TO MARKET, TO MARKET :

The Market Can Transform Our Schools (MILTON FRIEDMAN, 7/02/02, NY Times)

The state of Ohio provided vouchers worth up to $2,250 to low-income parents in Cleveland who chose to send their children to private schools that charge them tuition of no more than $2,500 per child. The voucher was offered as an alternative to government schooling costing nearly three times as much per student. Yet some 4,000 low-income parents still found the private alternative preferable - enough so to pay 10 percent of private school tuition out of their own pockets. What an indictment of government schools.

Most schools that accept vouchers are religious for a simple reason, and one that is easily corrected. That reason is the low value of the voucher. It is not easy, perhaps not possible, to provide a satisfactory education for $2,500 per student. Most private schools spend more than that. But parochial schools are able to accept that low voucher amount because they are subsidized by their churches.

Raise the voucher amount to $7,000 - the sum that Ohio state and local governments now spend per child in government schools - and make it available to all students, not simply to students from low-income families, and most private schools accepting vouchers would no longer be religious. A host of new nonprofit and for-profit schools would emerge. Voucher-bearing students would then be less dependent on low-tuition parochial schools.

In the words of the Chairman : Let a thousand flowers bloom. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 2, 2002 6:36 PM