Now that the Supreme Court has ruled school vouchers constitutional in a case originating in Cleveland, opponents will have to recenter their criticism. Until the ruling, one of the most familiar arguments against vouchers rightfully held that they would narrow the gap between church and state. After all, 97 percent of voucher users attend religious schools. But while the evidence still supports their argument, critics needn't fall back on religion to explain why vouchers are bad for American education. Other ammunition abounds.
To begin with, the stipends that most voucher programs grant their students aren't enough to pay for a good private school. Florida's program offers about $4,000 for students, for example, while Ohio's offers $2,250. Although vouchers won't pay for the best secular private schools, they generally do pay for inexpensive, inner-city parochial schools -- which explains why so many vouchers go to religious schools. Pushing public-school students toward a religious education may not be against the law, but it certainly is bad education policy. Some parents argue it grants them choice, but a choice between a failing public school and a mediocre parochial school is an unenviable one.
And even if voucher programs conferred more money onto students from failed public schools, there's no reason private schools would accept these students -- who, sadly, come from schools that have often failed to teach them basic reading and writing skills, leaving them years behind their peers in private institutions. In Cleveland, the better, suburban private schools banded together and refused to accept vouchers.
And other private schools don't have enough space to accept voucher students even when they want to. In a typical scenario in Miami, more than 40 students from a failed high school will compete for a mere 20 spots at the nearby Catholic school. The voucher program floods the private-school market with applicants, from which schools can pick and choose. It's not about parental choice; it's about school choice.
Conservative economists claim that schools will materialize to cater to these students, in accordance with basic supply-and-demand market principles. But schools designed to accept voucher-students will inevitably be profit-making ventures. These voucher mills would be forced to put revenue drives and cost-cutting ahead of education, just like any other for-profit organization. They would also likely be prone to creative accounting. Edison Schools, the largest for-profit operator of schools, was just reprimanded by the Securities and Exchange Commission for booking costs as revenues.
And still, there are other reasons to be skeptical of vouchers. For instance, they undermine the teaching of pluralism because voucher users will naturally gravitate toward schools that represent their own demographic. In fact, The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University recently found that 48 percent of black students in Catholic schools and 44 percent in other religious schools encounter a heavily segregated educational experience, meaning that fewer than 10 percent of students in their schools are white. While public schools have used busing programs for years to desegregate the schools, religious institutions have been unable to overcome the patterns of residential segregation. The situation is likely to worsen with the promulgation of vouchers.
These stark realities don't interest voucher lovers, though. Hidden behind the effusive rhetoric about democracy and school choice, voucher proponents make a very simple statement to the public schools they believe are inadequate. The message is this: Schools can't improve. Therefore, rather than waste government money on reform, we should put the onus for change on the market. It's a horribly demeaning -- and certainly incorrect -- message for public-school faculty, administrators and students.
Inept schools, however, may be only part of the problem. Usage statistics released just this week in Florida suggest that parents aren't actually dying for school choice the way voucher advocates portray them. Of nearly 8,900 eligible students, only 338 filed for vouchers -- less than 4 percent. The numbers are comparable elsewhere. This lack of interest could mean anything, including a larger problem of priorities at home. But it's just as likely that all of these obstacles make the voucher program more impracticable than public-school reforms.
Most importantly, however, is that the assurances from voucher proponents that the programs will show real results are meaningless until these proponents actually try to measure results. So far, most private schools that accept vouchers have demurred from subjecting their students to the same standardized tests given regularly by public-school students. And they have completely balked at the prospect of industry standards. As Milton Friedman, the grandfather of vouchers, has said, "It is essential that no conditions be attached to the acceptance of vouchers that interfere with the freedom of private enterprises to experiment."
But without standards, or at least tests, the success of voucher programs will forever remain inconclusive. As long as regulation remains a conservative bogeyman, private schools will be free to disappoint students the same way America's worst public schools have.