The wonderful “failure” of the Milwaukee voucher program

It is interesting to see how progressives interpret experiments in competition.  Matt Yglesias has a post entitled:

The Milwaukee Voucher Failure

He makes the following observation:

The choice program does seem to lead to a lot of consumer satisfaction, but not actual improvements in performance.

In other words, actual parents like the results, and are trying to get their kids into the program, but central planners don’t like the results.  They prefer to measure the effectiveness of schools by how well students do on tests.

I know I am in the minority in not being a fan of the testing approach to school quality (probably even in the minority among my fellow right-wingers.)  So let’s say I am completely wrong about tests, and the central planners are completely correct.  In that case Yglesias is still wrong, as the article he links to suggests that the voucher program has been a big success, even if test scores are the proper criteria for judging school quality:

Wolf, who has led this effort as well as the federally-endorsed evaluation of the DC voucher program, summarized, “Voucher students are showing average rates of achievement gain similar to their public school peers.” Translation: when it comes to test scores, students with vouchers are performing no differently than other kids. (It is worth noting that MPCP students are being educated more cheaply than are district school students).

So the voucher program achieved the same learning objectives at a lower cost, or more bang for the buck.  Since when is that regarded as failure?  Let’s consider the following two possibilities:

1.  Spending more money on education (at the margin) increases learning.

2. Spending more money on education (at the margin) doesn’t increase learning.

First assume case one is true.  This would imply that if we adopted vouchers, and spent as much per student as the Milwaukee public schools spend per student, we would get higher test scores.  That is called “success.”

Now assume case two is correct.  This would imply that there is no point in spending more money on education.  We should simply try to hold down costs.  This means that the voucher program in Milwaukee succeeded in the only way schooling can succeed; it provided education at a lower cost than the public school system.

I’m sure that case two sounds very cynical to a progressive like Yglesias.  I imagine that he thinks more spending can make a difference, perhaps if targeted to certain methods that have been shown to work.  OK, then how about taking the tax saving from voucher schools, and giving those schools a government grant to improve education in whatever area progressives like Yglesias think that money can still help at the margin?  Wouldn’t that be a win-win for everyone except unionized public school teachers?  I wonder why such a policy has almost no chance of happening.

I suppose the progressive counter-argument is that the policy failed according to the criterion set by the voucher proponents.  I have been a voucher proponent from the beginning, and certainly never thought success should be measured by test scores.  I’ve always thought parental satisfaction was the proper criteria.  Indeed, I would hope that all free market economists agreed on this point.  There may be some conservatives who argued that test scores would improve, but why should we care what they think?  Every day the progressive bloggers tell us that conservatives are morons.  I’d rather judge the program on how well it actually did, using the standard economic criteria of costs and perceived customer benefits, not the single criterion used by central planners.

If a policy that leads to greater consumer satisfaction at lower cost, and produces no negative side-effects in test scores, is viewed as a “failure” by progressives, then I don’t think we need to worry very much when progressives criticize the free market.  As Dylan once said: “There’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all.”

BTW,  Has anyone else noticed that many of the same progressives who insist that we copy the European public health insurance model also tell us that the successful European voucher programs wouldn’t work here, because we are just too different?  (This last point is not directed at Yglesias, I have no idea on how he views the Swedish and Dutch voucher programs.)


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42 Responses to “The wonderful “failure” of the Milwaukee voucher program”

  1. Gravatar of John John
    12. April 2010 at 07:44

    I probably count as a “Lefty” [grimaces] but I think I mostly have your exact sentiments on this. If parents think it’s good, and it’s cheaper, what is anybody complaining about?

    I think the only difference my political views make are that I’d want to make sure these programs aren’t in some way biased against poor people or minorities any more than the public school system + paying full freight for private school already is. But I’m not aware of any evidence of that… if anything the public school system biases against anybody who doesn’t have the means to move to a good district, which overwhelmingly describes poor people and minorities.

    People’s attitudes on this issue really confuse me.

  2. Gravatar of Joe Joe
    12. April 2010 at 08:21

    Professor Sumner,

    The whole point of education is to increase one’s “human capital” so as to give you a better chance in the labor market and to get into college. The whole point of test scores is to somehow, in some way, measure how much “human capital” these students are gaining. Parental satisfaction is great, but what does that have to with succeeding in the labor market and getting into college?

    What we should really be doing is seeing how the voucher kids compare to their non-voucher peers when it comes to getting post-school jobs, promotions, wages, salaries, and getting into college and success there, etc. Or their poverty rate x amount of years after school graduation.

    Joe

  3. Gravatar of Tim Worstall Tim Worstall
    12. April 2010 at 09:03

    As I recall it, Yglesias’ attitude towards the European voucher systems is indeed that they won’t work in the US because the US is too different. Again, solely as I recall it, it’s that voucher systems will only work in more equal societies, European societies are more equal thus voucher systems won’t work in the US.

    I have to admit that I don’t actually understand the argument but that is the one I recall him making.

    At a tangent I’ve worked as a political hack (national press officer for a political party) and there’s always a problem with evaluating the output of a political voice. It’s analagous to trying to work out whether you’re looking at a free market or a collusive one: prices will move in lock step in either. With a political voice that the answer to each and every question is exactly the same as the answer espoused by a particular political organisation or interest group could come from one of two causes: the political ideals and aims of the voice and the interest group are perfectly aligned or that there’s more than a trace of hackery going on. Even having done the job of a political hack I’m still not able to identify which is which from the outside.

  4. Gravatar of mobile mobile
    12. April 2010 at 09:36

    Didn’t the Milwaukee public school system improve after the introduction of vouchers? If this improvement can be attributed to the competitive pressures supplied by the voucher program, then that is also a success for vouchers.

  5. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    12. April 2010 at 09:38

    The article Yglesias links (which was written by a conservative, and AEI alum) makes exactly your same points about cost… The point has some merit, but should not be overstated. Obviously, there’s the retirement issue – states/municipalities are going to need to globally cut retirement spending anyway, so I concede part of the cost difference is real.

    But importantly, many charter schools have implicit subsidies (like favorable terms of use for buildings), which is allowed under the law so long as the school does not officially proselytize.

    http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/cspguidance03.pdf

    If charter schools were expanded to replace public schools, the marginal opportunities for such savings would be rapidly exhausted. That suggests the would continue to be long term cost savings, but those savings might shrink in size.

    On the issue of efficacy, you have to understand that for many years, voucher enthusiasts were making _very_ strong claims – and lambasting public education as inferior (not merely more costly). The AEI author notes this –

    “Finally, I think the right reaction is to recognize that choice enthusiasts have been overselling the miracle, restorative powers of choice for years. Choice can make it easier for quality schools to emerge, for schools to forge coherent and disciplined cultures, and for reformers to break out of the contractual and cultural handcuffs implicit in so many districts.”

    So at least now we can have the right debate – not “vouchers are like magic” vs. “no they aren’t”. While the efficiency question is important (though not nearly as important as quality teachers, which dwarfs all other predictors of student success), there are other questions as well, such as:

    Are public schools valuable to build civic community?

    I’ve seen several mathematical models, and a few empirical studies, that show that people are always happier when they socialize with their own groups (Catholics with Catholics, Hispanics with Hispanics, etc.). HOWEVER, having a _public_ school system that reinforces group fragmentation may not be in the national interest.

    A lot of the people who favor charter schools seem to favor them because it reduces the public subsidy for a unifying socializing mechanism (which they disagree with), and redirects those funds to a privately funded mechanism that allows them to select a school that reinforces their culture. BY THAT STANDARD, it’s OBVIOUS that parent satisfaction will increase – but if this results in reduced social cohesion and increased social mistrust, then it’s NOT obvious that greater social satisfaction is better for society.

    And I fully recognize how odious libertarians find this message (why is social cohesion or reducing social mistrust a legitimate public goal???) – but I’m not a libertarian.

  6. Gravatar of woupiestek woupiestek
    12. April 2010 at 10:18

    Our `voucher system’ — I’m Dutch by the way — has let to the creation of black schools. In the Netherlands this means most of the schoolkids are muslims or slave decendents from former colonies. `Freedom of education’ was implemented to support religious segregation, so I guess you could call that a succes…

  7. Gravatar of Thorfinn Thorfinn
    12. April 2010 at 11:30

    This is looking at the wrong margin. Vouchers are intended not to improve only performance of the kids affected, but also to increase competition and performance by kids left behind too. Ontario’s program suggests that these effects could be large; and it looks like Milwaukee’s kids do better overall.

    It also looks like schools do better for math testing:
    http://www.nber.org/digest/nov97/w5964.html
    This, of course, would be the one area you might expect better teaching to translate quicker into test outcomes.

  8. Gravatar of Blackadder Blackadder
    12. April 2010 at 11:35

    Statsguy,

    My guess is that you could pick any measure of social cohesion you wanted and private school kids would outperform public school kids (or at least not do any worse). Especially schools where the kids come from low SES backgrounds. Public schools aren’t any better at teaching social cohesion or civic mindedness than they are at teaching math or reading.

  9. Gravatar of suffer suffer
    12. April 2010 at 12:37

    Statsguy,

    You mean social cohesion like this: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/89250427.html

  10. Gravatar of bil. A. bil. A.
    12. April 2010 at 13:04

    On social cohesion – I’m familiar with the arguments for this, but I’ve seen no empirical evidence that this is true. I’d say Blackadder has it right. I once attended a homeschooling convention where I was amazed at the high levels of social development seen in the kids there – they were much more comfortable and capable in dealing with adults and with kids of different ages (compared to the products of public schools).
    I’d say that even theoretically the idea falls flat – locking kids up with other kids of the same age from their immediate neighborhood and subjecting them to authority figures from the teacher’s unions is likely incredibly harmful.
    Having taught college economics courses to public school graduates, I’d have to say a huge chuck of my time was devoted to dealing with the mis- or dis-information and faulty social models inculcated in them by the “unifying socializing mechanism”.
    Maintaining that the contrived and highly artificial social setting that results from a bureaucratic public school system has beneficial socializing effects requires more than just the hand-waving feel-good theorizing I’m afraid, and I haven’t seen it yet.

    Sure, under a market in primary education there might be marginally more kids in anti-social schools catering to fringe groups – but delivering a beneficial socializing environment for child development would be one of the many margins upon which competition would deliver better results overall. Then again, under a market there might actually be a greater and more beneficial unifying socialization process that results from broad adoption of best practices (compared to, say, the current “unity” experienced between inner city Baltimore public school students and suburban northern Virginia public school students)

    On the “experiment” – one thing that always annoys me about these kinds of analysis is the neglect of most of the general equilibrium effects that would result from widespread voucherization. As it is now, all the input/complement industries to primary schooling are dominated by the need to interface with the centralized bureaucratic government school monopoly/monopsony model. A broad market for primary schooling would spur massive improvements in the markets for teacher training, curriculum development, credentialing (teachers, students, curricula, schools, etc…), testing, textbooks, etc…
    The results of short-term, localized voucher experiments are important, but they don’t get near the results one would expect to get from a broader sustained market for primary education.

  11. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    12. April 2010 at 13:40

    ‘Didn’t the Milwaukee public school system improve after the introduction of vouchers? If this improvement can be attributed to the competitive pressures supplied by the voucher program, then that is also a success for vouchers.’

    Yes, that is correct. Most of the heavy lifting being done by Carolyn Hoxby, such as here:

    http://www.allianceforschoolchoice.org/UploadedFiles/ResearchResources/Competition-%20Hoxby.pdf

    Her finding is that competition forced public schools to respond by making themselves more attractive. Particularly in Milwaukee, where the public schools head started advertising the merits of his schools on the radio.

    All of which is ignored by this Hess guy from AEI. Consider this from the Arkansas project:

    http://www.uark.edu/ua/der/SCDP/Milwaukee_Eval/Report_15.pdf

    ‘Throughout the report, we describe a range of cautions and caveats; the most important being that this is the
    third year of a five-year study and that student achievement trajectories often take time to change. Thus, while at
    the present time, in terms of achievement as measured by two years of achievement growth, we conclude that in
    general there is little significant difference overall between MPS students and MPCP students, this result may
    change in future analyses.’

    Note well that; ‘as measured by two years of achievement growth’. This is out of almost twenty years of experience with vouchers in Milwaukee! It’s way too premature to take this one evaluation seriously.

  12. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    12. April 2010 at 13:48

    bil A. –

    “A broad market for primary schooling would spur massive improvements in the markets for teacher training, curriculum development, credentialing (teachers, students, curricula, schools, etc…), testing, textbooks, etc…”

    That might be true. OTOH, we do have an example of the privatized curriculum development markets – 4 year public-subsidized private colleges. Which are dominated by things like prestige and reputation effects, and are about the least cost-effective way to educate a student that I can possibly imagine.

    Re homeschooling – you may be right, but the narrative you describe is highly conflated with parental involvement. It’s the same thing as the selection problem.

    So perhaps a full charter system would yield market equillibrium bliss, or perhaps we’d get something like Talk Radio in schools – or, perhaps, something like the Dutch system that woupiestek describes above.

    I’m not so proud as to think that I can predict a counterfactual of that complexity.

  13. Gravatar of suffer suffer
    12. April 2010 at 15:15

    StatsGuy, but how’s the status quo working out? Why not adjust, experiment, etc until we get better results than mediocre.

  14. Gravatar of scott sumner scott sumner
    12. April 2010 at 16:12

    John, I agree with your comments. Allow me a cynical response to your final comment:

    “People’s attitudes on this issue really confuse me.”

    I’m not confused at all. Here’s how I interpret people’s attitudes:

    1. Inner city minorities support vouchers.
    2. Politically powerful teachers unions oppose them.
    3. Democratic politicians and Republican voters oppose them.

    I see a pattern there.

    Joe, You said;

    “The whole point of education is to increase one’s “human capital” so as to give you a better chance in the labor market and to get into college. The whole point of test scores is to somehow, in some way, measure how much “human capital” these students are gaining. Parental satisfaction is great, but what does that have to with succeeding in the labor market and getting into college?”

    No, that’s not the whole point of education. That’s what teachers and intellectuals think is the whole point of education. Most people don’t agree. Here are some other objectives:

    1. Provide a safe day care environment for parent who are working. Public schools in the inner city don’t do that.
    2. Instill good values. Teach students discipline.
    3. Provide programs like art and music and sports. In places like Texas parents care a lot about high school football. Some people think that’s silly, but I don’t believe I should impose my taste on others.

    I do agree that looking to see how students do later in life would be a better test than how they do on test scores, but it certainly isn’t the only purpose of education. There is another issue here as well–if better educated students do better in the job market, it might not be because they have more skills, but rather because education is a sort of signaling device. In that case the public value of education is much less than its private value.

    I’m not willing to discount the views of parents. Even though I couldn’t care less about high school football, the discipline and safety issues alone would make me prefer (as a parent) to send my kid to an inner city voucher school rather than an inner city public school. And that would still be true even if there were no selection biases between the two student groups.

    Tim, That argument also makes no sense to me. How is it more equal to have low income students in lousy public schools and rich students in fancy private schools?

    Statsguy, You said:

    “If charter schools were expanded to replace public schools, the marginal opportunities for such savings would be rapidly exhausted. That suggests the would continue to be long term cost savings, but those savings might shrink in size.”

    I think the advantage would still be pretty large (due to lower salaries and less non-teaching staff.) Private schools of equal quality (such as Catholic schools) have much lower costs. Some of that could not be replicated by vouchers (i.e. low-paid nuns teaching), but I think some of it could.

    You said;

    “Finally, I think the right reaction is to recognize that choice enthusiasts have been overselling the miracle, restorative powers of choice for years.”

    Anyone saying that choice can perform miracles should be ridiculed, so I agree with you there.

    You said;

    “I’ve seen several mathematical models, and a few empirical studies, that show that people are always happier when they socialize with their own groups (Catholics with Catholics, Hispanics with Hispanics, etc.). HOWEVER, having a _public_ school system that reinforces group fragmentation may not be in the national interest.”

    There may be mathematical models where public school systems provide social cohesion, unfortunately it doesn’t work in the real world. (I’m reacting to what I thought you meant here, there seems to be a typo that makes your statement ambiguous.)

    You said;

    “And I fully recognize how odious libertarians find this message (why is social cohesion or reducing social mistrust a legitimate public goal???) – but I’m not a libertarian.”

    Being a pragmatic libertarian I favor social cohesion and trust. But I’m also a realist, and public schools have failed to provide these goods.

    woupiespek, You said;

    “Our `voucher system’ “” I’m Dutch by the way “” has let to the creation of black schools. In the Netherlands this means most of the schoolkids are muslims or slave decendents from former colonies. `Freedom of education’ was implemented to support religious segregation, so I guess you could call that a succes…”

    That’s funny, our public school system produce identical results. Perhaps these trends have nothing to do with the type of school system, but rather reflect deeper societal trends. But again, I don’t believe vouchers can produce miracles, so I accept you point. We should not expect too much.

    mobile and Thorfinn, I have also heard that argument, but not being well informed on the issue I tried to stick with some fairly simple observations.

    Blackadder and suffer, I agree.

    bil A. I agree, a true free market would look nothing like the current voucher system. I don’t think it would produce any test score “miracles”, but it might do a better job of figuring out what we should teach teenage boys who can’t stand sitting still in school. There might be multiple models, not the current one size fits all approach. Maybe schools would give younger men who don’t like academics but do like to tinker with things more of an opportunity to learn things like auto mechanics, and other trades. Again, I don’t have any answers, I just think a free market would be more likely to produce innovations. I believe that even voucher schools are forced to follow our one size fits all system of teaching, which assumes all students are identical. My plan might sound regressive or defeatist, but I recall the Germans have this sort of segmentation, and last time I looked Germany produced a lot of men (and some women) who are good with mechanical things. And German blue collar wages aren’t too shabby either.

    Patrick, Those are good points. Again, I haven’t kept up with the research, but I usually read research abstracts so I am somewhat aware of the research by Hoxby and others. At the same time I agree with those who suggest that we may not see big effects on tests scores, even with a completely free market.

    Here’s another way of explaining my test skepticism. I’d rather a young guy who is a poor student leave high school with the skills to be an auto mechanic, electrician trainee, or plumber trainee, and still reading at the eighth grade level, rather than reading at the 10th grade level but having no useful job skills.

    Statsguy#2. You said;

    “That might be true. OTOH, we do have an example of the privatized curriculum development markets – 4 year public-subsidized private colleges. Which are dominated by things like prestige and reputation effects, and are about the least cost-effective way to educate a student that I can possibly imagine.”

    I don’t follow this. I have taught at a private college for 27 years, and it seems much more efficiently run than the public university that I went to (Wisconsin). We have less taxpayer subsidy, so the only way we can compete is by being more efficient. What is wrong with my reasoning? If we were less efficient than the University of Massachusetts, wouldn’t students go there rather than to our school?

    You said;

    “I’m not so proud as to think that I can predict a counterfactual of that complexity.”

    Milton Friedman was asked to describe how voucher schools would teach students better than public schools. He said something to the effect “If I knew the answer to that I wouldn’t favor voucher schools, I’d just instruct public schools to teach that way.” I also have no idea what the market would produce, that’s why I favor the market.

  15. Gravatar of OGT OGT
    12. April 2010 at 16:45

    Statsguy- You’re point on private colleges is exactly right. I am not sure Sumner’s anecdotal defense amounts to much, tenured professors aren’t exactly the best judges of their institution’s productivity after all. I doubt he’d ask us to accept the observations of a unionized public school teacher on the relative productivity of their school.

    Sumner- The short answer to your query to Statsguy are those fancy dorms you were grumbling about a few months ago. In a reputational model with few points of relevant information to consumers the appearance of success can sustain an institution, and even produce success without any actual increase in educational achievement. I don’t know if you’ve seen this paper, which by the way references the (relative) failure of Chile’s much larger voucher program, but it gives a good model for why vouchers in and of themselves aren’t likely to increase educational results and are likely to increase economic stratification.

    http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/15112.html

    Friedman (1962) argued that a free market in which schools compete based upon their reputation would lead to an efficient supply of educational services. This paper explores this issue by building a tractable model in which rational individuals go to school and accumulate skill valued in a perfectly competitive labor market. To this it adds one ingredient: school reputation in the spirit of Holmstrom (1982). The first result is that if schools cannot select students based upon their ability, then a free market is indeed efficient and encourages entry by high productivity schools. However, if schools are allowed to select on ability, then competition leads to stratification by parental income, increased transmission of income inequality, and reduced student effort—in some cases lowering the accumulation of skill. The model accounts for several (sometimes puzzling) findings in the educational literature, and implies that national standardized testing can play a key role in enhancing learning.

    Talking about the “market” without an understanding of the actual dynamics of the particular market one is discussing is rarely helpful. For that reason, I lean in the exact opposite direction you do on testing. I’d love to see both truth in tuition to let parents know how much of their spending is going to instruction and universal entrance and exit testing of college students. My guess is most parents would too, but of course professors and college administrators are opposed, what does that tell us?

  16. Gravatar of William William
    12. April 2010 at 17:18

    …that’s what teachers and intellectuals think is the whole point of education.

    Really? I’d think the typical intellectual would be in favor of a wide-ranging liberal arts program that may not translate directly into “human capital”, whereas the anti-intellectual types would be more inclined to reject any programs that do not lead directly to specialized job training.

    But more to the topic – aside from being most cost efficient, I’d like to throw in another metric which makes Yglesias look rather silly – graduation rates. Voucher programs are typically followed by higher rates (often in the 20% range.) What about Milwaukee? I’ll let the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel do the talking for me,

    “New data in a study that compares the high school graduation rates since 2003 of students in Milwaukee Public Schools with those of students in the city’s publicly financed voucher program has concluded that students in voucher schools are about 18% more likely to graduate than their peers in MPS.” (http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/83314577.html)

    So it’s cheaper AND more students graduate.

  17. Gravatar of TGGP TGGP
    12. April 2010 at 17:22

    Adam Ozimek complains about journalistic commentary on voucher studies here.

  18. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    12. April 2010 at 19:44

    I don’t consider UMass a public school…

    BTW, tuition alone at Bentley is 34K per year, and the “year” is 26 weeks, with 12 instructional hours per week for a 4 course load. That’s 12*26 hours, or $110 per hour per student for instruction only (leaving out fees, books, board, etc.) And that doesn’t count the endowment contribution.

    I do not doubt that many professors work incredibly hard (for relatively low pay), but they don’t work hard teaching students. The “public” colleges – which function somewhat like charter schools – have the same problems.

    Having said that, sure – let’s pick a couple districts and let them go full charter school for 15 years and see what happens. It’s a worthy social experiment, and hardly immoral if the participants volunteer.

  19. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    12. April 2010 at 19:47

    @William – did that study control for parental involvement and socioeconomic/family effects at the student/household level?

  20. Gravatar of Doc Merlin Doc Merlin
    13. April 2010 at 00:15

    Republican voters do not oppose vouchers its one of the most popular republican issues that exists. Its just so incredibly, vehemently opposed by democratic politicians and established interests that it doesn’t have much chance.
    What is the case, is that the democrats are vehemently opposed to it, and the republican politicians are too chicken wrt to the teachers in their own districts to do anything about it.

  21. Gravatar of scott sumner scott sumner
    13. April 2010 at 05:03

    OGT, I think you misunderstood my point about colleges. I agree that massive public subsidies to colleges caused excessive spending and waste in both public and private colleges. So we probably agree much more than you think. I favor big cutbacks in public support for colleges, which would hurt my fiancial interest.

    Where I disagree is that I just don’t think our private colleges are worse than the public colleges. Overall I think the entire US educational system is mediocre (compared to other developed countries) but I see private colleges as one of the bright spots. The competition they provide may also prevent the public sector colleges from becoming ossified, as they have in many European countries that lack competition. I seem to recall than in many European countries students are simply assigned to different colleges by the government, and having a captive audience they do a very poor job.

    William, You said;

    “Really? I’d think the typical intellectual would be in favor of a wide-ranging liberal arts program that may not translate directly into “human capital”, whereas the anti-intellectual types would be more inclined to reject any programs that do not lead directly to specialized job training.”

    I agree, but I was referring to my list above (sports, day care, discipline, etc.) Many academics do support testing.

    Thanks for the data on graduation rates. I suppose skeptics might wonder whether the students deserve to graduate. But I suppose there is some value in just having them stick around in school and stay out of trouble. Is there any data on the proportion of students that avoid being arrested in the first year after leaving school?

    Statsguy: I do consider UMass a public school–it is owned by the state. As I said to OGT, big government subsidies do cause excessive spending in both public and private colleges. But students get more bang for the buck here at Bentley. The classes are almost all small, and they are taught by professors, not TAs.

    Higher education is full of many problems, some of which are due to tenure. (I am one of a tiny number of professors, liberal or conservative, who oppose tenure. Indeed I don’t ever recall meeting another professor who agrees with me. I think that many of the horror stories about lazy professors is due to the tenure system. After getting tenure professors only work hard if they want to. I believe this is a problem in some K-12 schools as well. The good news is that tenure is gradually declining at the college level.

    Research is a tough issue. In some fields (health care?) there may be a public good aspect that suggests public subsidies are appropriate. I don’t think that economic research has much of a benefit to society, at the margin. By that I mean that if you take the amount of research that would be done at all the elite universities even without public subsidies, then providing public subsidies to researches at Podunk State University probably has little marginal benefit. Ditto for the humanities and other social sciences.

    College has also become a form of delayed adolescence in our society. Many of the jobs actually require only a high school degree. 100 years ago you simply needed a high school education to become an accountant. Even today, college is probably more of a sorting mechanism, you could quickly train a student on the job in whatever accounting they needed to know. It gives young people in a affluent society like ours an opportunity to enjoy life for 4 years while young, while also picking up some job skills. It is wrong to think of college life as only being about jobs. I seem to recall that in Japan this is even more extreme—students work extremely hard to get into good colleges, and then coast.

    I don’t want “a few charter schools”, I want zero charter schools and zero public schools of any kind. I’d like to privatize all schools in the country. We don’t need any more experiments, we know private schools are better than public schools.

    Interestingly, in places like India the poor often go to private schools, and pay out of their own pocket, and the richer students often go to public schools.

    Doc Merlin. I had read the opposite. In places like New Jersey the inner city parents supported vouchers, but the Republican voters in richer suburbs weren’t crazy about the idea of inner city students coming out into their nice schools. Vouchers and school choice would enable poor students to go to the sorts of schools that richer students now have all to themselves.

  22. Gravatar of Josh Josh
    13. April 2010 at 06:17

    Scott,

    One quick point. The quote from the article is that “Voucher students are showing average rates of achievement gain similar to their public school peers.”

    Not only is this statement meaningless in measuring success, isn’t this what we would expect from competition? Shouldn’t the public schools attempt to hire better teachers and put measures in place to attempt to achieve higher test scores because they now face competition?

  23. Gravatar of Brian Clendinen Brian Clendinen
    13. April 2010 at 08:02

    @ StatsGuy” Re Homeschooling- you may be right, but the narrative you describe is highly conflated with parental involvement. It’s the same thing as the selection problem.

    On homeschooler’s social skills, I home schooled and there actually was an interesting study in the late 90’s on the social skills of homeschoolers. I need to find the study but Doctorate candidate for this thesis took a groups of homeschoolers who did not know each other of different ages and put them into a room together. He also did the same with there public school counterparts. He then observed their behavior. He overall found Homeschooler’s had significantly better social skills. Homeschoolers when they first were put into the room introduced themselves to everyone else in the room almost all the time. The public school counterparts rarely did this. Secondly, and more significant was who Homeschoolers interacted with. The public school after a short while only socialized with their peers of roughly the same age. Homeschoolers were the opposite, they interacted with all age levels during the observation period. Also it was interesting when he gave his initial presentation on the study about half the faculty showed up.

    Don’t get me wrong I have know and meet Homeschooled kids who where social inapt, however, I have know more who were in this category that graduated form a public institution. The idea that going to school someone gives you social skills if you lack them is nuts. What studies have there been to show that school is better at teaching social skills than other methods?

    I think tenure is major cause for poor education. I hope Crist signs the bill to remove tenure in Florida. I think removing tenure will be the biggest single reform Florida has ever had in public education. Anyone aware of how many private K-12 schools have tenure? This alone gives private schools a significant comparative advantage. Just as non-union business have advantages over union ones. I think this will lead to the performance difference between public and private being narrowed for students in the same parental status demographic.

  24. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    13. April 2010 at 09:40

    ‘But more to the topic – aside from being most cost efficient, I’d like to throw in another metric which makes Yglesias look rather silly – graduation rates.’

    Yes, and that is what the Arkansas project is all about–which entirely escaped the AEI guy–differential high school graduation rates in Milwaukee.

  25. Gravatar of Lorenzo from Oz Lorenzo from Oz
    14. April 2010 at 04:35

    The dominant purpose of providing schooling is to control belief formation (pdf). That is why the biggest competitor to the state in school provision are religious bodies.

    Progressives generally want to control belief formation as much as possible, which is why they tend to hate private provision and parental choice in schooling. That is the great political bargain: the teacher unions protect and expands the privileges of their members while organising for the “goodies” on the basis of a set of beliefs that channels networking: both within the unions and in their wider political coalition building. So the bargain is–we will promote a shared belief set and you will support our monopolising rorts. Vouchers are SO not helpful to that.

    When parents pay for schooling (either directly or by choosing where to live), one of their biggest issues is controlling who sits “next to” their child. That is, whether kids in the classroom will help or frustrate their child’s learning. Hence private schools and universities provide scholarships. Hence also suburban voters not liking vouchers. You spend the premium to buy a house in a “good school” area and the government then pays to ghetto kids turn up: this was not what you were buying.

    So vouchers conflict with the interests of teachers, progressive politics and suburban parents. The surprising thing is not that vouchers have encountered much resistance but that there are any voucher programs at all.

    BTW The notion that provision of government schooling promotes equality or social mixing is bunkum. It stratifies by the catchment area and ability to work the political process. (As someone who teachers in lots of schools in Melbourne, private schools are at least as ethnically mixed as government schools, for example.)

  26. Gravatar of Lorenzo from Oz Lorenzo from Oz
    14. April 2010 at 04:38

    That should have been “pays to have ghetto kids turn up”.

  27. Gravatar of scott sumner scott sumner
    14. April 2010 at 05:08

    Josh, That’s a good point.

    Brian, I agree with both points. Homeschooling is great if parents can do it, and tenure should be abolished.

    Patrick, Good point.

    Lorenzo, Yes, I think belief formation is what this is all about. In my town people are strongly opposed to religion in the public schools, but then allow the schools to go out and indoctrinate students in socialism, feminism and environmentalism. Just to be clear I think the schools should cover economics, gender, and the environment. But it would be nice to have more than one point of view.

  28. Gravatar of StatsGuy StatsGuy
    14. April 2010 at 06:30

    Lorenzo, William, et. al. –

    All very good points, and I recall the study on social skills as well. I’m not making a pro-public school argument about social skills, however (unless you consider it important for kids to learn how to deal with being picked on, bullied, and social pecking orders – which admittedly are valuable skills in the workplace).

    Social skills, and socialization, are different things – and I know several private schools in Boston that go out of their way to promote racial and ethnic diversity (that being, of course, the politically correct thing to do). I know several public schools that educate a small portion of inner city children (lots of self-congratulation there).

    I don’t doubt that – for the current selection of private schools in some areas – they outperform on several levels. I do not know, however, if extending these models (which benefit from some degree of cherry picking) to all schools will keep that data favorable. I do have concerns about social polarization (certainly, our data shows increasing polarization of media and political attitudes over the last 30 years, and it’s possible that charter schools may reinforce the polariztion by facilitating even greater self-selection).

    But it’s worth a try – let’s let states that want to convert their entire system to a charter school system take the plunge. At the federal level, we’ve survived with public schools for over a hundred years, so another 10 won’t kill us – but it’s the height of imprudence to make a radical shift overnight. Meanwhile, we do have some examples (not at all perfect parallels) of quasi-private/public systems reinforcing existing social/class structures. I disagree with ssumner that we know the full systemic effects – all we have are some isolated experiments. Moreover, it should be MUCH easier for advocates of charter schools to win over at least one state (since some are heavily republican) than to win over the entire federal bureaucracy. Once this state proves the benefits, others will follow.

    The voucher/charter school advocates would have a lot better chance of succeeding if the made this case:

    “We have enough evidence to justify allowing one or two states – those which have the greatest desire to make changes – to try using a charter school system at the state level. The risks seem moderate, and the benefits large – if it works, the gains for our children will be immense. If it fails, those states can revert to the current system and everything we know now says the children there should not suffer harm – and possibly be better off. It’s worth a try – unless we’re too scared that it might work.”

    The past 10 years of strident, absolutist voucher school advocates – along with the belief that the private markets will fix everything when all the latest data shows us that the most important predictor of success is teacher quality and that high quality teachers are finite in number and hard to train – have nearly killed the movement. By attacking the overstated claims, the anti-voucher folks have been able to cast the voucher advocates as strident free market fundamentalists who hate the very notion of publicly funded education (and, frankly, many of the voucher advocates do fit that description).

  29. Gravatar of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog
    14. April 2010 at 07:21

    Good Stuff on Vouchers…

    Scott Sumner on vouchers.  The thing that always confused me about vouchers is that opponents always seemed to be making the case in the mode of  ”I am a parent choosing whether to send my kid to a voucher or non-voucher school” and thereby…

  30. Gravatar of Brian Moore Brian Moore
    14. April 2010 at 07:29

    Why is the burden of proof on those who seek to expand choice, but not on those who seek to restrict it?

  31. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    14. April 2010 at 13:53

    ‘The past 10 years of strident, absolutist voucher school advocates…’

    Speaking as a veteran of many debates on the issue, the stridency is mostly in evidence on the side of anti-choicers. Specificly, public school teachers, administrators and their union representatives who know exactly what they have to lose and have no compunction about using children as hostages to keep their privileges. It’s ‘abandon all logic, ye who enter’ into such debates.

  32. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    14. April 2010 at 14:12

    Some might find this paper interesting:

    http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/jay1.htm

    ————quote————-
    The belief that public schools produce better integration than private schools is deeply held by many people, but it is unfortunately supported by little empirical evidence. In this paper we take a systematic look at integration in a random sample of public and private schools in two cities. Unlike previous studies of integration in schools, our data are drawn from a setting in which racial mixing has greater meaning: the lunchroom. We also develop new measures of integration that allow for easier, more meaningful comparisons between different school systems. Our analyses suggest that private schools tend to offer a more racially integrated environment than do public schools. The primary explanation for private schools’ success at integration is that private school attendance is not as closely attached to where one lives as attendance at public schools. Public schools tend to replicate and reinforce racial segregation in housing. Because private schools do not require that their students live in particular neighborhoods, they can more easily overcome segregation in housing to provide integration in school. The strong religious mission and higher social class found in most private schools are also factors that contribute to better racial integration.
    ————endquote————

    One of the authors, Jay Greene, is the head of the Arkansas project that produced the report the AEI guy is mis-reporting on. Greene’s method was merely to photograph the lunchroom socializing in public and private schools to compare VOLUNTARY integration by the students themselves. He found a significant difference; the private school students integrated themselves to a greater extent.

  33. Gravatar of scott sumner scott sumner
    15. April 2010 at 04:44

    Statsguy, You said;

    “But it’s worth a try – let’s let states that want to convert their entire system to a charter school system take the plunge. At the federal level, we’ve survived with public schools for over a hundred years, so another 10 won’t kill us – but it’s the height of imprudence to make a radical shift overnight. Meanwhile, we do have some examples (not at all perfect parallels) of quasi-private/public systems reinforcing existing social/class structures. I disagree with ssumner that we know the full systemic effects – all we have are some isolated experiments. Moreover, it should be MUCH easier for advocates of charter schools to win over at least one state (since some are heavily republican) than to win over the entire federal bureaucracy. Once this state proves the benefits, others will follow.”

    Let’s contrast education with health care. We have some experiments like Milwaukee that seem to have worked (saved money), but you are right that they may fail if scaled up to the entire country. So the argument is let’s not rush in to things. On the other hand we have only one controlled experiment on medical insurance (the Rand study) and it failed to save lives. The left says on the basis of that one failed study and their blind religious faith in their anti-market fundamentalist ideology that we should rush into a single-payer socialized health care system. So who are the true fundamentalists?

    You said:

    “The past 10 years of strident, absolutist voucher school advocates – along with the belief that the private markets will fix everything when all the latest data shows us that the most important predictor of success is teacher quality and that high quality teachers are finite in number and hard to train – have nearly killed the movement. By attacking the overstated claims, the anti-voucher folks have been able to cast the voucher advocates as strident free market fundamentalists who hate the very notion of publicly funded education (and, frankly, many of the voucher advocates do fit that description).”

    Again, who are the zealots? Those who favor allowing parents to choose? Or those who favor a one-size-fits-all system controlled by central planners? Which system is more subject to catastrophic failure?

    Here is the bottom line for me. Progressives claim to want to reform societal systems that are dysfunctional. The public schools systems in big cities are dysfunctional. The only meaningful reform would be less government control. The systems are now fully controlled by the government, not just financed, but as controlled in every way. They are like the British NHS, but in education. Progressives oppose significant reforms. So what is the true agenda of progressives? A better society, or a society with more government control?

    Brian, I agree.

    Patrick. That lunchroom example is quite interesting.

  34. Gravatar of Zdeno Zdeno
    15. April 2010 at 13:07

    I am as pro-voucher as they come, but shouldn’t we assume that students who take advantage of voucher programs are on average smarter, better-parented and more invested in the quality of their education than those who do not? Selection effects alone should result in a test score bump.

  35. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    16. April 2010 at 04:46

    Zdeno, We shouldn’t assume anything, we should control for student quality in any academic study. I am pretty sure that the studies have done this (as best they can.)

  36. Gravatar of ADF Alliance Alert » The wonderful “failure” of the Milwaukee voucher program ADF Alliance Alert » The wonderful “failure” of the Milwaukee voucher program
    16. April 2010 at 05:11

    […] Sumner writing at The Money Illusion: “If a policy that leads to greater consumer satisfaction at lower cost, and produces no […]

  37. Gravatar of Adam Adam
    19. April 2010 at 10:43

    Swedish schools are under a charter-like regulatory mandate to be unselective in their admissions and it’s more-or-less the same in the Netherlands.

  38. Gravatar of Adam Adam
    19. April 2010 at 11:00

    Oh and you said you weren’t sure about Matthew’s take. I think he made it here.

    http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/03/school_choice_in_sweden.php

  39. Gravatar of A Town More Famous For Hops Than Vouchers « Around The Sphere A Town More Famous For Hops Than Vouchers « Around The Sphere
    21. April 2010 at 10:38

    […] Scott Sumner: So the voucher program achieved the same learning objectives at a lower cost, or more bang for the buck.  Since when is that regarded as failure?  Let’s consider the following two possibilities: […]

  40. Gravatar of Despistagem « O Insurgente Despistagem « O Insurgente
    23. April 2010 at 05:30

    […] baixo foram obtidos resultados iguais e com níveis de satisfação superiores. Parece-me que isto está longe da definição de falhanço. É claro que, não sendo um “progressista”, posso estar […]

  41. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    28. April 2010 at 13:45

    Thanks Adam, I’m not sure that open admission will solve the problem of segregation by class. Students from low SES might just be shuffled off into special ed classes. But I haven’t really studied the issue and don’t have strong views either way.

  42. Gravatar of Best of the Week: April 11-17, 2010 | Trading 8s Best of the Week: April 11-17, 2010 | Trading 8s
    22. May 2010 at 15:26

    […] The Wonderful “Failure” of the Milwaukee Voucher Program — Scott Sumner 9. Why Immigration Can’t Save Social Security — Andrew G. Biggs 8. The PIIGS Problem: […]

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