The nomination of Betsy De Vos to head the Department of Education has brought up, again, the question of vouchers and voucher-like systems, at least on twitter and facebook. Here’s what I’ve been thinking.
There are reasonable arguments in favor of and against voucher/schools of choice/charter school systems. On the one hand, these systems create winners and losers, and the loser-school systems bear burdensome legacy costs, if the public schools can’t respond to the situation by upping their game. Parents who can’t transport their kids to a better school lose out too, as do motivated kids with indifferent parents.
On the other hand, to shrug off poor public schools, and lack of family choice, with statements such as, “the parents should just get involved in improving their local public school” is missing the point. In some cases, they may make attempts that are rebuffed by an administration and a teacher’s union that figures that parents have no choice, anyway. Even before that point, the “you should just get involved” presumes that the parents actually have the time and the skill set to do so, and there’s not all that much that parental involvement can remedy. But in most cases, regardless of what they should or shouldn’t do, the practical effect is that those parents respond by moving — the classic “voting with your feet.” And there are all manner of consequences to a system that says, “the only way you can give your child a better school is to move” (or, yes, by sending your child to a parochial or private school, but for most families, that’s not under consideration): poor areas lose families who could stabilize the neighborhood, even if their children aren’t classmates of their neighbors, and wealthier areas see housing prices go up as families are willing to pay escalating prices for the opportunity to send their children to a “good school” — both in terms of quality of instruction and quality of their classmates. And “escalating prices” doesn’t refer just to the cost of real estate taxes, but a sort of bidding war as the top 25th percentile of American families want to get into the top 10th percentile-ranked schools, for example. And as housing prices go up, families increasingly struggle to pay their mortgage — because, much as we’ve deluded ourselves that housing price increases are a matter of wealth-building, the reality is that this is a real burden for families.
There was a book about this, which Amazon tells me is even older than I had remembered: The Two-Income Trap, from 2003. Sure, there’s a lot more to it, but that was a key part of it, as I recall. (And yes, maybe I’ll check this out and re-read it the next time I’m at the library.)
So a more widespread voucher/charter school/school of choice system could have much wider impacts.
Yes, Detroit is bleeding population. And at the same time, the Detroit school system has lost massive numbers of students to non-public schools, or public schools outside of its borders.
What would the city be like if those parents didn’t have these alternative options? Yes, DPS wouldn’t be in such financial straights. But at the same time — and we don’t really know — it seems likely that the population loss among the middle class would have been even greater, that the possibilities of schools outside the DPS system may have held onto families who would have otherwise abandoned Detroit as well. And the city is now trying to bring new middle-class residents into its “midtown” developments, but, again, it would be a pretty tough sell, for families at least, if there weren’t non-DPS options.
So there’s no easy answer. Each alternative — neighborhood schools, i.e., “you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit” vs. mobility options — have real benefits and real costs.
image: from flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/15344079560; by woodleywonderworks
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