I Run a Private School – and I’m Against School Vouchers

Many people across the political spectrum are concerned about the dire state of government schools today. Not only are too many students arriving at college illiterate, innumerate, and ignorant, but many have had to survive a dangerous and destructive time in government schools.

But I have an entirely different reason to oppose vouchers, and it revolves around the phrase “ensuring a minimum standard for all schools where vouchers could be spent.”

Free society advocates argue that a market solution—thriving competition—is the key to change. In his 1960 Constitution of Liberty, Friedrich Hayek proposed a plan to take the government out of the business of schooling by providing parents with publicly-funded vouchers with which to pay for any school of their choice:

“As has been shown by Professor Milton Friedman (M. Friedman, The role of government in education, 1955), it would now be entirely practicable to defray the costs of general education out of the public purse without maintaining government schools, by giving the parents vouchers covering the cost of education of each child which they could hand over to schools of their choice. It may still be desirable that government directly provide schools in a few isolated communities where the number of children is too small (and the average cost of education therefore too high) for privately run schools. But with respect to the great majority of the population, it would undoubtedly be possible to leave the organization and management of education entirely to private efforts, with the government providing merely the basic finance and ensuring a minimum standard for all schools where the vouchers could be spent.” (F. A. Hayek, 1960, section 24.3)

Many free society advocates have been campaigning for voucher systems the past 25 years, and some locales (Milwaukee, New Orleans) and states (Florida) have instituted them.

The main opposition to school vouchers argues that they threaten to put public education in direct competition with private education, reducing and reallocating public school funding to private schools. Of course, the teachers’ unions and National Education Association are against them.

But I have an entirely different reason to oppose vouchers, and it revolves around the phrase “ensuring a minimum standard for all schools where vouchers could be spent.” Contrary to the opponents who worry that vouchers will undermine the public schools, I’m sure they will undermine—level—the private ones.

That’s because whomever controls the money, controls the curriculum.

I founded and have been running Council Oak Montessori School for children 3 to 15 years old for 25 years. We are a classic Montessori school; we do almost nothing like a traditional school, yet we’ve been cited in Chicago Magazine as one of the best private elementary schools in the city. Our outcomes are remarkable, but not easily standardized. Our students generally do well on standardized tests, but that’s not why we’re good.

What truly sets us apart is that our students are good at finding what they love to do and being good at it—and that’s not always an academic path.

Instead, we produce students who maintain their delight in learning, work hard, and know how to behave well with others while retaining their independence. Many do exceptionally well academically, but that depends on the individual. What truly sets us apart is that our students are good at finding what they love to do and being good at it—and that’s not always an academic path.

Council Oak has graduates who struggled mightily with their academic work – and yet, are now designers at Google, illustrators for the movies, gemologists, and auto mechanics. We also have graduates who didn’t want to do much but math—and are engineers and research scientists mad for learning history and reading literature. They just needed to develop their interest in their own time.

Montessori alumni include Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, videogame pioneer Will Wright, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Julia Child, and rapper Sean “P.Diddy” Combs.

“I think it was part of that [Montessori] training of not following rules and orders, and being self-motivated.”

Queried by Barbara Walters about the source of their creativity, Google co-founder Larry Page said, “I think it was part of that [Montessori] training of not following rules and orders, and being self-motivated, questioning what’s going on in the world, doing things a little bit differently.”
But, Traditionalists just don’t get Montessori. They have objections up the wazoo, despite our 100 years of experience. It’s too different, too child-centered, too individualistic.

I’ve seen what happens to Montessori programs under the thumb of traditionalists—in Chicago public school Montessori magnet schools, and in private Montessori schools run by traditionalists—caving to parent fear and peer pressure—and there’s plenty of that to go around.

So, I can imagine what would happen under a voucher program, and here’s what I fear for the private schools: only the richest private schools would be able to continue without taking vouchers. Inevitably, there would be corruption. This would lead to government oversight, and before you know it—boom! We’re back to the government controlling the curricula, teachers, and program. The differences between private schools will be fundamentally wiped out. What bureaucrat is going to miss out on determining the standards centrally? Once government bureaucrats begin regulating, you’re down the same slippery slope that got us into our current educational mess.

It’s happened elsewhere: Belgium is a good example. In 1917, they instituted a voucher program to enable students to go to private and religious schools. Over the years, the schools have come to be more and more regulated by the state, so that now, there is no longer a significant difference between private and public schools.

But we don’t really need the European example; just look at the dire consequences of Federal student loans at the college level today. The Feds have become an octopus, encircling and strangling our colleges and universities with regulations, mandates, and controls. Between them and the New Left manning the professoriat, the market in college education is hugely diminished. Diversity in ideas remains only in a few places.

The only completely privately-funded college I know of is Hillsdale College, in Michigan. They chose to stay privately funded because of affirmative action: they were started in the 19^th century by abolitionists who did not believe in discriminating based on race. In the ‘70’s, they were required by the Feds to employ affirmative action if they wanted to use Pew grants. But they considered affirmative action a form of racial discrimination. Rather than continue with it, their trustees decided the college should become entirely privately funded.

And now Hillsdale stands as one of the only ideologically unique higher education institutions in the nation. Too bad more places haven’t had the integrity to follow that path.

Returning to our fundamental problem: what about the kids! What about the millions that are getting a terrible education in public schools. Aren’t we concerned with all those individuals? Should we advocate that they languish just because of what might happen 50 years down the road? Maybe we should just bite the bullet and use vouchers and charter schools (don’t get me started on those crony capitalist institutions!)?

I think there’s a much better way to transition to a free market in education: tax credits for education.

Tax credits are via individual tax returns, not controlled and handed out by some government bureaucracy.

A person could get a tax credit for any amount donated towards a student’s tuition and fees, whether the child was related to the donor or not. Private charities like The Donors Trust would arise to administer the scholarships. Of course, there’s still the specter of the government regulating the use of the tax credits, a serious concern. But the fact that tax credits are more arms-length from government regulators is a big plus.

Right now in the States, individuals deduct millions of dollars of donations to educational non-profit organizations on their tax returns without much interfering oversight. It’s true that these organizations are approved by the federal and state governments for donations. Such entities must maintain a high level of transparency, including annual audits in some states. In my experience, once approved and following their missions, the educational organizations are most often left alone to provide their services

If you’d like an idea of what a real free market in education could be, see Common Ground Against Common Core. In the final chapter, “Liberating Education,” I outline the rich market in schools that would ensue if we had no government education program, but a completely private market—and how everyone could be educated in it, no matter their wealth or penchants or problems. The evidence is there.

About the Author: Marsha Familaro Enright

Marsha Familaro Enright, M.A. Psychology, is President of The Reason, Individualism, Freedom Institute. She writes and presents on a broad range of topics, from research neuropsychology to philosophical biology to contemporary culture. She is the lead instructor of The Great Connections summer seminar for high-school and college students.