I’m struggling to understand an intellectual disconnect of the first order.
Nearly everyone involved in education reform wrings their hands about the achievement gaps between poor and nonpoor, between white and minority students. And most Americans are increasingly disturbed about widening inequality of income and wealth.
Yet when Nevada enacted the nation’s first law last month creating almost universal access to vouchers (technically, education savings accounts, or ESAs), few reformers pointed out that it would undermine equal opportunity. Dozens of bloggers weighed in; the Fordham Institute even invited 14 of them to comment. And not one of the 14 mentioned that the new bill would make access to quality education less equal than it is today.
READ: [Nevada’s Education Gambit]
Why do I say it will do that? Because it allows families to add to their education savings account to buy a more expensive education. Most parents want what’s best for their children, so those who can afford it will do just that. Those who can’t will not. And the education market will stratify by income, far more than it already does. In a decade, it will look like the markets for houses, cars and other private goods, with huge disparities based on wealth.
I just don’t get it. We need bold reform of education, yes. But do we want to widen the achievement gap? Do we want to increase inequality in America? More than half of public students in America are poor (i.e., they qualify for a free or reduced price lunch). Do we want to leave them all behind in inferior schools?
A core value of public education — one of the reasons we treat it as a public rather than a private good — is equality of opportunity. That’s hard to achieve in America, where incomes — hence neighborhoods — are vastly unequal. For 50 years the courts have forced states to take over more and more of the financing of public education from local governments, to create more equality of spending between communities. The results are disappointing in many states, but even in the worst, public school spending is not vastly unequal. And a few states have succeeded in creating fairly level playing fields, and in Washington, D.C., low-income kids actually get extra money.
What would happen if those states passed laws like Nevada’s?
The new bill allows any parent whose child has been in public education for at least 100 days to take an education savings account worth $5,100 (or $5,700 for low-income kids and those with disabilities) and spend it as they please — on private schools, home-schooling, tutors, textbooks, online courses, computers, transportation, almost anything related to education. Participants will have to take a nationally norm-referenced test in math and English every year, but they get to choose which test, so there will be no universal measuring stick by which to compare performance.
READ: [Education’s Wild West]
In addition, low-income students can apply for a tax credit scholarship worth up to $7,775, though the legislature appropriated only $5 million a year, so it will serve less than 1,000 kids. But the accounts are available to all students, as long as they spend 100 days in a public school.
Putting all state, local and federal funds together, public schools in Nevada received $8,339 per student in 2013, well below the national average. Tracey Weinstein, director of policy and innovation at StudentsFirst, says the average tuition at private schools in the state is $8,000-10,000.
So it’s obvious that a $5,100 education — or even a $5,700 education — will be a cut-rate job. Every parent who can afford it will add their own money, to buy a better education. Some will buy $30,000 educations, some $25,000, some $15,000, some $10,000. But 51 percent of public school students in Nevada are poor, so most will have to settle for $5,100 or $5,700 — or stay in a public school that has no middle class kids left. Mixing of students from different income groups — something essential to the healthy functioning of a multiracial, multicultural democracy — will disappear.
Meanwhile, information about schools’ academic quality will be sparse, and many parents will be ill equipped to distinguish the wheat from the chaff. Experience in the charter school sector has proven that if a school is safe, warm and nurturing, many parents will stick with it, even if test scores show that students are falling behind. The same will be true in Nevada’s private schools, so many kids will get a lousy education.
This already happens in large voucher and education savings account programs in other states, such as Florida. Some private schools are excellent, others are terrible, and both varieties survive. In Nevada, as in Florida, no one has the authority to ban the worst schools from participating.
Some might say that Nevada should amend its law, so the state can do that. But the legislature deliberately avoided requiring participants to take the state’s standardized tests, so there is no common yardstick by which to judge schools — and obviously no legislative appetite for one.
Others might argue that the state should not allow parents to add to the accounts. But that would never pass. American voters wouldn’t tolerate being told that they couldn’t spend their own money on their child’s private school.
READ: [Why Charter Schools Work — Or Don’t]
Perhaps some supporters of Nevada’s approach feel that it’s worth losing ground on equal opportunity to shake up the educational establishment and trigger innovations that will ultimately help everyone. But there’s a better way to do this. New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and other cities have shown that with charter schools we can have choice, competition, accountability for performance and innovation while preserving equal funding for all (except for those in special education, who get more).
Charter-heavy cities have even begun appropriating more public money for higher-needs students. New Orleans has several tiers of funding for special education, depending upon the severity of the child’s disability, and Washington D.C. appropriates extra money for “at-risk” children — those receiving welfare or food stamps, those who are homeless or in foster care, and those who have been held back in high school.
Yet their charter sectors have unleashed tremendous innovation. Consider the range of charters available in Washington, D.C., which has a mature charter sector that enrolls 45 percent of all public students. There are Montessori charters, bilingual immersion charters in four languages, preschool charters, adult education charters, a charter that serves both adult immigrants and their young children, “expeditionary learning” charters, “blended learning” charters, intensely academic charters, a residential charter, alternative charters for at-risk teenagers and charters that emphasize public policy, law, arts, as well as science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM.
Cities like D.C. and New Orleans have created a thriving and competitive market in public education, but it is a “social market,” carefully structured to preserve equal opportunity while improving student learning. Unlike most voucher systems, these cities close schools whose students are falling too far behind academically. Both charter sectors are producing impressive results, with academic progress far beyond the traditional public schools they replaced. They are even luring students back from private schools.
Many Republican leaders think Nevada’s new law is “the wave of the future,” as the head of Jeb Bush’s foundation told the Washington Post last month. But we have too much inequality in our education system already, and it contributes mightily to the inequality in our society. Do we really want more?
More from U.S. News
Nevada School Choice Accounts Are the New Frontier in Education
Nevada’s New Education Savings Accounts Will Give Parents Lots of Options
What’s Working — and What’s Not — With Charter Schools
Nevada’s New Voucher Law Will Worsen Educational Inequality originally appeared on usnews.com
