Today, there is an Indy Star article on school vouchers entitled, Voucher plan for schools gaining steam.
Here is the basic problem with vouchers: Some kids are more expensive to educate than others.
If we don’t really care if the difficult to educate kids get some level of education, we can let the schools kick out the problem kids and probably make a voucher system work. If schools know they only have $x per kid to meet their education goals, they can just kick out those kids who cost more than $x to educate. Under the current system, the more easily educated kids are, in effect, subsidizing the less educable children.
If we do want to educate the hard-to-educate children (and I think we should), then a straight voucher system doesn’t work because it lets the easily educated children leave and take all of their money with them, including the dollars that were previously being used to subsidize the problem children.
Now, if we had enough money to let the old school receive just as much money as ever while the child who wanted to change schools headed for greener pastures with some additional money; then I suppose a voucher system could work. But, if we’re going to require a school to keep the problem child and take money away from the school every time an easily educated child leaves, then we’re putting the school in a trick bag that it won’t get out of.
Leave a Reply