Private School Vouchers

A school voucher, also called an education voucher in a voucher system, is a certificate of government funding for students at schools chosen by themselves or their parents. Funding is usually for a particular year, term, or semester. In some countries, states, or local jurisdictions, the voucher can be used to cover or reimburse home schooling expenses. In some countries, vouchers only exist for tuition at private schools.

A 2017 review of the economics literature on school vouchers concluded that "the evidence to date is not sufficient to warrant recommending that vouchers be adopted on a widespread basis; however, multiple positive findings support continued exploration". A 2006 survey of members of the American Economic Association found that over two-thirds of economists support giving parents educational vouchers that can be used at both government-operated and private schools, and that support is greater if the vouchers are to be used by parents with low incomes or children in poorly performing schools.

History

When France lost the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) many blamed the loss on its inferior military education system. Following this defeat, the French Assembly proposed a religious voucher that they hoped would improve schools by allowing students to seek out the best. This proposal never moved forward due to the reluctance of the French to subsidize religious education. Despite its failure, this proposal closely resembles voucher systems proposed and used today in many countries.

The oldest extant school voucher programs in the United States are the Town Tuitioning programs in Vermont and Maine, beginning in 1869 and 1873 respectively. Because some towns in these states operate neither local high schools nor elementary schools, students in these towns "are eligible for a voucher to attend itherpublic schools in other towns or non-religious private schools. In these cases, the 'sending' towns pay tuition directly to the 'receiving' schools".

A system of educational vouchers was introduced in the Netherlands in 1917. Today, more than 70% of pupils attend privately run but publicly funded schools, mostly split along denominational lines.

Milton Friedman argued for the modern concept of vouchers in the 1950s, stating that competition would improve schools, cost less and yield superior educational outcomes. Friedman's reasoning in favor of vouchers gained additional attention in 1980 with the broadcast of his ten-part television series '' Free to Choose'' and the publication of its companion book of the same name (co-written with his wife Rose Friedman, who was also an economist). Episode 6 of the series and chapter 6 of the book were both entitled "What's Wrong with Our Schools", and asserted that permitting parents and students to use vouchers to choose their schools would expand freedom of choice and produce more well-educated students.

In some Southern states during the 1960s, school vouchers were used as a way to perpetuate segregation. In a few instances, public schools were closed outright and vouchers were issued to parents. The vouchers, known as tuition grants, in many cases, were only good at new, private and segregated schools, known as segregation academies.

Today, all modern voucher programs prohibit racial discrimination.

Definitions

There are important distinctions between different kinds of schools:
* Charter schools are funded publicly
* Education savings accounts (ESAs) allow parents to withdraw their children from public district or charter schools and receive a deposit of public funds into government-authorized savings accounts with restricted, but multiple, uses. Those funds, often distributed to families via debit card, can cover private school tuition and fees, online learning programs, private tutoring, community college costs, higher education expenses and other approved customized learning services and materials.
* Education tax credit, tuition tax credit, or tax-credit scholarship: There are two types of education tax credits: personal use, and donation. Personal use tax credits are tax credits given to individual taxpayers for education expenditures made on behalf of their own children. Donation tax credits are tax credits given to individual taxpayers or businesses who donate to non-profit organizations that give out private school scholarships.
* Open enrollment is the process of allowing parents to choose which public school their child attends instead of being assigned one (provided the school has not reached its maximum capacity number for students). This is sometimes confused with vouchers as a promotion for school choice.
* Private schools are funded privately, such as by tuition or donations.
* Public schools are funded by taxes (except in the United Kingdom, where the term 'public school' refers to older private schools, and the equivalent term for tax-funded schools is 'state school')
* School vouchers are subsidies given directly to parents for tuition at any school

Economics

Background

Education as a tool for human capital accumulation is often crucial to the development and progression of societies and thus governments have large incentives to continually intervene and improve public education. Additionally, education is often the tool with which societies instill a common set of values that underlie the basic norms of the society. Furthermore, there are positive externalities to society from education. These positive externalities can be in the form of reduced crime, more informed citizens and economic development, known as the neighborhood effect.

In terms of economic theory, families face a bundle of consumption choices that determine how much they will spend on education and private consumption. Any number of consumption bundles are available as long as they fit within the budget constraint. This means that any bundle of consumption of education and private consumption must not exceed budgetary constraints. Indifference curves represent the preferences of one good over another. The indifference curve determines how much education an individual will want to consume versus how much private consumption an individual will want to consume.

Government intervention in education typically takes two forms. The first approach can be broad, such as instituting charter schools, magnet schools, or for-profit schools and increasing competition. The second approach can be individually focused such as providing subsidies or loans for individuals to attend college or school vouchers for K-12.

Vouchers are typically instituted for two broad economic reasons. The first reason is consumer choice. A family can choose to where their child goes to school and pick the school that is closest to their preference of education provider.

The second reason why vouchers are proposed is to increase market competition amongst schools. Similar to the free market theorem, vouchers are intended to make schools more competitive while lowering costs for schools and increasing the educational quality for consumers, the families.

In many instances where school voucher programs have been instituted, there have been mixed results, with some programs showing increased benefits of school vouchers and some instances showing detrimental effects.

Effects

Positive effects

A 2021 meta-analysis by Shakeel et al., published in the journal '' School Effectiveness and School Improvement'', evaluated evidence from randomized controlled trials assessing "student-level math and reading test score effects of school vouchers internationally." After evaluating 21 studies addressing 11 different voucher programs, the meta-analysis authors found "moderate evidence of positive achievement impacts of private school vouchers, with substantial effect heterogeneity across programs and outcome years" as well as evidence suggesting that "voucher interventions may be cost-effective even for null achievement impacts." The study authors noted that future experimental studies might yield more facts on whether and how "long-term, scaled-up voucher interventions" affect student achievement.

Negative effects

Besides the general lack of results, critics of school vouchers argue that vouchers will lead to segregation. Empirical studies show that there is some evidence that school vouchers can lead to racial or income segregation. However research on this topic is inconclusive, as there is also valid research that shows under certain circumstances, income and racial segregation can be reduced indirectly by increasing school choice.

Additionally, since school vouchers are funded by the government, the implementation could cause the funds for public schools to be reduced. Private-school vouchers affect government budgets through two channels: additional direct voucher expenditures, and public school cost savings from lower enrollments. Voucher programs would be paid for by the government's education budget, which would be subtracted from the public school's budget. This might affect the public school system by giving them less to spend and use for their student's education.

A 2018 study by Abdulkadiroğlu et al. found that disadvantaged students who won a lottery (the Louisiana Scholarship Program) to get vouchers to attend private schools had worse education outcomes than disadvantaged students who did not win vouchers: "LSP participation lowers math scores by 0.4 standard deviations and also reduces achievement in reading, science, and social studies. These effects may be due in part to selection of low-quality private schools into the program".

Implementations

Colombia

The PACES voucher program was established by the Colombian government in late 1991. It aimed to assist low-income households by distributing school vouchers to students living in neighborhoods situated in the two lowest socioeconomic strata. Between 1991 and 1997, the PACES program awarded 125,000 vouchers to lower-income secondary school students. Those vouchers were worth about US$190 in 1998, and data shows that matriculation fees and other monthly expenses incurred by voucher students attending private schools averaged about US$340 in 1998, so a majority of voucher recipients supplemented the voucher with personal funds.

The students selected to be in the program were selected by lottery. The vouchers were able to be renewed annually, conditional on students achieving satisfactory academic success as indicated by scheduled grade promotion. The program also included incentives to study harder as well as widening schooling options. Empirical evidence showed that the program had some success. Joshua Angrist shows that after three years into the program, lottery winners were 15 percentage points more likely to attend private school and complete 0.1 more years of schooling, and were about 10 percentage points more likely to have finished the 8th grade. The study also reported that there were larger voucher effects for boys than for girls, especially in mathematics performance. It is important to note that the program did not have a significant impact on dropout rates. Angrist reports that lottery winners scored 0.2 standard deviations higher on standardized tests. The voucher program also reported some social effects. Lottery winners worked less on average than non-lottery winners. Angrist reports that this was correlated with a decreased likelihood to marry or cohabit as teenagers.

Chile

In 1981, Chile implemented a universal school voucher system for both elementary and secondary school students. As a result, over 1,000 private schools entered the market, and private enrollment increased by 20–40% by 1998, surpassing 50% in some urban areas. From 1981 to 1988, the private school enrollment rate in urban areas grew 11% more than the private school enrollment rate in rural areas. This change coincided with the transfer of public school administration from the central government to local municipalities. The financial value of a voucher did not depend on the income of the family receiving it, and the program allowed private voucher schools to be selective, while public schools had to accept and enroll every interested student. At the turn of the 21st century, student achievement in Chile was low compared to students in other nations based on international test scores. This disparity led to the Chilean government enacting substantial educational reforms in 2008, including major changes in the school voucher system.

The Chilean government passed the Preferential School Subsidy Law (SEP) in January 2008. This piece of legislation made the educational voucher system much more like the regulated compensatory model championed by Christopher Jencks. Under SEP, the voucher system was altered to take family incomes into account. The vouchers provided to "priority students" – those whose family income was in the lower than 40% of Chileans – were worth 50% more than those given to the families with higher income. Schools with larger numbers of priority students were eligible to receive per-student bonuses, the size of which was tied to the percentage of priority students in the student body. When SEP was started, it covered preschool to fourth grade, and an additional school year of coverage was added each subsequent year. Almost every public school chose to participate in SEP in 2008, as well as almost two-thirds of private subsidized elementary schools.

There were three important requirements attached to the program. The first requirement stipulated that participating schools could not charge fees to priority students, although private schools in the voucher system could do so for non-priority students. The second requirement ensured that schools could not select students based on their academic ability, nor expel them on academic grounds. The third requirement postulated that schools had to self-enroll themselves in an accountability system that ensured that schools were responsible for the utilization of financial resources and student test scores.

Europe

In most European countries, education for all primary and secondary schools is fully subsidized. In some countries (e.g. Belgium or France), parents are free to choose which school their child attends.

France

Parents can choose either a private school or a public school. Most private schools are under contract to the French government in which case the French government pays teachers' salaries and they are considered state employees. Other costs at private schools are paid through fees which are usually low. Schools under contract follow the French national curriculum. Some private schools are not under contract giving them more freedom to teach different curricula although the state still monitors educational standards. Teachers' salaries at private schools not 'under contract' are paid through fees that are therefore much higher than those under contract. About 20% of French schoolchildren attend private schools. Homeschooling is heavily restricted in France.

Ireland

Most schools in the Republic of Ireland are state-aided Catholic parish schools, established under diocesan patronage but with capital costs, teachers' salaries, and a fee per head paid to the school. These are given to the school regardless of whether or not it requires its students to pay fees. (Although fee-paying schools are in the minority, there has been much criticism over the state aid they receive. Opponents claim that the aid gives them an unfair advantage.)

There is a recent trend towards multi-denominational schools established by parents and organised as limited companies without share capital. Parents and students are free to choose their own schools. If a school fails to attract students, it immediately loses its fees and eventually loses its teaching posts, and teachers are moved to other schools that are attracting students. The system is perceived to have achieved very successful outcomes for most Irish children.

The 1995–97 "Rainbow Coalition" government, containing ministers from parties of the center-right and the left, introduced free third-level education to primary degree level. Critics charge that this has not increased the number of students from economically deprived backgrounds attending university. However, studies have shown that the removal of tuition fees at third level has increased the numbers of students overall and of students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Since the economic crisis of 2008, there has been extensive debate regarding the possible reintroduction of third-level fees.

Sweden

In Sweden, a system of school vouchers (called ''skolpeng'') was introduced in 1992 at primary and secondary school level, enabling free choice among publicly run schools and privately run ''friskolor'' ("free schools"). The voucher is paid with public funds from the local municipality (''kommun'') directly to a school based solely on its number of students. Both public schools and free schools are funded the same way. Free schools can be run by not-for-profit groups as well as by for-profit companies, but may not charge top-up fees or select students other than on a first-come, first-served basis. Over 10% of Swedish pupils were enrolled in free schools in 2008 and the number is growing fast, leading the country to be viewed as a pioneer of the model.

Per Unckel