The Liberty Belle

If indeed, “competition is merely the absence of oppression”*, than lack of competition is oppression. On the surface, the school voucher system seems appealing to those who are for the free market. But when further prodding is done, reality is discovered — “Under the voucher system public education remains public education, and nothing fundamental has changed.”^[1]

With a school voucher, parents only have certain, restricted choices of schools at which to redeem the voucher. A limited choice is not a real choice at all. This would not be the case if education was privatized, in which case parents would have complete freedom in regards to decisions about where to send their children to school.

In his book, Vouchers Within Reason, James Dwyer explains, “The great promise of school vouchers is that they provide a mechanism for accomplishing what some states once tried to do…to rein in the practices of the worst religious schools, whose operators and parent clients vehemently and forcefully resist involuntary imposition of regulations.” This quote perfectly illustrates how school vouchers violate the first amendment, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

The school voucher system ends up making education more regulated, instead of less. “The government regulates what it funds. Vouchers will inevitably open the door to extensive regulation of private religious schools [that accept them].”^[2]

Restricted choice of school is not a real choice. Ultimately, school vouchers give the government more control over education rather than less. The government should give up its oxygen-squelching, death-grip on education, and let the free market, and the interests of consumers, dictate school choice. Relinquishing the $10,000 (on average) that the government spends per student would be a terrific start on the road to freedom from oppression.

* Frederic Bastiat said this

^[1] Dr. Dwight L. Lee, Professor of Economics @ the University of Georgia

^[2] The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United

Privatizing government schooling is the ultimate goal for a free market economy in the area of education. Contrary to popular belief, private education is not more expensive than public education. Rather, it is typically less expensive. Compare the $10,000 (on average) that the government spends per student with the cost per student at a private school.

In the most impoverished slums in Africa and southern Asia, private schools for the poor have emerged in huge numbers. These schools consistently outperform their government counterparts, and their cost is much lower. Makina Primary School in Kibera, Kenya, which has an enrollment of 300 students, costs a mere 200 Kenyan shillings (which is roughly $2.80 in US dollars) per month. The poorest children, which include 50 orphans, receive free education from the school.

When someone observed that a private school building in Ghana consisted of not much more than an iron roof on rickety poles while the government school, within a couple hundred yards, was a brick building, the owner said, “Education is not about buildings…What matters is what is in the teacher’s heart. In our hearts, we love the children, and do our best for them.” Three-thousand children, roughly half from Nairobi slums and attending private schools, and half from government schools on the periphery, were tested using standardized tests in math, English, and Kiswahili.

The private schools served only slum children while the government schools served both the privileged middle classes and the slum children, yet the private schools outperformed the government schools in mathematics and Kiswhaili. In English, the government schools performed higher, which is understandable considering the privileged children would pick up English through television and interacting with their parents. According to James Tooley, coauthor of “Private Education Is Good for the Poor: A Study of Private Schools Serving the poor in Low-Income Countries”, published by the Cato Institute, “When all relevant background variables were statistically controlled, the private schools outperformed the governments schoolchildren in all three subjects”.

Private education is affordable for the poor in other countries much poorer than the United States. Privatizing education would be just as affordable for the poor in the United States as it is in other countries. Charitable foundations and churches would likely set up schools that had a very low cost per student yet gave a very high-quality education.

The government school system that exists in the U.S. today is a monopoly that needs to cease. In 1828, when education was still a private entity, there were 50 colleges in the United States, as well as a number of academies, and though there were only 28 million people, 600 newspapers existed, and the literacy rate was approx. 95%. A wise, though poor, woman, when asked about free education via a government school system, observed, “When a store offers free vegetables, they’re always rotten.”