Peter David wrote about his experience at a recent PTA meeting. I normally avoid discussions like this on his blog, but I jumped into this one, suggesting that a voucher system would’ve encouraged the school system to run itself like a business, finding ways to cut costs or go out of business, instead of just going to the PTA trying to beg for money.

A reader named Bobb wrote:

Vouchers strike me the same way that private accounts instead of social security do: an election buzz word that sounds good, but once you look at what it really does, you see that it doesn’t really fix the problem at all. It really just does the same thing the system you’re looking to replace does, just moves the money around in a different way.

I had a buddy harp on both these topics, yet he could never explain why they were any better than what we have today. So, we give some money back to the parents so they can offset the cost os sending their kid to a “better” school? That’ll do nothing if the kid doesn’t have a desire to learn in the first place. And if we stuff that better school with a whole bunch of new kids, the quality of service that school is going to be able to provide will drop…while the school the kid used to be in now has a lot fewer students, and may see an improvement in performance. So, vouchers are likely to have the opposite effect they are touted as having.

Now, giving parents that support their kids’ education at home a tax break for the things they do, that might be a decent use of a tax incentive to energize education.

Vouchers don’t do the same thing that the system that exists now does (and neither would private accounts, but that’s a different topic), and here’s why.

Let’s imagine a school district that currently gets $1,000 for each of its 100 students. As I understand it, under the current system, the government would then give the school $100,000 for running that school. It is nearly impossible to quantify whether that school is successful or not for its student body as a whole. Standardized tests don’t work the way they’re intended (which is part of the reason I don’t approve of No Child Left Behind), and even if they did, it’s just an incentive for teachers to teach to the test.

If my kid isn’t doing well in the school system, I’m stuck with a set of unappealing choices: I can drive him to another district, I can shell out the cash to get him into a private school (with no help from the government, and without getting the $1,000 in taxes that would otherwise go for his education), or I can let him stay in a school that isn’t meeting his needs. If I can’t afford to send him elsewhere, the district has very little (if any) incentive to do better for him.

Bobb seems to think that the only problem with our schools is overcrowding. At least, that’s the only explanation I can come up with for his assertion that the quality of education that the better school can provide will drop as more students arrive. The reality, though, is that there are a number of problems that are all addressed by vouchers.

Maybe my son just doesn’t do well in a traditional school environment. Whether he needs a school that goes at a slower pace, one that actively challenges all of its students, or one that will find that his strengths don’t lie in a traditional classroom environment but in a hands-on type education, I can get that kind of school for him.

A school system that is failing for enough students will provide a very strong incentive for someone else who can provide a better experience for the largest number of students to open a new school and take students from the existing school. If there’s an upper limit to how big schools can be and remain effective (which I don’t believe), there would almost certainly be multiple smaller schools opened, instead of a choice between two large schools.

The voucher system’s biggest strength, in my mind, is that it’s a fundamentally capitalistic approach to education, and (as much as some don’t want to admit this) capitalism works. Unlike other economic systems, it works because it accepts and uses human nature. If schools have to compete for dollars, and we don’t give government bureauracracy the power to interfere too heavily with the school’s internal workings, that will encourage schools to do better.