I expect that you have to try it and add controls as necessary. Not only are these systems too complicated to model in any simple way, but have multiple players each with their own demands. It's a strategy problem as much as simply channeling some money.
It seems to me that the end game always becomes one of segregation of 'good' vs. 'bad' students. The teaching part isn't purely an aside, but matters less than you might think. So, you have to ask how important it is for the good to drag along the bad (or visa versa) and how detrimental it is to produce schools that are, in essence, jails.
At least with vouchers the parents, rich or poor have a choice where their kids go.
In crappy schools, little learning occurs as the classroom resembles a zoo, and many/most students are several grade levels behind.
Crappy schools have an awful student body, many of which don't want to be there, are further behind in their learning than their grade indicates, are disruptive, and teachers have to spend large amounts of time calling security to have students removed or disciplining students. Often, the parents blame the schools and teachers for all their kids' problems.
In my experience, some of the teachers were still trying their best (usually young ones that weren't made cynical yet) but others were too burned out to care much since you only had to look around and see it was mainly hopeless.
The crappy school had fights every day in classes and in the hallways and were fairly violent places.
In the good school (last couple years of school) I wasn't sure the teachers were any more talented but the students showed up on time, listened, did their assignments, and were not violent or disruptive. Honestly, it was really strange to me the first few months and felt probably like when a prisoner is put back into society and they don't quite know how to act at school yet. Any slight I'd meet with threatening behavior to defend myself and intimidate, but I found it wasn't necessary after some time. I hated that school too but I think it was more I disliked a lot of the people there and the reason why was because I was initially resentful of their comfortable, happy life and civility, and just how functional things were. People listened to their teachers and wanted to succeed. I know that sounds crazy, but I was used to going to an insane asylum every day year after year and this was different. The friends I made at the crappy school are the best friends I've had but as the years have gone on many of them are dead from suicide or drugs or have had a really difficult go of it as adults. It all catches up.
I spent my entire school life in the public school system of a large city and I would never send my kids to those schools. It's not really that the schools that are "good or bad" per-se - it's the student body that determines that and that is largely decided by the parents and communities of those children. So much money has to be spent on security (my HS had 10 full-time staff) and discipline that there's not money for "nice things". But, the administration knows they need to hit numbers so kids are passed along if they show up and I knew more than a few kids who graduated and couldn't read past a 5th grade level.
Kids are impressionable and will adapt to the culture they’re immersed in. I took on bad values because I was immersed in that. I’m only grateful afterwards I was able to figure it out. I lost a few years early on but was able to recover. I only wish I was immersed in a serious academic environment rather than prison training. My kids absolutely will not be immersed in that and I wish no parent that wants to surround their kids with likewise parents would have to settle for that. It’s why funding students and not schools is the best path. Poor, single moms would have the option of getting their kids out of these public school hell holes.
It will cost more per student, which leaves less money available for teachers so the student/teacher ratio would get worse. The facilities will not be kept up as required. Programs will be cut.
Also ignored in your analysis is that generally when school choice is available, the students most likely to leave a school are the high performers and the most likely to stay are the low performs and students with special needs, who are more expensive to educate and were previously subsidized by the high performers. If you compare the services provided to special needs students at a school in a wealthy area to the services provided to special needs students at a school in a poor area, there will be a massive difference in quality.
I’d understand this argument say in 1975, but in 2021 your argument needs some deeper analysis
Schools suffer from the same Too Big To Fail. We have to let them fail and let parents have free choice.
Ultimately I think pure free-market school choice in practice would fail not so much because of regulatory capture or a cash-grab, but because changing schools is disruptive and won't fix the problems of students with dysfunctional home lives.
It’s literally the opposite of efficient use of funds. You want to shift more money to the better run schools not the worst run schools.
The city is not the top level when it comes to funding, champ. It takes, literally in this case, a decade to start to undo the damage of Republican misappropriation and sabotage.
To be fair, that's probably as much due to a ballot measure lowering the budget threshold down from a 2/3 supermajority and thereby actually making the state governable.
OTOH, that measure was heavily pushed by the Democratic governor and legislature and opposed by Republicans, so...
Yet Republicans would campaign on preventing the repeal of such a measure and it didn't happen until Democrats had full control of the Capital again. Hmmm, curious. It's almost as if Republicans have a history of being unable or unwilling to work with others.
I’m pretty sure there is a word missing in this sentence that radically alters its meaning (I can think of several candidates, either before or after “Republican”, that might make it true), but SF definitely has some Republicans.
There are two kinds of great fools in the world: those who say regulations are always good and those who say regulations are never good.
E.g., school in my district is bad. They don't have enough resources, or their teachers are bad. People begin taking their kids out of the school which means the school now has less money. Assuming they could fire teachers at will, they can't even now afford the "better" teachers who would likely cost more. They definitely can't afford more learning resources or an expansion to lower class sizes.
So how do you prevent schools either going into a vicious or virtuous cycle?