Free Markets and the Schools

We are talking about vouchers here. My own view is that the schools should be a totally free market, governed by the greatest extent possible by the market choices of parents. Because of the possibility of market failure (for example the information of what curriculum are needed for employment and college) the state will have some role, but ideally it will be informational and not regulatory. The state will have a funding role because there are two overwhelming benefits. First, state funding distributes the cost along the whole life of the tax-payers, rather than asking parents of school age children to produce five to seven thousand dollars per child per year of school. Second, the whole community benefits from a well educated populace, so our current tax collection scheme is fine, its the use of the money in a monopoly school system based on a Progressive ideology that is the problem.

Parents are most apt to abandon the schools when schools are failing, but a free market approach to schools should not rely on schools failing. Everywhere school choice should exist, although certainly where parents are mostly happy with schools, parent choice will largely continue to support the schools. Nevertheless, the model of the public schools is a factory model emphisizing a uniformity of inputs and outputs. Within the system, magnet schools and charter schools can provide much needed variety of teaching philosophy and curriculum, but currently this option is under utilized. Currently, there is a war between parents and the education establishment over control of the schools in which parents have the upper hand and can use the regulatory powers of the state to impose their will on a teaching staff who cannot be observed sufficiently to gain compliance and is shirking some portion of this regulatory burden anyway. All of which leads to high stakes testing to enforce compliance. This battle to win the public schools creates an adversarial situation where none need exist.

Rather, if schools were able to advertise themselves as best filling a market niche demanded by parents, most teachers could teach according their desired philosophy. Parents, aware of what was going on in the class room, because it was the attraction to send their children, would not demand burdensome restrictions, monitoring, and regulation. Much of this burden is a reflection of the fact that there is a presumption of bad faith by parents about teachers. As I have discussed earlier, this is because parents tend to be essentialists and teachers tend to be progressives. [ed. I'll be posting more on who they are a bit down the road.] With Progressive parents seeking out those teachers committed to Progressive education, and Essentialist parents seeking schools with teachers committed to or at least comfortable with Essentialist education. And so parents would be able to assume good faith by teachers. Barring problems of false advertising, which is grossly pervasive now (because Progressives want to placate Essentialists), teachers would be free to teach as they had promiced they would when they attracted parents to bring their students.

Most school districts would break down in philosophy into Progressive and Essentialist schools. Small schools would be divided into two programs. Large school districts would see further breakdown into various choices. One might imagine a large district with a classically oriented liberal arts high school, with much attention to the great books, to ancient philosophy, literature, and art, to the humanities in general with a strong does of history and literature built on a foundation of the ancients (How does Vietnam reflect the causes of war identified by Thucydides?), including Latin and Greek as language options, and which teaches math and science in order to fill out the knowledge of the educated person and in order to develope rigorous thinking skills. Another school might be more in tune with the moderns but still perennialist, concerned instead with impressionist art, Romanticism and Modernism, and so forth. Another school might be Progressive and even Social Reconstructionist in their approach, using the Humanities as a platform with which to end racism, teach social justice, save the enviroment, and all the rest of the Social Reconstructionist agenda.

Until the Supream Court decision Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the courts had not spoken favorably on school choice. When the issue first comes up in cases like Lemon v. Kurtzman and Committee for Public Education & Religious Liberty et al. v. Nyquist the state's approach to schools was far more statist, and its liberalism was of the New Deal/ Great Society model. So, efforts to encourage a variety of school options resulted in direct subsidies to already existing private schools, most of which were parochial. There was little attempt to balance the Church-State issues here with the rights to a free education established in most state constitutions, especially as it pertains to the disabled or the poor, who often lacked the means to avail themselves of private alternatived to public school. Between the early 70's of Lemon and Nyquist and the present (Zelman was decided in 2002), are three key changes.

First, there is the rise of Neo-Liberalism. (See two hostile definitions here and here) Neo-Liberalism is a reaction to the statism of the mid-century which regards the market as a better tool for social policy than the state. There are neo-liberals of the left, like Bill Clinton, Mickey Kaus, The New Republic, and any democrat who advocates free trade, privatization, means testing benefits, and the like. There are neo-liberals on the right as well, although to the extent that this program is anti-regulatory and pro-business, its a more natural fit for many (but certainly not all) on the right. The rise of neo-liberalism meant that when government aimed to support alterntaives to the monolithic public school, the market became a re-inventing goverment approach to an older problem. Rather than direct subsidies to schools as in Lemon, or even tuition rebates (along side building maintenence subsidies) as in Nyquist, neo-liberals devised magnet schools, charter schools, and devised a voucher program by which parents could take the tax subsidy owed their child (who has a right to a state provided education) and transfer it to a school of their own choosing. By this device, the state avoided direct subsidies (the benefit goes to the parent not the school) and the locus of choice resides with the parent and not the state. Even if one is inclined to look at Lemon and Nyquist and find them constituional, a voucher program as approved in Zelman is better. Parents have more choice on the one hand, but that choice creates a market opportunity for educators in the form of niche schools.

A second change since the early 70's has been the rise of competing goods. Early Church-State cases basically revolved around the test of Establishment violations. While there was some discussion over state interests or public policy effects, the cases hinged on the scrutiny applied to the Establishment issues involved. The famous Lemon Test was invented to determine whether a state action was an Establishment violation. [Note: ? 1 of the 14th Amendment says, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" which is understood to make the Bill of Rights applicable to the states] The Lemon Test is concerned with the intent of said action, the neutrality of said action, and any entanglements that result. No where are the Establishment issues balanced in this test by other compelling interests, such as the right of students to a free, appropriate education. The court was provided arguments on three grounds, but largely ignnored all three. These were the benefit to the state of a private school system to take up some of the burden of providing the public good, education. In the particulars of both Lemon and Nyquist, the states of Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and New York were experiencing a temporary growth of enrollments because of the demographic bubble that resulted from the baby boomers having babies some twenty years after their own births. School officials also anticipated the decline in enrollments that would take place during the 80's and so were reluctant to build new schools and hire new teachers. They prefered to subsidize the private schools to absorb as much of this burden as they could and spare the state. The fact that the courts rejected this plan is one of the reasons there was such a contraction of the school system in the 80's. A second argument made to the court was that it was unequitable for poor inner-city families to be denied access to alternatives because of expence. In Nyquist, for example, New York gave tuition reimbursements to poor families who enrolled their children in private schools. A third argument, was that disabled students could not make appropriate use of private schools without the special services increasingly being offered by the public school system. In the mid 60's the Congress imposed Title I obligations to meet the needs of all students in an appropriate fashion, and in the mid 70's the Congress added the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) as well as other legislation to mandate approriate education for all students. Cases in the later 70's, such as Meek v. Pittenger in 1975 and Wolman v. Walter in 1977. In Meek, the courts rejected the extension of special ed professionals because they feared the state professionals would be unable to resists the sectarian purpose of their sometime work enviroment. (See Section V, paragraph 8 of the Stewart opinion in the link). In Wolman, they reconsidered and while materials and field trips (because the trips were planned by sectarian teachers, despite being to secular locations) were prohibited, the special ed teachers where permissible because they operated in mobile classrooms or in public school facilities. Not only does the Court believe that teachers in parochial schools will act in bad faith, teaching religion with state resources despite prohibition, it believes that this bad faith is contageous.

The third major change that took place was the composition of the court. While Justice Burger was left to argue in dissent during Nyquist the primary purpose of the New York actions were educational and not religious, he was not in the majority. By the mid-eighties, it was possible to form majorities around accomodationist possitions regarding religion and the schools. In Meuller v. Allen in 1983, and Witters v. Wash. Dept. of Services For Blind the Court began to take a different view of Establishment. In Meuller, the court approved tex deductions in Minnasota for tuition, books, and transportation for students in private schools. Returning to older understandings, the court held that the benefits flow to the students (not the schools) and that choice in attendence lies with parents (not the state who pays). In Witters, a rare 9-0 case, the Court allowed a blind adult seeking funding for education intended for the blind to attend a seminary because the benefit was his and the choice was his. (The benefit was also generally available to the blind.) It is notable that it was in the area of disabled claims, rather than state interest or equity claims, that the court began to change it approach to Establishment, because Congress had been so vigorous in demanding accomodations. In time, the bad faith assumptions would give way as well. Aguilar v. Felton in 1985 is the last case in which the court argued,
"Similarly, in Meek v. Pittenger, we invalidated a state program that offered, inter alia, guidance, testing, and remedial and therapeutic services performed by public employees on the premises of the parochial schools. As in Lemon, we observed that though a comprehensive system of supervision might conceivably prevent teachers from having the primary effect of advancing religion, such a system would inevitably lead to an unconstitutional administrative entanglement between church and state."

After Aguilar, this kind of reasoning, assuming bad faith in parochial school educational professionals and public school special education teachers working along side them was not to be seen.

Since the mid 80's a series of cases have expanded the confirmed the more favorable approach to religion, at least as seen in the majorities. Its quite possible that a new member on the Court from the strict seperationist wing would bring us back to the 70s's (bad faith, benefits to the schools not students, choice by the state not the parents). However, as things are now, there is no presumption of bad faith, the court sees the benefits of school choice falling on students and that the choice to take these opportunities are being made by parents and students. Zelman was a 5-4 case and bitterly argued, so one can imagine how eager the strict seperationists would be to over-turn school choice descisions.

Anyone who has read over this weblog will find that I am not interested in propogating religious education. I am, however, not the least bit hostile to parents who want such an education being free to obtain it as easily as they might obtain a public school education for their childrem. Instead, I see the a great monoploly, the public schools, unwilling to reform itself, resistant to the demands of parents, taxpayers, and citizens, lacking any incentive improve quality, and founded on a philosophy rejected by the community (to the point of the community using its regulatory powers to demand compliance). While I want this monopoy of progressive education overturned, I do not want a monopoly of Essentialists put in its place. I say this for two reasons. One is that it is unfair to demand of others what I have found so objectionable, an educational orthodoxy. Second, I will not be satisfied with an Essentialist hegemony, since I want more classical studies, more reading and writing, more higher level thinking than Essentialists will settle for. I want a Perennialist school, indeed I go farther, I want an Realist school founded on Aristotelian principles. There is no classical school unless there is a market place of schools, because a classicist school is niche educational market.