public school

The Case for Private School Vouchers

by Alex Schibuola on November 23, 2010 · 3 comments

in Odds & Ends

If you had a choice between two identical cars, would you choose one that costs $7,500 or one that cost $15,000? The $7,500 one would be a better value, of course. Now, if you had to pay $15,000 for a car because an organization lobbied Congress to force you to do so, would you be angry? Yes, of course.

What if I replaced every instance of the word “car” in that last paragraph with “schools,” would you still have the same reaction? This is what we face in America’s education system. Which organization imposes this forced purchase? Teachers unions—the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT)—which adamantly oppose school choice and other substantive reforms that could help struggling schools improve, and get kids out of failing ones.

The NEA likes to quote studies showing that public schools have comparable academic achievements to private ones. While that strikes me as unlikely, let’s just say it’s true. Even then, the costs per student at public schools are twice that of some private schools! Once again, given two identical products, with one being half the cost, which would you choose?

Monopolies are undesirable. In addition to charging high prices, they produce inferior products. Why then are we so willing to accept the monopoly of government schools? The opposite of monopoly is a competitive industry. Competition means choices. And choices mean that competitors have to provide a superior product at the lowest price possible.

Ever notice how our university system is world-class, but our primary and secondary schools are considered second-rate among developed nations? What is the primary difference between the universities and the primary and secondary schools? Choice. When competition prevails, society wins. When monopoly exists, society suffers.

A monopoly controls the supply of its products. This allows them to charge a higher price and to produce lower quality goods. Unions are the labor market’s equivalent to monopolies. Unions control the supply of labor, which allows them to charge a higher price for labor, i.e., wages.

Quality in teaching is compromised by the lack of incentives that unionization engenders—outstanding teachers do not get additional compensation, while subpar teachers face little chance of dismissal.

That is why teachers unions fear school choice so much. If most public schools were truly comparable to private schools, then why would parents ever choose to use voucher programs to send their children to private schools? Public schools need to compete. The private school voucher system would allow us to reinvigorate our educational system and cut government spending simultaneously.

Photo Credit: Tncountryfan’s Flickr Photostream

Regulation of the Day 51: Mandatory Hand Sanitizing

by Ryan Young on September 15, 2009

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Regulation, Regulation of the Day

In Jersey City, New Jersey, the school district is requiring students to “sanitize their hands when they walk into the class in the morning, before and after lunch, and after each restroom visit.” That’s a requirement. As in, not optional. The district will be providing hand sanitizers at a cost of about $100,000.

Stopping Wasteful Spending: Better Latte Than Never

by Richard Morrison on January 7, 2009 · 1 comment

in Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

Working in Washington, D.C. for the last decade, I’ve become familiar with the experience of criminal conduct in city government. The city sports a culture of corruption so brazen that it has included everyone from the (former) mayor down to local beat cops. The crimes perpetrated include everything from selling drugs to demanding kickbacks from government contractors to a $50 million embezzlement scam perpetrated by local tax officials.

It is therefore with a spirit of weary amusement that I read about a group of Chicago Public Schools officials and their recent purchase of $67,000 worth of espresso makers:

Chicago public school bureaucrats skirted competitive bidding rules to buy 30 cappuccino/espresso machines for $67,000, with most of the machines going unused because the schools they were ordered for had not asked for them, according to a report by the CPS Office of Inspector General.

That was just one example of questionable CPS actions detailed in the inspector general’s 2008 annual report. Others included high school staffers changing grades to pump up transcripts of student athletes and workers at a restricted-enrollment grade school falsifying addresses to get relatives admitted.

In the case of the cappuccino machines, central office administrators split the order among 21 vocational schools to avoid competitive bidding required for purchases over $10,000. As a result CPS paid about $12,000 too much, according to Inspector General James Sullivan. “We were able to find the same machines cheaper online,” he said.

So is that the problem – not that someone spent $67,000 on fancy coffee makers – but that they paid slightly too much for them? Would things have been acceptable if they had ordered them off of the website the IG found for $1,833 each instead of the actual purchase price of $2,233? More importantly, are they keeping them or can I buy one off of eBay at a massive discount?

One more thing: D.C. has, of course, had plenty of public school officials playing fast and loose with government money as well – amazingly, some of them even went to jail! In their defense, though, D.C. public school employees can be forgiven for thinking the District has an unlimited supply of cash. We spend about $24,600 per pupil per year — about $10,000 more than the average for area private schools.