April 21, 2004
Don't Vouch for This
I don't know why so many conservatives get so gaga over school vouchers. I suppose some forms of wealth redistribution are empirically better than others.
I used to believe in vouchers because I thought the value and purpose in them was sound. I did not believe the purpose was to strip away money and students piecemeal until we were out of the public school business altogether, although we can certainly debate that concept on the merits at a later date. No, I thought the true purpose behind vouchers was to wield a mighty cudgel by withholding money to public schools, and force them to reform. Because reform is what is needed. Public schools need to slash bureaucracies, allow administrators and educators to mete out real discipline, institute valid objective testing, revoke the concept of social promotion, and cull all the politically correct tripe from their texts and programs. If using the big stick of diverted funds did the job, I'd be all for it.
Let me tell you something: that dog won't hump. If money is diverted from public schools to private institutions, it is a certainty that county commissions, state legislatures, and congressmen will do their damnedest to find more tax money to refill those coffers. No government mandate ever, ever gets permanently downsized. Never happened, never will. In fact, many voucher programs are actually being sold on the fact they will not divert existing public school funding. That's not a stick, it's a carrot with ranch dressing on the side.
So what you will have is public schools with the same amount of money, and less students. That'll teach them. You will also have a new growing entitlement of tuition welfare, because that's what vouchers are. Just another cancerous government giveaway that gives those who can't afford to pay private school tuition a free ride, and a spit in the face of the hardworking parents who pay the full nut.
Here's another thing. Once those private schools take those public funds they will be at the mercy of the government lawyers and the grievance pimps. Public monies are chained and manacled with imperial diktats like Marley's ghost. Wait until some private school principal disciplines little Rasheed with a belt or a paddle. It will be Uncle Tom's Cabin and Mandingo rolled into one nasty dust-up. The government bureaucrats will have these schools by the shorts, and will pummel the discipline and the testing and the popery right out of them.
So there is your voucher future: unreformed public schools with even higher bureaucrat to pupil ratios, higher taxes for the working stiff, and scores of private schools sued out of existence.
Nota bene: My children attend that rarest of rarities: an excellent public school system, so I don't have a dog in this fight. Even a dog that won't hump. But I do pay taxes, so I am a stakeholder at the pecuniary level. And I hate to see people believe in fairy tales.