whole story: rather, many people interpret the school district's reputation as a proxy for the safety of the neighborhood and socio-economic status of its residents, as well as a proxy for their own socio-economic status. Ulimately, I suspect that with the free market voucher system I described in my parent comment, legacy private schools would continue to charge outrageous tuition. But I think we'd also see some new, possibly virtual "bang for your buck" schools which would compete on price and which would be exclusive due to entrance exams and high academic expectations for enrolled students. [1] https://www.edweek.org/leadership/education-statistics-facts-about-american-schools/2019/01 https://www.edweek.org/leadership/education-statistics-facts...
- analog31 5y ago
  >>> The elephant in the root is that the US already experimented heavily with a hybrid public/private model for educational delivery... And also for health care delivery. And for the reconstruction of Iraq after Desert Storm.
- mbg721 5y ago
  An additional outcome in higher-ed was the perceived dilution of the religious characteristics of Catholic universities (a large portion of the prominent private universities) who took the money; the more-religious types complain about Jesuit schools, Notre Dame, etc. for being beholden to the whims of the state for so much of their funding that they cease to serve their mission, and their remaining supporters are mostly the ones who care about sports and the brand-value of the school name. For charter-schools at the secondary level, I'd expect the same kind of thing, only much faster.
- landemva 5y ago
  In the college sector, the price ramped after Clinton signed law to prevent student loans being discharged in bankruptcy. And now parents co-sign and the parent's social security is sometimes taken to pay the child's non-dischargeable student loans. K-12 public school is government paid.
MengerSponge 5y ago
We know what happens. Educational outcomes drop. There's a strong bloc of hard-right ultra-religious conservatives who don't care if Jonnie or Jayden or whatever learns how to read or add, and they really don't want Kayden or Charlotte or whatever to learn any biology or autonomy. They vote with their vouchers for truly terrible schools. It siphons a tremendous amount of money from "traditional" public schools and delivers a hugely negative return. It's a mistake, but it's a mistake we can't help but keep making because we're so determined to make everything function like a pseudo market.
- mannerheim 5y ago
  Is there any empirical evidence for educational outcomes dropping? The ultra-religious types would be homeschooling with or without the financial incentives to send children to private schools.
  - MengerSponge 5y ago
    Vouchers don't improve student achievement (Stanford, 2017) https://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-student-achievement-stanford-researcher-finds/ https://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-st... Students in Louisiana's voucher program showed a decline in scores, especially math: https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_3bd354cd-6fae-5fa1-a978-6908eb9f5395.html https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/artic... Not every hard-right ultra-religious parent has the means to homeschool their kid or to enroll them in private school. Vouchers really help lower that barrier.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - mannerheim 5y ago
      > Vouchers don't improve student achievement (Stanford, 2017) So not worse, then. > Students in Louisiana's voucher program showed a decline in scores, especially math: Let's see... > Any changes in the second year of reading were unclear. Hmm. > Past research on Louisiana’s school-voucher program came to a bleak conclusion: Students who used the program to transfer to a private school saw their test scores plummet. > A new study complicates that narrative, finding some good—or at least, less bad—news about the closely watched program. > The research shows that, for students who received a voucher at the middle or end of elementary school, there were no statistically significant effects on their math or reading test scores by the third year in the program. That’s a boon for voucher advocates who have argued against judging a program by its initial impacts. > The research shows that, for students who received a voucher at the middle or end of elementary school, there were no statistically significant effects on their math or reading test scores by the third year in the program. That’s a boon for voucher advocates who have argued against judging a program by its initial impacts. They deliberately cut the results off in the second year because the study was conducted by those whose livelihoods are threatened by vouchers. https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/532137/ https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/532137/
analog31 5y ago
I have some thoughts about this: 1. The state has to remain in the school business as a back-up for schools that fail, kids who get kicked out, and regions that have insufficient capacity because it's not profitable to run schools there. The public schools need to provide excess capacity so the private ones can operate at capacity and take financial risks. As a result, the state bears the risk. 2. A fleet of SUV's hit the road at 6:00 AM every day to carry kids to the far flung schools that their parents managed to get them into. 3. A shortage of available capacity, turnover in administration and ownership of schools, statistical variance, and opaque metrics make it impossible for parents to actually make an informed choice based on the quality of schools. It will be a crap shoot.
- danans 5y ago
  > opaque metrics make it impossible for parents to actually make an informed choice based on the quality of schools. It will be a crap shoot. Nope, people will probably figure out the "best schools" via their private social networks and cloistered communities, and find ways to pull up the ladders behind them.
  - notacoward 5y ago
    ...or they'll send their kids to evangelical-Christian "schools" that don't really teach much except counter-factual history and creationism and of course their own particular ideology. The very same people who have totally fabricated a panic about teaching CRT in public schools are more than happy to do far far worse in their own schools. Most of my cousins spent at least some years in such schools. They were worthless money sinks even long ago, and I don't imagine they've gotten any better.
    - analog31 5y ago
      In my view the worst thing is that those schools can be well funded, and easily price secular schools out of the market. When I was living in Texas, it was before we had kids, but I noticed that among private schools, the secular ones were absolutely priced out of our reach. Religious hospitals and medical clinics can do the same thing in rural areas.
DarylZero 5y ago
The vouchers won't be enough for normal people to buy private education. They'll only be used by rich people to avoid subsidizing public education.

MengerSponge 5y ago

Yes, I also enjoy watching states adopt policies that are expensive and harmful. I am very smart. Vouchers don't improve student achievement (Stanford): https://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-student-achievement-stanford-researcher-finds/ https://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-st... Students who received vouchers in Louisiana learned less than their peers: https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_3bd354cd-6fae-5fa1-a978-6908eb9f5395.html https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/artic...

bitshiftfaced 5y ago
> Students who received vouchers in Louisiana learned less than their peers: https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/artic https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/artic... Looks like that study wasn't peer-reviewed, and compared voucher students with those of the general population. A later study compared voucher students with those who applied for vouchers but didn't win the vouchers, and the bad effects largely disappeared: https://www.chalkbeat.org/2017/6/26/21107301/students-given-vouchers-in-louisiana-do-worse-than-their-peers-but-new-research-shows-some-kids-catc https://www.chalkbeat.org/2017/6/26/21107301/students-given-... With school choice, bad schools are finally allowed to die and be replaced with good schools.