It's election year again, which means that many of us will be seeing ballot measures asking us to support school vouchers. Many people see vouchers as the only way to save our children from the failures of public schools, both real and perceived.

The voucher system basically works like this: The dollars your state would have spent to educate your child in a public school become portable. If your state spends $2,500 per year per student, you will receive a $2,500 voucher for each school age child. You may choose to turn in your voucher and keep your child in a public school, or you may use it towards the cost of a private school, which may or may not choose to charge you any amount in addition to the voucher.

Vouchers have been used, and been fairly successful, in limited tests. The question before many of us this November will be whether or not we want to gamble on instituting such a system on a larger scale or statewide. I believe the answer should be "no."

There are many arguments both pro and con on this issue, too many in fact to completely address in one short article. Instead, I will look at just a few of the arguments in favor of vouchers, and show why they are flawed. The four arguments fall under the headings of Competition is Good, The Private Sector Can Deliver, We Need Accountability, and It's My Money.

Competition is Good:
I agree, monopolies tend to stifle innovation and grow lazy with complacency, and public monopolies are no exception. The question here is whether vouchers are the proper way to create competition in the education marketplace.

For there to be legitimate competition between public and private schools we'd have to start with a level playing field, and from the start the voucher game would be tilted in favor of the private schools. First of all, public schools are required to take all children within their boundaries - private schools can pick and choose who they accept. Second, public schools must comply with unbelievable bureaucratic requirements in reporting, from daily attendance to standardized testing, not to mention a little thing called teaching credentials - private schools, again, are exempt from these requirements and their associated costs.

To create a system where one type of school must accept every student and be subject to costly bureaucracy and oversight, while the other type of school can select only the most promising students and be exempt from all regulations is a mockery of competition. It virtually guarantees the continued degeneration of public schools into a repository for only the most troubled and difficult of our children. It is painfully obvious that the private companies that would reap the benefits of vouchers, and are financing voucher campaigns, don't really want competition, they only want the money that vouchers would bring them.

Wouldn't it be better to create competition within the public school system? Couldn't we agree to ease some of the bureaucratic restrictions and regulations that have made a mess of public schools? Wouldn't it make more sense to allow families a choice of schools within their home district, or even to allow students to attend a public school in a neighboring district, if they so chose?

Ideas like open districts, charter schools, and magnet schools work to foster competition, choice, and innovation within the public school system, and without using public dollars to fund private enterprises. How about a ballot initiative to expand these innovations?

The Private Sector Can Deliver:
As Americans, we place an incredible amount of faith in the private sector's ability to deliver any product or service where there is money to be made. Education, again, is no exception. And, with vouchers, there is certainly money to be made.

People who argue for vouchers often point to the best, most prestigious, of private schools, and declare that every child should have the opportunity to attend such an institution. If I would deny the voucher that could make it possible, I must be an elitist, or worse, a racist, right? Well, let's take a look and see if vouchers really would allow all the children in the nation's worst schools to attend the best private schools.

The first possible scenario is that, as promised, the private sector delivers. Somehow, seemingly overnight, enough new private schools are established to handle the great majority students who are currently in public schools. Are these all quality private schools? Probably not. These will not be established institutions. For the most part they will be brand new, with no track record.

With a larger pool of students from which to choose, the established schools will be able to raise their admission standards accordingly. Remember, these schools may choose to charge far more than the value of the voucher. The voucher alone is no guarantee of a quality private school. With all these new schools, where are all these teachers coming from? How qualified or experienced will they be? One of the allures of private schools is lower student-teacher ratios, so simply moving public school teachers to private schools will not solve that problem. Most of these new private school students will be in situations not much different than the public school they just left, and possibly worse. The investors, meanwhile, will make a tidy profit.

Another scenario, on the other extreme, is that the quality somehow reigns over profit, and the private sector does not deliver enough new classrooms to accommodate the rise in demand. This will put tremendous power into the hands of admissions staff at existing private schools to select only the finest students and, given the laws of private market supply and demand, allow tuitions to increase several times over. Again, the investors win, and the students who need the most help get screwed.

I have nothing against investors seeing a fair return on their capital. My retirement plan, meager as it is, is counting on that. What I don't like to see is this happening at the expense of a generation of young Americans. I'm not willing to sell them out to finance my senior years.

We Need Accountability:
Again, I couldn't agree more. Accountability in education is essential. Many parents and other citizens are rightfully fed up with the arrogance, slowness, and dehumanizing aspects of the public bureaucracy. But, will Boards of Directors be any more responsive to communities than Boards of Education?

Boards of Education are accountable to you, and to all citizens. We all have a right to vote them in and to vote them out. One citizen, one vote. We also have the right and the ability to run for those positions ourselves. Boards of Directors are accountable only to the share holder. Unless you have a large block of stock in the company, you have no voice. You also have very little opportunity to make an impact at a Board meeting, let alone sit on the Board.

I'm going to make a radical statement here, and suggest that maybe part of the problem with public schools is too much accountability. Wait one second, then start reading this paragraph again. Too much accountability? Much of the wasteful bureaucracy that public schools go through is in the name of accountability. Reporting of daily attendance, instead of monthly averages. More time spent on standardized tests (on which teachers' depend on their students passing to keep their jobs) than on teaching. These are just a couple of the regulatory weights we put on public schools, but not on private schools.

Check the regulations in your state. Are private school teachers even required to hold the same credentials as public school teachers? Probably not. Are they subject to the same level of background checks and fingerprinting? Probably not. Just who is teaching your child at that brand new voucher funded private school?

How about some public school reforms that create tools for education, not simply more paperwork? And if we're going to use vouchers to fund private schools, how about subjecting them to the same level of accountability that public schools are subject to? If accepting vouchers were to subject them to the same level of bureaucracy, do you really think they'd be interested in taking public money? I don't believe they would be.

It's My Money:
This argument is so ridiculous to me that I hesitate even to look at it. Unfortunately, some people are very serious when they argue that "it's my money, and I'll spend it at whatever school I like."

It should be obvious, but there is no direct relationship between the taxes you pay and the services you receive. Your tax dollars do not go into a special account that only pays for the public goods you consume - only your share of national defense, only the highways that you might drive on, and only the schools that your children might attend. Your taxes go for things that benefit the community as a whole, not you as an individual. It is in all our best interest that roads are well maintained, criminals are incarcerated, poor people are not left to starve in the streets, and that all children receive at least a basic education.

You may have also noticed that the more children you have, the lower your effective tax rate - or don't you take all the deductions available to you? Why should you get a tax deduction and a voucher for each child? Nobody "owes" you or your children anything towards the cost of a private education. You may choose to take advantage of the availability of free public schools, or you may make the personal choice to pay for a private school.

If we're so concerned about how "our tax dollars" are being spent, let's take a moment and look at what will happen to our tax burden if vouchers are widely instituted. Let's take an example of a state that currently has twelve percent of its children in private schools. When those private school children, who are not included in the state's current budget, become eligible for vouchers one of two things will happen.

To maintain current per pupil spending levels the state must come up with the means to increase spending by twelve percent. The other option is to cut the amount spent per pupil by approximately eleven percent to stay within the current overall education budget. Some voucher proposals attempt to phase in current private school students over a period of a few years, but all voucher proposals would eventually come to pay for those children who have always attended private schools. To me, this sounds like welfare for the rich. Is that really how you want YOUR tax dollars spent?

Conclusion - By Whatever Means Necessary:
Some of you may be saying, "Ken, you've made some good points, but I'm desperate. My kids are trapped in a lousy school and I'll do whatever it takes to get them out. I'm voting for vouchers."

To you, I ask, have you really done all you could? Have you volunteered at your child's school? Not all volunteering has to be done during the work day. I've done weekend landscaping and painting projects. Do you attend School Board meetings? Before you vote for your local school board, do you get to know the candidates, or do you simply toss a coin when you enter the voting booth? Have you run for your local School Board? Have you written letters to other elected officials, or to the local newspaper? Have you arranged a donation of supplies, volunteers, or money from your employer or other local businesses? Have you even asked? I'm sure there are other things you can try before resorting to vouchers, but they may require some work and dedication. The best answers are rarely the easy ones.

In this article I've only looked at a few of the more common arguments in favor of vouchers, and why they are flawed. There are more arguments in favor of vouchers, and some of them are quite good. On a balance, however, vouchers are a dangerous experiment that could put our entire system of free compulsory education at risk.

We have wisely chosen in this country to require a basic education for every citizen and resident alien between the ages of six and eighteen, and to provide free access to public schools to attain that education. Every modern nation recognizes the need for a literate and numerate workforce that can make reasoned decisions and provides the means for achieving that.

Broad use of vouchers would leave public schools in even worse condition than we now believe them to be in. Worse yet, we would be turning our backs on those students left within such schools. Students that will one day grow to be our neighbors, co-workers, employees, and fellow voters.

We cannot turn our backs on public education. We cannot take our money and run. We must make the harder choice to return to the public schools and do whatever is necessary to save them. That work starts by voting "no" on vouchers.