On February 7, 2017, Betsy DeVos was confirmed as the
Secretary of Education of the Trump Administration. The confirmation process
was a particularly contentious one, forcing the Vice-President to cast a
tie-breaking vote in the Senate in favour of confirmation. One of the main
reasons for the controversy was Ms. DeVos’ favorable view of ‘education
vouchers’ and ‘charter schools’, two policy mechanisms favored by the ‘school
choice’ movement. In a March 2015 speech, Ms. DeVos said: “Let the
education dollars follow each child, instead of forcing the child to follow the
dollars. This is pretty straightforward. And it’s how you go from a closed
system to an open system that encourages innovation. People deserve choices and
options.”[1]
‘Choices and options?! What kind of right-wing monster could
be in favour of those?!’ the leftists bray. ‘Such things will only increase
education inequality!” To counter such nonsense, let us examine the working and
benefits of the most thoroughgoing school choice policy: education vouchers.
Educational Vouchers:
The Basics
In 2013, the average amount of public school spending per
pupil was $10,700[2]. The
idea behind an education voucher system is that, rather than governments
spending this money to fund ‘free’ public schools, they would distribute it to
the families of individual students in the form of vouchers that could only be
spent on approved private education services. Under this system, education
providers are rewarded monetarily depending on how many students they are able
to attract, rather than in the public system where schools receive a set amount
of funding, regardless of performance. The private, competitive education
market of the voucher system maximally incentivizes education providers to
cater to the demands of the education consumers (families of students, or the
students themselves); something which the public, monopolistic model
conspicuously fails to accomplish.
So that’s the basic principle, but what kind of concrete
changes to the education system could we expect as a result of implementing the
voucher system? The most noticeable change would be a significantly more
diverse array of educational options, as education providers sought to appeal
to specific target markets in their quest for voucher money. For the majority
of this post, I will discuss different aspects of the increased educational
diversity that we might expect.
Secular versus Religious
I begin with this one, not because I expect it to be the most
important consideration for voucher-wielding parents, but because it is the one
that critics of school choice carry on about endlessly. Yes, it is true: under
a voucher system, religious parents would be able to send their children to
religious schools. These schools, it is alleged, will focus
more on religious indoctrination than on actual education, thereby dooming
their pupils to lives of ignorance and zealotry.
There are several problems with this statement. Firstly, it
makes the unwarranted assumption that the chance to religiously indoctrinate
their kids some more is more important to most religious parents than their children’s
academic and professional success. This is very unlikely to be the case. Take,
for instance, Jesuit High School: a private, Catholic, secondary school in
Portland, Oregon. On the ‘Academic Snapshot’ page of its website, the school
brags about how 99% of their students continued to college, and about how their
average SAT scores in all three areas (Reading, Writing, and Math) were better
than the State and National averages. They also brag about how many hours their
students volunteered, how qualified their teachers are, and the school’s
favorable student-to-teacher ratio.[3]
Nowhere on the page does it brag about how boss their students are at theology,
or about how many Bible verses the average student can recite by heart.
This makes sense because, contrary to the ignorant beliefs of
rabid secularists, most religious parents actually want their children to
succeed in their academic and professional lives, not just in their ‘spiritual’
one. Most religious schools competing for voucher money will cater to this
desire, and prioritize general academic accomplishment over religious content
in their programs as a result. But, in case the paranoid secularists are still
worried about ‘indoctrination academies’, the government could just formulate a
policy that sets a maximum amount of religious content in the institution’s
curriculum (25% say) as a condition for the institution remaining eligible for
voucher payments. This policy will likely prove superfluous, but whatever; it
won’t do much harm to have it on the books.
A second problem with the statement is that it assumes that
only religious schools are into indoctrination. This is far from the truth;
secular, public schools attempt to indoctrinate kids all the time! Just
recently, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) mandated that all schools
include an ‘acknowledgement’ that the school is situated on the ‘traditional
territories’ of specifically named ‘indigenous tribes’ in their morning
announcements; every single morning![4]
This is not a mere history lesson, as some defenders of the policy claim. We
know that it is indoctrination because it is repeated, with ritual-like
regularity, every single school morning. It seeks to indoctrinate children with
the ridiculous notion that only members of indigenous tribes are the ‘real’
owners of the land, and that the rest of the population (the settlers) are
illegitimate interlopers, a crime for which they must pay with endless guilt
and reparations towards the remaining indigenous peoples. Sound familiar? Why
yes, it is the religious doctrine of
sin and repentance! See, supposedly secular people can be into what looks
suspiciously like religious indoctrination.
Speaking of sin and repentance, how about the doctrines of
environmentalism and climate change? These controversial doctrines are taught
as gospel truths in many secular public schools (including the ones that I
attended). They claim that mankind has sinned through his pursuit of consumer
goods (consumerism) and use of fossil-fuel-powered machines (industrialism).
Only by repenting and giving up his sinful ways can he avert the hellish
scourges of environmental contamination and catastrophic global climate change.
Never mind that environmental contamination could best be addressed via
better-defined private property rights and free-market mechanisms, and that the
science of anthropogenic climate change is still hugely uncertain. To the
secular indoctrinator, the truth is clear, and that truth is environmentalism.
And speaking of morning rituals, how about the ritual of
singing the national anthem every single morning in schools? The purpose of
this is obvious: to indoctrinate children with the doctrines of nationalism and
patriotism.
And these are just a few examples of secular indoctrination.
Here are a few more: the lionization of the United Nations, the teaching of the
fallacious economic theories of John Maynard Keynes as absolute truth, the
emphasis on ‘sharing’, ‘group work’,
‘fairness’, and other collectivist principles, strict adherence to the
latest principles of left-wing ‘political correctness’, especially as it
relates to racial and sexual orientation minorities. And these are just off the
top of my head. The point is that worldview indoctrination, whether this
worldview is secular or religious, is an almost inescapable part of any kind of
education. As such, to the champions of public secular education who complain
about indoctrination in religious schools, I respond with a quote from the book
which they loath: “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s
(religious) eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own (secular)
eye?”[5]
Local versus Out of
Area
This is another controversial one, but one that I believe to
be very important. Often, in the public school system, kids are forced to
attend the school that is in their family’s local area (school zones). Now,
there are definite advantages to going to a local school (most notably, saving
time and money on transportation), but there can also be significant
disadvantages in certain cases. These are most obvious in the case of local
schools in impoverished, or ‘ghetto’, areas.
The behaviors, attitudes, and mindsets of a student’s
classmates (in other words, the social environment of the school) constitute an
important factor in determining what that student will get out of a program of
education. In many ghetto areas, the social environments of the local schools
are very unconducive to learning. Bad parenting of many of the kids, often the
result of the (usually single[6])
parent lacking the requisite time or intelligence, causes widespread behavioral
issues (acting out, unwillingness to learn, violence) in the school’s student
population. Lacking a stable family, a number of these students join
violent/criminal gangs as a kind of substitute. Gang politics and winning
‘street cred’ become more important to these students than actually learning academic
subjects at school. Those few students who actually do prioritize academics
over these things are often excluded from the ‘cool’ social groupings, and
mercilessly bullied by the more thuggish students.
In my view, the biggest tragedy of this situation is that many
bright, academically-talented kids from these areas are prevented from living
up to these potentials. They are forced into a chaotic school environment where
classes are constantly disrupted by their behaviorally-challenged classmates,
thereby rendering academic instruction very difficult. In addition, tremendous
social pressure is exerted on them to conform to the culture of thuggery and
ignorance favored by their peers. For the government to force these kids into
these kinds of schools is not just bad education policy; it is also incredibly
cruel.
With a voucher system, these kids could get away from the
toxic social environment of their local school by attending an out-of-area
school in a friendlier part of the city. Getting there would be more expensive
and time-consuming, but compared to the benefits of a far more conducive social
environment, this is a small price to pay. Part of the total voucher amount for
these kids could be used to pay for the extra transportation (whether by school
bus or by public transit). It is true that this would leave a reduced sum for
tuition, but there would still be more than enough to pay for an educational
experience far superior to that provided by the local ghetto schools.
Pace and difficulty of
education
Especially bright, average, and especially slow students
learn at different paces and levels. If they are all stuck in the same class,
the teacher generally adopts a pace and level conducive to the average student,
thereby leaving the bright kids bored and the slow kids struggling. Better to
separate these groups of kids into different classes so that the pace and level
of instruction can be more optimal for them.
While they make an effort to do this in the public system
with gifted programs and such, free-market competition under a voucher system,
where catering to specific target markets is highly encouraged, would most
certainly result in more such differentiation.
Other differentiation
factors
- Size
of school.
- Online,
more self-directed, learning versus in-class, more guided, learning.
- Pedagogical
approaches (content-focused versus skills-focused, rote learning versus
creative learning, strict discipline versus more student freedom, etc…)
- Facilities
(more/better facilities such as gyms, libraries, cafeterias, fancy furniture,
etc… but higher tuition/less money spent on straight academics; or less/worse
facilities but lower tuition/more money spent on straight academics).
- Student
to teacher ratio.
- Subject
specialization (art school, math/science school, technical school, humanities
school, etc…)
- General
education versus career-oriented education.
Higher Quality Overall
Not only would a voucher system result in far greater variety
and choice when it comes to education; it would also tend to produce a higher
quality system all around. The public system is an uncompetitive, politicized
monopoly that caters to teachers’ unions who prioritize the job security of
their members over the quality of teaching in the system. The free-market
system would be a competitive, consumer-oriented array of different educational
providers who would leave such anti-social unions in the dust. For these
reasons, the latter would tend to drive up quality and be more open to
innovation overall.
Conclusion
If one is a big fan of coercive social engineering and the
mean-spirited, leveling-for-leveling’s sake version of egalitarianism, then a
public education system is the best choice. If, on the other hand, one is
interested in higher quality, more innovative, more diverse, more customizable,
and similarly accessible education for the world’s children; then a free-market
system, paired with redistribution via education vouchers, is the best choice.
And if the latter is more your cup of tea, then the confirmation of school
choice advocate Betsy DeVos as education secretary should be a cause for celebration,
no matter what she may or may not have said about guns and grizzly bears.
[1] http://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/02/07/education-secretary-betsy-devos-on-school-choice-vouchers-and-religion.html
[2] http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-98.html
[3] http://www.jesuitportland.org/page.cfm?p=419
[4] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/tdsb-indigenous-land-1.3773050
[5]
King James Bible, Matthew 7:3.
[6] https://newsone.com/1195075/children-single-parents-u-s-american/
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