Sweden Chooses Voucher Program for Its Schools

The highly socialized nation of Sweden entrusts Milton Friedman’s idea of the voucher system. And guess what? It works.

Charter Schools popular in Harlem

From The Economist:

THOSE who had won whooped with joy and punched their fists. The disappointed shed tears. Some 5,000 people attended April 17th's Harlem Success Academy Charter School lottery, the largest ever held for charter schools in the history of New York state. About 3,600 applied for 600 available places, and 900 applied for the 11 open slots in the second grade.

The desperation of these parents is hardly surprising. In one Harlem school district, not one public elementary school has more than 55% of its pupils reading at the level expected for their grade. And 75% of 14-year-olds are unable to read at their grade level. So Harlem parents are beginning to leave the public school system in crowds.

Despite what United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten tells us about the “failure” of school vouchers and charter schools on Charlie Rose, desperate parents living in one of the toughest parts of New York City are aching for something better for their children than the usual rhetorical pabulum served up by the Teachers Union. In the interview with Charlie Rose, Ms. Weingarten tells Rose that the voucher program in Milwaukee is a failure and that therefore, she insinuates, the system will not work in New York City (Harlem). What she fails to understand or willfully ignores, is that a similar lottery system exists in Milwaukee as in Harlem. For the first eight years of its existence, Milwaukee's program was capped at about 1,500 students, for the next eight it was capped at 15,000. It is currently capped at 22,500 students. By getting local and state governments to kowtow to their powerful lobby, the teachers union effectively rigged the voucher market for difficulties and failure by putting an artificial cap on student enrollment. After all, if we capped the number of cell phones that Apple could sell, there would not only be a shortage of these items, but any excess demand by consumers would have to find other providers for a similar item. Unlike the cell phone market where there are many providers, the education market is dominated by one large monopoly. Students that don’t win the lottery must submit themselves to the local public schools. Additionally, if a charter school wants to expand enrollment, it can not do so quickly and easily due to its restrictive mandate. This is hardly a free-market and most certainly not a fair test of school vouchers or charter schools. The fact that a lottery is used to reward participation in a charter school is proof enough that Ms. Weingarten is being disingenuous and that charter schools are a lot more popular than the teachers union would ever care to admit.

VH news roll for Thursday

School vouchers in D.C. are going to get a long look on Capital Hill this week. I have a funny feeling that this program will not get the funding it needs to continue.

Support for Republican Party falls; no surprise except that somehow the presidential race remains tight.

Exxon Mobil profit up 17%; How long before we see a politician ranting about “obscene” profits?

A Reversal on School Choice

It seems that long time school choice advocate Sol Stern has expressed doubts on the free-markets ability to enhance public education; His change of opinion on the matter is a serious blow to free-market advocates. In his City Journal piece, Mr. Stern points out that one of the reasons that he has come to his new conclusion is due to the perceived failure of the Milwaukee voucher program; A program in which he was a lauded proponent. As Mr. Stern states of the programs fifteen year run, “no ‘Milwaukee miracle,’ no transformation of the public schools, has taken place.”

What I found most striking about Sterns conclusion about the Milwaukee voucher programs difficulties and struggles was that Stern completely missed the real cause of its problems. Milwaukee's voucher program was hamstrung from the start because it never operated in a true free-market. The voucher program was capped at 1,500 students for the first eight years. Can you imagine any other industry being forced to cap it’s customers for that length of time? It’s no wonder that Catholic schools are closing down all over the country as Stern states in his article. The game was rigged from the get-go. Stern suggests that it is possible, “to create the conditions for vigorous market competition within public school systems, with the same beneficent effects that were supposed to flow from a pure choice program.” But I think that he is simply looking through the wrong end of the telescope because there are still no real incentives for long term and institutional reform. Or that the power of special interests will be curbed as Stern himself admits. Perhaps Mr. Stern and others like him should take a closer look at Sweden, and they should ask themselves why a notoriously welfare-state has done so well with their school choice program.

Welfare Economics.

From The Economist

"It is not every day that an American city takes lessons in bribery from Latin America. But New York City's Opportunity NYC programme, a privately funded scheme that rewards parents and children with cash for doing such things as getting proper health check ups and passing school exams, owes a debt of gratitude south of the border. Britain and other European countries are looking into similar reforms. In doing so, they raise a big question: should people be paid for doing what it is already in their interest?"

Comment: This program is proof positive that money walks and bullshit talks. But it also highlights Milton Friedman’s idea of a voucher system to some extent; Instead of taxpayer funds going to a institution and therefore building on a large bureaucracy to serve individual needs, it is best to grant those that are in need direct funds so that they may be able to choose or in this case give the needy an incentive to do what is ultimately best for them. Obviously, this is not a perfect solution and it has its limitations and it's a different form of voucher incentive that Friedman was fond of but the incentive is good enough to move people to do things that are good for them and ultimately good for society.