Those who reject vouchers argue that education is not and cannot be a free market in the usual sense. An important property of a free market is the ability for companies to fail: indeed, the majority of startups and small businesses fail. And while it's acceptable for restaurants a grocery stores to come and go, a private school going under has serious consequences. Unless the school goes under in the middle of summer break, all the students will be out of an education for a time. Even if neighboring schools are able to immediately take in all the displaced students, the disruption costs students weeks of productive learning. Also, competition requires people to have different options when choosing a school, but there's no guarantee schools will crop up appropriately, especially if poorer school districts will come with smaller vouchers. Finally, relating back to the article, if the private schools have any choice in which students they take, they will be incentivized to avoid taking students with disabilities, which generally are more costly to educate.

The proponent's response to all of this is that these problems can be alleviated with proper regulations, and then we leave the realm of ideology and it becomes a negotiation. Personally, I'm skeptical that a voucher system could be implemented well enough to improve education, though it could come out cheaper, but I don't think it's worth the risk. I'm open to the idea, though, or at least talking about it.

The total amount of funding for schools hasn't changed. One could inversely argue public-school funding is bad because it reduces money for private schools. Both arguments are tautological. They first assume their system is better, say the other competes for their money, and thusly conclude that funding for their better system should be preserved. (This is not an argument for or against charter schools. I'm just saying the "depletion" argument is silly.)

> You also divert money from public schools for no guarantee of better results

When properly done, charter schools can outperform public schools [1]. Otherwise, the evidence is mixed. I'd thus argue defaulting to the status quo. Teachers argue the status quo is state education while conservatives argue it's parent choice.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/charter-school-perf...

Public schools can use charters to game metrics themselves too [2].

[1] http://www.nber.org/papers/w22502

[2] https://www.propublica.org/article/alternative-education-usi...

So no, I don't think the depletion argument is tautological because we do not have citizen control over how a private school is run, by definition. If they opt to charge more for tuition that the voucher covers, the depletion argument is very real, because people with more money can provide a better education with public subsidies. Even if they cannot do that, we still do not have oversight of those funds.

My wife is an SLP (i.e. "speech teacher", but more recently in management) and has dealt with several cases where very well-off families keep their children in public school so the state picks up the cost of special programs, even for simple stuff like articulation. In some states/counties, some students are entitled to government-funded therapy even if the kid goes to private school during the day!

Given everything we know about how _little_ teaching methodology matters to overall, aggregate outcomes--that what matters most, by far, are the home environment and the peer environment--I don't even see the debate about vouchers as remotely legitimate. From a 10,000 foot view, public education has the maximal benefit with minimal _actual_ burdens on other students. Rich kids will tend to go to rich public schools, and that's all that really matters. Poor kids will go to poor schools because poor parents rarely care, nor have the time or wherewithal to care, about those issues. But at least public schools will meet a baseline. Those parents that do care usually are able to make busing arrangements. Basically, all the corner cases can be adequately handled with smaller programs. There's no need to upset the existing structure of public school education.

Only bad things can happen. The history of education is littered with foolish ideas. The only obvious good idea was to institute public education in the first place. Beyond that, there are no easy solutions to improving educational outcomes. It's largely a cultural issue, and you can't legislate culture, nor can you throw money at it.

The main point of the debate is not whether some private schools are able to educate better than public schools. It is whether subsidizing private schools will raise the overall quality of education.

DC spent about $20k/year per student in 2014. That's among the highest spending level in the nation [3]. I believe that figure is closer to $25k/year in 2016. About a third of the states spend less than half per student than DC [4].

[1] http://www.sidwell.edu/admissions/tuition-and-fees/index.asp... [2] https://www.labschool.org/page/admissions/tuition-and-fees [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/06/02/the-... [4]http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-educa...

Well, if I do poorly at my job, I won't get paid either. Why does a school system get protection that the people paying for it do not? The status quo continues to hurt children.

> And once you divert public money to private schools, are they obligated to meet the same academic standards?

Well, yes, they should be held to the same standards as our public schools. Heck, if they take tax payer money they should have the same standard of what can be added as extra fees (no BS taking the money and demanding additional tuition).

It bugs me that when private social programs are brought in to deal with the worst-of-the-worst[1] and get results that we don't allow our children the same outlet education-wise.

FYI: North Dakota has a variation of open enrollment for public schools https://www.nd.gov/dpi/SchoolStaff/SchoolFinance/OpenEnrollm...

1) I remember the lecture by one group out of Chicago in the 90's (cannot remember the name but they had some good data collection that I took hints from). They had a client burn down their HQ. They still continued even with that individual.

The problem here is always measurement. How do you measure education success? Tests? If we have too many tests, people complain that their kids get too much testing. Grades? That leads to inflation. And so on. I don't think most people will disagree with the need for measurement and performance expectations, it's the details that are the sticking point.

> Well, yes, they should be held to the same standards as our public schools. Heck, if they take tax payer money they should have the same standard of what can be added as extra fees (no BS taking the money and demanding additional tuition).

But what's the point of the school being private then? They become public school that we don't have elected oversight of.

>FYI: North Dakota has a variation of open enrollment for public schools

I actually live in North Dakota and know a few families who utilize open enrollment. I have my issues with it because the district foots the costs for transportation, but the key difference is that it is between public schools, not between private and public.

The measurement is always going to be a problem, but we already measure public schools with tests. It really isn't the main issue as parents will pick the schools and they by and large know if their children are being educated.

> But what's the point of the school being private then? They become public school that we don't have elected oversight of.

I'm a bit confused. Just because I think that the tuition needs to be the same for everyone as a parent protection mechanism doesn't mean their won't be a difference.

> I have my issues with it because the district foots the costs for transportation, but the key difference is that it is between public schools, not between private and public.

One step towards allowing parents to vote on if the school is doing a good job. I do wish they would transfer the tuition to private schools also. If a district accepts the students then transportation is an issue which the state could separate out in a budget. Sadly, ND is going to have some problems this year because of an unexpected expense.

What would be the meaningful differences? We are saying, "here's a fixed amount you can spend, you can't charge more and here are the standards you have to meet. Oh, and you can't go out of business, since that would be disruptive to the child's education." It really seems like we've removed most of the advantages of a private school, but can't elect their oversight like we can with a public school. I see absolutely no benefit to having a bunch of disparate schools that have identical budgets and standards. We could do that with magnet schools.

EDIT: I should also add, that I think people overestimate how much vouchers can do to solve the problem, which is largely socioeconomic. Rich people would still live close to the best schools and even if poor people could send their kids there, they still deal with so many disadvantages. If all the best schools are an hour bus ride away, that's unfair to people who don't live in that neighborhood. If I still cannot afford extra curriculars or class trips, then I still cannot give my kids the same education. There's so many other things that figure into the education formula that are not just the school you attend or the teacher that teaches you. I think the best option is to increase people's engagement in their school systems (via school board elections, lobbying, PTA and so on) and get incentives to improve public schools.

The oversight is the parents saying I want my kid to go somewhere else. Individual decisions of the parents is quite a bit more valuable to me then the elected folks taking donations from the various teacher's unions.

I guess I'd like to hear specifically what a private school that is using fixed tuition dollars could do differently. How could they pay teachers that much more? If parents take their kids out and the school goes out of business, how does that improve the outcomes for the kids who didn't leave the school who's education has been disrupted?

EDIT: I should note that here in Fargo, no private school is paying teachers near what they are public schools. I went to look for assessment reports in the school district profiles, but the private school system is not listed.

> Rich people would still live close to the best schools and even if poor people could send their kids there, they still deal with so many disadvantages. If all the best schools are an hour bus ride away, that's unfair to people who don't live in that neighborhood.

That is a result of schools being funded by property taxes and levies. Our current system allows this to happen and switching to a system where the school is paid per student reduces the problem.

> I guess I'd like to hear specifically what a private school that is using fixed tuition dollars could do differently. How could they pay teachers that much more?

Most private schools have less funding than public schools so it would actually increase their budget. Public schools spend a lot of money outside the classroom on admin which most private schools don't find necessary.

Citation? The private schools in my area charge tuition well in excess of the county/city expenditure per student.

[Fairfax County Public Schools, $16,000/pupil/year: http://www.insidenova.com/news/education/fairfax/fcps-per-st...

Madeira School (girls prep school), $45,000/pupil/year: http://www.madeira.org/admission/tuition-financial-aid/cost-...

Nysmith Academy (elemetary school), $30,000+: http://www.nysmith.com/tuition-fees/

St. Stephen's & St. Agnes (parochial), $30,000+: https://www.sssas.org/page/admission/tuition-and-financial-a...

Paul VI (parochial), $18,000: https://www.paulvi.net/page.aspx?pid=257

Also of note - PVI charges more for special ed students.

Fairfax County, VA. It's one of the wealthiest counties in the US, so there's plenty of discretionary income for private school. But, I wouldn't have guessed other areas had tuition less than average spending per pupil at the local public schools.

I suppose there is always going to be a 'elite minimum' so that the precious child won't have to deal with the riff-raff. Very much like unpaid internships often become.

When I started editing my post you hadn't yet replied. So I'll just have to be sorry and leave it at that.

> That is a result of schools being funded by property taxes and levies. Our current system allows this to happen and switching to a system where the school is paid per student reduces the problem.

Not exclusively. People want to live close to good schools so people who can afford to live close to one do. Performance is related very closely to the socioeconomics of the area. In Chicago and New York, schools in poor neighborhoods under perform, despite receiving the same funding. Anecdotally I see the same here. Of course, this is the argument for vouchers; get kids out of schools that under perform, but the cost of doing so can be onerous, not just in money, but in time. Getting a kid from a poor neighborhood to a better school is costly and difficult. I actually think open enrollment is a better answer for this, because the public can pick up the transportation costs (as much as the current implementation of that chagrins me). And of course you have the problem of admission and extra programs that are funded by backers, not the public, which could complicate the process a great deal. (for the record, taking sports out of schools is something I support regardless).

> Public schools spend a lot of money outside the classroom on admin which most private schools don't find necessary.

I don't know that there's much more than anecdotal evidence for this. In my experience (which I fully knowledge is anecdotal) most administrative expenses in the public sector surround the need to be accountable to the public. This creates cumbersome red tape like complicated purchasing policies, regulation, auditors and so on. My observations of the school system here leads to much the same conclusion. Part of the admin overhead is their requirement to meet certain standards and provide certain required services. If private schools were to start taking public money, I believe administrative overhead would follow closely.

The thing is, I'm not categorically opposed to vouchers. I think that there is a place for parents to argue that their kids are not being served by the public school system. But I cannot see how a blanket voucher program can avoid the same pitfalls public schools currently have. As someone said upthread, a critical part of the free market is the ability to fail, and the last thing we can have happen to a school is to have it fail. To avoid that we would regulate private schools to the point they are a public utility, technically private, but really indistinguishable from what we once had.