Last week, President Bush launched his latest education initiative, a $500-million voucher plan that he calls the GI bill for elementary and secondary schools. GI bull would be a more appropriate name. The original GI bill paid the entire cost -- tuition, room, board, books and other expenses -- of a college education that former U.S. servicemen and women would not have gotten without it. The Bush proposal provides only $1000 a year to help pay for the cost of a private school education. Unlike the GI bill, which was an entitlement, this will go to a relatively small number of students, all of whom are already getting a fully paid-for education in public schools.
President Bush is selling the idea that public school students will be able to get a better education at private and parochial schools, but if Vice President Quayle can't spell, President Bush can't read his own government reports. The most recent results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that 17- and 18-year-olds in private schools -- and about to graduate from high school - don't do any better than public school students when you control for family background. So the "education president" is about to spend $500 million to give kids an education that is no better in quality than the one they are already getting.
The President talks a lot about how his voucher program will give families the right to choose. When parents hear the word "choice," what goes through their minds is that they will get to choose where their children will go to school. It's true that they will have a right to apply wherever they'd like. But the schools will choose which kids will be accepted. Many schools that people agree are excellent will already be full. If there are vouchers, the top-notch schools that now have some places left will have lots of applicants for those few seats.
And what President Bush does not say is that probably very few public school students would get the $1000 because students whose parents are already paying for their private or parochial school education would also be eligible for the voucher. And there are so many kids already in these schools that the entire $500 million could be used up in this way.
When teachers in Los Angeles are facing a 15-percent pay cut, student services there are being drastically curtailed and the school year is being shortened - and it's the same story in school districts all over the country -- can anyone really argue that the best way for the U.S. to spend $500 million is to help pay tuition costs for parents who are already paying them?
But even the parents who are now paying tuition would probably be disappointed if the Bush plan were to pass. What's likely to happen if 500,000 parents get $1000 to help pay the tuition they are now paying from their own pockets? I bet it would turn out to be like my experience with doctors' fees. Before I had health insurance, many years ago, doctors charged $10 for an office visit. When I started to work and was covered by health insurance, my plan paid the $10 for an office visit. Very soon, my doctor raised his fee to $20 -- so he got $10 from insurance plus $10 from my pocket. A year later, when insurance coverage increased to pay;$20, the charge became $30. Studies in Western Canada, where the government started programs like the Bush plan, show that's just what happened in education. The injection of large sums of money into the private system did not reduce what parents paid; it resulted in increased tuition in these schools.
President Bush also claims that using public money to send children to private and parochial schools will help improve both -- and that without such competition, public schools will not improve. The argument is without merit. If you have two or three companies competing with each other under the same rules, the best product is likely to win. But that's not the kind of competition we'll have here. Public schools have to take all comers -- which means the kids no private school wants or has to accept. So the competition between public and private schools will be about as fair and productive as the competition between Japan and the United States. We operate under one set of rules and they operate under another. The U.S. lets in all of their products and they don't let in any of ours.
Furthermore, public schools in Germany, France and Japan -- countries where the education system is much better than ours -- are not engaged in competition with private schools. Excellent public education does not depend on competition with private schools or on government support of private schools. It depends on government policy to support public schools.
But the major flaw in the Bush plan is that it undermines the traditional values of our country. It views education as a consumer good -- as something that I, as a parent, buy for my children from some vendor (Chris Whittle?). That goes against the tradition and the values that have made our democracy the envy of the world. Education is a public good that communities have provided for all children because they are future citizens. In the early years of the republic, we discovered that if one person buys the services of a fire company to put out fires in his house when his neighbor has no such arrangement, the protection is not worth much. The notion that our democracy can succeed if we view education as an advantage that a few can buy for their children -- without caring about all the others -- is a delusion.