December 22, 2024

by Stephen Stofka

This is sixth in a series of debates on various issues. The debates are voiced by Abel, a Wilsonian with a faith that government can ameliorate social and economic injustices to improve society’s  welfare, and Cain, who believes that individual autonomy, the free market and the price system promote the greatest good.

Wishing everyone a happy holiday this coming week.

Abel said, “Last week, we spoke about higher education but let’s look at the K-12 system. Your group advocates for school choice and a voucher program. For each school age child, the government gives families a voucher that can be applied to their school of choice.”

Cain replied, “There are a number of voucher programs in various states and studies have found an overall positive effect on student learning.”

Abel argued, “Our group is concerned that the costs outweigh the relatively small benefits. The key feature of those programs is parental freedom, your group says, but those taxpayer dollars are taken from established public schools to fund private schools. If voucher programs are more widely adopted, existing schools will have less money for capital improvements and repairs, forcing some to close. Lower enrollment causes public school districts to consolidate their students and close some. School choice transfers resources from one publicly funded school system to another.”

Cain insisted, “Parents are taxpayers. Many are homeowners whose property taxes are the main source of funding for public schools. Parents should have some control over where their property taxes are being spent. A voucher system allows parents to direct funds to those schools which serve their children best and away from low-performing schools or schools that do not provide a safe environment.”

Abel said, “Our concern is that parents will direct funds to those schools with students from similar backgrounds, effectively segregating the schools. As I mentioned last week, parents might choose schools with a curriculum that does not challenge their child in a particular subject like math.”

Cain shook his head. “Your group has too much faith in ‘experts.’ You readily overlook the many policy mistakes that education experts have made. The ‘new math’ that de-emphasized rote learning of arithmetic is one example. Kids got out of school and couldn’t make change when working in a retail store. In the 1970s, schools tried the ‘open classroom’ concept, a model based on the one-room country schoolhouse. Imagine the noise and distraction when fifty to sixty kids of various grade levels were squeezed into one big room and learning multiple subjects.”  

Abel nodded. “I’ll grant you that there have been policy mistakes. Your group has a faith in the wisdom of crowds. That’s the idea underpinning the free market and democracy. Our group is concerned about what Garret Hardin called the ‘Tragedy of the Commons.” The sum of  individual actions can produce a result that is harmful to the group as a whole. Overgrazing and overfishing are prime examples.”

Cain interrupted, “I’ll grant that the Tragedy of the Commons can be a problem. Our group worries about the ‘Tragedy of Group Think.’ Policymakers of like assumptions, values and policy preferences are attracted to each other like magnets. They implement some policy and overdo it. Their biases and loyalty to their political group make them unable to honestly evaluate the results of their policy. They become increasingly focused on countering any political opposition to their policies.”

Abel shrugged. “Yes, our system of checks and balances can be like a tired defensive line in the fourth quarter. Our group worries that the tragedy of the commons will become more acute as the  population concentrates in urban areas. As our technology and communications become more powerful, there is a greater likelihood that people synchronize their decisions and actions. The sum of those actions creates a negative feedback loop that creates the very circumstances that people fear.”

Cain’s said, “The problem with ‘top-down’ policymaking is that an interest group can influence policy to best meet their self-interest. The teachers’ union is a prime example. They have joined forces with a deep educational bureaucracy to take over the public schools. Administration is no longer responsive to parents’ concerns. When bad teachers get paid to sit and do nothing in so called ‘rubber rooms,’ that is a waste of taxpayer dollars and an insult to hard working parents.”

Abel shrugged, “A few bad teachers make the headlines, and your group uses that as an excuse to condemn all public-school teachers. Does one bad soldier make you condemn all soldiers? No, of course not. Most teachers work hard. They care about the kids. They make personal sacrifices and financial sacrifices.”

Cain objected, “It’s the teachers and administrators spreading their liberal ideology when the schools should be teaching reading and math skills.”

Abel sighed. “Now we are getting to the heart of the debate. How do kids learn to read? By reading. Your group objects to some of the material the kids read in class. Your group wants to hover over teachers’ shoulders, approving or disapproving of each piece of reading material. In 2023, Florida passed a law that allowed anyone in a school district to challenge the appropriateness of a particular book. Schools often remove a challenged book from their shelves while the book is under review. School districts insist the books are not banned – only temporarily removed.”

Cain made a ‘stop’ motion with his hand. “Most of those objections were raised by a single advocacy group. Florida passed a law in 2024 permitting only parents to raise an objection.”

Abel protested, “An advocacy group could enlist the help of a parent and raise an objection. Call it whatever euphemism you want; the policy effectively bans books.”

Cain argued, “Look, the responsibility for rearing children resides primarily with the parents, not the state. Only if the parents are unfit can the state override that fundamental right.”

Abel nodded. “But a school acts on behalf of parents when children are in their custody and care. A school cannot satisfy the preferences and ideologies of every parent who sends their child  to a school.”

Cain answered, “Should an unelected bureaucrat decide what is appropriate material for a library shelf in a K-12 school? Under that system, a small committee of bureaucrats can promote homosexuality or transgender issues, pushing their personal agenda on the community. Our group prefers  that parents make decisions about their children, not some supposed expert.”

Abel replied, “Teachers are promoting tolerance for others who may look or act different than the majority. In a classroom with children from different family structures, cultures and faiths, tolerance is an important character trait. In the Christian tradition, Jesus taught tolerance of those ostracized by their society – the leper and prostitute, for example. The Founding Fathers enshrined tolerance in the First Amendment, protecting speech and religion against government intrusion.”

Cain said, “As public institutions, public schools might have some Constitutional obligations that private schools don’t have. That is why some parents want the option of sending their children to private school.”

Abel interjected, “At taxpayer expense.”

Cain disagreed, “Parents are the taxpayers. Naturally, they don’t want to pay property and sales tax for public schools, then pay again to send their children to a private school.”

Abel argued, “Look, a voucher program is an ‘end-run’ around the Constitutional separation of church and state. The exchange of a voucher between a parent and a school does not obscure the fact that taxpayer money is funding the school. If the school is religious, that is a violation of the First Amendment.”

Cain said, “Is it? The term ‘separation of church and state’ was coined by Thomas Jefferson and is not in the Constitution. The text of the First Amendment is that the government can not inhibit or promote a religion. In a 1971 case, Lemon v Kurtzman, the Supreme Court established the ‘Lemon test’, a three-part test as to whether a particular law violates the Establishment Clause  of the First Amendment. In our opinion, school vouchers pass that test and do not violate the Establishment Clause any more than giving property tax exemptions to religious schools. In a 2002 decision, the court ruled that an Ohio voucher program was legal.”

Abel argued, “That Lemon case was a unanimous 8-0 decision. The 2002 case was decided 5-4. by the same slim conservative majority that handed George Bush the 2000 Presidential election.”

Cain objected, “Supreme Court decisions form legal precedent no matter what the ‘score’ was. The justices on the present court are even more conservative now.”

Abel said, “This year, the South Carolina Supreme Court found that a voucher program violated their state constitution. Obviously, the legality of voucher programs is not settled. To our group, the issue seems more like judicial political preference than judicial precedence.”

Cain replied, “A voucher program may violate the text of a state’s constitution, but it doesn’t violate the federal Establishment Clause.”

Abel raised his hand. “Let’s move on from the legality of it and return to the taxpayer expense aspect. Many private schools are exempt from state and local property taxes so the loss of that tax revenue is a taxpayer expense. Lower attendance in the public school system prompts school districts to consolidate and close some of their schools. Taxpayers have an ongoing expense to maintain or dispose of those buildings. School choice robs Peter to pay Paul, as the saying goes.”

Cain said, “Adopting any new policy of modifying an existing system incurs costs. A public expense may affect some taxpayers differently than others. That is the nature of a public expense and it’s why people often disagree on funding for public improvements. For instance, a district or county allows the building of new subdivisions. Then the county has to build a larger sewage treatment plant to process the extra waste from those residences. When the county proposes a special property tax assessment to pay for the plant, homeowners in older portions of the county object. They feel like most of the cost should fall on those newer homeowners.”

Abel replied, “Your example is about an addition to an existing system. School choice involves replacing, not adding to, existing public schools.”

Cain said, “A distinction without a difference. Often the schools that are closed have served their useful life. In other words, they are fully depreciated and would require a lot of ongoing expense to maintain or upgrade to current building codes. In that sense, private schools save taxpayers the burden of that expense and allow them to sell the property to a buyer who will maximize its usefulness.”

Abel insisted, “Often those closed schools are in low-income areas. A voucher may not fully reimburse a parent who wants to send their child to a more expensive school in a nearby district. School vouchers can further separate families by socio-economic status. Even if vouchers pass the court’s Lemon test, they will not afford all families equal access to the K-12 school system.”

Cain argued, “The vouchers would all be for the same amount within that geographical area. That’s equal access.”

Abel replied, “Equal access is not equal opportunity. The equality of the voucher amounts would not violate the text of the Fourteenth Amendment, but they would violate its spirit of equality.”

Cain turned to leave. “That equality issue is a Pandora’s box of different interpretations. We’ll cover that another time.”

Abel waved. “See you next week.”

/////////////////////

Photo by Julia Morales on Unsplash

New math focused on student comprehension of math concepts rather than rote learning of arithmetic skills like multiplication tables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math. Without fundamental skills in arithmetic, however, students struggled to understand conceptual relationships between quantitative measures.

Here is a recent article on Australia’s current experiment with the open classroom concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_classroom. Montessori schools have a non-traditional design with class sizes of twenty to thirty students. https://amshq.org/Families/Why-Choose-Montessori/Montessori-FAQs

This Wikipedia article on the Tragedy of the Commons notes that Garret Hardin did not invent the concept but his 1968 article in Science brought widespread attention to the problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

This article from the Fordham Institute contains links to several studies of voucher programs in the states. https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/impact-voucher-programs-deep-dive-research In Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000), the Supreme Court held that, under the 14^th Amendment, parents have a fundamental right to “oversee the care, custody and control of a child.” https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/530/57/. Schools have an “in loco parentis” duty to act on behalf of the parents when the child is in the school’s custody, but states cannot supersede the fundamental rights of the parents “until a parent is proven unfit.” See https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-618/162853/20201207145434898_20-616%20Amicus%20Brief%20The%20Justice%20Foundation%20cert%20stage.pdf.