FAQ: School vouchers

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End to compulsory schooling

When we stop forcing kids to attend school, the world will be more beautiful (see: Compulsory schooling must end).

Coercion will end when we universally adopt the Declaration of Educational Emancipation (supported by Dr Peter Gray).

For freedom to thrive, it makes sense to support children with a good start in their lives. No investment brings better returns than the investment in education. In the 1950s, Milton Friedman came up with the idea of school vouchers. In short, every child will receive a set amount of money to invest in education at the start of her journey.

There are many skeptics and even opponents who either do not understand the concept or are misled with poor outcomes, or poorly measured outcomes, of poorly implemented school choice programs. This FAQ will quickly answer the most burning questions about school vouchers.

See also: This text in Polish

Released creativity

  • Q: How can vouchers improve education?
  • A: Vouchers provide the freedom of learning and the freedom of funding. Freedom is the basis of creativity. The effects depend on the degree of entrepreneurship. However, the effects are cumulative. Creativity sparks more creativity

Simple law

  • Q: This will require a revolution in the law. A great deal of new bills and regulations
  • A: No. Simplifying the law to just 3 points opens an infinite number of new legal options blocked by old regulations (see: ABC of Education Reform)

Economic polarization

  • Q: Giving the same voucher to all children will deepen the polarization
  • A: Vouchers are equalizers. Everyone will get the same boost. Polarization will increase only as a result of a natural process. Diversification in development is inevitable. To complain about diversity is a bad school habit

Voucher value

  • Q: Who will determine the value of the voucher?
  • A: There is no optimum. This kind of decisions is best left to the wisdom of the crowds. The procedure might be analogous to the way we determine the level of taxation

Savings

  • Q: Why would this system cost less?
  • A: If the starting point of expenditure is 70% of the present cost of education, the student will still be happier due to the ability to make his own decisions. In addition, all the administrative costs can be excluded. The cost of centrally controlled bureaucracy is enormous

Draining public schools

  • Q: Vouchers will drain funds from public schools
  • A: There is no need to differentiate between public schools and private school. The evolutionary selection criterion will be student satisfaction. Public school will indeed struggle, but this only reflects their incompetence and inefficiency. Good school will do well

Right to education

  • Q: Public schools secure the right to education. Draining public schools will undermine that mission
  • A: The right to education will be secured with school vouchers, which additionally enhance the right to choose. The decline of public schooling can only happen as a result of student dissatisfaction

Big modern schools

  • Q: Big modern schools are too expensive to survive just on vouchers
  • A: We do not need to reduce the level of funding. We only change the way the funding decisions are made

Robbing the poor

  • Q: Don't you take from the poor to give it to the rich?
  • A: No. All kids get the same voucher. Taxes usually take more from the rich

Voucher failure

  • Q: Voucher system failed in many places all over the world
  • A: This is not true. Voucher system works optimally only when the student is free to make all educational decisions. All verdicts of "failure" can be explained by the use of wrong metrics (e.g. test scores), or by unfreedom. For example, in Sweden, schools are not free to charge extra tuition or determine their own admissions criteria. This is worsened by the fact that students cannot be homeschooled, let alone unschooled

Vouchers: conservative idea

  • Q: Vouchers will never work. It is an extreme conservative idea
  • A: Vouchers are apolitical. They serve efficient funding rooted in child's brain. In a sense, vouchers take from the rich to support all children equally

Vouchers: socialist idea

  • Q: Vouchers will never work. It is an extreme socialist idea like basic income
  • A: Vouchers are apolitical. This is an equal-opportunity investment in child's brain. Vouchers facilitate privatization

Discredited vouchers

  • Q: Vouchers have been discredited by advocating politicians
  • A: Good idea should be judged on its merits, not by who supports it. Vouchers are a good balance between the conservative fiscal efficiency, and the egalitarian drive for equal opportunities for children

Vouchers vs. Subsidy

  • Q: Why do you insist on vouchers instead of just school subsidy?
  • A: Educational investments are too complex to involve government. Some payments might go overseas. Metaphorically, you would not want the government to subsidize the shop in reward for your buying bread in that particular shop. Direct payments are more convenient

Education is inelastic

  • Q: Economists will tell you that the demand for education is inelastic. Everyone must get education, and schools have no incentive to reduce prices because students will come anyway.
  • A: This reasoning is equivalent to saying that students are less capable of figuring their educational needs than they are of determining their needs for food. The major source of inelasticity is lack of diversity, which stems from lack of school choice, and the artificial protection of inefficient public schools. Vouchers are to remedy this. In the days of artificial intelligence, the education market might be one of the most efficient markets in existence.

Increased bureaucracy

  • Q: Vouchers increase bureaucracy. A clerk needs to process the payment
  • A: Electronic payment system can be used in which money is automatically transferred to the accounts of eligible families. There is no human clerk involved

Private enrichment

  • Q: Your whole scheme will only transfer money to private pockets of school owners
  • A: There is no crime in private earnings. Privatization will only be proportional to the inefficiency of public schools. If public schools can compete for the satisfaction of the student, they will continue unabated

Passionate teachers

  • Q: School vouchers exacerbate inequalities. Instead, we should increase teachers' salaries
  • A: The idea of pay increase comes from teacher's lobby. From the economic point of view, it is an error of optimization. It only increases the supply of teachers without affecting the source of quality optimization decisions. School vouchers transfer the choice to the optimum source of decision, which is a child's brain enhanced by the support of her family

Corruption

  • Q: School vouchers are a formula for corruption and pathology
  • A: Education reform is the best remedy against corruption. Corruption is more likely when someone handles your money. Child's brain is a good detector of needs not satisfied. Practical implementations of vouchers are relatively free of corrupt practices

Lost opportunities

  • Q: Vouchers will leave some kids without school. Today, the principal of a public school is obliged to admit all children in the area
  • A: (1) Green light for private schools will reduce the demand and depopulate public schools. (2) Local authority is free to set their own regulation to help those potentially abandoned children. (3) The educational market is approaching perfectly competitive markets.

There will always be under-served areas in the country, and freedom to choose is always the necessary condition of efficient optimization. As long as the child has a substantial amount of money to spend, you can expect someone to be willing to extend a hand. In the era of on-line learning, on a perfectly competitive educational market, it is the businesses who shall struggle to secure their normal profit

Student Spring 2024

This text explains the reasons and strategies behind a school strike "Student Spring 2024" aimed at ending compulsory schooling

Hashtags: #WiosnaUczniow, #StudentSpring2024

More information:

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