I definitely see the upside to school choice, but I bet there would be a lot of unintended consequences for the first handful of years. If everyone is free to go anywhere then high performing schools would get many more applicants than available spots. Whats the process for entry? Can't be performance for elementary, we have no idea how these kids will perform. If you are working and can't drive your kids to school and your kids don't get into the local schools, what do you do? How does a bussing system work when kids are going to school all over the place? Sadly there are thousands of parents who do the absolute minimum. They put no forethought into their child’s education. That is more common in very poor areas. So when all of the kids with parental support leave all the local schools for better schools further away (which is great) aren't we left with a bunch of kids that need to go to a local school, but the school doesn't have the funding to keep going? Or maybe it can keep going, but at an even lower level of performance. And would a private school choose to move into an impoverished and crime ridden area, knowing it will be receiving the standard voucher amount to educate the lowest performing kids with the least amount of parental support? A profit driven company probably wouldn’t. Could it attract teachers and other staff to those areas while paying the same wages as other schools in nicer areas?
If market forces are at work then the good private schools would likely just increase their prices and profit, and the low performing schools would “go out of business”. Thats what market forces do. We might end up with islands of populations with no viable school options without additional public funding beyond the standard amount per student.
Sorry, thats a lot of questions and I don’t expect all of the answers. It just seems that I hear a lot about the upside of school choice/voucher programs and not much about the downside.
I definitely see the upside to school choice, but I bet there would be a lot of unintended consequences for the first handful of years. If everyone is free to go anywhere then high performing schools would get many more applicants than available spots. Whats the process for entry? Can't be performance for elementary, we have no idea how these kids will perform. If you are working and can't drive your kids to school and your kids don't get into the local schools, what do you do? How does a bussing system work when kids are going to school all over the place? Sadly there are thousands of parents who do the absolute minimum. They put no forethought into their child’s education. That is more common in very poor areas. So when all of the kids with parental support leave all the local schools for better schools further away (which is great) aren't we left with a bunch of kids that need to go to a local school, but the school doesn't have the funding to keep going? Or maybe it can keep going, but at an even lower level of performance. And would a private school choose to move into an impoverished and crime ridden area, knowing it will be receiving the standard voucher amount to educate the lowest performing kids with the least amount of parental support? A profit driven company probably wouldn’t. Could it attract teachers and other staff to those areas while paying the same wages as other schools in nicer areas?
If market forces are at work then the good private schools would likely just increase their prices and profit, and the low performing schools would “go out of business”. Thats what market forces do. We might end up with islands of populations with no viable school options without additional public funding beyond the standard amount per student.
Sorry, thats a lot of questions and I don’t expect all of the answers. It just seems that I hear a lot about the upside of school choice/voucher programs and not much about the downside.