Voucher Plan Will Help Public Education
The article below about how a privately funded voucher program targeted at one failing elementary school triggered rapid, major changes reminds me of the debate in the school reform movement between those in the following two camps:
1) Those that focus on creating alternatives to (and competition for) the existing system, in the form of charter schools and/or vouchers. Many of these people disparage efforts to reform the current system as futile and/or unnecessary (arguing that competition, by itself, will bring about change), and
2) Those that focus on reforming the existing system. Many of these people disparage efforts to create alternatives as a distraction and/or too small-scale to make a difference.
This debate drives me nuts because we need to do BOTH!
As much as I'd like to see well-designed voucher programs become more widespread, I'm not optimistic that this will happen anytime soon at a scale that would be meaningful in the context of 55 MILLION public schoolchildren. The trends are favorable, but this will be a LOOOOONG road.
The same is true for charter schools. Creating and growing a high-quality charter school is the single most difficult entrepreneurial challenge I can think of. Given the extraordinary challenges -- lack of adequate funding, finding facilities, etc. -- it's remarkable how many charter schools have been created -- and how many are doing so well. But while charter schools are growing rapidly, take a look at the map below -- charters have more than 2% market share in only four states plus Washington DC, so this too will be a long road.
This being said, creating competition is critical for two reasons:
1) Alternative schools like KIPP are laboratories of innovation. They try many more experiments than regular public schools -- for example, can you imagine ANY public school requiring, as KIPP does, that every teacher have a cell phone and students are told to call anytime, 24/7, if they need help on homework (or anything else)? These schools also show what is possible -- what low-income, minority kids can achieve with high expectations, good teachers, etc. I forget who said "The actual proves the possible", but it's critically important.
2) Alternative schools create competition, which creates pressure for change. Even small-scale competition can have a major impact, and I'm having trouble thinking of more than a few rare examples of meaningful public school change in the absense of competition. The article below is a great case study, and there are countless others.
Every person in the private sector I've ever spoken with instantly gets the importance of competition, but those in the worlds of government, nonprofits, education and academia, I've found that people don't get this as quickly and instinctively, so we have to collect data and document countless case studies to win everyone over to this argument.
Lastly, in the article below, I love this rebuttal!
The most prominent critic of the governor's voucher plan proposal, Connecticut Education Association president Rosemary Coyle, has asked "Why would we want to divert public dollars to private schools that are not accountable to Connecticut's citizens?" The answer is very simple: to make the state's worst performing public schools accountable to Connecticut's citizens.
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Voucher Plan Will Help Public Education
Governor Rowland has proposed an education reform plan that offers 500 private school vouchers, worth $4,000 each, to children in the state's worst performing schools. The best way to understand why it makes so much sense to target Connecticut's failing schools with some form of school choice is to look across the border to Albany, New York.
In 1996, Virginia Manheimer, a wealthy philanthropist, wanted to see just how powerful vouchers could be in improving the quality of education, especially for the poor and minorities.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 2:02 PM
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