Sixty years ago, Milton Friedman suggested eliminating the public-school system as it exists, and giving parents a taxpayer-funded voucher for every child to use toward tuition at any school of his/her choice. His vision hasnt come to pass, but around 1990 school choice for parents and children appeared in various places in the United States.
The school-choice proposals were never envisioned as tuition relief for parents who already send their children to private and religious schools, but as a means to allow children to escape from failing public schools. Opponents of allowing children to escape from failing schools suggest that we improve all the public schools, but they never say how to do it. Various methods have been tried for nearly 40 years, and the public schools still provide the same unsatisfactory results. Our children cant wait another 40 years.
School choice has taken different forms in different places. In Florida, for example, the Opportunity-Scholarship program grades every Florida public school each year, and offers a voucher to every student in any school that receives an F grade two years in a row. When the program was established, the voucher could be used at any public or private school, including religious schools, but the Florida Supreme Court ruled their use in religious schools unconstitutional, and now the vouchers can be used only in public schools and sectarian private schools.
Additionally, it was found that public schools receiving their first F grade made great efforts to improve, in order to avoid a second one. The threat of vouchers improved public education.
Florida also has a program that permits individuals to receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for donations to an independently administered scholarship fund. The fund helps pay tuition for needy children.
In Milwaukee, the extensive voucher program is for poor children only. Families with incomes below certain limits are entitled to a voucher. The Milwaukee program now serves so many voucher children that if the voucher program were eliminated, the public school system would be unable to handle the mass of students who would return.
If you look at the arithmetic of vouchers you can see why they are not a good means of providing tuition relief. In New York City, for example, there are more than 1 million children in the public schools, and one-quarter of a million children in private and religious schools. The taxpayer now pays about $18,000 per year, per child, in the public schools. If a voucher for $10,000 were offered, the taxpayer could save $8,000 for every public-school student who accepted the voucher and left the public-school system. Such vouchers would also have to be offered to every student in private and religious school, or else such children could be enrolled in a public school for a week and get a voucher anyway. A $10,000 voucher for one-quarter of a million students would cost the taxpayer $2.5 billion, so for the taxpayer to break even, more than 300,000 public-school students would have to accept the voucher.
Another way to provide tuition relief is through educational tax credits, where parents would get a dollar-for-dollar reduction of their New York State income tax for educational expenditures. Tax credits are much more politically palatable to the general population than vouchers, and do not involve public-school students.
The School Choice Party was founded in New York State in the year 2000 and ran four candidates for Congress and the New York State legislature. Since then, the party has run candidates in New York State for different offices from Brooklyn to Buffalo. The party supports candidates who promote any form of school choicevouchers, tax credits, charter schools, or private scholarshipsregardless of their views on other political issues. In that way, we can bring together all supporters of educational freedom for parents and children, from the left, the right, and everywhere in between.
If you would like to support the School Choice Party register at schoolchoiceny.org. If you would like to become more active in School Choice or join a committee, email info@schoolchoiceny.org.
