Let's get vouchers to teach people about economics

[merlinofchaos]

Vouchers are one of those partisan ideas that has great support amonst Republicans and is almost universally reviled by Democrats. The problem have with vouchers is that the plans I've seen basically violate the laws of supply and demand.

According to this 25% of the schools in the US are private schools. However, 82% of those are also very small schools (under 300 students) so the actual capacity of these schools is in fact much lower -- 11% of all students in the US go to private school.

So let's say that current capacity is at 15%.

As of right now, market forces have found a sort of medium for the supply and demand for private schooling. While currently demand is quite high, supply is limited by the cost of equipping a private school, qualified teachers, staff, and all of those things that go into teaching children.

Let's put vouchers into the system. Now, theoretically anyone can go to private school. Right?

But wait, we only have capacity for 15%. Supply will surely go up once vouchers are available -- there is money to be made now that the government is giving it away -- but how long does it take to put together a school? How much can the existing schools grow? Sure, there will be a lot of teachers out of work as the money for the public school system dwindles and they go into private teaching, but there are still facilities to deal with, and putting together an organization.

Hey, economics 101 question: When supply can only increase slowly but demand rises sharply, what happens to prices?

If you answered "They go up" you are half right. If you answered "They go up a lot" get a gold star. Since anyone can have a Voucher's worth of tuition, and there isn't enough supply to meet the demand of "Anyone who wants one" then costs will very quickly go up to Demand + $X, where $X is probably a little less than what the parents currently sending their kids to private school will pay.

What does this mean? Anyone who currently attends private school gets a discount, anyone currently attending public school who wants to go to private school STILL has to pay for it, public schools lose some unknown but let's face it, probably large amount of their funding, and the inner city kids get shafted because there aren't private schools in the inner city anyway. But all the existing private schools get to double their income while the rich parents get a discount AND get to feel like they've "helped" the poor.

Maybe eventually the government giving away of money will cause the supply to come up to reach the new demand, causing prices to go back down to reasonable levels, and I have to wonder if the public school system will even survive. But of course private schools, who won't have any real accountability, will naturally be much better than public schools. Because the current excellent education that 10% gets will continue to hold when 80% enroll into the same system. At least they won't be saddled with No Child Left Behind. After all, private schools get to kic out whomever they want whyever they want. Sounds like fun to me.

This little diatribe brought to you by CNN and the letter F.

Comments

[multiplexer.livejournal.com]

I have long since written off the McCain Campaign as run by morons. See how many times McCain has fired his campaign manager. (3 since getting the nomination alone!)

They're not shooting for jumping the shark -- they are shooting for how many sharks they can jump at once.

[tyee.livejournal.com]

It's even worse than that -- because the schools, like businesses, are funded by their enrollment and measured by their product. The product is overall achievement of student, generally assessed by standardized tests. Private schools can choose who they enroll, but public schools cannot.

Advocates of vouchers tout the improvements that will occur in public schools once they are competing with private schools on a "level playing field." So in the economics model, one set of businesses is given substandard materials* that the government requires be given a lot of extra expensive treatment, the other gets first pick of the best materials, and yet somehow this constitutes fair competition that will benefit all via glorious, glorious capitalism.

Only not.


* I don't think special ed kids are actually substandard in any way other than performance on standardized tests -- they are wonderful, but they would impact school performance by current measures and they are expensive to teach (although worth it!). Not to mention all of the kids who aren't special ed but aren't above average either.

[silkiemom.livejournal.com]

I don't know about you, but I bet I could get Bill and Ted's Excellent Private School up and running really fast, and collect me some of that sweet, sweet voucher cash. I have a ton of educational DVDs already!

And if you sign your kid up now, I'll even throw in a free Playstation!

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

Silkie has an excellent point - since private schools would be unregulated, one effect of vouchers would be to set up a ton of awesomely awful schools that kick back some of the voucher money to the parents and provide no real education at all. (Unregulated? Of course. These are Republicans you're talking about.

But I think you're wrong about this being a violation of supply and demand. You seem to think that these consequences are unintended. Think about virtually every Republican policy. Are the huge-benefits-to-rich-folks consequences unintentional in any of them?

[merlinofchaos]

I think that a lot of the supporters of vouchers are not seeing this picture, even if it's possible that the people who are really at the core of pushing these ideas possibly do understand the ramifications and simply don't care.

I do understand that some of the core support for vouchers comes from people who feel it is unfair that their tax money goes to public education when their children are in private school, causing them to "double pay" or basically pay for some other kid's education.

On the other hand, there's also a lot of support for vouchers from inner city parents who are basically screwed now because our inner city schools are in such sad shape and they've bought into believing that this can somehow fix the problems, even though any real analysis of it seems like it can only make their situation worse.

[dtm]

You know, my daughter's going to be in private school next year, and I'll gladly pay my property taxes so that the public schools around here have some funding. I'd love to increase our income tax state-wide so that all Abbot schools could get more money, if that were politically feasible. (*)

I honestly do not understand the attitude of people who don't want to pay for public education with their taxes - don't they live in their communities? Even if their child is going to be going to private school, don't they realize that their child interacts with people outside of school? Don't they realize that strangers' children are going to be paying their social security, and working to create the underlying value that their 401K stock investments rest on? I have sympathy for people on a fixed income looking at rising property taxes, but that's an argument for changing how the money comes in, not how it goes out.

(*) I should note for honesty's sake that such an increase wouldn't necessarily affect me personally, since I already pay the higher income tax rate of New York on the vast majority of my income.

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

> I honestly do not understand the attitude of people who don't want to pay for public education with their taxes...

Ideology. Like strongly-religious people who literally cannot accept that two gay people simply love each other, strongly-libertarian people literally cannot accept that money taken from you without your personal assent can ever become a good thing.

And apart from the libertarian laissez-fairies, there are the racists -- acknowledged or not -- who think that if they're taxed for schools, the money will go to 'undeserving' kids who can't actually learn things or become productive. It's ugly, but if you push hard enough a dispiriting number of people will admit to thinking something like this.

But I think it makes the most sense if we view it the way we view any other dogma. It is a carefully and deliberately constructed blindness.

[death-by-monkey.livejournal.com]

How do you feel charter schools fit into this picture, if at all?

[merlinofchaos]

I don't really know a lot about charter schools, honestly. They look basically like publically funded private schools that have accountability review, which I have a feeling is what those who support vouchers would like all schools to basically become.

With an economy of vouchers, I'm not sure charter schools could survive. Since parents could theoretically take their student dollars wherever they like, the "money for accountability" system will fail before the "money for convincing parents that our school is good for your kid" (or the closely related "Money for being the only school with openings for your kid").