Republicans for School Choice favors a system that can be remembered by the letters of the word FREE signifying:
F for Full Payment
R for Random Selection
E for Equal Funding
E for Empowerment
Full Payment
Some school voucher schemes make it illegal for the schools to charge additional tuition fees on top of the value of the voucher. This means that for the parents the financial decision is exactly the same as if they sent their children to public schools. They have no requirement to pay tuition. They never have to pay twice. Dating back to the early 1990s the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the USA’s oldest and largest school voucher scheme, has always forbidden the schools to charge additional fees. Some of the school choice programs expanded in the year 2023, such as Florida’s and Iowa’s, do allow additional fees to be charged. The reason we favor the full payment rule for several reasons. Firstly, it avoids the risk of sparking tuition fee inflation as some schools might say: “Now that the parents can afford to pay more we will charge more.” Secondly, we believe that it should be fully possible to research the outcomes of public schools and voucher schools using head-to-head comparisons but if the voucher school students receive more money then such comparisons are not possible. Most importantly, the full payment rule means that the vouchers will be taken up equally by richer and poorer families. Under the full payment rule many blue-collar families can use the vouchers without facing any kind of financial penalty which will create built-in voter loyalty towards school choice. During the 1980s the term “Reagan Democrats” was used to describe voters who usually supported the Democrats but who voted Republican when Reagan was on the ticket. In a similar way we believe the right kind of voucher program will produce “School Choice Democrats” who will favor candidates who support educational freedom. In a sense this has already happened in Milwaukee as Democratic candidates for the state legislature know they cannot get elected if they talk about abolishing school choice. In this sense the full payment rule helps the voucher schemes to become “politically bullet-proof”. The full payment rule will also help the vouchers to become legally bullet proof under the 14th amendment. If the users of school vouchers skew richer because the parents have to pay extra fees they may also skew whiter which could at some point in the future lead to a ruling that they are racially biased. Currently, full payment voucher systems lean the other way. For example, there is evidence that Washington DC’s voucher program has encouraged families to place their children in schools slightly farther away from home and as a by-product of this the voucher students are in more racially diverse environment than DC’s public school students who tend to be placed in the nearest neighborhood school[1].
Random Selection
Random selection rules have often been required of voucher schools in order to prevent the possibility of racial discrimination in the selection of students for a particular school. Schools are required to have a public meeting for parents. Then there a glass box random drawing of names. In the early years of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program this was a legal requirement to maximize the buy-in of Democrat legislators in the Wisconsin legislature. As with the full payment rule this provision helps to make voucher programs more secure from legal challenges. Since the schools hold a public random name drawing it is difficult for legal opponents of the vouchers to argue that any discrimination is going on. Some school principals in other parts of the USA sometimes choose to hold random selection meetings even when they do not have a legal requirement to do so. “We don’t have to but we want to show the local community that the process is fair.” The random selection rule becomes most controversial for schools that have a tradition of selectivity and they realize that if they offer voucher places they have to accept all comers. In practice, this means a C- student might end up in a school that usually only accept A+ applicants. In practice, this happens less often that one might suppose. Students generally self-select school where they feel socially and academically comfortable. It is certainly not true that all academically elite schools opt out of voucher programs for this reason. Marquette University High School enrolls some of the highest scoring students in Milwaukee but it has decided to welcome 122 voucher students out of a total enrollment of 894 students[2]. Another reason for the random selection rule is that it makes head-to-head comparisons of public school and voucher school students meaningful. In states where political control often changes hands between Republicans and Democrats this sort of evidence is the sort of thing that can help voucher programs to survive political opposition.
Equal Funding
According to the principle of equal funding the value of a school voucher in a given school district should be set to the average cost per pupil of public-school education in that area. As described above since the schools are required to accept all comers on an equal basis (through the random selection rule) and the education is tuition free (through the full payment rule) then they are, in effect, providing public education and deserve to be funded at the same level per pupil.
Empowerment
According to the principle of empowerment school choice should be seen as a parental right not as a privilege the state grants only to the few. In the past, most school choice programs in the USA only granted vouchers to parents in a low-income category. Currently in Missouri the MO Scholars program can only be accessed by students with a learning disability or who have incomes less than twice the income limit to receive free or reduced cost school meals. However, in the year 2023 several states passed laws to allow universal school choice (that is school vouchers without a parental income limit). It makes no sense, for example, to give a school voucher to parents who happen to be unemployed than to their working neighbors. This means the working parents are paying more taxes to fund education but they have fewer rights when it comes to the education of their children. The income limited school voucher systems create an additional poverty trap for families trying to work their way out of poverty. As income increases some families lose Medicaid, Food Stamps (i.e. SNAP) and other benefits. When you factor in increased income and payroll taxes some of these families pay more than 100% for each dollar of extra income. It is wrong that school vouchers should make this cliff effect even worse.
What Form of School Choice Should You Support?
The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program has some good features. It protects families from having to pay extra tuition fees. However, the income limit means that average income and richer families are excluded. The voucher programs in Florida and Iowa are designed to include all families over time but do not follow the full payment rule. No school choice program is perfect. You should support whatever school choice system brings your area more educational freedom, whether or not it conforms to all the principles mentioned above. Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Notes
Department of Public Instruction, Wisconsin. “Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, 2023-24 Head Count and FTE,” 2023. https://dpi.wi.gov/parental-education-options/choice-programs/data.
Greene, Jay P., and Marcus A. Winters. “An Evaluation of the Effect of DC’s Voucher Program on Public School Achievement and Racial Integration after One Year.” Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice 11, no. 1 (September 1, 2007): 83–102.
[1] Greene and Winters, “An Evaluation of the Effect of DC’s Voucher Program on Public School Achievement and Racial Integration after One Year.”
[2] Department of Public Instructions, “2023-24_mpcp_hc_fte_by_school_and_grade_with_all_pupils.Xls.”