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]]>You might be surprised to know that Elizabeth Warren has written in favor of school vouchers. Granted, that was from a book that she co-authored with her daughter in 2003, but the position expressed in unequivocal.
The book is “The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are (Still) Going Broke,” written by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi.
To get a better understanding of her words, let’s set a scenario. Suppose that you are a young couple and you move into a new neighborhood with other parents around your age. You love where you live and in most respects it is exactly where you would like to raise your children. But there is a problem. You are not confident that the local public schools will provide the kind of education that you would want for your children. And you’re not alone. Many of your neighbors feel the same way. So what are your choices? Let’s list them:
This fifth option does not come free. The school is going to need teachers, a facility, supplies and money for a variety of other expenses ranging from field trips to specialist teachers. But it is a school that likely would have your imprint on it as well as those of other children and adults in the neighborhood.
There are two ways to fund this school. The first is to make it a private school and charge tuition. That may be a good idea, but it would be a financial burden on the families as described in option 3 above.
The second way (which is only available in a few communities in the United States) would be for the school to become a “voucher school.” By all rights, it should be a not-for-profit [501(c) 3 tax status] school. The money that would have been allocated for the children in the local public school district would now be allocated for your children and those of others so that they could attend this new school. In other words, the school would be funded by public money that would amount to the cost of educating each child in your school district by the number of children in the school.
From a societal point of view, there would be a downside in that the public school system would have less money for its operations. On the other hand, it would have fewer students to educate, thus reducing its expenses.
In the beginning, the parents of the students would still have costs. A facility would need to be rented, and eventually maybe a new structure built. That would require money that would not be included in the cost per pupil allocation from the local public school district.
If voucher funding were available, this kind of school would be a real option for parents and children. Here is what Elizabeth Warren and her daughter Amelia had to say about this option:
Any policy that loosens the ironclad relationship between location-location-location and school-school-school would eliminate the need for parents to pay an inflated price for a home just because it happens to lie within the boundaries of a desirable school district.
A well-designed voucher program would fit the bill neatly. A taxpayer-funded voucher that paid the entire cost of educating a child (not just a partial subsidy) would open a range of opportunities to all children. Fully funded vouchers would relieve parents from the terrible choice of leaving their kids in lousy schools or bankrupting themselves to escape those schools.
We recognize that the term “voucher” has become a dirty word in many educational circles. The reason is straightforward: The current debate over vouchers is framed as a public-versus-private rift, with vouchers denounced for draining off much-needed funds from public schools. The fear is that partial-subsidy vouchers provide a boost so that better-off parents can opt out of a failing public school system, while the other children are left behind.
When we talk about the baby and the bathwater with school vouchers, here is what the baby looks like:
Democrats have shied away from vouchers for good reasons:
These last two points are the trickiest ones for many liberals to accept. Here are quick responses to each concern:
Right now may not be the best time for a major effort to promote nationwide vouchers. But it would be very helpful to experiment with them further, particularly in our inner cities where so many young adults want to live, except for the lack of public schools to their liking. It is a good time for Democrats to put their knees in a brace, do away with the knee-jerk reaction, and give serious consideration to the potential upside of vouchers.
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