Scucca

Do vouchers make inequality of opportunity problems even more acute?

Prasch and Sheth (2000, What Is Wrong with Education Vouchers?, Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 34, pp 509-516) conclude: "education vouchers are not the ‘magic bullet’ that will ‘empower’ parents while efficiently selecting out the lazy, corrupt, and unqualified among the nation's schools and teachers. On the other hand, there is compelling evidence that vouchers will result in less equality of opportunity, less social mobility, and the further exacerbation of social stratification along the lines of race and class."

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obvious Child

Don't vouchers allow students from poor schools to attend better ones? The whole premise seems to contradict that argument.

Scucca

Prasch and Sheth (2000) certainly don't support that hope. They'd focus on how school choice systems magnify segmentation according to class and race. Examples of the evidence they reference are Schneider et al (1997, Networks to Nowhere: Segregation and Stratification in Networks of Information about Schools', American Journal of Political Science, Vol 41, pp 1201-1223) and Manski (1994, Systemic Educational Reform and Social Mobility: The School Choice Controversy' in Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions for Change, edited by Sheldon H. Danziger, Gary D. Sandefur, and Daniel H. Weinberg. Cambridge: Harvard University Press)

obvious Child

care to cite actual paragraphs?

Scucca

From Prasch and Sheth (2000)? Here's an example:

Depending on one's prior knowledge, connections, and social networks, information barriers can be more or less difficult to overcome. It follows that schools can be expected to diverge in quality under a market system, because the better schools will attract those children whose parents have the resources--in time, knowledge, and efficient social networks--to discern and monitor the quality of schools and their underlying educational philosophies; dysfunctional or otherwise troubled schools are more likely to receive or retain children whose parents are either indifferent to education or are unable to play the game effectively. Recent empirical and simulation studies affirm these observations and suggest that school choice programs will lead to a greater segmentation of the population by both class and race [Schneider et al. 1997; Manski 1994]. These results cannot be too surprising since education vouchers will, at best, only be effective in dealing with the tuition aspect of the "school choice" problem.

RightinNYC

I'm willing to bet there's other authors who have different opinions about the efficacy of voucher programs, so I'd hesitate before taking the 8 year old work of two particular authors as authoritative.

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Scucca

Any examples of conflicting research gratefully received!

Doc Howl

No. Whatever gave you that idea?

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Edify_Always_In_All_Ways

The 'better schools' are better because they have the ability to select their student body- if you switched the population of a public and a private school in kindergarten, I'm willing to wager that the public-school students would have better test scores than the others pretty soon.

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aegyptos

They do depending on the amount of the voucher and the availability of better schools. The old GI Bill was a voucher program. Veterans who would not have been able to attend college any other way found themselves taking classes at institutions like UCLA, Harvard, Duke, Univ Of Colorado, Ohio State, Michigan and all the rest of the major schools. The answer to your question is a qualified yes.