The A, B, C’s of VOUCHER EDUCATION
In 1980, as I was completing my Ph.D. in Secondary Education, I wrote a paper on the pros and cons of voucher education, a policy which allows tax dollars dedicated to education to be returned to parents allowing them to choose the school for their children. A book on the topic, Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman, was also published that year. Yes, the debate on this issue goes back over 50 years. Actually, it goes back even further to the 1950’s, when southern states used vouchers to avoid forced integration after the Supreme Court banned segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. Friedman was pro-voucher, and at that time I agreed. It seemed more democratic to allow parents choose the school their children would attend. And with vouchers it seemed the best schools would thrive, while poorer schools, facing declining enrollment, would either improve or close. The argument was that vouchers would democratize education.
With Governor Abbot’s recently proposed education savings accounts (ESA), $500 million would be allocated to provide financial support for families who remove their children from the public school system. These tax dollars would go directly to parents, giving them ‘school choice’. I do not think this proposal for vouchers outweighs the argument against them in the times we live in now, for many reasons. Here are just a few:
Foremost, we do not adequately fund our public schools, or educators. The salary of a teacher is over 23% less than other fields that require a college degree. Texas trails the national average in spending per student by more than $4,000 and is ranked 42nd in the nation. We will not solve this acute problem by reducing public school funding.
If parents choose the school, then the parent is the client, rather than the student. It diverts the focus of administrators and teachers from educating the children to courting the parents, in particular those who can pay the most.
Vouchers would enable parents to send their children to more expensive private and parochial schools, enabling these schools to become more selective and less diverse—by wealth, race and class. Also, vouchers would eliminate the constitutional separation of Church and State.
Many private and parochial schools do not offer programs for children with disabilities or learning difficulties, so children with these needs would not be well served by vouchers.
Texas teachers and administrators have invested tuition, time and training to qualify for their roles, but we do not compensate or value them adequately. We are bleeding the loss of educators, particularly in public schools. The number of students pursuing a bachelor’s degree in education has declined by almost 50% since the 1970’s. Diversity in our schools has been in decline since the 1950’s. During the 2020-21 school year, more than a third of students (about 18.5 million) attended schools where 75% or more students were of a single race or ethnicity.
This is our problem. If we want education in Texas to be better, we can start by responsibly funding, supporting and improving our public school system, so that all students have access to quality education and all educators are valued and fairly compensated. Vouchers do not address this, rather they would amplify the problem.