Education voucher are a Trojan Horse, a mechanism through which government authorities would be able to regulate private schools.
Vouchers are nothing more than... an attempt to "play market" using socialist hardware, something that did not work in the Soviet Union and something that would ultimately fail here.
While the idea seems to have merit on the surface, it actually has many flaws. First, as the conservative/libertarian critics charge, vouchers, being funded with taxes, would permit the state to regulate private schools in the same way they currently regulate colleges that accept GI Bill funds, Pell Grants, and student loans. Since elementary and secondary education is even more regulated by state authorities than higher education, there is no doubt vouchers could have a crippling effect upon private schools that soon would find themselves under the government thumb.
Vouchers are an attempt to "create a market" where one has not existed. However, as Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard have demonstrated many times, a true market is impossible without private property rights. Vouchers are government funds supplied by taxpayers. They are no more private property than an interstate highway or the Brooklyn Bridge.
The issue of private property is crucial, for without such property rights, voucher programs would operate at the whim of state authorities, which could change the rules whenever they pleased. One political regime might favor a hands-off voucher system, while a successive regime would demand "accountability" or even gut the program altogether, should the teachers unions demand it.
Unlike the money that parents like myself have used to pay private school tuition for our children, voucher money would come from the state. While the government was taxing me to pay for public schools, at least it could not restrict how I chose to spend the amount earmarked for school tuition. It was my money, my property.
That simply would not be the case for voucher payments. Because vouchers are not the private property of individuals, their uses will be restricted by government authorities that are beholden to special interest groups that certainly do not care about the rights of families.
As Mises and Rothbard also pointed out, without private property rights, economic calculation becomes a comedy of errors. Two likely scenarios would emerge in the wake of a new voucher program. First, the new money flooding into the private school market would undoubtedly drive up tuition prices, thus rendering many families still unable to send their children to the school of their choice. The tuition hikes would also fuel the rage of politicians who would most likely accused private schools of "price gouging," making them more susceptible to future unwanted and unwise regulation.
Second, the injection of new education money would lead to a number of small "education startups," some of which would be legitimate, but many others being "fly-by-night" operations. Like the malinvestment that strikes capital markets when government creates new credit out of the air, we would quickly see a new waste of funds into unwieldy educational operations that otherwise would never have opened their doors. It would not take long for voucher opponents to seize upon this unfortunate situation and convince political authorities to crack down on all private schools.
Finally, there is the prospect of "capture theory" itself. As economists have shown, regulated firms soon are able to "capture" the regulatory process and turn regulation into barriers to entry that keep other firms out of the market.
Such a scenario is highly likely if vouchers were to become widespread. Teachers unions and public school authorities, while at first resisting vouchers, would find how the influx of public money would ultimately give them more sway over private school operations. Most likely they would form alliances with the most established private schools that do not like competing with smaller startups, finding ways to damage their rivals or run them out of business altogether.
In other words, while the idea of vouchers sounds good to those who rightly believe that the public school monopoly should be challenged, voucher programs... are a halfway measure that ultimately would trap legitimate private schools in a worse trap than exists today.
Read full article here: https://mises.org/library/trouble-vouchers
Vouchers are nothing more than... an attempt to "play market" using socialist hardware, something that did not work in the Soviet Union and something that would ultimately fail here.
While the idea seems to have merit on the surface, it actually has many flaws. First, as the conservative/libertarian critics charge, vouchers, being funded with taxes, would permit the state to regulate private schools in the same way they currently regulate colleges that accept GI Bill funds, Pell Grants, and student loans. Since elementary and secondary education is even more regulated by state authorities than higher education, there is no doubt vouchers could have a crippling effect upon private schools that soon would find themselves under the government thumb.
Vouchers are an attempt to "create a market" where one has not existed. However, as Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard have demonstrated many times, a true market is impossible without private property rights. Vouchers are government funds supplied by taxpayers. They are no more private property than an interstate highway or the Brooklyn Bridge.
The issue of private property is crucial, for without such property rights, voucher programs would operate at the whim of state authorities, which could change the rules whenever they pleased. One political regime might favor a hands-off voucher system, while a successive regime would demand "accountability" or even gut the program altogether, should the teachers unions demand it.
Unlike the money that parents like myself have used to pay private school tuition for our children, voucher money would come from the state. While the government was taxing me to pay for public schools, at least it could not restrict how I chose to spend the amount earmarked for school tuition. It was my money, my property.
That simply would not be the case for voucher payments. Because vouchers are not the private property of individuals, their uses will be restricted by government authorities that are beholden to special interest groups that certainly do not care about the rights of families.
As Mises and Rothbard also pointed out, without private property rights, economic calculation becomes a comedy of errors. Two likely scenarios would emerge in the wake of a new voucher program. First, the new money flooding into the private school market would undoubtedly drive up tuition prices, thus rendering many families still unable to send their children to the school of their choice. The tuition hikes would also fuel the rage of politicians who would most likely accused private schools of "price gouging," making them more susceptible to future unwanted and unwise regulation.
Second, the injection of new education money would lead to a number of small "education startups," some of which would be legitimate, but many others being "fly-by-night" operations. Like the malinvestment that strikes capital markets when government creates new credit out of the air, we would quickly see a new waste of funds into unwieldy educational operations that otherwise would never have opened their doors. It would not take long for voucher opponents to seize upon this unfortunate situation and convince political authorities to crack down on all private schools.
Finally, there is the prospect of "capture theory" itself. As economists have shown, regulated firms soon are able to "capture" the regulatory process and turn regulation into barriers to entry that keep other firms out of the market.
Such a scenario is highly likely if vouchers were to become widespread. Teachers unions and public school authorities, while at first resisting vouchers, would find how the influx of public money would ultimately give them more sway over private school operations. Most likely they would form alliances with the most established private schools that do not like competing with smaller startups, finding ways to damage their rivals or run them out of business altogether.
In other words, while the idea of vouchers sounds good to those who rightly believe that the public school monopoly should be challenged, voucher programs... are a halfway measure that ultimately would trap legitimate private schools in a worse trap than exists today.
Read full article here: https://mises.org/library/trouble-vouchers
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