Wait, Vouchers Don't Make Schools Better??
For those who support school vouchers, the idea that competition will make the education system better is almost a given. Looking at a study done in Milwaukee, where voucher programs have been in place for a decade and a half, we see that may not be the case.
How vouchers affect public schools
* An Economic Policy Institute study released today looked at data such as test scores for Milwaukee public elementary schools from 1996 to 2004.
* Researchers found that public schools improved for two years following expansion of the voucher program in 1998. Researchers said that improvement was likely due to the threat of competition from the expanding voucher program, but the higher achievement did not last.
* Those mixed results led researchers to conclude that the argument that competition from vouchers improves the performance of public schools is not a compelling one. (...)
"The only competition that we've really seen between public schools and voucher schools in Milwaukee has been competition for resources," said Dennis Oulahan, Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association president. "Public schools lost big time."
The cost of the proposed voucher program is also concerning. While this is not money taken away from Utah public schools, it is money paid by Utah taxpayers that could be used in other ways. President Bush's veto of the SCHIP bill today leads me to wonder what $400+ million could do for children's health care in Utah.
Similarly, the anti-voucher group Utahns for Public Schools criticizes the cost of a voucher program in Utah estimated at $429 million over 13 years, according to the Office of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst.
Of course you don't see these details in the voucher advocate ads on teevee. In fact you don't see much about the voucher program at all. Instead we see voucher opponents linked to Ted Kennedy and MoveOn.org in the hopes that by hiding the facts, and lining vouchers up in opposition of scary Washington liberals, voucher supporters can pull enough votes to uphold their law. When did Utah's voucher debate become about Ted Kennedy?
So, as a question to voucher supporters, what good will this voucher program bring to the state?
Also, has anyone seen a poll recently, I can't find one that isn't 3 months old? Sphere: Related Content
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Here's a quick list of things the voucher program will (or should) do:
* Increase per-pupil spending for each student that opts out of the public school system. For this to work appropriately, the number of switchers need to be more than 36% of private school students by the 5th year of the program, the "break-even" point as it were. This means increasing the private school population from 3% to 4% of total students. The national average is 12%.
* Slow the need to construct new school buildings by decreasing the rate of student growth. Land in Utah ain't getting any cheaper, that's for sure. Again, the amounts depend on how many switchers we end up with.
* On the issue of school performance, the threat of vouchers (though not necessarily the use of vouchers) worked in Florida to prompt many failing schools to clean up their act. In Milwaukee, private schools initially outperformed public schools, then they caught up to perform on par with private schools by year four. I don't know the peculiarities of the Milwaukee program to know what happened from there.
I haven't seen any new polls on vouchers for months now. That's really weird since this is pretty much the hottest issue of the year. You'd think papers would be all over it, wouldn't you?
Can you really trust the EPI for an honest study of vouchers in Milwaukee? Edward J. McElroy, the
President of the American Federation of Teachers is on the Board of directors along with 8 other Union big wigs.
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