School vouchers are a fantasy, writes George Liebmann of the Calvert Institute in the Baltimore Sun. Focus on achievable reforms, such as school-level control, streamlined teacher certification requirements and “differential pay for teachers in scarce disciplines.”
Each of these reforms has a potential constituency: parents and teachers frustrated by bureaucracies for the first; liberal arts graduates and retiring military and civil servants for the second; and the business, scientific, medical and higher-education community for the third.
The energy applied to statewide voucher schemes should be directed to these reforms.
If teachers unions resist them as obstinately as in the past, the public arguments over them will make the case for vouchers more obvious.
I don’t think Liebmann’s three reforms will be enough to transform K-12 schools.
Liebmann’s reforms would be short lived, and the unions and the bureaucracy would restore the status quo in short order.
Incremental reform is always doomed to failure when dealing with large bureaucracies.
We need a complete break with the present totally ineffective and costly system. Good education will not be cheap, but right now we’ve got incredible costs and abysmal output.
I guess I’m not a member of the constituencies for Liebmann’s pet reforms. Anyway, what good is school-level control when you can’t choose a school that fits your particular needs?
But most annoying is Liebmann’s characterization of vouchers as a “sledghammer reform” along with his insinuation that vouchers would somehow dismantle the public school system. Why else would he digress into a list of the “many valuable public services” performed by public schools? Won’t they still be performed, with or without vouchers?
If he’s going to go down that road, he should back it up with evidence that vouchers actually harm public schools. Most if not all of the limited voucher programs currently in place actually free up public money for the students who remain in public school.
Is it possible to design a voucher system so extreme that it would adversly impact public schools? Sure, if you were to offer an overly generous voucher. The only voucher proposals I’ve seen that even approach the public per-pupil cost have been limited to poor or disabled children.
If by sledghammer Liebmann merely meant “blunt” then there are more apt (and less mixed) metaphors that don’t have the destructive connotations. To go with the scalpel, how about a low-cost medical transportation service or a good insurance policy to allow you to access the best available surgeon?