I know this will probably come as a shock to a number of readers, but I struggle to make “school choice,” as we’ve defined it, consistent with the moral values of love, peace, respect, compassion, connection, and community.
I’m a big supporter of parents having the choice to decide where, how, and when their children are educated. But I evaluate every policy through exactly the same lens — one you’ll recognize if you follow this Substack: Does it expand or contract our capacity for love, peace, respect, compassion, connection, and community?
Certainly, a parent’s ability to decide where and how a child is educated is a peaceful action. It requires no government or political intervention whatsoever. As it should be. Making affirmative decisions about what is best for a child is the finest expression of love. A robust range of education choices necessarily requires compassion, connection, and community. The action to create, maintain, and utilize school choice in this manner is respectful because it requires no force of compulsion to achieve the result.
But government school choice programs — tax credits, scholarships, and vouchers created and funded by government — necessarily require force to achieve the objective, and thus suffers from still being the antithesis of human respect.
Taxpayers who happen to have no children, or fully grown children, are compelled to pay for the education of children not their own. If they fail to do so, the same punishment remains, e.g., fines or imprisonment. Such a threat is a Petri dish for fear, conflict, and control. Naturally because taxpayers are paying the bill for education, they believe they have permission to control what the education ultimately looks like, and people will naturally disagree on what that looks like. Naturally, this empowers politicians to create the framework on which a school choice program rests. And this is how it was intellectually argued more than 70 years ago.
Education choice, as we understand it today, derives from free market economist Milton Friedman’s 1955 essay on the topic, which is still worth a read, even though, in total, I don’t much care for it. While a lot of people know that Friedman believed in vouchers, it is often overlooked that what Friedman was trying to do was separate the funding of education from the administration. In fact, he believed government involvement in funding — though not administering — education to be of value. He wrote:
A stable and democratic society is impossible without widespread acceptance of some common set of values and without a minimum degree of literacy and knowledge on the part of most citizens. Education contributes to both.
Here I believe Friedman was wrong because he assumes that government — via politicians and bureaucrats who are determined to obtain and keep their positions — are capable of achieving this result. Or even have the right to try. Continuing on, Friedman said:
In consequence, the gain from the education of a child accrues not only to the child or to his parents but to other members of the society; the education of my child contributes to other people’s welfare by promoting a stable and democratic society.
This argument allows the expansion of government into all sectors of life well beyond a child’s formative years, which when the essay was written was essentially grades 1-12. Government has since expanded widely, under the same premise, to fund and administer Kindergarten, pre-kindergarten, and post-secondary education. And to set the parameters for it, in the interest of benefiting a “neighborhood effect.”
What kind of governmental action is justified by this particular neighborhood effect? The most obvious is to require that each child receive a minimum amount of education of a specified kind.
So Friedman proposed a voucher.
Governments could require a minimum level of education which they could finance by giving parents vouchers redeemable for a specified maximum sum per child per year if spent on “approved” educational services. Parents would then be free to spend this sum and any additional sum on purchasing educational services from an “approved” institution of their own choice. The educational services could be rendered by private enterprises operated for profit, or by non-profit institutions of various kinds. The role of the government would be limited to assuring that the schools met certain minimum standards such as the inclusion of a minimum common content in their programs, much as it now inspects restaurants to assure that they maintain minimum sanitary standards.
This, again, assumes that government has the capacity to set minimum standards. As we have learned over the seven decades since his essay, standards have been lowered, costs have gone up, and in general, students emerge from the government-run education system with less knowledge than earlier generations of students did. Results of standardized tests prove this point. Roughly half of students graduate the school system unable to read, write, do math, or understand history at a level that would serve them well in day to day life and work.
Moreover, education choice programs administered by the government — in whatever form they take — require politicians to continue playing a central role in the lives of parents. Chief among these is the value of the scholarship, tax credit, or voucher. It creates another way for politicians to say “vote for me, and I will increase (or decrease, depending on the objective) the value of the credit or voucher.” This then puts people at the mercy of the system.
Ultimately, what we understand today, after more than 150 years of public education, is that the system is expensive, inefficient, and does not produce the desired result. School choice became an alibi for politicians who generally understand this to argue against government-run schools without challenging the system. Instead of telling parents the truth about the system, the praise it while offering an alternative.
All of this is to say: yes, a voucher or tax credit may be preferable to the existing system — I believe that’s the case — but it is not the end destination. It is much like being half pregnant, partly in, partly out. Instead, we should focus on what leads to true human flourishing and expand on it.
Let’s free parents to participate in the education programs that work best for their kids at the cost that they’re willing and able to pay. Let families, vocations, businesses, churches, and charities participate in what that looks like, and let the free market truly operate, but make absolutely certain that the essential elements of human flourishing are prioritized. This requires politicians to do nothing except get out of the way and allow the real work to happen on its own, for people to do it themselves.
I know that, in writing this essay, I have left open several questions, such as how the poor would pay for education, how to deal with bad schooling, and how standards would be set. I’ll address these in forthcoming writings. Meanwhile, let me know what you think.