Let me preface this post by saying I can almost hear the criticism already: “School vouchers? They’re a thing of the past! That’s not the ‘Future of Education’!” I thought so too, but then I discovered a small army of impassioned followers that, regardless of the political climate, will not go down without a fight. United under the banner of “School Choice”, they create many impassioned cases like this one:
The first school voucher programs were initiated by Vermont and Maine in 1869 and 1873 respectively. Yes, you read that right, the concept was first put into practice in the 19th century. Since that time however, little progress has been made. In spite of the support of powerful politicians and Nobel laureates, only six states currently have a voucher program. Furthermore, eleven times legislation has been passed and enacted in various states since 1972, but all of the measures were defeated by public referendums, often by wide margins.
In spite of their passion for the issue, the school choice camp is grossly outnumbered and outvoted. In previous elections, Republicans had been the banner carriers for school vouchers because of their belief in smaller government and free-market competition among schools. However, now that the Democrats have swept into power and hold significant majorities in both houses of congress, the likelihood of school vouchers re-emerging as a hot issue in the near future is small.
However, I believe we have not seen the last of this debate, largely in part because of the growing prevalence of charter schools (see my previous post here) and other options that give parents choice within the public schools. School choice has ceased to be a “private vs. public” battle, with new and innovative methods of public education joining the fray and keeping the issue at the forefront of political issues. This interactive map by the Heritage Foundation highlights private, public, charter, and online school choice by state, and provides links to more detailed information.
The number of students wanting to attend public schools other than the ones they’ve been assigned to is growing significantly faster than the availability in those schools, thanks largely in part to state restrictions on the number of non-traditional schools. For example, by law, North Carolina can only have 100 charter schools in operation, a cap that was quickly reached and has since stifled many attempts to create new programs there. With these restrictions in place, and parents still desiring the best opportunity for their students, I believe school vouchers will re-emerge as a viable option in the years to come. The odds however, are against me.
Your last two statements are confusing to me – why do you think they are viable if the odds are against you? And what does this have to do with people choosing (or not?). Interesting that there is such a long history of these kinds of schools. I didn’t know that.
Comment by Prof Lunsford — July 10, 2009 @ 1:21 pm |
Professor et al.
Allow me to clarify those last two sentences. I fully believe that the issue will reemerge in the future. However, I think the odds are against the success of the issue for two reasons. First, the current political climate is overwhelmingly opposed to school vouchers, and with no end in sight to Democratic dominance, my theory will only come to fruition if there is an unexpected sweeping change. Secondly, simply put, history is not on my side. As I mentioned in the post, the issue has a long history and has experienced numerous legislative victories. Those victories however have turned into defeats at the hands of public referendums time after time. So while I think the odds are good that this issue will arise again, the odds are against its supporters suddenly finding success after such a long series of failures.
I hope that helps. Thanks for the great comments, everyone!
-ACM
Comment by mrmactfa — July 11, 2009 @ 12:00 pm |
Alec,
Very interesting about the history – pretty strong evidence this debate won’t go away any time soon.
I gotta say I’m very impressed by the video, especially that it was created by students (college, yes, but still). They did a great job with it and that is hugely valuable. One of my friends is in packaging design and you wouldn’t believe the money and research that goes into designing what our products come in. In fact, we just had dinner together the night before you led the conversation about multiple intelligences. He was telling me about how they identify their audience, then do testing/research to find the four words that the audience most positively associate with (within the domain of the product), then work on ways to transfer that association to the packaging of their product. He mentioned a packaging study where they took the same water and placed it in two different bottles and people overwhelmingly said water in one of the bottles tasted better than water from the other bottle. That’s sort of what happens with this ad. It’s polished, clever, and simple – forceful.
Another thing that struck me about the packaging stuff is that your pinwheel chart on multiple intelligences looks strikingly similar to packaging charts I’ve seen. The population divided into categories and words that are relevant to each group are identified.
Of course, I feel we’re in the same business he is; we’re trying to get kids to want our product. To choose it.
Which brings me back to your post – if we consider that we are packagers of education, then it makes perfect sense that at least some parents will always want to have a choice. Actually, it’s surprising to me that more of them don’t. I mean, how many other domains in our lives are ruled by one option? Could be a fun activity/assignment – go to a Kroger or Harris Teeter and see how many product categories can be found where there is only one brand available.
If I was a resident of City X and was paying for each of the schools equally with my tax dollars, why shouldn’t I have the option to buy the education in the blue box?
Not saying I agree with the policy as it seems to collapse as it expands. But the PSA is very well done.
Another good one.
cheers
harry
Comment by dukemat10 — July 10, 2009 @ 6:27 pm |
I wanted to explain my other. I think the issue of school choice will continue to be a hot button subject. We’ve already scrambled the egg of school choice, there’s no way we are going back to just going to school where you’re zoned. However, I have no idea where we are actually going with it.
Comment by gerardtetel — July 16, 2009 @ 9:19 pm |