Time for a school voucher system?

As Goffstown taxpayers consider their shrinking paychecks and ever-rising property tax bills, it's well past time to consider some other things. 

This is about special interests driving the course of public education, and an apathetic taxpayer who will groan about obscene tax increases but do nothing about it.

It's about teachers and their unions working the system to get everything they possibly can.  Watch out, Goffstown - the teachers' contract is up for re-negotiation very shortly.

It's about administrators feathering their beds and turning a blind eye to excesses.

It's about elected school board members who don't care or don't know enough about expenditures they sign off on.  Their role as representatives of the taxpayers is not included in the school board member handbook.

It's about our elected state officials, from our local representatives to our top-dog governor, all of whom know on which side the bread is buttered and will keep the status quo for political expediency.  Keep the special interests happy and you'll keep your job.

And at the end of the day, it's almost entirely about the taxpayer who stays home and refuses to hold feet to the fire on accountability in public education.

The education syndicate strikes again.  Union, administration, school board ... three strikes and you're out.

So what are we getting for the outrageous spending and bloated budget that has become commonplace in Goffstown?  Let's see:

• We are getting fewer teachers and more administrators;

• We are getting new phone systems for use by administrators only;

• We are getting a school district rated DINI (District In Need of Improvement) in Math (see NH DOE Status of School Districts, 4/7/2010);

• We are getting a HUGE increase in property taxes this coming year;

• We are getting continued claims that increases in school spending is the only way to a quality education.

It's time to stop the charade.  It's time to stop the threats that the only way to keep a good education system is to keep an ever-increasing stream of money flowing into the hands of the school board.

In the absence of a competitive educational marketplace, there is no reason for the school board to even try to control spending.  Why should they?

It's time to consider placing caps on school spending in Goffstown.  It's the only way to control this runaway spending.  

Perhaps it's also time to consider a school voucher system.  This would provide parents with alternatives and introduce competition to our educational 'marketplace'.  

Under a voucher system, there is competition between our public schools and private schools for the school tax dollar.  Such competition raises the performance of all schools.

A school voucher, also sometimes called an education voucher, is a certificate issued by the local government which parents can apply toward tuition at a private school, rather than at the public school to which their child is assigned.

Under non-voucher education systems like ours in Goffstown, citizens who currently pay for private schooling are still taxed for public schools. Vouchers are intended to allow citizens to offset this extra cost, without a direct tax credit or deduction.  This voucher system promotes free market competition among schools of all types, which accordingly provides schools incentive to improve.

Under a voucher system, competition would increase the quality of education for both private and public education sectors as it has for higher education with publicly funded state universities directly competing against private universities.  This is further supported by studies such as the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research "When Schools Compete: The Effects of Vouchers on Florida Public School Achievement" (2003) which concluded that schools facing a greater degree of threat from voucher competition made significantly better improvements than similar schools facing a lesser degree of threat from vouchers.  Also, Stanford's C.M. Hoxby, who has researched the systemic effects of school choice, determined that areas with greater residential school choice have consistently higher test scores at a lower per-pupil cost than areas with very few school districts (see Hoxby, 1998). 

Hoxby also found that the effects of vouchers in Milwaukee and of charter schools in Arizona and Michigan on nearby public schools forced to compete made greater test score gains than schools not faced with such competition (see Hoxby, 2001), and that the so-called effect of cream skimming does not exist.  Also, similar competition has helped in manufacturing, energy, transportation, and parcel postal (UPS, FedEx vs. USPS) sectors of government that have been socialized and later opened up to free market competition.

The observation is that, frequently, institutions are forced to operate at higher efficiencies when they are allowed to compete, and that any resulting job losses in the public sector would be offset by the increased demand for jobs in the private sector.

As a school "district in need of improvement", Goffstown might do well to consider a voucher system, not only to improve the quality of education our kids are receiving, but in helping to reign in our school board's perpetual spending spree. 

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Guy Caron can be reached via e-mail at: GuyC@GoffstownResidentsAssociation.com

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