Funding school choice programs: "... vouchers or tax credits ... not only will give children access ti better education, [they] will unleast the power of constructive competition that will lead to dramatically improved outcomes in the future.".

• Author: Salisbury, David F.
• Position: Education

SCHOOL VOUCHERS have garnered increased attention as more states have adopted programs allowing families to have a choice of private or public--rather than just public--schools. The idea of school choice traces its history at least as far back as political essayist Thomas Paine, who, in The Rights of Man (1791), proposed providing financial support to parents who could use those funds to send their children to private schools. However, it was not until Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman discussed the idea in his 1962 classic, Capitalism and Freedom, that the concept began to receive serious consideration in modern America. Interest in school choice accelerated in 1983 following the release of A Nation at Risk, a report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education that identified a rising tide of mediocrity in American education, and forced reformers and policymakers to take a serious look at the situation.

A comprehensive survey of public and private schools published by John Chubb and Terry Moe in 1990 gave strong support to the growing belief that centralization and bureaucracy are the main causes of inefficiency. As evidence that government learning institutions are overcentralized and bureaucratized, they detailed the difference in administrative overhead between public and private schools. For example, it was noted that there were 6,000 administrators in the New York City public school system, yet a mere 25 in the Catholic schools--the latter serving nearly one-fourth as many students. Other scholars also have documented the consistent trend over the last several decades toward larger, centralized school districts. In 1945, there were more than 100,000 school districts in the U.S. By 1993, the number had fallen to 14,881. During this same period, the enrollments in public schools increased from about 25,000,000 to over 46,000,000.

As districts became larger, school bureaucracies increased in proportion to the number of teachers in classrooms. Today, 51.6% of school employees are teachers. In 1950, nearly 70% were. In 2000, 62% of public school spending went for instruction. Administrative costs consumed 15%, or nearly one-fourth, of what schools spent on instruction. It wasn't only free market intellectuals that pointed to monopoly and centralization as the core malady of public schools. In 1989, Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, stated, "Public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and them are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy."

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