Education: A Citizen Voices Issue Framework

Too many young Philadelphians emerge from school unprepared for life, in this view, because government and the education profession have colluded to deny parents their right to choose what’s best for their child.

The broad remedy, to proponents of this choice, is simple and obvious: Put that power back into parents’ hands, by allowing a market system of free choice among educational options.

Proponents vary in how far they would go in this direction. Some would privatize education, period. They would scrap the public school system entirely.

Others grant that the favored choice for some parents might be a public-school-style environment. They’d allow a tax-funded public system to continue, just as long as tax policy did not give it what they consider to be an unfair advantage over private and religious schools.

They point out that America’s system of higher education - where government grants and loans go to students without regard to whether the college they attend is public, private or religious - is the envy of the world. By contrast, the public K-12 system, which this view sees as a monopoly run for the benefit of those who work for and manage it, is rife with problems and by some measures lags behind education in other industrialized nations.

This view regards pleas to spend more money on a hopelessly failed enterprise such as the city school system as folly – throwing good money down a rat hole. It regards calls for standards, accountability and charter/voucher experiments as tinkering at the edges.

It insists that parents, no matter whether rich or poor, have ultimate responsibility for their children’s education – thus it’s only fair that they regain the power that, in this view, has been stolen from them over the years by the education bureaucracy and its hired hands in politics.

• Abrogate all labor contracts inside the system that stand in the way of this goal.

• Give all city parents vouchers (grants of tax money raised for education) that they can spend as they see fit, at public, private or religious schools. Needs-test or scale the aid so that poorer families get a fair crack at true choice.

• Reconstitute public schools as "charter schools," publicly funded but with freedom from most state mandates. The should be set up however any group of parents, teachers or businesses would like to set them up.

• Make it the responsibility of the school board not to manage schools directly, but to oversee an equitable system of educational choice.

• Invite corporations and philanthropies to underwrite scholarships to advance individual choice, or to set up their own charter schools.

• Create tax breaks for people who donate time or money to K-12 schools.

• The current city school system is a costly shambles that is unjust to the children it is supposed to serve, and lacks incentive to reform itself.

• Under the current school governance, teachers unions other and entrenched interests can undermine any attempt to make schools more child-centered.

• Parents of private and religious schoolchildren are forced to pay twice for education: their child’s tuition and taxes to public schools that waste money and teach values the parents may not espouse.

• Parental choice creates competition among schools for students, which is an incentive for public schools do a better job, lest they lose "customers."

• Parents know their children and their children’s needs better than anyone; a market system would allow parents to exercise their expert judgment.

• Arguments that poor parents don’t know enough to choose their children’s schools are paternalistic and racist.

• When America was founded, there was no compulsory public schooling, yet citizenship and the economy thrived.

• Private and religious schools have proven they can provide quality education more cheaply than public schools, where politics and bureaucracy raise costs.

• A system of choice would spur more private, business and philanthropic donations to education.

What are the key arguments against this choice?

• How can public schools "compete" when the money spent on vouchers will be subtracted from the inadequate resources the city schools now have?

• Vouchers would subsidize parents who can afford private or parochial school, since they send their children there already.

• Vouchers are unconstitutional, because they would send tax dollars to religious schools.

• Choice works fine for parents with means, but it’s a false promise to poor parents, who will never be able to afford Germantown Friends or Episcopal Academy.

• Education is not purely a private good; the state constitution clearly states it is a fundamental moral responsibility of the state to educate its citizens.

• Education is not purely a private good; society has a valid interest in making sure its citizens are well educated for citizenship and the global economy.

• If you allow vouchers and charters without some government oversight, how will the state know students at private and religious schools are meeting the state’s standards for a good education?

• Public schools are a vital melting pot; school choice would tend to divide a diverse city even further, not unify it.

Education as a private good. Parental responsibility. Free-market choice.

Freedom of religion. Populism. Risk-taking.