Volconvo Debate Forums - View Single Post - Soliciting Criticism for a School Choice System

forecg · Feb 25, 2004, 01:30 pm

I've got an idea for a privately funded school choice system and I'd like to hear your criticism.

Right now public schools are supported by everyone's tax dollars - regardless of whether or not they use them, and regardless of whether or not they think they're more cost effective than private schools. My proposal is to do _nothing_ to the amount of money each person pays for education, but to give them the individual ability to choose how it gets spent.

It's pretty simple, really. Anyone who spends money on _non-public_ education gets a tax rebate for that amount. The restrictions are as follows:

1. The institution they spend it on (a private/religious school, a scholarship organization, a homeschooling parent, etc) must be state-approved. To avoid getting out of hand, this approval must exist solely to prevent fraud, and must be entirely open to public scrutiny.

2. To qualify for the rebate, the money spent per child can't exceed the amount the state currently spends per child. Parents can spend more than that of course - the extra money just won't qualify for the rebate.

3. It's a _rebate_, so the total amount returned to the taxpayer can never exceed the amount they paid for education in the first place.

You may wonder how people would actually use these vouchers if they wanted to. Parents could get a rebate for some of the money they spent educating their own kids, but grandparents, friends, neighbors, and local businesses could all get rebates for helping them out (up to the state level of funding anyway). Even people who pay far more than the cost of school for a single child can still get the full rebate by funding scholarships that support multiple children.

So under this system, what happens to someone who has a principled objection to funding private or religious schools? Their money continues to go to the public schools just like it always has. What happens to the people who are cheap and just want to pay lower taxes? They pay the same amount they've always paid, because this proposal does nothing to reduce the amount of money they're required to spend on education. What happens if people take their kids out of medium-priced public schools and put them in really expensive private schools? The state doesn't lose out because the rebate only goes up to the amount _the state_ spends, not the amount the parents spend. Public schools ONLY lose the money they save by not having to teach the kids that stop going to them.

The advantage of this system is that it lets individual people support school choice if and only if they choose to, while at the same time it does nothing to prevent public schools from continuing to function with their existing levels of funding per student. In fact, because private and religious schools on average cost LESS than public ones, per student funding levels will actually INCREASE for the students who remain in public schools. Kids who are unhappy with their schools will be more easily able to escape them, while kids who are happy will have more money to remain in them.

Feb 25, 2004, 01:30 pm	#1 (permalink) (top)
forecg Molten Ash Posts: 36	I've got an idea for a privately funded school choice system and I'd like to hear your criticism. Right now public schools are supported by everyone's tax dollars - regardless of whether or not they use them, and regardless of whether or not they think they're more cost effective than private schools. My proposal is to do _nothing_ to the amount of money each person pays for education, but to give them the individual ability to choose how it gets spent. It's pretty simple, really. Anyone who spends money on _non-public_ education gets a tax rebate for that amount. The restrictions are as follows: 1. The institution they spend it on (a private/religious school, a scholarship organization, a homeschooling parent, etc) must be state-approved. To avoid getting out of hand, this approval must exist solely to prevent fraud, and must be entirely open to public scrutiny. 2. To qualify for the rebate, the money spent per child can't exceed the amount the state currently spends per child. Parents can spend more than that of course - the extra money just won't qualify for the rebate. 3. It's a _rebate_, so the total amount returned to the taxpayer can never exceed the amount they paid for education in the first place. You may wonder how people would actually use these vouchers if they wanted to. Parents could get a rebate for some of the money they spent educating their own kids, but grandparents, friends, neighbors, and local businesses could all get rebates for helping them out (up to the state level of funding anyway). Even people who pay far more than the cost of school for a single child can still get the full rebate by funding scholarships that support multiple children. So under this system, what happens to someone who has a principled objection to funding private or religious schools? Their money continues to go to the public schools just like it always has. What happens to the people who are cheap and just want to pay lower taxes? They pay the same amount they've always paid, because this proposal does nothing to reduce the amount of money they're required to spend on education. What happens if people take their kids out of medium-priced public schools and put them in really expensive private schools? The state doesn't lose out because the rebate only goes up to the amount _the state_ spends, not the amount the parents spend. Public schools ONLY lose the money they save by not having to teach the kids that stop going to them. The advantage of this system is that it lets individual people support school choice if and only if they choose to, while at the same time it does nothing to prevent public schools from continuing to function with their existing levels of funding per student. In fact, because private and religious schools on average cost LESS than public ones, per student funding levels will actually INCREASE for the students who remain in public schools. Kids who are unhappy with their schools will be more easily able to escape them, while kids who are happy will have more money to remain in them.