WOIFM

Krempasky riffs on the school-voucher

Krempasky riffs on the school-voucher case, Zelman vs. Simmons-Harris:

1. Almost all inner-city schools complain about overcrowding.
2. Ohio (in this case) spends more than $6,400 per student each year.
3. The Cleveland voucher is only $2,250 per student.
4. Schools that accept the voucher agree to accept $2,500 (including the voucher) as payment in full per child
5. The public school frees up a desk, and keeps the balance of public funding.

Preach, brother, preach... I made a similar argument myself a couple of years ago:

It's a simple idea and it works, which is why its opponents find it so dangerous: allow every child to choose their school by making their education funding portable to any school, public or private

Just like Doc Searls said about weblogs:

Journalism as Usual is threatened by the blogging movement because blogging enlarges the circle that defines journalism and redistributes power outside the old center... But y'know, it's just power to the people. And that's always been scary.

I got some comments on the Supreme Court argument on a mailing list I'm on. Unfortunately, they were not attributed to anyone in particular, so I'll just paraphrase. First, the opponents of choice argued that the vouchers go mainly to religious schools. The Court seemed suspicious of this argument, wondering what percentage of schools would have to be non-religious to make the program constitutional, and whether such an analysis would require annuals surveys of the proram to determine whether it was in fact constitutional. The Court also wondered whether the proper context was larger than the single voucher program itself, but rather the city's educational aid programs altogether, the predominance of which had no religious taint whatsoever. By contrast, the appellate court below considered only the voucher program in isolation.

If one can rely on oral arguments - and in truth, one rarely can - the Supreme Court seems likely to overturn the Sixth Circuit ruling, and allow some form of school vouchers for disadvantaged Cleveland children.