The Voucher System Explicated
Smirnoff, Edgar
The Voucher System Explicated Edgar Smirnoff I'm going to talk about primary and secondary education...by way of Ralph Nader and Guatemala. Because perhaps Nader is right. Perhaps business can...
...Public schools are so far up there with apple pie that anyone who politely questions whether they do the job is often branded a drowner of babies...
...2. Panthers, KuKluxers, etc., etc., will start schools and poison our youth...
...I am perfectly willing to pay taxes for B-52s and prowl cars, though I may sometimes think them misused, simply because for government in the U.S...
...Hardly...
...But it can be done in education...
...The mind-poisoning capability of the fringe-types in a voucher system is vastly overrated...
...Quick Bear lost under the doctrine of the freely-choosing Sioux...
...For "X"fill in the cost per child at the local public schools...
...The authoritative "Coleman Report," for which the federal government paid a horrendous amount of your money, concluded that variations in the quality of a public school (using the traditional yardsticks of expenditure per pupil and pupil-teacher ratios) are not related to scholastic achievement...
...Speaking as a man of modest means, I would question how much my children would learn submitting to the vacuous blather which passes as economics in public schools...
...In 1952 the U.S...
...Because it sure helps to view public education as a monopoly...
...Thus, with some competition the education bureaucrats might surprise us with how fast they can move...
...Neglecting the ad hominem stuff in #7, and the "only educators know revealed truth" sophistry in #1, this hypothetical educationist will have asked you five valid questions (2,3,4,5,6...
...Not so...
...The voucher is given to a parent, not a parochial school, and the freely-choosing parent breaks the direct state-church link...
...Many Johnnies still can't read...
...Quick Bear (a dissenting Sioux) sued Leupp (Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs) charging that the federal payment was establishment of religion...
...Hence, a surplus of nincompoops...
...Further, it ain't so far-fetched to believe that groups of parents will band together (this happens in Denmark) or that entrepreneurs in the classical mold will step forth with schools...
...Especially, it should be added, for the compensatory programs of ghetto kids...
...The consumer may take it in the neck occasionally, but he always retains the ultimate weapon-his checkbook...
...3. Schools will discriminate in admissions...
...This is the "educational voucher system...
...Monopolists are not known for their energy, until confronted by challengers...
...Talk about defense being a sacred cow...
...history textbooks with errors of fact because it is safest to choose books which tout the conventional-wisdom-view, not scholarly truth...
...Government has to have a monopoly of legal force to forestall illegal force...
...If anything raises the hackles of the education troops, it is the mere mention of the word "voucher...
...Whatever Mr...
...What can be expected from a civil service bureaucracy running a monopoly...
...Most of us are willing to put up with the pay-flee to Guatemala-jail choice for many important government functions...
...Except for parochial schools (who receive massive support from their own sources), a man of modest means has no choice for his children other than the local school monopoly...
...7. You Fascist...
...However, even if my trusty Oldsmobile has turned out to be a Naderesque hunk of scrap, there would have been a few things I could have done about it...
...He can pay his taxes, go to jail or flee the country...
...4. It will destroy the public schools...
...Heaped on this is a little communications problem...
...The last two are not, in the vulgar parlance of the times, "viable alternatives," and they are certainly not of the same genre as, say, switching to Kools if Winston No Longer Tastes Good etc...
...As the list of counter-arguments pops from his hip pocket, you will invariably note, inter alia, the following Standard Voucher attacks: 1. Parents are incapable of choosing "proper" schools for their young...
...Under these circumstances we should be wearing out the prayer rugs in thanksgiving that we get as many competent teachers as we do...
...Aid to parochial schools is the kicker...
...We don't have to tolerate government to spend it on defense (unless you have some desire to wind up long on officers' pubs and short on bombsights...
...Or to orientation, band, driver education, basket-weaving and suchlike things which bear little relation to true education...
...blessed be the name of O.E.O...
...This is expensive - about $43 billion this year - and costs rise 10% per year regardless of the number of pupils served...
...You are not likely to answer him as Rational Man to Rational Man, unless he is one of the worthy few who calms down quickly, but here are some suggested answers anyway...
...Toss the ball up and see if anybody can teach the kids more cheaply and better...
...Try it on an educator...
...6. This is a subterfuge for parochiaid...
...Public education has an effective monopoly because it is prohibitively expensive for any but the near-rich to pay - simultaneously - taxes for public schools, and then again, by tuition for private schools...
...The Sioux chose a Catholic School...
...If a surplus of applicants, the school takes children previously enrolled, selects a percentage of the remainder by its own standards,and admits the rest by a lottery conducted by a public official...
...There are a number of corporations itching to take a crack at educating kids...
...I do note that my own automobile has wheezed its way throught 130,000 miles without embracing a bridge abutment or contracting gonorrhea of the crankcase...
...Hell, Ed Smirnoff might even take a crack at it...
...Smirnoff is not alone in holding that more and more money for more and more irrelevantalia (a word I just coined), bigger educational palaces, and lower and lower pupil/ teacher ratios is not the answer to quality education...
...Simple...
...That's between me, my kid, the ditch and the insurance company...
...no teaching of violent overthrow, "proof of financial responsibility") which would weed most of this stuff out, if that is your bag...
...By treaty the Feds gave Sioux Indians funds to establish a school...
...Inexplicable...
...Not to mention Datsun, Toyota and American Motors...
...The National Education Association is trying to kill the sanitized voucher experiments O.E.O...
...Yes, it might...
...You can start with subsidiaries of monoliths (Westinghouse has one) and work down through small fry like Behavioral Research Laboratories and Dorsett Educational...
...Anybody who peddles something besides high-quality instruction is out on his ear from lack of business...
...I am indeed leading up to an alternative...
...My mother always told me monopolies are bad and government monopolies are the worst...
...It will if public schools cannot adapt with more facility than in the past...
...Establishment" of religion is a no-no, but benefits conferred privately on a religious institution ("free exercise") are not proscribed...
...Nader says, I refuse to believe that: (a) most people will buy the same lemon twice, and (b) nobody makes anything but lemons...
...You may cringe at "controls," but as a political realist you must admit a Panther school wouldn't do much for voucher system P.R...
...merely that the system overpays the nincompoops and underpays those teachers who are creative and dedicated, while constraining the scope of the latter...
...Until then, the only thing I can find dangerous about a voucher system is standing in front of the exits to the public schools when it passes into law...
...So what does this have to do with lower education...
...Simply give each parent a certificate for his child, redeemable for X dollars in educational services at approved schools...
...First, insofar as anyone can know the Nine Wise Men, it appears as if a voucher system is perfectly constitutional...
...Shrewd woman, my mother...
...devised a perfectly OK lottery system of admissions to voucher schools...
...Perhaps business can gull the consumer despite the brazen "inferiority" of their merchandise, for a while anyway...
...The consumer also has choices when government extracts taxes from him to perform an activity...
...A school would take all applicants if there were more vacancies than applicants...
...And scholars who have taken issue with Coleman's 1966 study have come away eating crow, some even admitted that their investigations reveal the public schools to be even more inefficient that Coleman thought...
...Defense is something which is non-desocializable...
...5. The whole thing is unconstitutional...
...Some ghetto Johnnies can't even write...
...to neglect its duty to protect the citizenry from force and fraud would make Guatemala a comparatively nice place to live...
...Supreme Court unanimously struck down an Oregon law requiring all children to attend public schools, declaring that "the child is not the creature of the state...
...Government cannot police the destination of a welfare check-for instance to a collection plate...
...And clean up...late...in the cafeteria...
...O.E.O...
...In order of consideration they are Ford, Chrysler, Volkswagen, Fiat and Ferrari...
...There is no presumptive case to make education a government monopoly...
...A 1916 Supreme Court case, Quick Bear v. Leupp, supports this reasoning...
...And speaking of those "schools...
...In the first place, it isn't hard to place barriers to the wierdies (e.g...
...Ladies and gentlemen, controls or no, nearly anybody could open a voucher school, but if they don't attract business, that's finis...
...All that ever happens when something seems wrong is that educationists raise their chant, "think of the kids," and seduced legislators extract more tax dollars...
...I'm not saying that all teachers are nincompoops...
...Discrimination in admissions is no sweat...
...This: education is not a jet bomber and Joe Doakes can make intelligent decisions...
...Failure breeds budgetary success...
...is planning...
...Our educator friend has alleged that a voucher system is a cover of parochiaid...
...My local school corporation spends $900 per kid, and I figure for $500 I can have Ph.D's underfoot with Raquel Welch running the serving line in the cafeteria...
...Or to U.S...
...The thing has to pass a political body first...
...I would not be against my kids learning to keep a car out of a ditch, but I object to other people being forced to pay for it...
...What incentive is there when teacher salaries are based on standard salary schedules, advanced degrees and tenure, when a "good" administrator is one who leaves the boat-rocking to others, when no one is held accountable for the product produced- providing the kids don't burn down the buildings...
...More than 90% of nation's children attend public schools...
...Otherwise it's easy to fall for the siren song of the educationists, "Think of the Kids...
...Will a voucher system, therefore, "destroy public education...
...Yet we have given government a near monopoly of lower education...
Vol. 4 • April 1971 • No. 5
