More Libertarian Madness
After sarcastically venting my frustration that my own impeccably sensible ideas are so are out of the political mainstream, I was reminded of a recent post from Megan McArdle. She doesn’t understand why so many liberals oppose funding education through vouchers, rather than having the government provide it directly, as it currently does. And, frankly, I don’t either (well, aside from the concern that vouchers might fund religious indoctrination).
I kinda think that the Left’s dislike of school vouchers is part knee-jerk opposition to anything proposed by the Right, and part stubborn unwillingness to consider replacing a state-run program with a market-based alternative. But maybe my understanding of other people’s views on this issue is totally off-base. Anyone care to offer perspective on this? The objections to vouchers offered by Megan’s commenters are… well, weird and nonsensical, if you ask me.
market-based?
how about getting the tax money out of it, then?
geez.
I can only speak for myself, of course, but my take on this is a little more general than just religious indoctrination. In general, I suspect that vouchers would give parents what they want, and that what they want usually isn’t higher-quality education according to any standard I can understand. Instead, it’s education run by their favorite variety of nutcases (religious, conservative, liberal, or whatever). I think voucher-supported schools that harmed children would far outnumber those that helped children, and I’m willing to sacrifice the potential gains to keep this harm from occurring.
It’s a tough balancing act. I certainly wouldn’t go so far as to forbid private schools, but the idea that the government should support them (through vouchers) is galling.
I’d be much happier with vouchers that could be used only at schools that met very strict criteria. They would have to stay strictly religiously and politically neutral, they would have to educate a broad cross section of the community, they would have to demonstrate student success (how to do that is tricky), and they would have to follow a reasonably standard curriculum. If they managed to teach better than the current public schools, that would be great. I’m all for competition, as long as it isn’t a disguised process for switching to a very different sort of public school.