In the ongoing debate over school vouchers, I frequently hear use of the word “experiment.” We should try, voucher advocates argue, voucher “experiments” to see if they work.<\/p>\n
The Washington Post’s E. J. Dionne, whom I generally like, had a column about vouchers<\/a> on Friday that suggested that somehow there was a “middle ground” between supporters and opponents of transferring kids from public schools to private schools on the public’s dime.<\/p>\n By my count, he used the word “experiment” four times. “Democrats reflexively oppose all voucher experiments,” Dionne said, for example. “I have argued with my friends in the teachers’ unions that they should support voucher experiments,” he added.<\/p>\n I suppose Dionne and others feel like a major area of disagreement on the voucher issue is whether or not the policy would effectively improve education and the prospects for young people. Dionne, and many others, recommends “experiments” to help settle the debate.<\/p>\n What I don’t understand is the constant drive for experiments when we’ve already experimented with vouchers and discovered the less-than-impressive results. Milwaukee’s<\/a> and Cleveland’s<\/a> voucher programs, which have been around longer and are therefore easier to analyze than Florida’s, have failed to succeed in any of the ways their proponents argued before they were implemented. They said public schools would improve through competition, but they haven’t. They said test scores would improve, they haven’t. They said there would be minimal fraud and abuse, but controversies have been numerous<\/a>. They said voucher programs would cut education costs, but in fact costs have risen.<\/p>\n Why do we need to keep experimenting? If vouchers don’t work, shouldn’t we move on to different methods of education reform?<\/p>\n Dionne’s column from Friday was something of a pox-on-both-your-houses essay, chiding Dems and Republicans. Dems were blamed for folding to pressure from teachers’ unions, while the Dionne blamed the GOP for refusing to stand behind public schools in need of assistance.<\/p>\n I continue to be confused by the criticism of the Dems. Yes, the party has close ties to school teachers, which I believe is a good thing. But isn’t it possible that the Dems oppose vouchers because it’s a bad public policy, and not simply because of the party’s affiliation with a union?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the ongoing debate over school vouchers, I frequently hear use of the word “experiment.” We should try, voucher advocates argue, voucher “experiments” to see if they work. The Washington Post’s E. J. Dionne, whom I generally like, had a column about vouchers on Friday that suggested that somehow there was a “middle ground” between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nVoucher programs have existed in Milwaukee and Cleveland, for example, for nearly 10 years. Florida passed the nation’s first statewide voucher program in 1998. How many programs are needed to constitute a satisfactory experiment?<\/p>\n