The problem isn't what school the parents pick, it's that the voucher schools cherry pick high scoring kids to hold up stats and aren't accountable to the state for the education the state is paying for.

But isn't it a good thing where birds of feather flock together? Just not being dragged down from low scoring kids is worth it. Why can't they select for criteria they are looking for?

In practice this means discriminating against students who are non-native English speakers, students with learning disabilities, etc.

> Just not being dragged down from low scoring kids is worth it.

It depends on the kind of society you want to live in. I would rather live in a society that prioritizes decreasing inequality rather than exacerbating it.

https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/success-academy-charter-sc...

I could equally (and accurately) argue that in practice public school means discriminating against people by wealth, using zip code as a proxy.

And anyway, why would "discriminating based on competence" exacerbate inequality? Shouldn't competence-based discrimination lessen inequality e.g. by giving bright, poorer schools a shot at more prestigious institutions while financially-but-not-intellectually privileged kids move to more middling institutions?

Given the choice between wealth discrimination and merit discrimination, I would prefer the latter.

My understanding is that vouchers still put the most power in the parents about what school their children go to, when the parents themselves aren’t necessarily good judgements of what would make a good school. Additionally, tools that parents would use (how students are graded in standard tests) are opaque. There are even cases where private schools don’t have to disclose how well or poorly their students score, which means they can effectively present as being a great school without any proof, while public schools have to provide proof and therefore look worse as they can’t lie.

I taught for a few years, and I met many parents and students. The old adage is right: judge the tree by its fruit. Voucher-funded charter schools don't even have to cherry-pick students to surpass public schools: the biggest factor is that parents have to make a conscious decision to send a child to a charter school over the default public school. The worst-performing students belong to parents who will not put in the effort to choose a school instead of sending their kids to the default public school. There is a direct correlation between the parents' (or more likely parent's or grandmother's) lack of involvement in the child's education on the child's performance in school. The easiest filter to separate the bottom of the population from the average and top is to provide a choice of schools, because the lowest segments simply will not make any choice.

Fair enough, but my impression of lots of public schools is that they are abysmal and the few that aren’t are typically only available to rich people anyway (in practice, not principle) so the current system addresses neither overall quality of education nor inequality.

Yes, currently. But we should be looking to improve that system for everyone, not allowing a privileges few to opt out.

Wouldn’t a better system have more options with different approaches rather than a single lowest common denominator?

Just from a scientific perspective, more experiments that are able to learn from each other and adapt things they see working elsewhere into their approach should naturally lead to constantly improving schools.

A single lowest common denominator that nobody is allowed to escape from is doomed to failure by comparison.

Vouchers aren’t about letting the privileged few opt out, not more so than the current system anyway. And shooting down vouchers without a better plan for improving the current system is just prolonging a system that is bad for everyone (mostly the poor).

That’s the ultimate issue though. If parents don’t have the choice then we never really know that.

Right now, the only parents with a choice are the ones who can afford all the options, including moving to a better public school district.