There was an interesting, multi–party discussion over the weekend on private school tuition vouchers and the issue of accountability. The dialog helps highlight the inherent contradiction of the religious schools’ arguments about accepting public funds but not public responsibility.
There are a variety of ways of coming at this issue, but Kevin Drum, with whom I disagree about the benefits of “experimentation,” summarized one of the central problems.
If there’s a secular religion among education reform advocates, it’s accountability and testing. But apparently that religion goes out the window as soon as genuine religion is involved.
I can be talked into experimenting with vouchers and charter schools. But if the real goal is just to expand funding for parochial schools and allow them to operate with no oversight, count me out. High stakes testing has long been presented as a panacea for public schools, and if that’s the case, then it ought to be one for voucher schools as well. They should be willing to put their test scores where their mouths are.
Quite right, but funding private religious academies without any oversight, regulation, or accountability is exactly the problem for which voucher advocates offer no solutions.
When public funds go to public schools — as they should — there is an inherent system of accountability. These schools are government institutions and are treated as such. Their books are audited, they answer to a publicly-elected school board, their teachers have to be licensed and meet certain qualifications, their curricula is shaped and approved by state education officials. Students take standardized tests and results are published and shared with the public. There are multiple levels of accountability.
Before vouchers, private schools operated independently of this oversight altogether. Anyone could open up a private school, charge whatever they wish, and teach whatever they wish. They could even discriminate openly among student applicants and school employees. There are no mandated standards, their budgets are private, their students don’t have to take standardized tests, and their curricula is completely unregulated. If parents like the school, they pay the tuition. If not, they go elsewhere. The state had no role whatsoever.
Except for the financial one that’s come about. Under vouchers, taxpayers subsidize these schools — but demand nothing in the way of accountability in return. The private religious schools will accept public funds with one hand, but cut any attached strings with the other. “We’ll take your money,” the schools tell us, “but not your regulations.”
Indeed, when education advocates recommend some level of oversight, they’re immediately shouted down by voucher proponents. In Wisconsin, when policy makers were given the chance to study the success of voucher school performance, they rejected it. In DC, some Dem lawmakers recommended that publicly-financed private schools meet the same standards as publicly-financed public schools. Republicans swiftly dismissed the idea out of hand.
Voucher proponents want the money, but not the strings. They want “competition,” but not an even playing field. They want our checks, but not our questions about how the money is spent.
About eight years ago, for example, the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin sent letters to 112 private religious schools that accepted voucher funds in Milwaukee, asking if the schools would agree to guarantee basic civil rights public school students enjoy. The response from the schools ranged from silence to hostility.
“We do not believe that you have standing or any basis to seek the information requested,” replied Dr. John Norris, superintendent of schools of the Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee. For Norris and others like him, taxpayers are merely helping to pay the bills. This entitles taxpayers to … absolutely nothing.
The contradiction comes by way of competing arguments that should cancel each other out. When it comes time to feed at the public trough, the private schools insist they’re just educational institutions serving a vital societal role. They’re not religious academies, they’re merely centers for learning — so there’s no reason not to give them millions of dollars that would otherwise be spent on struggling public schools.
Simultaneously, these same institutions reject the idea of accountability because they’re religious ministries that must remain free of government interference. They’re schools when applying for funds; they’re churches when regulators want to take a peek inside. Every voucher program that exists in the United States codifies this relationship into law — and conservative lawmakers refuse to even consider changing it.
This problem is not without consequence. Funding institutions without any sense of accountability produces disaster. In Milwaukee’s voucher system, for example:
One school that received millions of dollars through the nation’s oldest and largest voucher program was founded by a convicted rapist. Another school reportedly entertained kids with Monopoly while cashing $330,000 in tuition checks for hundreds of no-show students.
The recent scandals have shocked politicians, angered parents and left even some voucher supporters demanding reforms. […] The schools are required to report virtually nothing about their methods to the state, or to track their students’ performance.
Elected officials and state agencies are given a choice under a voucher system: monitor and regulate the private recipients of public money to ensure responsible fiscal management and quality education, or write a sizeable check and hope for the best. Conservatives and voucher proponents insist on the latter. If they’ve come up with a justification for such obvious nonsense, I haven’t heard it.