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7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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Three Educational Innovations
Private School Choice: Vouchers
Public School Choice: Charter Schools Standards and Standardized Testing
7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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Questions to Ask About These
Educational Movements:1) Who promotes this intervention? What are the
ideas that shape this intervention?
2) What is the impact of the intervention on theissue of meritocracy? Are some of the structural
problems weve discussed mitigated by this
intervention?
7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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A Definition of Vouchers
Education vouchers are tuition certificatesthat are issued by the government and are
redeemable at the school of the studentschoice. Their aim is to make the educationsystem operate as much like a free marketas possible.
--Laura Hersh Salganik, The Fall and Rise ofEducation Vouchers, Teachers CollegeRecord(1981) 83:2.
7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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What are the ideas that gave riseto this educational reform?
7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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Milton Friedman
A neo-liberal economist(who graduated from
Rutgers University, 1932)
First proposed vouchers in
an article, The Role ofGovernment in Education,
1955.
Government has a
monopoly over educationand this is inappropriate in a
free enterprise system
7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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Neo-Liberal Philosophy
Private enterprise is likely to be far more
efficient---producing the most or the best at
the lowest cost---than government-run
enterprises, under competitive market
conditions (Friedman 1955, p.129)
People, as rational, self-interested actors,
will spend their money at the business
where they get the best product for the
smallest cost.
7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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Education:
For Public Good or Private Gain?Friedman differentiates between education forprivate gain and for public good, but recognizesthe difficulty of doing so, p. 125
Where do you stand? What are your reasons?
Education is a public good Education is for private gain
_______________________________
7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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What should governments role in
education be?1) For basic education that serves the public,
government should fund and regulate education,but not provide that education, p. 127
2) Because the market under-invests in humancapital, government should help capitalize
individuals education in the form of loans, to bepaid back against future income, p. 140
7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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Where do you stand?
What are your reasons?
Who would benefit and who would lose?
Would this increase social reproduction or
meritocracy?
Government should
fund and regulate
education, but not
administer it
Government should
fund, regulate, and
administer education
---------------------------------------------------
7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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The push for school vouchers has created
some strange bedfellows. Free marketers
not known for their sensitivity to theplight of the poor find themselves allied
with disadvantaged urban parents and
community organizations that are simply
fed up with the abysmal quality of theschools their children must attend. For
[urban parents], vouchers loom as offering
an escape hatch for at least some of their
children.--Edward Fiske and Helen Ladd, After Zelman: The Need
to Focus on the Core Education Issues, Teachers College
Record(2002).
7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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Black Ministers Council backs school
vouchers, Courier Post, 11 February 2005 The Black Ministers
Council of New Jersey
supported vouchers because
of dissatisfaction with thelocal public school systems
Opportunity Scholarship
Act: to give corporations
tax credits if they donated toa school voucher program;
died in legislature in July
2011 due to Democratic
opposition
Rev. Reginald Jackson
Executive Director of the Black Ministers
Council of New Jersey
7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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The Results Even in programs serving low-income students, those who
use vouchers tend to be the most advantaged of thedisadvantaged: those with higher parental educationallevels and fewer special needs.
Only 1/3 of voucher students in Milwaukee and 1/4 inCleveland came from public schools.
For low-income families, because of tuition costs and theamount of the scholarship (generally under $3,000 peryear), the only private schools available to them werereligious.
Vouchers seem neutral in terms of student achievement,
with no significant differences between voucher studentsand those who remain in public schools (from studies doneof Cleveland, Dayton, Washington DC, New York City,Chile, and New Zealand voucher systems).
7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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Zelman vs. Simmons-Harris (2002)
In a 5-4 decision, onJune 27, 2002, the USSupreme Court heldthat neutral
educational assistanceprograms that. . . offeraid directly to a broadclass of individual
recipients definedwithout regard toreligion areconstitutional.
Outside the Supreme Court
7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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No Child Left Behind (2001) Although the Republicans
are generally for vouchers,they could not implementa voucher program nation-wide because of the needto craft a compromise that
would pass Congress.They did pass one in DC.
NCLB did createprovisions for public
funds to be used forprivate tutoring services incases where a publicschool was failing.
Parents at an information forum
about vouchers in DC
7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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Other Forms of Privatization
Private enrichment of public schools through
PTAs, such as paying for arts and music education
or an extra teacher to reduce class size (as you saw
in Kozol 2005). Private managers (university, neighborhood
organizations, and for-profit companies) were
given contracts to run 52 public schools, generally
those with poor test scores, in Philadelphia (out ofa total of 268 schools). The evidence is mixed
about whether private management has produced
better results than public management.
7/29/2019 Vouchers Milton Friedman
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Other Forms of Privatization
Home-schooling: privately funded, privatelyprovided, and almost completely privatelyregulated (about 1.5 million children aged 5-17, or2.9%, in 2007).
Tuition tax credit for private school tuition(currently about $1,000 in six states).
These measures are not necessarily making theeducational market more competitive orequal, in Friedmans terms.