When I defended my dissertation on school vouchers five years ago, I promised myself that I would never write on a hot topic again. Keeping up with changing events and the rapidly expanding literature was stressful. I wouldn’t have that problem today.
My research looked at how the idea of school vouchers rose from Friedman’s work and inner policy circles to be embraced in the 60s by liberal Democrats looking for a relief for inner city schools. Much later, Reagan and the Republicans swiped the idea for their own. As a wonk, I enjoyed learning about how the ideas dreamed up by bookish sorts were translated into policy.
Then I traced the politics down to the state level and looked at how voucher politics played out there.
My conclusion was that vouchers faced a stiff fight in the future. The opponents from the suburban areas and the unions were a winning combination that would be difficult to combat. But I thought that charter schools would take off. Union leaders would be forced to allow charter schools as a compromise.
Sure enough. Vouchers are dead in the water. Florida’s Supreme Court ruled against their program. And there haven’t been any major new programs initiated in other states. But the fight for charter schools is still raging.
What happened? I am stilling thinking this over, but here are some quickie thoughts. 1. The media lost attention. The media has helped drive this voucher furor since the 1980s and without their constant stories on the topic, the movement lost support. 2. Bill Bennett has been a one man marching band for vouchers since the 1980s. When he isn’t gambling, he’s saying dumb things about aborting black babies. He is having some credibility issues at the moment. 3. Charter schools have had some high profile embarrassments 4. Suburban interests are king. Don’t mess with them. 4. With the war on, nobody is interested in education policy.
Apt. 11d 
Check out this piece by Avi Schick about the impact of state Blaine Amendments on voucher programs. Those old laws combine with the other factors you mention to create conditions favorable for the forces of massive resistance.
BTW, have you thought of turning your dissertation into a book? “The Rise and Fall of School Vouchers” sounds like a guaranteed bestseller to me.
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Vouchers are imperialistic
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At least in my neck of the woods (Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, California) the charter movement plus school specialization has taken the steam out of the voucher movement.
Joanne Jacob’s book, “Our School” is about a charter school. A group of parents devoted to public schools but disliking the choices in San Mateo county, founded a charter school, Summit High School. (It is now 3 years old).
I wonder if these fine-grained, local solutions are really what has happened to the voucher movement. Big policy shifts are in the eternal tomorrow; parents need solutions today.
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Before Bill Bennett’s current problems stemming from his ill-considered crime/black baby/abortion comments, he had already shifted his efforts away from vouchers and toward the charter school movement, via the company he founded, K12. (He resigned from its board shortly after the controversial radio show remarks.)
K12’s approach is to establish charter schools, which are public schools. He actually took a lot of criticism for this shift in tactics from his friends in the voucher movememnt, since he had criticized public schools so much when he was active in the voucher movement. Just goes to show he’s an opportunist who will follow the money, and not a principled guy.
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I thought that Bennett had shifted his efforts more to technology based education, which could be used by private schools and home schools, so that they would be less reliant on teaching staff. Not quite vouchers, but still independent of public schools and their unions.
A lot of voucher proponents have seen the writing on the wall and are trying to find less ambitious measures.
A book on vouchers? I might write an article; I don’t know about a book.
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I thought that Bennett had shifted his efforts more to technology based education, which could be used by private schools and home schools, so that they would be less reliant on teaching staff. Not quite vouchers, but still independent of public schools and their unions.
A lot of voucher proponents have seen the writing on the wall and are trying to find less ambitious measures.
A book on vouchers? I might write an article; I don’t know about a book.
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My sense is that the leading figures in the choice movement made a strategic decision to focus instead on charters. Well, its not my sense, I know it, having been privy to some very pissed off email exchanges around 2000 between folks who were abandoning vouchers and folks who were angry with them. Good move, I think — vouchers were always subject to the objection that they were a trojan horse to interfere with private schooling (one of the reasons I am more inclined to support them than some other forms of choice!) and they never really stood a chance with the suburban electorate which dominates education politics. Wealthy suburban republican (and to be fair democrat) voters are smart enough to resist anything that jeopardises their getting elite private schooling on the state dollar for their kids, and vouchers indirectly threatened that. Charters, by contrast, are more amenable to being hijacked by them, and can even benefit them in some cases (for example if they are unsatisfied with provision for their kids with special educational needs) and anyway the movement to charters was already irresistable.
I agree, by the way, that a nice narrative book about the movement, with some smart conjecturing about why it has stalled, would be a seller, if marketed right. Think about it, and I’m always happy to give advice if needed. Why not start with a Harper’s style article?
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I also thought that urban only voucher programs, like the one in Cleveland, had a shot. They didn’t interfere with suburban interests, urban Catholic bishops were pushing for them, and there were a fair number of black leaders who wanted to set up their own schools. But the urban-only vouchers haven’t panned out either.
Thanks, guys, for planting the voucher book idea. I will bother you about this, harry, after I have a chance to think things through.
why blogs are a useful thing.
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Somehow, vouchers are seen as more radical than charter schools, whereas I would argue that it’s really the other way around. With vouchers, you can move very incrementally, allowing individual students to attend successful existing schools. With charter schools, on the other hand, you’ve got to build a whole new school from scratch.
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I don’t think I understand exactly what vouchers are (being from Australia and all), but I’m surprised that the wealthy suburban republicans opposed them. I’m probably being overly simplistic (see my blog post), but don’t they just end up worsening the public sector experience? And if you’re a wealthy suburban republican, I’m surprised you’re going near the public sector schools at all.
Or maybe the Australian experience is a cautionary tale, because there are very few Australian wealthy suburban conservative voters who send their children to public sector schools.
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Jennifer,
It’s a complicated situation. Here it goes, quick and dirty. Urban public schools (i.e. minority populated schools) in the US are bad as a rule, while suburban public schools are generally much better. Our US pattern is that well-off single folk who live in the cities leave for the suburbs as soon as their children became school age.
Exacerbating the situation is our public school funding system (which ties residence in a particular neighborhood to attendance at a particular school) and the real mediocrity of many public schools. This means that well-informed parents are in a real estate bidding war with each other to get homes in neighborhoods with “good” public schools. In some major metropolitan areas (like Washington DC) the inequities between schools within the public system are amazing. And so is the income and race segregation of neighborhoods within the city. But everybody in DC, rich and poor, black and white, votes Democratic!
Those who have homes and children in “good” schools are naturally very committed to the existing system. If the system changed, both the quality of their schools and the value of the real estate would probably take a huge hit.
I’m sure Laura can say a lot more. In fact, I believe she’s already written a lot on this in the past.
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When I started Ed SChool after a career as a journalist, I thought school choice was dead too. And now I am more sure it looms as a big deal.
People think public schools are lousy. Sadly, in many cases they are right. It’s not always about religion or values–sometimes it’s about crappy teaching and lousy administrators. In my town, 20 percent of students are NOT in regular public schools, and we supposedly have a good school system
I’m not sure that school choice will improve teaching, which is what must happen to improve education. But parents feel as though they have control over their children’s destiny, which given the primitive state of research on teaching make sense.
I write about these and other issues quite a bit on my weblog.
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Thanks Amy and Jenny. It is always interesting to look at another completely different system to see what happens.
Our funding is state by state (not more local), so it sounds like our state schools are more even than yours (but there is still a wide-ish variation, as good teachers often don’t want to teach in poorer areas, and a rich PTA can make a difference to a school).
But for us, as private schools get significant funding from the government (up to 80% of the cost of education), the state schools are gradually declining as all the well-off parents take their children out of the state system. When a private school has twice as much money per child as a state school (money from the government, plus fees from parents), it starts to look like a significantly better education. So those who can’t afford to send their children to a private school will get a worse education.
I know that money isn’t the only thing that makes a good school. But at some point (and I think we’ve reached it, in some schools) it does make a serious difference to quality.
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