Argument for School Vouchers

The way in which America's public educational system is designed is a common point of contention between educators and economists, parents and politicians. One of the most common debates in modern times is over the likely effect a free market would have on the financing of our country's schooling. That there is a need to provide K-12 education to all of the nations children is unquestionable, but how we fund and administer this public good is a topic of much controversy. Traditionally, those in favor of public schooling maintain that leaving public education to the control a free market would either adversely affect the field through competition and choice, or that the effects would be unsubstantial. However, many economists and other critics are of the belief that education would behave like all other capitalist human exchanges. They hold that the education field would respond to market incentives with improved performance and that this would lead to increased attention to the needs of families and greater innovation (Boaz, 1991). It has been demonstrated that teachers and schools are indeed affected by financial incentives. In particular, it seems as though the schools that are in competitive markets do make improvements when forced with these economic pressures, while centralized bureaucratic systems have characteristically been coercive and stagnant.

Over the last decade many proposals have been formulated in many states that would introduce a degree of parental choice and interschool competition into the K-12 education field. Unfortunately though, these current choice programs almost always pose barriers to the entries of new schools and the exit of unpopular ones. In addition, current choice/voucher programs usually exclude religious and "for profit" institutions and restrict staffing and admissions policies. In this, the current programs are controlling the supply and demand for education and cannot be looked to as examples of a market force educational system. Even private schools face very limited competition at the primary and secondary levels. The comparison between the tuition paid at private schools v. the "free" status of tax-supported schools severely limit's the ones who can afford to participate in private education. Consequently, this keeps the density of private schools much lower than one would expect if government did not provide schools and, instead, provided tuition grants or vouchers. As such, there is nowhere in the United States where students and parents enjoy a truly free and competitive market in education (Coleman, 1990).

Although market styled education reform has gained in popularity recently, it has also been subject to much criticism. The most common criticism of this new approach is that parents cannot be expected to make sound educational choices for their students and that these key decisions are better left to experts and educators. Opponents believe that there would be a significant number of parents that would either fail to educate themselves properly on competing schools, or would base their decisions on the wrong criteria. From a socioeconomic point of view, there is legitimate concern that specific groups such as the poor or the poorly educated would be the ones most likely to make poor choices for their children. Also, if these parents chose schools solely on the basis of race or social status, economic and racial isolation would be increased in the communities and in the long run economy.

On the supply side, a market force K-12 educational system would allow these newly created "for-profit" institutions to lure customers away from academically superior institutions by using flashy advertising and making bold promises, much like colleges do. If a voucher system were to be implemented there would definitely be a large cause for concern over the possibility of fraud occurring within the system. Corrupt principals could easily offer