Debunking some myths about school choice
For thousands of students, news of probation for Atlanta Public Schools was yet another time that adults key to their education have let them down. And for too many parents, unable to afford other options, it was one more reminder their child’s educational future is too tightly bound by their ZIP code.
National School Choice Week begins Sunday, and the urgency of extending truly equal opportunity for all students — whether in Atlanta or elsewhere — is only growing. Arguments to the contrary rely largely on myths, such as:
1. School choice amounts to “stealing” money from public schools.
Whether you talk about publicly funded charter schools or vouchers for use at any type of school, this objection comes up. It’s wrong-headed.
State-approved charter schools get no more money per student than the local system spends. If one of XYZ School’s 100 students leaves to attend a charter, XYZ will have 99 percent as much funding as before, for 99 percent as many kids.
Yes, fixed costs will remain. But they are the part of school budgets that most need scrutiny. Georgia has even more school systems (186) than it has counties (159), and more can be done to cut administrative expenses and share services to gain efficiencies.
Vouchers are an even better deal for local systems. Georgia’s existing voucher program, for special-needs children, will pay private-school tuition for them. But it won’t cover more than what the state pays traditional public schools per pupil. And the local system retains the locally raised revenue it would have spent on those children.
2. The school-choice movement is for rich kids.
News flash: Rich kids already have school choice. Their families can afford to pay for private school, or to move to a better-performing school district even if housing there is more expensive. School choice is for those families that can’t afford other options. New charter schools tend to pop up in middle- to lower-income neighborhoods.
But, just to be sure, voucher bills introduced in Georgia have included a stipulation that the child attended public schools for the entire previous academic year. A student at, say, Westminster wouldn’t be able to enroll in North Atlanta High School for a week, then move back and collect the voucher.
3. Vouchers won’t cover the full cost of a private education, so they won’t really help poor kids.
A voucher tied to state funding for public-school students would be $5,000 to $7,000 a year. Such a voucher wouldn’t cover the full cost of attending the most-elite private schools. But the Center for an Educated Georgia reports the average yearly tuition at Georgia’s private schools is about $6,600 — well within range of a voucher.
And basic economics suggests that new schools would open if more students could afford to attend them.
4. School choice will mean an exodus of the “best” kids, leaving public schools to deal with the rest.
Students already doing well are unlikely to leave their current schools. School choice is intended for those students who aren’t doing well but can’t afford to move to a school that might be a better fit for them. Data from current programs across the nation suggest only a small percentage of those eligible for school-choice mechanisms actually use them.
5. Choice won’t come to some (read: rural) areas.
Maybe not at first, though online education is removing geographic barriers. But the difficulty in adding choice everywhere mustn’t keep us from adding it where we can, as soon as we can.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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136 comments Add your comment
Public school employee
January 22nd, 2011
10:12 am
Lee, you are listening to yourself? We don’t pick our parents. You have no regard for kids of bad parents. We need public funding for alternative educations for these students or we will insure their futures in the prison system. Oh….I forgot. The GOP wants to privatize the prison system too to save money.
Left wing management
January 22nd, 2011
10:13 am
Myth, per Kyle Wingfield: “1. School choice amounts to “stealing” money from public schools.”
Oh, I don’t know, would a “public option” have stolen from the private health insurance sector and set off an inexorable slide towards government takeover of health care?
John Ellison
January 22nd, 2011
10:13 am
Successful sports teams and private business enterprise produce quality products by keeping track and doing a better job than their competition. Public educators would be wise to look at what other countries are doing to advance their school kids educational performance ahead of our American kids.
Dr. Pangloss
January 22nd, 2011
10:22 am
What will these private schools teach? Will we wind up using tax money to teach creationism in the biology class and lost cause mythology in the history class? Will the kids learn that Joe McCarthy was a hero and FDR a villain?
Nikole
January 22nd, 2011
10:22 am
I work in Dekalb County where we have many school choice option within the district and I can tell you that you are wrong about #4. I work in a struggling school, in first grade, and many of my brightest, most talented students, with involved parents, move on to a choice school by 3rd and 4th grade. What’s left are a large number of students with behavior problems and students with parents that are hard to contact and take little interest in school. I would like for politicians to require schools to offer up their own turn around plans, and then support them in their efforts. For example, if my school’s plan included parenting session, but they need someone to babysit during that time, or people to run a reading and math lab before or after school…things of that nature, we need the money to do those things. The goal should be to improve ALL schools so that no one feels the need to go somewhere else. Vouchers provide an out, and the parents left at struggling schools either don’t know what their children deserve, or don’t care, so those struggling schools will continue to struggle.
Nikole
January 22nd, 2011
10:31 am
@ John Ellison—We have already looked at other countries and these things won’t work in America.
1. Other countries don’t educate EVERYONE. Only the best and brightes.
2. Failure is an option in other countries. In America, teachers must provide mountains of paperwork proving you have allowed a child umpteen chances to make up work or retake tests etc. before failing them. Even children that have missed a majority of the semester can pass.
3. Teachers in other countries get professional development on what they need. The county says I have to do prof. dev. in guided reading, but I already know how to do that. It doesn’t matter, everyone will do guided reading, even though I would like to improve in teaching math.
4. Teachers in other countries spend half of their day planning and the other half of the day teaching. Wow! Imagine the innovative lessons teachers can prepare for if they didn’t spend their planning time on useless paperwork, but could actually plan and collaborate with other teachers.
5. Students in other countries aren’t the same. Some classrooms in Asia are much larger than American classrooms, but there is no moving and talking and the teacher doesn’t have to stop to discipline anyone. Teachers in other countries have probably never seen a first grader throw a chair at them, or have a student try to stab them with a pencil, or have students run out of the room(then out of the door and down the street) or have students slam doors and stomp and scream in the middle of a lesson.
Just a few thoughts about “other countries”.
Left wing management
January 22nd, 2011
10:34 am
Pangloss: “Will we wind up using tax money to teach creationism in the biology class and lost cause mythology in the history class? Will the kids learn that Joe McCarthy was a hero and FDR a villain?”
Hey, let the market decide. It’s the ultimate arbiter, right? And the kids (meaning parents) are the ‘customers’ so we mustn’t offend them with things we know is just leftist propaganda, such as any mention that there was racism implicit in our founding, and that the Civil War was all about slavery, the New Deal a communist interregnum in a long march of untrammeled capitalism, and so forth … long live the markets!
Lee
January 22nd, 2011
10:41 am
@Public, read first, try to comprehend, re-read if necessary. THEN comment.
really reality
January 22nd, 2011
10:43 am
It would be more effective to just give them a voucher to the state pen. Reform the penal system and call it a day. The APS spends nearly twice the $’s per student as most effective systems. Remove students/parents that don’t care to learn from the system and even the APS schools could do their job.
Atlmom
January 22nd, 2011
11:45 am
People who are against vouchers. Um you are FOR the current system then? What is so great about the current system? It really sucks and sucks mostly for the children living in poor neighborhoods whose parents can’t Afford to move. Really the current system is working for you?
As for taking money away from public schools why is that bad? They are mainly doing a lousy job so why not make them accountable. That is the only way ya know.
Dr. Craig Spinks/ Augusta
January 22nd, 2011
12:07 pm
Has any competent, disinterested(i.e., external) agency audited the GA special-needs voucher program to ascertain its comparative efficacy in promoting the academic and adaptive behavioral progress of its recipients versus those of similar special needs kids enrolled in public school programs?
get out much?
January 22nd, 2011
12:49 pm
If vouchers are introduced, I wonder how soon it will be before schools start “recruiting” star athletes for their various sports teams.
Get Real
January 22nd, 2011
1:22 pm
Reality
Couple of points:
1) You do not have to worry about the AJC becoming middle of the road or conservative, FOX news as you describe it. It is, and always will remain a liberal rag.
2) Sounds like you have some real issues with FOX news. If you do not like it don’t watch it, it is a simple fix. BTW, sorry about your gal pal Keith Olbermman getting fired/quitting abruptly yesterday…real shame…NOT
Get Real
January 22nd, 2011
1:26 pm
Left wing management @ 10:13 am
“Oh, I don’t know, would a “public option” have stolen from the private health insurance sector and set off an inexorable slide towards government takeover of health care?”
YES
MrLiberty
January 22nd, 2011
1:40 pm
Let’s also be clear on a few things:
1. The mechanism for funding government run schools, voucher programs and the like is STEALING from everyone. This is not a voluntary mechanism, is socialistic, is based on the value of one’s home and not how many kids you have in school, takes from people who do not benefit AT ALL, and is immoral.
2. Because of factor 1, vouchers are just as immoral as the current system, whether or not they improve outcomes.
3. Parents gave birth to their children, not the rest of society. They have a responsibility to feed them, clothe them, house them, and EDUCATE THEM.
4. When you violate fact 3, you sent up a perverse incentive to have children, relinquish responsibility for them, and enable the govenrment to dictate how your children are raised and the values they will be indoctrinated with 5-7 hours a day for 12 years.
5. A truly free market in education, with absolutely no involvement from the government, not through zoning laws, not through professional licensure requirements, not a damn thing, is the only sound solution to our educational problems and to get the indoctrination mechanism of the government out of the lives of our children.
6. Vouchers are just another mechanism by which parents use the power of government to continue to socialize the costs of raising children while providing a false sense of autonomy that will be fully undermined by government rules and regulations that will surely accompany any dollars that follow each child.
7. True choice requires YOU to pay your own way, True choice requires YOU to decide what school your child will attend. True choice demands the responsibility that every parent should have for the education of their child and the power to make the responsible changes to their choices should there be problems. Vouchers will achieve none of these things.
MrLiberty
January 22nd, 2011
1:45 pm
And the juvenile argument that being against vouchers means loving the current system is about as juvenile an argument that was made during the Obamacare ram-through. There is everything wrong with government education and there is everything wrong with the current government-manipulated, third party insurance controlled health delivery system. Objecting to worthless proposed alternatives does not automatically make one in favor of the status quo. The belief that there are only two sides to any issue (black/white, republican/democrat, conservative/liberal) is exactly what has led to our current screwed up economy and society.
Sean Smith
January 22nd, 2011
2:07 pm
I would like school choice. As a gay man I dont have any children and would really like to opt out of paying to educate other peoples kids. 3/4 of my property taxes go towards schools. Government forcing me to buy education is the same kind of thing conservatives whine about in the health care law. You want to have kids you can pay to educate them.
DC Dawg
January 22nd, 2011
2:09 pm
Parental “choice” is a myth. Parents don’t chose what private school their child will attend. They can apply for admission, but the private school chooses what students will be admitted. The school also decides what students will be expelled, either for bad behavior or bad grades. I know this because my daughter goes to an elite private school here in DC, and the school dismisses several students each year for academic difficulties. The school can’t maintain its high SAT score rating and college placement sucess if it allows dumb kids to attend and graduate. That’s the reality of private schools. And I pay $32,000 a year to participate in this shameful process.
Ray
January 22nd, 2011
2:20 pm
MrLiberty is nothing but an anti-American propaganda soldier for al qaeda. His disdain for America’s future ought to alarm everyone.
Move back to the middle east, ungrateful freeloader
Atticus Finch
January 22nd, 2011
2:20 pm
@God Bless America, with roads, the government doesn’t just hand everyone a $5000 check and say “Spend it on roads as you see fit.” Why not? No economies of scale, no standardization, no requirement that your road contractor do things the right way, no requirement that he even spend it on road improvements.
Now, if the government wants to put the running of schools out for bid, like highway projects, with requirements and standards, that MIGHT work.
Alecia
January 22nd, 2011
2:46 pm
Unfortunately, the GOAL scholarship cannot be used for a specific student. If I wanted to take the $2,500 tax credit and pay the school $2500. The school would be in charge of choosing the recipient (usually based on financial need). When we visited several private schools in the area, this was made abundantly clear. We do not have a plethora of wealthy parents directing their tax money towards their child that already has the means to attend a private school. However, a high performing disadvantaged student can attend a better school and cost our system $2,500 instead of the approx $9000 the public schools pay per student.
Independent
January 22nd, 2011
3:29 pm
If they decide to allow parents to “take their money elsewhere”, Which I am not totally opposed to, it should be only the cost of the average “good” student, since that is only what private schools will take anyway. When they say a school system spends “an average of $7000 per student” that is actually skewed. It may only be $2000 per average “good” student and an average of $25000 per special education student.
joe in tucker
January 22nd, 2011
3:40 pm
Hear Here ‘Billy O’, you hit the nail on the head!!
Michael H. Smith
January 22nd, 2011
5:09 pm
As you probably already know I’m in agreement with you on this one, Kyle.
Jerry Springer Answers to Frontline Questions
January 22nd, 2011
5:22 pm
@Independent. Right you are. How about that KYLE?
Jerry Springer Answers to Frontline Questions
January 22nd, 2011
5:24 pm
Don’t forget your meds, Ray.
MrLiberty
January 22nd, 2011
5:58 pm
Ray – Yes, I support freedom, individual liberty, personal responsibility, limited government and all the “unamerican” things that made this country great. If I were to call for government operation of supermarkets, electronic stores, barber shops, restaurants, and the like you would call me a socialist and suggest that I move to China. Yet because I wish to end the failed government monopoly that is destroying the future of our children through a socialist government run education monopoly you say that I am an “anti-america propoganda soldier for al qaeda.” Your ignorance of both politics, economics, and al qaeda is alarming.
It is specifically because I am su interested in america’s future that I wish to get government completely out of the education business. Government has destroyed everything it touches. From the schools to the roads to health care to the airline industry, to our national security. Why should our children continue to be victimized by a system that clearly is a failure. I am clealy not anti-american. I am not calling for China to run our education system. I am more confident in the capabilities of americans freed from the restrictions, taxation, idiocy, and bureaucracy of the government than I am of continuing things as they are today.
If you equate america with its government than you are clearly part of the problem. I am not the government and the government is not me. To think otherwise is to fall for the collectivist thinking that was the foundation of Soviet Russia, today’s China and North Korea, and other collectivist states. Truly a shame if that is how you think.
yuzeyurbrain
January 22nd, 2011
6:57 pm
Kyle, I first thought you were just a naive, but intelligent, young man. You are too intelligent to believe the propaganda spin here. “Choice”—what a nice friendly word. Who could be against it? In reality, it has been a big boon to the budgets of private schools, most of which are not very good, and like the proverbial camel who stuck its nose under the tent, is a Trojan Horse designed to benefit these schools at the expense of public education. How do you defend the diversion of $50 million in tax revenues from public education to private schools at a time when $3 billion has been cut from public education budgets, public school teachers have been furloughed and the number of school days required in Ga. schools has been cut to 137 from 170? I guess you made your attempt. It is intellectually dishonest.
Dabir Dalton
January 22nd, 2011
8:11 pm
Kyle School vouchers are an entitlement program for Conservatives. Pure and Simple. More importantly with no school aged children in my household why should I be required to subsidize the education of the children of parents who make more money than I do?
Crenshaw8
January 22nd, 2011
8:50 pm
Liberals fear vouchers just like they fear success. Mediocrity for all guides their life.
@@
January 22nd, 2011
8:53 pm
Kyle, freedom of choice goes only so far with a leftist. Children are disposable…especially the unborn.
Reality Check
January 22nd, 2011
10:37 pm
I knew kids that went to private school way back when and know parents now that send their children to private schools. The only difference I can see is private schools have higher priced drugs and better alcohol.
Michael H. Smith
January 23rd, 2011
6:09 am
Want to scare the Be-Jesus out of a socialist liberal: Just tell them the government education monopoly in this country is now going to be subjected to prosecution under the federal anti-trust laws.
Lil' Barry Bailout
January 23rd, 2011
7:37 am
John Ellison
ban private schools
——————
Fascist.
Lil' Barry Bailout
January 23rd, 2011
7:41 am
Dabir Dalton
School vouchers are an entitlement program for Conservatives.
———————-
Public schools are an entitlement program for teacher’s unions and government bureaucrats.
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
January 23rd, 2011
8:24 am
Many experts expect further price hikes. Most notable among pessimists is former Shell Oil president John Hofmeister, who has predicted $5-a-gallon gasoline by the end of this year. -Urinal
Um, drill, baby, drill, just sayin…duh.
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
January 23rd, 2011
8:30 am
For Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, one of the most salient messages in President Barack Obama’s congressional address Tuesday night was his call “to jumpstart job creation.”-2/24/2009
“My No. 1 focus,” he said, “is going to be making sure that we are competitive, and we are creating jobs not just now but well into the future.” -Urinal 1/24/2010
We’re screwed, just sayin…
Buzz G
January 23rd, 2011
8:46 am
When the Big Phone Company had a monopoly, we had no choice. We got what they gave us, and that was very expensive. When the monopoly ended, there was an explosion of choices, and prices dropped incredibly fast. It is not likely that either cell phones or the internet would have developed.
Why not give people real school choice. Prices will drop and new and better options will pop up all over. But our politicians are beholden to the teachers unions and will not do the right thing. Shame.
@@
January 23rd, 2011
8:53 am
“Government should not intrude on private family matters,” Obama said in a statement, adding that he also supports policies to prevented “unintended pregnancies.”
A contradictory statement if ever I’ve read one.
Isn’t health care a private family matter?
Lil' Barry Bailout
January 23rd, 2011
9:10 am
Some “private family matters” are more private than others.
Keep your laws off my health care, control-freak fascist Democrats.
Lee Howell
January 23rd, 2011
9:17 am
We used to have school choice in Georgia. The rich kids got educated and the poor kids worked in the fields or the cotton mills.
Your ancestors might have been white, but that doesn’t mean they owned the plantation or the mill.
Lil' Barry Bailout
January 23rd, 2011
9:25 am
Killing your unborn child–”private family matter”.
Deciding what products a family must purchase–to be determined by government bureaucrats.
Michael H. Smith
January 23rd, 2011
9:35 am
Prices will drop and new and better options will pop up all over.
“All over” is a key phrase, provided BIG SOCIALIST GUB’MENT will allow it. The undeniable facts about Capitalism remain forever true: If there is a demand for something, somebody will market the supply that shall meet that demand.
Guess that knocks the old hoopla about only the worst of the worst will remain in public schools if freedom of education choices are granted. Even the worst of the worst will have a choice, if when once again the public schools can’t deliver the supply of their demand – You can bet your teacher’s pensions on that one!
Best get with it BIG SOCIALIST GUB’MENT education monopoly, you are going to have to do what you have never done before, which is to COMPETE for every student you can get to enroll. If you don’t, you’ll not only lose the best of the best, you will even lose the worst of the worst, too. No more taxpayer guaranteed custom delivery of children to your taxpayer bought doorsteps.
Capitalism can be a very scary thing to a government dependent socialist.
Dr. Pangloss
January 23rd, 2011
10:22 am
Sean Smith
January 22nd, 2011
2:07 pm
I would like school choice. As a gay man I dont have any children and would really like to opt out of paying to educate other peoples kids.
—————
I have often heard old, illiterate country folks make this argument. A decently educated person realizes that we all use the schools. We go to the doctor who went to school. We travel on the highways–built by civil engineers who went to school. We can at least hope that our politicians went to school.
Dunwoody Mom
January 23rd, 2011
11:54 am
What an absolutely poorly researched story – little to no facts to back up any assertion you have made.
Wow, just wow.
MrLiberty
January 23rd, 2011
11:58 am
Dr. Pangloss – The fact is that those who go to school benefit from the schooling. The parents of those children see the benefit and know of its importance. Your implication is the typical one of the socialist who wishes to justify his support of taking because “everyone benefits.” Everyone benefits from food being available. Government doesn’t have to grow the food or manage this societal mechanism and thank god they don’t or we would all be starving as they did in the former Soviet Union. Those who wish to have a future get educated by whatever means. The civil engineer didn’t just end up a civil engineer and now we HOPE he got a government education. The same with the doctor. They got an education and that allowed them to work at the task they chose. We can ask the politician of their qualifications, we do not have to just “HOPE.” To assume that without all of society paying the costs of this there would be no educated people is again just another socialistic justification for your not wanting parents to have to be responsible for educating their own kids.
Also, this statement about “we all use the schools.” What is that. Which schools are you talking about? Which are THE SCHOOLS? I didn’t use the government schools. I used the schools that private individuals and others established as businesses to deliver educational services. To assume that the free market would not deliver hundreds of thousands of alternatives to the government monopoly schools is just plain ignorant of how the market works. You obviously think that everyone is society is a horrible person who would shun all education no matter what. Your abysmal attitude toward everyone is clearly evident as you automatically are assuming that no parent would ensure that their child received an education, no business would see the value of making charitable contributions to assist parents with school costs, no childless individuals or others would do the same, nobody would educate themselves so as to be able to effectively educate others, etc.
I have been criticised on this blog by others for my anti-american attitude, but the attitude of everyone else who shows such low regard for their fellow americans is appalling. I have nothing but absolute faith and trust (and plenty of historical evidence to boot) that americans, left to their own devices, can achieve a far superior solution to the current failed government education monopoly.
Yes, we all use supermarkets, cell phones, gas stations, homes, clothes, food, etc. and it didn’t take everyone in society being forced to pay for any of them in order for them to become part of our everyday existence. I buy what I wish to buy and there is a business ready to supply my needs. Every single person, childless couple, and the like has the RIGHT to not be forced to pay for the needs of others. It is socialism that is unamerican, and there is no better example of it than the government school system. That it is enshrined in our state constitution means little. That can easily be changed by vote and certainly should be.
Finn McCool (Yes, Reps won, they now control a whopping 1/2 of 1/3 of the legislative body.) (Golf Clap.)
January 23rd, 2011
12:14 pm
IF all schools will look to the very best school system in the state and choose to use the same textbooks instead of having an entire education arm that writes new textbooks, you will improve bad schools and save some money that can be used elsewhere.
It’s a start.
Dabir Dalton
January 23rd, 2011
12:31 pm
@ Lil’ Barry Bailout
Which makes conservatives demanding the entitlement of school vouchers not just a hypocrites but just as bad as the liberal socialists they love to complain about.
Dabir Dalton
January 23rd, 2011
12:37 pm
Buzz G wrote: When the Big Phone Company had a monopoly, we had no choice. We got what they gave us, and that was very expensive. When the monopoly ended, there was an explosion of choices, and prices dropped incredibly fast. It is not likely that either cell phones or the internet would have developed.
______________________________
Yet when they tried it with natural gas the price when through the roof, past the moon and onward towards the stars. Forcing Grandma and Grandpa along with everyone else dumb enough to believe the free market hype to choose between eating or heating their home.
Dabir Dalton
January 23rd, 2011
12:46 pm
How ironic that the average Republican family self righteously claims that our elected government is stealing their money through taxes. Yet turns a blind eye to the fact that singles and childless couples are the ones being forced by our elected government to both finance and subsidize. The tax breaks received by families with children along with their little darlings education; through the theft of their just as hard earned money through payroll deductions as well as property and consumption (sales) taxes.
Kyle conservatives you can not have their cake and eat it too or both ways. The mantra of personal responsibility applies to you as well and if you choose to have children – then you and you alone are responsible to pay for their education. Not your next door neighbor, Me or the Government otherwise conservatives are just as guilty of the theft through taxation as they claim the liberals are.