Private Education Would Improve the Lot of the Poor

Proposals that suggest strengthening education by diminishing the role of government always garner objections. In various forms, the question “what do we do about the poor?” outstrips all others. The implicit assumption, only natural after 60 years of the welfare state and 150 years of government control over education, is that government is the only entity capable of looking out for the poor and educating them.

People often assume that government must provide education. Historically, however, this has not been true. There is no evidence that poor children were denied an education in the nonslave states before the government takeover of the schools in the mid-1800s. Since then, educational opportunities for the poor have declined steadily.

While government control of education—with its low standards and rigid bureaucracies—harms everyone, children of low-income families are hurt most severely. Our inner-city government schools resemble prisons with their metal detectors and armed guards on patrol. Described as “poverty mills” by critics, these institutions cannot educate; they can only warehouse children. Despite spending over 300 billion taxpayer dollars on elementary and secondary education every year, our existing system of government schools is not meeting the needs of low-income families.

Providing educational opportunities for low-income families can be met without educational welfare by replacing the government educational dole with a system of private scholarships (or private vouchers) funded by charitable donations.

As part of the movement toward a free market in education, dozens of private scholarship foundations for elementary and secondary school-age children have proliferated since J. Patrick Rooney, chairman of Golden Rule Insurance, inaugurated the first one in 1991. These charity-financed programs encourage family involvement with their children’s education and schools by requiring participating families to choose a school that matches their needs and to pay part of the tuition themselves.

These programs are successfully providing the means for over 10,000 children to attend independent schools today. Is it realistic to expect them to replace our gigantic educational welfare system? How much money would these programs need to help all low-income families?

The answer is, comparatively, very little.

According to the National Scholarship Center (a Washington, D.C.-based private scholarship organization for elementary and secondary school children), most private school tuition fees in big cities (where a third of all American children attend school) range between $800 and $ 1,800 a year. A typical private scholarship program pays half the cost, up to a ceiling of $ 1,000 (some ceilings are higher, and some programs pay more than half).

If we provided every child classified as “poor” a full scholarship of $2,000 and every lower middle-class child a typical scholarship of $ 1,000, educational opportunities for all low-income families in today’s independent schools could be opened for only $24 billion. To put that number in perspective, it is 25 percent less than the state of California alone spends and less than 8 percent of the $316 billion spent on elementary and secondary education today by all levels of government nationwide.

A recent example illustrates the credibility of this scenario. Last August, a local judge shut down much of Milwaukee’s school choice program (based on government vouchers) after thousands of children had already begun classes. A generous outpouring by Milwaukee’s citizens resulted in raising $1.6 million in ten days (and eventually more than $2 million) so that the children could remain in the schools they chose and not be forced to return to government schools.

The critics who claim that American’s won’t donate to charities are dead wrong. Consider that Americans donated more than $ 126.2 billion to charities in 1993. Individuals, corporations, foundations and other organizations donated $12.4 billion directly to colleges and universities in 1994-1995 and private sector sources donated $24.9 billion in private scholarships and fellowships for higher education in 1994.

It’s not a question of whether Americans will support private scholarships for children—they already do. Those who oppose substantive efforts to reform education through privatization measures underestimate the generosity of the American public. Unfortunately, the consequences are borne by the poorest of the country’s youth.