One of the "hottest" educational items being peddled by the Nixon administration is the educational voucher program. The basic idea is to give each child (or his parents) the purchasing power to go into a free market and choose the public, private or parochial school of his liking. The voucher idea has strong political support. It originated with Catholic parochial school supporters in the late 1950's who saw in the post-World War II G.I. Bill of Rights a model that might be used to provide aid to church schools without violation of the constitutional barrier between church and state. Last week's Supreme Court ruling barring direct aid to parochial schools is certain to lead to increasing pressure for the voucher system. Interest in the idea became widespread about a decade ago, when it was advocated by Dr. Milton Friedman, the conservative economic advisor to Senator Goldwater. Friedman's support of the idea was based largely on his belief that a competitive free enterprise system in education would bring the same advantages ( consumer choice, competitive prices and wages, increased efficiency) claimed for the system in the private commercial and industrial sector.
In the last few years, new adherents of the voucher plan have emerged. Southern governors seized upon the proposal as a device by which students could use their vouchers to circumvent the Supreme Court decision on integration. What was envisioned was the creation of a system of segregated private schools. In the North, vouchers are gaining increasing support from city dwellers-black and white, conservative and liberal-who, because of deteriorating conditions in the public schools, are eager to reduce or eliminate the burdensome expense of private schooling for their children. Additional support comes from New Left critics of the schools who hope that vouchers will produce innovative models and that teachers and principals will be spurred to do a better job by their awareness that the customer can take his money elsewhere. Finally, the proposal is supported by those corporations, which seek to enter the multi-billion-dollar education field on a profit basis.
It would be a mistake; however, to conclude that all these groups are united in support of a single specific plan. They are not. The number of voucher plans that have been offered is as great as the number of purposes motivating support of the general idea. But for convenience of discussion it will suffice to distinguish between two types-the conservative plans and the liberal plans.
"Let's Drop the Egg and See What Happens"
The conservative proposals are those with the fewest safeguards and public controls. These plans allow enough "freedom" to assure that the result will be pupil segregation. They provide vouchers in equal amounts to all students -- in disregard of the obligation to use public moneys to give extra services to students with greater need.
The liberal proposals aim at integration by requiring all voucher schools to accept some of their students on a random basis and by prohibiting the more affluent parents from using their own funds, in addition to the vouchers, to create "rich" schools. These proposals also grant larger vouchers to needy students, in the expectation that the larger vouchers will serve as an incentive to private schools to admit such students. The most brilliant of the liberal plans was designed by Christopher Jencks for the Office of Economic Opportunity, which will "experiment" with it.
Despite its brilliance, the Jencks plan suffers from political naivete: There is no legislature in the nation which will enact a voucher plan that will give substantially more money to each poor child, and bar private schools from freely selecting the students they want and rejecting those they don't want. By the the Jencks model goes through the political-legislative wringer it will have become the conservative model which is author himself opposes.
Like many other educational notions, vouchers are being sold as an "experiment," and those who oppose the "experiment" are branded as self-interested members of the establishment. But not all experiments are alike. Some are harmless in that we try something new and, if we don't like the result, we go back to what was there before. But there are experiments that are like the act of dropping an egg to see what happens. We quickly see what happens, but the egg cannot be put back together again.
The voucher experiment is dangerous because it is irreversible. Once parents get money to buy education for their children, that money will not be taken back. Once great numbers of students depart from the public schools to try private and parochial schools, there will be no public schools for them to return to. The public will not pay for empty school buildings and for materials and a staff while waiting to see if the students will return. Those who are promoting vouchers should be more honest in their espousals. Vouchers are not an "experiment," the conclusion of which is unknown. The results is inevitable-the end of public schools and the establishment of a system of tax-financed private education.