So I\u2019m driving my daughters to school, and my eight-year-old notices our next-door neighbor\u2019s lawn sign urging a \u201cno\u201d vote on the upcoming voucher initiative. (It\u2019s a bit silly for our neighbors to put up lawn signs, because we live on a cul-de-sac. But I digress.)<\/p>\n
My daughter then announces she\u2019s opposed to vouchers, too. So I ask her why.<\/p>\n
She says, \u201cBecause the money they spend on a voucher should be spent in a public school instead.\u201d<\/p>\n
I then say that vouchers will actually mean more money for public schools, not less. She looks at me like I\u2019m brain damaged. So I proceed to explain the economics, which, granted, are a little confusing, especially to the elementary school set. And at the end of the exchange, she remains entirely convinced she\u2019s taken the right position, whereas I\u2019m suddenly filled with doubt.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a general approximation of the discussion.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour school gets about $7,000 from the state of Utah because you go there,\u201d I explain.<\/p>\n
\u201c$7,000?\u201d she repeats. \u201cThat\u2019s a lot!\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s actually the lowest per-pupil spending in the nation, but I don\u2019t tell her that.<\/p>\n
I go on. \u201cUnder a voucher law, if you want to go to a private school, then the state would give the private school some of that $7,000 to help pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to go to a private school,\u201d she says. \u201cI like my school.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, I know,\u201d I say, \u201cbut public schools aren\u2019t always the best school for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen we should make the public schools better,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what vouchers will do,\u201d I tell her.<\/p>\n
She crinkles up her nose in disbelief. So I continue to explain myself.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most a voucher will be is $3,000,\u201d I say. \u201cThat leaves $4,000 extra, which will go to the local public school for every kid that goes to a private school. So then a public school will get $4,000 of money they wouldn\u2019t have gotten without vouchers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that school would have gotten $7,000 without vouchers,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I explain patiently, \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t. Because now, if you go to a private school, the public school gets nothing. With vouchers, they get $4,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo people shouldn\u2019t go to private schools,\u201d she says. \u201cThen the school gets the $7,000, and everybody\u2019s happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yeah, swell, I thought. You win.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t press the issue beyond that, but I did pass on what I learned when I spoke to my wife later in the evening. As we talked it over, I came away doubting a lot of my initial assumptions. <\/p>\n
In the end, it all comes down to an issue of fixed vs. marginal costs.<\/p>\n
Economics 101: Fixed costs are those up-front outlays of capital that don\u2019t change based on the amount of business you do. If I run a donut shop, for instance, the rent or mortgage I pay for the actual building in which I sell my donuts is a fixed cost. My mortgage doesn\u2019t go up if I sell more donuts or down if I sell less. However, the amount of money I spend on donut batter is a marginal cost. If I only sell two donuts, I only have to buy two donuts\u2019 worth of donut batter. If I sell a million donuts, I\u2019m going to have to cough up a lot more dough \u2013 i.e. money \u2013 to buy dough \u2013 i.e. dough.<\/p>\n
Are you with me?<\/p>\n
Anyway, in my analysis with my daughter, I was treating each student as an additional marginal cost, not a fixed cost. If that\u2019s the case, then vouchers make perfect sense. When each student is only a marginal cost, a school of 100 students that loses half of its student body to private schools funded by a $3,000 voucher would see its total income decline, yet the per-pupil marginal spending would increase dramatically. In this scenario, instead of $7,000 per pupil, the state would be spending $11,000 on each pupil left in the public system.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a slam dunk, right?<\/p>\n
It is if the scenario is accurate and students are a wholly marginal cost. But are they?<\/p>\n
Not really.<\/p>\n
In a typical classroom of thirty students, if you lose, say, three of them to private schools, it\u2019s not likely that you\u2019re going to reduce marginal costs by much of anything. You won\u2019t have to pay as much for paper, textbooks, and raw school supplies, but those costs are essentially trivial when compared to salaries and such, which are fixed costs that make up the bulk of a public school budget. Teachers don\u2019t usually get more or less money if their class size fluctuates by a handful of students. So losing a few students in the margins won\u2019t drive down costs unless you lose enough to eliminate an entire classroom and you can fire a teacher.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the fixed cost of the public school facility, which is even harder to downsize. If vouchers mean you have fewer students and you don\u2019t need a classroom, you can\u2019t just sell the history building on eBay. True, you can slow the demand for newer school buildings, but in all these considerations, the number of students becomes an unpredictable, aggregate marginal cost, and it\u2019s very likely that the long-term benefit will only come after a series of painful, short-term adjustments.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s a bad thing.<\/p>\n
Consider two facts that voucher opponents are constantly citing:<\/p>\n
Because of these facts, opponents say, we need to reject vouchers, because they will mean less total income into Utah schools.<\/p>\n
That argument is extraordinarily disingenuous.<\/p>\n
If those two facts are really the fundamental reasons driving the opposition, then voucher opponents are being willfully stupid. Because while the impact of vouchers will be unpredictable in many ways, there are two areas in which their effect will be immediately and measurably recognizable.<\/p>\n
Opponents know that, but they hope you haven\u2019t thought it through. They\u2019re betting on voters having no higher level of economic understanding than my eight-year-old.<\/p>\n
If recent polls are any indication, the bet is about to pay off.<\/p>\n
The whole per-pupil spending argument is a red herring, anyway. Despite the low raw dollar amounts, Utah has some of the best test scores and highest graduation rates in the country. You want your kids attending a school with the highest per pupil spending? Then enroll your kids in a Washington DC inner city school, and pray every day that they don\u2019t get shot.<\/p>\n
In the end, I\u2019m probably going to vote for the voucher initiative, even though I think it\u2019s a tepid, lukewarm proposal that won\u2019t make much difference one way or another. But if it weren\u2019t a step in the right direction, its opponents wouldn\u2019t be working so hard into misleading the public to maintain the status quo.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a hard thing to explain to an eight-year-old on the way to school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SoI\u2019m driving my daughters to school, and my eight-year-old notices our next-door neighbor\u2019s lawn sign urging a \u201cno\u201d vote on the upcoming voucher initiative. (It\u2019s a bit silly for our neighbors to put up lawn signs, because we live on a cul-de-sac. But I digress.) My daughter then announces she\u2019s opposed to vouchers, too. So ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}