Mary Landrieu’s ‘Peak Education’ Economic Illiteracy
We could do another post on the idiocy of the state’s teacher unions in their opposition to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s education reform package, and we could do something on Jindal’s counterbarrage calling for Michael Walker-Jones, executive director of the Louisiana Association of Educators, to resign after the latter suggested poor people aren’t capable of picking schools for their kids.
But when we found this, it just jumped out as blog material.
U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu sought to pour some cold water on one of the central proposals in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s education reform agenda Monday, using state data to show a huge gap between the number of students who would technically qualify for the governor’s proposed private school voucher program and the number of seats that may actually exist in the state’s private schools.Under Jindal’s plan, about 380,000 students would qualify to receive state aid for tuition at a private or religious school, Landrieu pointed out.
But even if every private school in the state could immediately grow their enrollment by 10 percent to accommodate an influx of voucher recipients, there would only be about 8,000 seats available. She based her estimate on figures from the state Department of Education that show about 80,000 private school students in Louisiana overall.
Vouchers, Landrieu said, “cannot be the centerpiece of our reforms based on the reality of these numbers.”
Landrieu, it should be pointed out, isn’t actually all that bad on education. She’s more or less a fan of charter schools, for example, and she’s been supportive of Jindal’s call for urgency in school reform.
But the voucher criticism as expressed today is just painfully stupid.
Does Landrieu really believe that when the state issues school vouchers covering the cost, essentially, of public school – which is somewhere between $10,500 and $13,000 per student per year, depending on your source – that there won’t be an increase in the supply of spots in private schools? Particularly when those vouchers are available to some 380,000 students?
The point is to create a market for education. The point is to incentivize entrepreneurs in the educational field to get into that market and try all kinds of things which might well work better than the crappy public schools those 380,000 kids are stuck in. And the point is that the parents of those kids in those crappy schools, rather than politicians, would get to make the decision where those kids and the tuition dollars which follow them go – once the politicians have proven themselves to be failures in operating public schools.
Because that’s where the voucher program kicks in. It applies to kids in schools which score C, D or F, and that’s a bit more than half of the state’s 700,000 K-12 kids. If your school stinks, Jindal wants to give you a chance to try a private school.
In all likelihood that doesn’t mean Newman, St. Martin’s, Country Day or Episcopal. It means Catholic school, since Catholic schools are a lot cheaper per student than public schools are.
But when there’s no more room at the current private-school inn, guess what happens?
Somebody comes along and builds more private schools. That’s called the marketplace.
Let’s say they build an interstate exit out in the sticks. Invariably, somebody will build a gas station there. And inevitably, that gas station will get pretty busy pretty quickly. Maybe even so busy that folks will sometimes be stuck lining up for gas there.
Guess what happens in no time…
Another gas station.
This plays out the same way with fast food restaurants, with bars, with theme parks (feel free to count how many they’ve got in Orlando now since Disney built the first one there) and lots of other kinds of business establishments.
Does anybody really think the marketplace will operate differently somehow where schools are involved?
Of course not. The minute Jindal’s voucher program goes statewide America’s entrepreneurial class will descend on Louisiana armed with every possible business model in an effort to land those 380,000 kids and their parents as clients. Because doing it better, cheaper means the potential for profit and success in any business.
The majority of the charter schools currently in Louisiana are non-profits, and charters go through the government – whether local school boards, or, increasingly in the current political landscape, the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. And that responsible government agency can pull a charter if they don’t think the methods or results are worthy of taxpayer dollars.
Which is a perfectly fine idea and in New Orleans it works like a charm. After Hurricane Katrina the school system was largely dissolved and better than 70 percent of the public school kids in the city now attend charters. Now, after six years of building a charter school-based market there, two-thirds of the folks agree that the schools are better than they were before the storm.
But vouchers go even further than that.
Because with vouchers, there are no politicians around to pull the plug and there is no board to grant a charter, or not. With vouchers the final arbiter is the consumer. Nobody wants to go to a bad school.
The voucher program in New Orleans, limited though it might be, is even more popular than the charter schools are. This came out on Thursday…
The Louisiana Federation for Children today praised newly-released results of a recent parental satisfaction survey showing overwhelmingly high satisfaction rates from parents with children participating in the New Orleans voucher program.
The survey, conducted by direct mail in December 2011 by the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), reported an overwhelming satisfaction rate – 93.4 percent – among parents with children in the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence program, which allows qualifying families to send their children to participating private schools of their choice. The percentage includes those parents who reported being “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their child’s school.
Why are they satisfied? Because they directly picked their school. It’s not rocket science; it’s the market at work.
There is no better way to insure quality of service than competition among suppliers of that service. The voucher program makes a growth industry out of education in Louisiana thanks to the creation of a sizable market from what is essentially thin air.
It’s pretty simple for most of us. Open up a significant demand, and you’ll see a significant increase in supply. Basic economics.
But Mary Landrieu has practically zero private-sector experience. She got elected to the state legislature in 1980, when she was 25, and she’s been an elected official since. So it’s no surprise that Mary Landrieu can’t envision education becoming a service industry like insurance or medicine or IT or staffing or food service; she has zero frame of reference to see something like that.
And because she has zero frame of reference, she offers up something akin to the Peak Oil prophecies of the 1960′s and 1970′s applied to education. We’ll never have enough private school spots to cover the kids who want them, so a voucher plan won’t work. We’ll never have them because there’s a finite amount of classroom space in Louisiana. We just can’t kill dinosaurs fast enough to train private-school teachers or build schoolhouses, you see. Or something like that.
This is stupidity. It’s breathtakingly vapid to come out of the mouth of a U.S. Senator. But it’s what we have, and it’s emblematic of why our schools are what they are.
She says stupid crap. That, and her chubbiness, is why they used to call her Porky at Ursuline.
and, don’t forget she is the Louisiana Purchase senator who sold us out to Obama, anything for the good of the people she is against, just like her boss
Besides the strengths of the choice argument noted here, a good idea is not invalidated by the fact it can’t be implemented immediately at its full potential. So what if you may not have hundreds of thousands of slots next year? 10,000 would better than none, and then 100,000 the next year is better still. The quality of the idea does not depend on the magnitude of its implementation.
Oh, I think Jindal isn’t actually expecting to get this for “C”-rated schools, and maybe not even for the “D”-rated. It seems likely, though, that we’ll get a compromise where kids who attend failing schools can get the voucher—and that will be a big step forward.
What is interesting is the question of what would happen if ALL students were given equal access to vouchers, including students already in private schools. If public schools are supposed to treat all students equally then I think vouchers should be given to ALL students. Think about the long-term results of doing that. With a voucher system in place for all students, the private schools could basically become like the public schools and poor people would go to the less expensive private schools and rich people would go to the more expensive private schools if the rich could pay with both vouchers and private funds. In the long term I see nothing really being fixed with vouchers. Besides, taxpayers cannot afford to support a multi-tier public school system anyway.
your argument makes superficial economic sense – the supply of seats available at private schools will increase to accommodate the demand resulting from the expanded voucher program, likely by way of new private schools opening. but there’s the pipeline issue as noted below, which is a far more lengthy processes than i think you realize. it typically takes about 2 years to start a private school, less if you know what you’re doing. you need to develop articles of incorporation, have them approved by the SOS, apply for tax exempt status with the irs (that is, IF you’re going to be running a religious school… many won’t file for nonprofit status because they’ll exist specifically to make a profit), find a facility, staff, principal, develop a curriculum, business plan, etc. the list goes on. not as easy to open as a starbux, or gas station.
but that leads to another question, which is far more important than the issue of capacity. if, as you posit, schools will open exclusively for the purpose of taking advantage of the vouchers, then there is a clear incentive to open a shiny new private school to do just that. and by ‘that’, i mean to open a school for the purpose of making money. while i don’t think that’s jindal’s goal – i genuinely believe his goal in this is a roundabout way to funnel public money to the catholic church and yes, provide parents the right to send their child to the school of their choice which is a good thing – it is a very likely outcome. and if a school’s purpose is to make money, it’s unlikely to deliver outcomes any better than the failed public schools the students came from.
now of course you’ll argue, “but parents have the option to send their kids there. if the school sucks, they’ll send their kids somewhere else. that’s how the free market works. the profiteering schools that fail students will loose them and be forced to close.” simple!
but of course, it’s not that simple. jindal fought tooth and nail to keep any accountability measures out of the voucher bill. the only benchmark is that the students receiving vouchers still have to take the leap test. they don’t have pass it to progress to the next grade, and no matter how poorly the kids do on it, it doesn’t threaten the school’s ability to receive vouchers.
so even now, a student in new orleans can ostensibly pay for tuition to a private school with vouchers that has worse test scores than the very failing schools their parents are trying to save them from… see: http://educatenow.net/2011/07/06/voucher-program-in-trouble/
as an aside, i get the impression landrieu just doesn’t support vouchers and is using a BS angle to attack the program from to avoid taking a strong, clear stance on the issue. that’s very mary….
So long as you “genuinely believe” Jindal is trying to funnel money to the Catholics, who can argue with that?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOnRHAyXqYY
Anybody here see the fact that even school reformer Leslie Jacobs’ analysis of voucher accepting school performance shows that all but two failed (the last two years) to get student achievement scores equal to the worst performing RSD-NO direct run schools?
Anybody ask how parents who pay private school tuition will react if vouchered students from F performing schools invade in numbers? Will they drag teachers away from the higher-performers in class? How many will have their noses rubbed into the fact that they are “welfare kids”—school yard bullies can be relentless even in good private schools.
Anybody think about seat availability? In most Parishes there are no private schools available. Can I sell you some stock in a company that’s going to build a new school and hope to lure some voucher business to its site?
That sounds like some of the same crap people said about cable TV in 1980 when all they had was USA, ESPN, CNN, MTV and that channel all the Cubs games came on. Why get cable when there’s only a couple more channels than the rabbit ears could pick up?
Now they’ve got a cable channel with animals nonstop and you can get it in HD. And another one where they do nothing but talk about golf all day. I think that one’s in HD, too.
So far, the voucher system has operated as a test program. Corporations are unwilling to participate in a program which can be cancelled at a moments notice, if the teachers union sees it as an unmanagebale threat. Once the voucher program is establicshed as perminent, the big boys will get onboard and then there will be a different scene. If the students do not show that they are there to learn, they will be booted out. The test scores will soar, when those tested are determined to learn. The losers will be sent back to the publoc schools, where their antics will be allowed. I believe that the parents will do what is necessary to keep their children in good schools, even allow them to be punished for misbehavior.
So where are you going to get teachers. Well, talk to any teacher who is or was assigned to the really bad schools. And there are plenty. They are only teaching , for the most part, to make a patcheck. They hate the public school syste m and would leave it in a heartbeat if there was anywhere else that they could go. If you put an ad in any newspaper telling teachers that you were building a new school where only students whose parents wanted theem to learn and that these same students could be expelled for misbehavior, you would have to hire a service to handle all of your mail. Ask any conyractor how long it would tank to build a building to accomadate classrooms for 1000 students, if the money was there. Building time is proportion to the amount of amenities required. Open rooms consisting of four walls , a floor, aroof, is duck soup. So is electrical and plumbing. If you couldn’t get a school built, without all of the state know nothing inspectors in the way, I would fire them, The state moves in portable classrooms as a temporary measure, which lasts for years. You could syart with temps. until a perminent structure was finished. If the school had competent teachers, who had to be good or they were fired, there would be many parents willing to accept substandard buildings if their children were going to be teaght in a safe, learning environment. The teachers would gladly put up with any inconvenience if they knew that they would not be assaulted in their clessroom. Ealk to the public school teachers, ask their opinion. They mostly put their children in private schools and some would home school their children if they could not get them in private or religious schools.This of course would further lower the standards in the public schools,but they would have to improve in order to survive.
The Public School System has long been broke and the vast
majority of that blame rests with teacher unions and corrupt politicians that
took the political donations from those teacher unions (97% going to the
Democrat Party at a rate many times more than any other group).
Competition between ALL schools will illuminate the best
schools and expose the worst, as it will the teachers that work in ALL schools.
Vouchers/Parental choice will facilitate that competition. Likewise, removing
the idiocy of time-based tenure and implementing meaningful performance
evaluation AND incentives will serve to not only inspire teachers to do a
better job, but will also provide parents with the needed information to better
select a good school for their children.
However, the “fly” in the Governor’s ointment
would seem to be his obvious willingness to abandon the middle-class when it
comes to the voucher program.
Why should ANY taxpaying family be denied THEIR money when
it comes to providing their child with a better education? If control of Minimum
Foundation Program (MFP) funding can be given to one parent, it SHOULD be given
to ALL parents.
If only the rich kids and those in poverty are going to be
given the opportunity to escape our failing public schools, what is to happen
with those middle-class children whose parents are being FORCED to fund this
failing system? Why are middle-class children going to be forced to attend
failing schools?
Vouchers are the very best way to allow parents to do what
is best for their children, but denying the largest segment of parents in this
state that RIGHT, will prove to be an outrage, not a rescue.
As a long time charter school advocate, I would also warn
Governor Jindal that a better balance needs to be reached on the accountability
of charter schools. Please, do not lose sight of the painful lesson provided by
Abramson and provide badly needed legislation and policy to provide non-existent
accountability of Type II Boards. The Board of Directors of Type II charter
schools have no measure of accountability to parents and/or taxpayers. This
“hands off” policy by the Governor’s administration is simply
ridiculous at best.
Making matters worse, the Department of Education AND the
Louisiana Board of Ethics have failed miserably to address issues brought
before them concerning Type II charter schools, while charter advocates on the
Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) have not performed any
better.
I would also point out to those that don’t understand the
meaning of “private schools”. These schools have the option to deny
enrollment (which actually helps competition). Private schools can set minimum
scholastic levels and set higher standards for discipline. This will play very
well in getting parents involved in their children’s education (for a needed
change), not to mention sending a serious wake-up call to the public schools
who will also by vying for that voucher money.
If the voucher system was allowed, would that in itself not create a demand for more private schools to meet the demands? Where is the fear coming from? Assuming that there are only 8,000 available seats in private schools, why not allow them to be filled with vouchers.
Her position seems to be “all or nothing”. Are private schools such a threat to the current system that such a barrier must exist or is it that political concessions have been made to the LEA, etc.? Bring on any change that will make the system better, then if it doesn’t work, WE WILL ALL KNOW…. NOT JUST THE POLITICIANS.