A few thoughts on vouchers, for Chris

This is for Chris, and anyone else who is interested.

Chris asked my thoughts on vouchers. I am opposed to them on basic ideological grounds. I don't believe public money should go to private schools. Simple. In fact, I don't even think public money should go to buy textbooks, pay for counseling services, or busing.

But, a larger point for me is practical. There just isn't enough money to go around to start spending money on vouchers. Let me explain.


According to the 2003-04 NCES report, Characteristics of the 100 largest school districts, Cleveland had about 71,000 students. (If you open the PDF, I'm looking at table A-14). They spent around 10,000 per student, of which about half comes from the state. Let's say 5,000 students are given vouchers in Cleveland. Ohio doesn't give the state funding to Cleveland for each of those 5,000 students. That adds up to about $2.5 million in lost revenue for Cleveland.

Now, you say, the other half of the 10,000 that is local revenue is freed up to spend on the remaining students, to do whatever the district wants. (There is federal money in there also, but I'm not dealing with that right now. That money depends on which students transfer out, so it's not as clean a discussion.)

But school funding comes in per pupil from the state, but it isn't really spent that way. Money is spent on teachers, support staff, and facilities. If three students transfer out of School A in Cleveland, for example, it loses $15,000 in funding from the state. But it still has to employ the same number of teachers, support staff, etc. Three students isn't enough to close the school or cut a teacher. But in reality, $15,000 will have to come from somewhere in the school's site budget. Computers? Supplies? If the number is a little higher than 3, then the cuts are a little deeper. Cut a teacher, cut a class, cut supplies more deeply, cut a counselor.

In a district as large as Cleveland, eventually resources have to be moved around, maybe schools closed, maybe extracurriculars are cut, and so on. But the end result is a loss of investment in public education in Cleveland. Supporters of vouchers say that's a good thing, and that those 5,000 students who transfer out are doing much better and have a better future. Maybe so. But the private school system certainly can't support the other 66,000 students in Cleveland public. (And, I would argue, if the private system did absorb those students, they would have the same problems the public district had before.) We end up sacrificing them and their education so that 5,000 kids--the best kids, because the private schools can be selective--can go to private schools. It's a very elitist agenda.

Long term, we need to figure out what it is about private schools that make them successful--is it discipline? High standards? Parental support? And try to model that in public schools.

I know this much: expensive private schools don't produce high quality graduates by beating their brains in with standardized tests.