Contributed Commentary on
Volume 4 Number 9: Coulson Markets Versus Monopolies in Education: The Historical Evidence


Editor's note: The following commentary is an excerpt from the EDPOLICY Listserv. It is a general comment about vouchers and is not directly connected to Andrew Coulson's EPAA article.

30 May 1996

Sherman Dorn

dornsj@CTRVAX.VANDERBILT.EDU


Proponents of vouchers frequently point to higher education as a model of how vouchers might work on the K-12 level and, more importantly, cite it as evidence that vouchers need not degrade the quality of education. On the contrary, they would legitimately point out, the GI Bill allowed American universities (or multiversities, as Clark Kerr declared) to expand and become a leader in higher education throughout the world. In other words, voucher proponents invite us to consider a gedanken (or thought) experiment: what would K-12 look like if it were like American higher education?
I'm going to skip here the responses one might make about whether we like the shape of American higher education, what happened when federal loan and grant money started going to beauty schools and other proprietary institutions, and so forth. Let's grant for the moment that the shape of higher education is a reasonable best-case scenario, and that it probably would not be worse to end up with something like that compared with the current configuration of K-12. Instead, I have a different question: can we identify today what would be a worst-case scenario for vouchers, what Herb Gintis called "fatal compromises" that would make K-12 much worse than the admittedly flawed status quo?
I assert that day care as currently exists in the United States is a very good example of what the worst-case scenario might be for K-12 education if privatized. Currently, most states have some subsidies available for day care for poor families. These subsidies cover only a fraction of children across the state who need child care, and they cover only a fraction of the cost of good child care. A number of corporations have sprouted across the country providing child care either as franchises appealing to parents (e.g., KinderCare) or as subcontractees of corporations (e.g., Corporate Child Care). Standards for child care are spotty across the country. When the Tennessee commission on child care standards recently suggested mild revisions to existing standards, it got bottled up because it would have made the governor's welfare proposal much more expensive. (It would have required such unreasonable things as having someone on site with CPR/rescue training, a 6:1 toddler:teacher ratio, and the elimination of a vast loophole which allowed child care centers essentially to ignore the ratio standards which currently exist.) (I should also mention that there are no standards in Tennessee for child care provided in private homes.)
In other words, child care is a pretty lousy privated system with poor public subsidies and weak standards. This despite the growth of professional organizations such as NAEYC. I would argue that, if K-12 is privatized, it might turn into the equivalent of child care. Not necessarily, but it's a possibility.
Moreover, child care conditions in most states demonstrate the avowed hypocrisy of politicians who support vouchers. Many of those supporting vouchers are the same ones who refuse to support more subsidies for child care. NO ONE is arguing, to my knowledge, that child care is satisfactory or that child care centers waste money. (Putting about 80% or so into salaries for teachers, they're probably among the most efficient places around.) Politicians just don't want to spend money on child care, and the thousands of parents who need it haven't changed the behavior of state legislatures. I suspect that, if K-12 is privatized, the same instincts will govern political behavior. Political rhetoric will put more downward pressure on school funding, more pressure than currently exists, and there will not be the countervailing influence of funding structures that we now have. To any politicians supporting vouchers, I'd say, "Put your money where your mouth is. Support increased subsidies and standards for child care in your state, and I'll believe that you're serious about having a good privatized system. Because we should make the privatized system we have good before we think about privatizing K-12."