by Immett Tyrrell, TownHall.com
A report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has found that reading scores among the nation’s hapless middle-school students have shown little improvement over the past two years, remaining at the same dismal level where they have lingered since the early 1990s. Math scores have improved only slightly. This can not be good for the commonweal nor for the self-esteem of our nation’s youth. I am told they even find prime-time television inscrutable. Even the more complicated lyrics of rap music mystify them.
Something has to change in the education of our elementary – and secondary – school pupils.…To their credit public school administrators have been concerned about improving schools for years. They have increased funding until we now spend more per pupil in real dollars corrected for inflation than any other nation on earth…
One alternative to public schools has worked well, though it could work even better, to wit, vouchers. It is now fifty years since the great Milton Friedman devised a voucher plan to improve elementary and secondary education. In his masterful little book, “Capitalism and Freedom,” the future Nobel laureate suggested that rather than having the government subsidize schools, the government should let parents subsidize schools that answer their children’s needs. Government checks would go to parents rather than to schools. The checks would be called vouchers. Almost all voucher schemes since the publication of “Capitalism and Freedom” have been limited to low-income families. They have allowed the parents of inner-city students the choice of sending their children to private schools rather than nearby public schools, which are invariably bad schools. Yet this is only part of Friedman’s vision…
While Friedman has wanted the poor to have a choice, he foresees vouchers as improving education nationwide. He would give all parents vouchers, thus establishing a market in education. In commerce markets provide improved and diversified products at lower costs. In education a market would do the same…
The problem with today’s voucher system is that it is too limited. It does not really establish a market in education. Thus public education remains rigid and unresponsive to students’ needs, namely the needs demonstrated in the report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the need to teach young people to read and do math…
The Friedmans have lived to see most of the world accept the existence and value of markets. Doubtless in time markets will exert their force in education also, and to education’s gain.
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