Entries from SchoolFunding

[ed.: I suspect this figure is higher, for 'Freudian' reasions. When you can't change what you have, defense mechanisms ought to protect you from seeing just how bad what you have really is.]

Critics of vouchers are concerned that people want to go private basically for pernicious reasons, right — because they are elitist, because they want to separate themselves off from minorities and from the lower classes. Basically they see vouchers as having greatest appeal to the affluent and to people who are advantaged, and they think that if vouchers were adopted, you would get an exodus of these kinds of people from the public system which would exacerbate existing social biases.

Voucher leaders, of course, claim the opposite and claim that parents are basically interested in performance, not in elitism and race and these other sorts of things, and that the people who would be especially interested in vouchers would be the people who have the lowest performing schools and who have no choice now — I mean, like people who are disadvantaged...



what does the evidence have to say?

[ed.: bullets added]

• First, performance is far and away the most important influence on the decision of parents to go private. So the public parents who are interested in possibly seeking out a private school are thinking first and foremost about finding a good school for their kids, and not about race, not about elitism and so on.

• Number two, choice has greatest appeal to parents who are low in income, minority — especially blacks — and from disadvantaged, typically low-performing school districts.

• Number three, all of the basic factors that sort of represent the arguments that voucher leaders make about parent influence, about moral values, about school prayer, and so on — all of those things show up in the way parents actually think about going private, and all of those things have exactly the impact that you would expect.

• ...attitudes toward diversity — toward busing, let's say — have very little to do with the desire of people to go choice — to go private. I'm not sure what to make of this. I think it's a very sensitive social issue. I don't want to arrive at any definitive conclusion on this. It is the one factor that consistently shows no impact throughout my analysis. I think that the critics of choice would be skeptical of this, and all I can say is it may well be that, with better measures, race would show a bigger impact. I mean, historically, race has been an important thing. I mean, in the '60s and '70s, certainly there were whites avoiding blacks, right? And this is one reason that the NAACP and other groups are skeptical about choice.

but...

• [Race] does, however, play a significant role in the thinking of low-income, white parents in the inner city, and these parents are precisely the ones who are most affected by choice programs because that's where most of the choice programs are....And so this is a red flag for voucher leaders. It appears that, at least for some white people, race does play a role, and it plays exactly the role you could expect. Whites who are opposed to diversity are the ones who seek out private schools. So choice people need to beware on that and need to design their choice programs with that in mind

what would a voucher system look like?

if we predict, just for purposes of simulation — let's say, 25 — the top 25 percent actually do go private — it is interesting to see what would happen, what the new private sector would like as they shift from public to private, and what the new public sector would look like after they leave. And how does that affect the social biases that now characterize the system?

[snip]

....this is purely hypothetical, but it's a very interesting thing to do since it simply reflects the underlying demand that's being expressed here — what we find is that the new private sector is substantially moderated compared to the existing private sector. The gap between public and private goes way down, so now, in the new private sector, the parents are only a little more educated than the new public parents. They are only very slightly higher in income, and in the private sector, there are now, percentage-wise, more minorities than in the public sector. The new private sector, in fact, would be 33 percent minority, whereas the new public sector would only be 22 percent minority. And, in fact, of the people who switch from public to private in this top group, 45 percent of those people are either black or Hispanic. So what you're getting is a big movement of low-income, minority, low-educated people from public to private, and that completely changes that character of the private sector, and really undermines whatever elitist character it has today and brings about not an exacerbation of social biases, but a substantial moderation of social biases.

Now, is this inevitable? No, because there's a supply-side here, and what critics would point out — and I think this is totally valid — is that, well, what if private schools discriminate against poor kids and don't let them in?

[snip]

....when people think about going private, and when they think about evaluating the schools, they are thinking about things that they know about, you know, that are close to home, whereas when it comes to public policy, they are thinking about issues, typically, that are complicated, abstract, and often require — and they often require theoretical thinking, they are remote from their lives, they have no experience with them. And so it is difficult for them to know much about these things, or, in many cases, to care that much about them.



rationally ignorant

Furthermore, they often have little incentive to know about these things, and the reason is that public policies are decided democratically through collective decision processes, and no single person can have much impact on what policies are going to result. And so as a result, since getting information is a costly act, individuals don't have incentives to make that investment to get informed. And so, as a result, people tend to be rationally ignorant, and that's still one of the basic findings of political science. People don't know much about public policy, and it's rational for them not to know much about public policy, that's why they do it.

[snip]

....what the findings suggest is two-thirds of the people are uninformed. They say that they haven't really heard much of anything about vouchers or anything about vouchers. And four years later, Public Agenda asked exactly the same question on their survey, and they got exactly the same answer — about two-thirds of the people say they're just uninformed about the issue.

Okay. So this raises a very interesting problem because in a book about vouchers you would think that the most important question is, "What percentage of the people support vouchers?" That's what everybody wants to know, right? Well, what is it — you know, is it 45 percent, is it 50 percent, is it 60 percent? What is it? You know — but the prior question is, if people are basically uninformed, how can they have any opinions at all?

[snip]

....political scientists have been dealing with this for a long time. It's a central issue in the study of public opinion and voting. The early work in the 1960s basically argued that people are out of it, you know, that basically people don't have real attitudes, and they are sort of responding, you know, in random fashion to surveys, and survey results really didn't mean much.

The more recent work is more generous to voters — not by a lot, but still more generous.



how political scientists interpret survey data

....what I try to argue here is don't focus on the numbers, you know? The fact is that my survey shows 60 percent of the people support vouchers; about 32 percent, I believe, oppose vouchers. I don't make a big deal of that. It doesn't mean to me, well, this is a clean sweep, right? Americans are really strongly in favor of that. That's not what it means at all. If I asked them the same question a month later, I would've gotten different results; if I had slightly varied the wording, I would have gotten different results; if I'd had different questions proceeding it, I would've gotten different results. And so if you look at different surveys like the PDK — Phi Delta Kappa surveys, Gallup surveys — there was one carried out by the National Catholic Education Association — you compare those results, they vary all over the map. They vary from, like, 24 percent support for vouchers to 70 percent support for vouchers. And in some sense, they are all right because they are all reflecting considerations that people care about.?

So the key is what are those considerations? What is going on in their brains? What matters to them? That's what I try to figure out here.

Okay. All right, what do I find out? First, there is a structure to the way they think about these things. There are a set of things that matter to them. What are those things? Well, among parents, the most important consideration is do they want to use a voucher. If they want to use a voucher, they are much more likely to support vouchers.

[snip]

beyond that who are the people who tend to support vouchers? The people who are far and away the strongest supporters of vouchers are people who are low in income, minority — especially black — and from disadvantaged school districts.

[snip]

But, the one that really stands out, again, is equity, and it is especially influential for low-income people.



who supports vouchers?

...…the people who support diversity are supportive of vouchers. Now again, I don't know whether this is a crucial fact about the world or not, or how — but it does fit in with everything else. So the syndrome of characteristics is, you have low-income, minority people from low-performing school districts who put a lot of emphasis on equity and who support diversity. That's the constellation of characteristics. These are basically democratic, liberal characteristics, and I think that is a fundamental point to be made. The constituency for vouchers that is the strongest in its support for vouchers is a democratic liberal constituency.

[snip]

...the main thing is the downside component, which is people are afraid of the risk. And the number one influence — social influence when they are evaluating the social consequences of vouchers on their support for vouchers is risk. And this applies for parents and non-parents alike. And this goes back to their basic support for the public schools. This is a result of, I think, profound political significance.

[snip]

it's really interesting to ask, "Well, are people basically thinking about the voucher issue in social terms, like how would it affect society?"….Are they thinking about their self-interest, about the fact that, you know, they want to use a voucher and, you know, who cares what happens to the rest of society? Are they thinking as citizens or are they thinking as consumers?... it's possible to carry out a statistical analysis where you basically force the social factors to compete with the self-interest factors to see what the balance is. And the results, overall, for parents — since parents are the ones who are really faced with this tension — are that parents think about both….the social considerations are a little bit more important than self-interest when the have to compete with one another.

[snip]

it turns out that low-income people — parents — who are in disadvantaged districts are very, very self-interested. They support vouchers because they want them for themselves, for obvious reasons. But if you move down to talk about people who have more money and who are not located in bad districts, their motivations are very largely social. They're thinking mainly in terms of, sort of, public interest kinds of reasons for supporting vouchers.

[snip]

this means that there are really two very different constituencies out there that are differently motivated. And this is important for the way voucher leaders have to, sort of, frame their appeals, because they can, in principle, provide vouchers to low-income constituencies because they want them for themselves, and at the same time justify what they are doing as being good for society, good for the worst schools in society on public interest grounds. And public interest arguments will resonate with the rest of the population because they are not, first and foremost, self-interested. The fact that they don't get the vouchers is not crucial to them.



all the other questions....

[ed.: bullets added]

• [S]hould religious schools be included or not? You can have a system that has no religious schools, just non-religious. That's totally different.

• Or, should we regulate private schools so that they have to follow certain rules with regard to curriculum, teacher qualifications, how they spend their money, testing students?

• Should private schools be allowed to admit any students they want, or should they have to admit everyone?

• Should religious schools be allowed to admit only students of their own religion or should they be required to admit student of all religions?

Basic regulatory issues. Milton Friedman would like a system with no regulations. But what do the American people want?

• And finally, do they think everybody should get a voucher — if we're going to have a voucher system — or do they think just low-income kids, needy kids should get a voucher?

[These are all] very different kinds of systems, and this obviously is crucial in determining what voucher leaders should propose if they are going to try to maximize their appeal.

[ed.: bullets added]

• One, overwhelmingly, Americans think religious schools should be included. Americans are very, very sympathetic toward religion. The opponents of vouchers, who are very strident in asserting the separation of church and state, and very strident in saying that religious schools should be excluded, are totally out of step of the American public on this issue.

"Americans love regulations"

• When it comes to the regulation issue, it's many of the voucher supporters that are out of step. The fact is, Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of regulations. They love regulations. They think that there should be rules for curriculum, for teacher qualifications, for student testing and so on, and they believe, by a big margin, that private schools should not be able to set their own admissions criteria. They should have to admit everybody. And they want to force religious schools to admit students of any religion. You want to play the voucher game, you've got to play by the rules. They want a system that is accountable and equitable, and regulations help guarantee that. Voucher leaders might not like it, but that's what people want. And it's truly overwhelming — we're talking about 85 percent approval on these things. You don't get that on anything.

• Finally, universalism vs. targeting. This is more subtle. Americans are basically universalists at heart, right? Basically, what they would prefer — if we're going to have a voucher system — is a system in which everybody gets one. That seems fair to them. However, they are also very sympathetic to giving vouchers to poor kids in the inner city. They favor that kind of a program, all by itself, by a big margin, and they are really risk-averse about going immediately to the kind of universal system that, in their hearts, they would really like. And so, their preference is to start small, to start incrementally, and to then move, perhaps, toward a broader system.

what does this mean for the politics of vouchers

...we have to go back to the basic fact of life here, which is Americans like the public schools. They are attached to the public schools. They don't want anything bad to happen to the public schools. On the other hand, they think private schools are better. They are very open to the ideas behind the voucher movement — from the idea of vouchers to the basic arguments that are being made. So that's the basic frame in which this is taking place. So the voucher leaders have to try to make progress in a context in which people are basically pretty satisfied and afraid of upsetting an apple cart that they like.

• ...they have to do everything they can to minimize risk to the system, and that means adopting an incremental approach.

• [first, voucher supporters should target] the obvious constituency that needs vouchers the most — low-income kids, kids in failing school districts. This, it so happens, is their strongest constituency anyway — far and away.

• Third, they should emphasize equity. This is an argument that resonates very strongly with that constituency and with everyone else.

• They have to accept regulation. The free marketers are — you know, they're going to have a nervous breakdown over this, or they might not even do it. But if they don't do it, they're not going to win. They need to be willing to hold private schools accountable, and they need to be willing to take concrete steps to ensure equity. Now, this doesn't mean burying them in a 7000-page education code, as we have in California for public schools, but it does mean having a framework of rules that ensures the public that markets will work as they want them to work.

• ...finally, voucher leaders have to refrain from attacking the public schools, and have to promote voucher programs that are intended to improve the public schools and to coexist with the public schools.

'next action'

....they can either go the initiative route, or they can go the more normal political route which is to seek new legislation.

Okay, what happens if they go the initiative route? Well, it seems attractive. You know, you go for the Hail Mary, right? If the thing passes, all of a sudden you have a voucher program. And if you think that people basically support vouchers — and I think basically they are very open to the idea — it seems like you ought to be able to win.

The problem is that this is wrong. I used to think that it was right, actually — and I'm sort of embarrassed by this, because as a political scientist I should have known better, but I didn't — I thought that if voucher leaders designed low-income voucher programs of the kind I just talked about, and put them out here for people to vote on, that they would vote yes. And I think other things being equal that they would. But other things are not equal....There is a literature on this, and it was this literature that I had never read. I am embarrassed to say so, but I had never read it.

Now I've read it. And this is what it says, basically: there are some issues on which people are basically pretty well informed because these issues are familiar to them and pretty simple — issues like the death penalty or immigration or maybe bilingual education or taxes. But they know where they stand coming in. And so the campaign is not going to have a huge influence on them.

But many issues are not like that. The voucher issue is not like that, but many others are not, either. These issues are not familiar to them, and they're pretty complicated in terms of the variety of social consequences they might have. And so these consequences can be subject to dispute. And so, if there is a strong opponent, then all that opponent has to do is to raise a doubt, and that is an easy thing to do with these kinds of issues. And, in these situations, the maximum voters — [the] maxim of voters is when in doubt, vote no. And if you talk to any professional in initiative campaigns, that's what they'll tell you — when in doubt, voters vote no. And so, on the opposition side, you don't have to convince people that you're right. What you have to do is convince people that there is doubt, that there is uncertainty, that there is risk. And given what people feel about the public school system and their fears about upsetting the apple cart, this is a piece of cake.

So in any initiative campaign where you have the unions willing to spend money to barrage people with these kinds of arguments, they win. And it doesn't matter how much the voucher side spends....So I think the basic lesson that comes out of this is not, oh, people don't want vouchers. The basic question is, don't do this, you know, voucher leaders should not do this. It's a loser. They can't ever win these kinds of battles.

What it does tell them, I think, is that the unions are not creating this opposition out of nothing. Again, go back to the considerations. People, in their heads, have certain considerations that are very pro-voucher, but they have some that are anti-voucher, too. And one of the anti-voucher things is, oh my God, what if something went wrong and hurt the public schools? The unions are just playing on that. It's real, and that's what comes out during the campaign.

So the only way that they can succeed is through legislative politics. And they already have succeeded though legislative — this is the normal way in which we make policy in this country.



veto points

Okay, now, this is no cakewalk because we have the separation power system in which policies are made by having legislation passed through subcommittees and committees and floor votes in two houses, then they have to be reconciled by conference committee, they have to be voted on in identical form by both houses, and the executive has to sign them, but he can veto them. If he does sign it, the courts can get in the way and overturn them. All of these steps are veto points. And so, if you want to get something passed like a new voucher program, you have to get it passed through every single veto point. But if you want to block — which is all the unions want to do, all the opponents want to do — you just have to block at one point, anywhere, it doesn't matter. And then you can get it all the way through the House of Representatives, all the way through the Senate, and then Clinton will veto it. At just one veto point, that's all you need.

Okay, so, it's very difficult to win here, and yet, they've managed to win a number of important victories. They've come very close in a number of states, like in Texas and Pennsylvania and others. And I think over the long haul this is likely to pay off for a couple of reasons, and let me point these out.

[snip]

• Okay, number one — the number one reason — the voucher movement is incredibly fragmented and decentralized, and while most people would say, whoa, this is really unfortunate for the voucher movement, you know, they're not really organized. But the upside of that is these people are everywhere, you know? The law of large numbers works to their advantage over the long haul.

• Number two, the key opponents on the liberal side — some of them — are going to defect, I think, in the coming years. We are already seeing this among certain liberal intellectuals. The Washington Post, the New Republic, Robert Reich, Joe Califano, Martin Luther King III, Andrew Young — all of these people have come out for low-income vouchers in recent years. This is really just the beginning. I think that the opponents are beginning to sort of lose the intellectual battle here. It's hardly over, but this is a tide that is beginning. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the constituency for these vouchers is a democratic liberal constituency, and there's no denying that.

The big event, I think, is going to be that someday — and it may happen soon, but probably it won't, probably it will take a little while — maybe 10 years, maybe longer — the civil rights groups are going to change sides. Right now the civil rights groups are out of step with their constituents. Their constituents are the single strongest supporters of vouchers in the country. Blacks want vouchers, big-time. Why? They are stuck in bad schools. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Well, the NAACP is opposed to vouchers, and their opposition goes back to the experiences that its leaders had during their formative times in the '50s and '60s, seeing that choice had been used by whites to avoid blacks and promote segregation. These are very real and legitimate feelings on their part. It's pretty obvious why they opposed choice — but those things were frozen, and today, decades later, they still oppose choice.

Well, younger blacks, in many cases, don't.....Now the NAACP is engaged in an attempt to convince its own constituents that they are wrong in their perception of their own interests. That is not going to work.



libertarian woes

....when it happens, this is big because that is going to shift the entire balance of power. They're going to be in the driver's seat. I mean, it's not like they're going to move over and support choice and then Milton Friedman is going to be designing the voucher program. It doesn't work that way. If they move over to support choice, they hold the balance of power, they are designing the voucher system, they are not going to get voucher systems they don't want. Milton Friedman is not going to get the programs he wants. He's going to — basically what's happening is the libertarians are going to lose control of their own movement to these people in the center — the liberals who are moving over, over time. And so then the problem will be how are these libertarians going to expand the voucher system, given that these people in the middle don't want to, and can renege in the future?

So, at any rate, once the civil rights groups shift — and I think they will — I think the ball game is over. I think a lot of Democrats will then find strong political reason for shifting over as well and getting in line with their own constituents, because now they find it very difficult and embarrassing to look poor people in the eye and say, "Yes, I know you're in bad schools. Yes, I know you want vouchers, but we are opposed to that. Of course, we support you in every other social policy. Every other program that benefits you we are on your side, but in this particular one, we are opposing you." That's got to go. I think that will go. It's an untenable position, I think, over the long haul, and especially once the civil rights groups and their power move over, the Democrats will move.

And now, again, this is not going to happen overnight. It could take 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.

[snip]

I think what we're looking at is a system that integrates vouchers into the system that we have now and that, over the long haul, simply provides more choice and more competition within a basic framework of governmental control that is a mixed system of markets and government that looks very much like our economy looks today.



Q & A

Q: How will public experience with charter schools affect public views about vouchers?

MR. MOE: Well, my own view is that as people become more and more familiar with choice?they have choice in almost every other area of their lives?and as they become more and more used to having choice in education, I think it becomes easier and easier to think that they ought to have the choice to be able to go to private schools, too. And so I think the people who are hoping that by supporting charter schools they can head off vouchers are wrong.

[ed.: I agree, absolutely. His point that people fear risk comes in here. Once people see that public schools aren't being destroyed by choice in the form of charter schools, they're going to think vouchers are the next step. That seems to be the way it always works. 'Baby steps.']

Q: I was wondering about the two-thirds that you said were uninformed about vouchers, and what percentage of those were actually parents or had kids in the school...

MOE: It's a fascinating thing, you know?...Ignorance is pervasive and widespread and seems to have nothing to do, basically, with the incentives to know about vouchers. And I think the reason for that is, again, this rational ignorance argument that everyone is involved in a collective decision process in which everyone knows that their own vote doesn't count for all that much, and they're not going to be pivotal, and that it costs something to become informed....parents are no better informed than non-parents. And the parents who say they want to go private, they are no better informed than other parents are. It's really quite remarkable.

Q: What sense do you have, as far as voters and the public viewing politicians — well, on the one hand, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, or Jesse Jackson, who have adamantly opposed vouchers, yet, you know, send their own children to private schools? Is that just their right and privilege and wisdom, or is there resentment and they are seen as hypocritical?

MR. MOE: I think that's a very difficult position to take, given that your own constituents are poor. I think Al Gore was squirming a lot during the last campaign. You know, in fact, in one setting, he actually told a poor woman in the audience, "Look, if I were in your shoes, I would probably support vouchers, too." Now, how does that sound? (Laughter.)

Q: How do you explain or reconcile what appears to be some kind of contradiction in that public schools are good, but private schools are better in people's mind; and then, if you get a voucher, you regulate the private schools to look like public schools?

MR. MOE: Well, people are not masters of resolving contradictions, right? So it never occurs to them that there is a contradiction. I don't think that, in their own minds, they think that the rules and regulations that, say, require teacher qualifications or curriculum standards or whatever, are imposing any burden on the public schools. They think those things are good, and if they're good for the public schools, they are good for the private schools. Now, I think it's for program designers to try to take those things into account, and I would hope that program designers, in imposing basic regulations on the private schools — which I think will probably be necessary — will keep them basic. I think the problem in the public schools is not that they have some standards that they have to meet, and not that they are held accountable, but that the rules and regulations are onerous and downright ridiculous. I mean, it really is true that in California we have a 7000-page education code. And we have something like 50, 60, 70 categorical programs that impose so many rules and regulations on the schools you can't even count them all. That's what burdens the schools. It's not having a few basic curriculum requirements.

Q: You mentioned that the public supports competition.

MR. MOE: I didn't quiz them in-depth about what they think competition means. And I think if you did, you would be deeply disappointed. And people are not social theorists. I think they have a sense that competition has something to do with the fact that people are allowed to go somewhere else if they don't like what they're getting. And, you know, really, that is sort of what competition comes down to, that schools are not allowed to take kids and money for granted, as they do today. And parents basically think that's a good idea, to get away from that and to have schools have to perform in order to keep kids and resources. They like that idea.

But there are obviously aspects of competition, for example, that have to do with advertising and that sort of thing, or cut-throat competition, you know, like in the economic marketplace, that turn people off. So, again, there are considerations having to do with competition that sort of weigh on both sides of the issue. But I think basically people are positive about competition....

I think public opinion on for-profit schools is dicey, because the idea of profits and education is not something that people are entirely comfortable with.

Q: I was wondering where educators and administrators fall in this public opinion. I've heard a lot of opposition coming from teachers for the voucher systems, and I wondered if you could just briefly speak to that and, you know, maybe it's different between public and private, and how do their opinions affect the public opinion?

MR. MOE: Well, teachers are, of course, against vouchers on the whole — not every teacher, but most teachers. Teachers, I think, as a group, are highly risk averse. They like job security or they wouldn't be in jobs that give them lifetime tenure. And so — and they believe strongly in the public schools and that what they are doing is right and good ,and many Americans believe the same thing about the public schools. So teachers are very much, on the whole, against vouchers. And this is a very important thing for the politics of it — people like teachers, you know. Ordinary Americans like teachers. [ed.: absolutely true of me. I come from a long line of teachers; my sister-in-law is a teacher; both my sisters were teachers; I've been a teacher myself. I like teachers. Period. This is why I don't particularly like talking about low-SAT scores & low math skills & yadda-yadda-yadda. When push comes to shove, I personally don't really care about any of that. Rationally or not, I like teachers as a group & I trust them.] And teachers are, then, important activists in political campaigns. So when teachers go around and tell parents that vouchers are a bad thing, parents tend to listen. Also, the unions and school administrations do systematically use the schools to send out information to parents and to try to convince the political electorate that vouchers are bad. So the role of teachers is really crucial in this and it makes a very difficult for the voucher movement.

Q: paraphrase: How fast can public opinion change?

MR. MOE: I think it moves glacially. And I think people who think that they can put a few ads on TV and change public opinion are wrong. I think what political scientists have found is most people just aren't paying attention. If they are paying attention, it goes in one ear and out the other, you know, and most people just don't have their attitudes changed very easily, right? Now, over long period of time, things can change their attitudes — salient events can change their attitudes. But I think the most important thing for changing public attitudes are things that change in their lives. And so someone back here asked a question about charter schools. The more charter schools there are, the more people get used to having choice as an integral, natural, normal part of the education system will have their attitudes about choice and about vouchers change.

Also, the private voucher movement in this country has now offered some 60,000 kids — all of them low income, most of them in urban areas — vouchers. These kids are out there using vouchers every day. Their parents are ecstatic about being able to do so. There are number of studies about this now — y