Katrina and School Choice

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune editorializes against President Bush's proposal to offer vouchers to evacuee Gulf families to send their children to public or private (including religious) schools:  "the president and his majority party should not take advantage of a natural disaster to rush through such a plan."  There are the usual arguments against vouchers, but a few twists worth noting.  First, the paper acknowledges that

[a]n estimated 60,000 Katrina kids were private school students before the hurricane hit. But that doesn't mean they should now receive taxpayer dollars for educations they had financed themselves or through scholarships before.

Of course.  The fact that your family has been chased from its (now destroyed) home by a hurricane and flood doesn't mean you have any moral claim on public support to help you continue major features of your family's life.  Well ... not if that major feature is the conscientiously motivated decision that your children should have a religious component to their education.

The editorial continues:

Channeling millions to private programs would take much-needed federal help from many already financially strapped public schools. They are the schools equipped and required to accept all students. Private schools, on the other hand, can pick and choose students based on their ability, background or religion. To their credit, many private institutions (such as DeLaSalle in Minneapolis) have generously opened their doors to Katrina victims without the expectation of federal reimbursement.

The first sentence is boilerplate anti-voucher stuff:  but what does it have to do with this supplemental program, added on the basis of each new evacuee student to the aid that public schools around the country already receive?  In the typical fiscal arguments over vouchers, when proponents point out that public schools receiving less government money because of vouchers will also have fewer students to serve, the usual answer is "Yes, but the fixed-cost items, like buildings, for a larger population will still be there and will then be partly uncompensated."  But that argument has no relevance to a program like the Katrina idea, that doesn't reduce the public schools' money but merely doesn't push every evacuee student (with corresponding funds) toward the public schools.  The argument here is a nonsequitur.  Unless the Star Trib and proponents of the public-school funding monopoly want themselves to "take advantage of a natural disaster" to get more money for public schools than the enrollment choices of parents would justify.

The second argument -- that public schools have to take all students and private schools "can pick and choose based on ability, background, and religion" -- is likewise a typical anti-voucher argument.  As is also typical, though, that argument would have more credibility if it confronted the repeated findings that the largest system of private schools around the nation, Catholic schools, has its biggest advantage over public schools with those students who come from the most challenging backgrounds, low-income inner-city minority families (see, e.g., here and here).

Finally, the Star-Trib argues that

the president and his majority party should not take advantage of a natural disaster to rush through such a plan. Though there are limited voucher experiments underway in a handful of U.S. cities, including Washington, both Congress and many public opinion polls reject the idea of a national voucher program. Any attempt to direct nearly a half-billion federal dollars to private and religious schools deserves full debate and discussion.

That's laughable too, because knee-kerk [CORRECTION: knee-jerk] voucher opponents like the Star-Trib do their level best to prevent any of the "limited voucher experiments" in inner cities that contribute to the factual basis for a "full debate and discussion" about the effects of school choice.  In addition to helping some people, a choice program for Katrina evacuees might give us a bit more evidence about such effects.  But opponents don't want a full discussion about vouchers:  they want to stop them by any means available, including litigation under the federal Constitution (until Zelman) and state constitutions (see here) that would decide the issue in court rather than in public debate.

Tom B.