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Imagine you applied the same logic to restaurants. You would end up with
a pre 1989 Eastern-Europe type of establishments where there was
essentially no difference between government restaurants and "private"
restaurants. Except for those that operated under black market rules.
First, let's remember that current voucher discussions in this country
peg vouchers at 20-50% of the public school per-student cost. In places
like Sweden or Belgium they are equal to a full per-student cost. Only
then you can argue that they must be acceptable as payment in full.
Second, if they *must* take students on first come first serve basis, it
defeats any idea of specialized schools. Why not declare the few things
that are not permitted (if any!) and let schools define themselves as
they want? Why force dance schools to accept people without any
selection? Or technology schools? As long as the vouchers are on the
order of public school cost, private schools will fight to get as many
reasonably qualified students as they can.
Third, why should the abide by all school regs? We already have such
schools -- the public ones. The whole idea is to relieve them of such
regulations. Except narrowly defined restrictions, similar to those
applicable to housing rental in the private market, I see no reason to
do more.
But what about the special ed kids or the ELL kids, one might ask. Well,
those should get a higher value vouchers based on the
"problem" -- essentially like today's discussion about "weighted
funding." There will be plenty of interest to provide these services at
a fair price, and still probably cheaper than today's public cost.
Further, public schools should be full participants in the new game of
attracting students. Berkeley, after all, is not less significantly
attractive than Stanford.
Give EVERY parent a voucher worth what we decide as a people we are willing to pay for one year of education at each level. Those vouchers could be accepted ONLY by schools that agree to live by a number of rules including
1) The voucher must be accepted as payment in full.
2) The school must take students on a first come, first served basis and the school must accept a set of strict rules governing expulsion.
3) The school must comply with all federal and state guidelines applicable to public schools (e.g., regarding handicapped students, Title IX, testing, etc.)
In this model, there would be no real distinction between "public" and "voucher-accepting private" schools. All such schools would be in competition, but the intent is to insure that that competition would be carried out on a level playing field.
There are clearly flaws in this model and I would be interested in hearing criticisms and/or suggestions for improvement. (I'm equally sure that there will be criticism based on the whole idea of creating a level playing field, but I'm unlikely to be moved by them!)