"Because peers influence individual student results, the increase in segregation could drag down average results and increase the inequality in education outcomes."

If peer influence is determinative, then the current schooling system is highly biased against poor children. In Victoria, public schools service particular areas. So, in all likelihood, children from the poorer areas will go the same school. And, at the other end of the spectrum, children in affluent areas are already grouped together in their schools. The segregation the author is concerned about is already present in our current schooling system. Parents in the cathcment area of Glen Waverley High have little interest in private schools as they already have a successful public school. However, parents in the poorer suburbs have their children sent to the local public school, which is inevitably characterised by ill-disciplined and poorly motivcated students. Rather than allow the parents the choice of opting out of the local school, the author suggests giving the teachers more money.

The author spends a great deal of time discrediting the study of the Milwaukee school voucher program but neglects to mention the Harvard study of the New York School Choice Scholarship Program which found statistically significant improvements in test performance after only one year. Further, there was no consideration of Florida's program of attaching funding to test results and giving students in failing schools vouchers for private ones. No mention either of Sweden and Denmark which both have well-developed and highly successful voucher programs. The success and popularity of school choice in Scandinavia, the world's most celebrated social democracies, makes for an interesting contrast with the author's branding of school choice advocates as "right-wing". It seems that while all opponents of school choice are lefties, not all lefties are opponents of school choice.

On my reading the evidence is against vouchers as a method of improving eductaion or of aiding the disadvantaged.
However I obviously have only read the wrong research.
That is the rub.
Once upon a time research was controlled by guide lines of objectivity. This is still so in say Physics where even the followers of energy creation, passionate as they may be, are returned their boxes by facts.
Not quite so in social science though real efforts are made by researchers being completely objective often precludes looking at unmeasurable nuances.

The voucher sytem relates to shooliong not upbringing or early child care.

For example whilst poverty is a syndrome showing how vouchers might overcome the disadvantage of inadequate stimulation and later the often poorly equipped home (aspirations and books etc) for a child, is to some extent (unmeasurable? confounded) by the early training of the brain and the connections which are favoured.

It has been found that working on the feelings of people be it desire for conformity or patriotism or merely doing the best for the child is a very useful adjunct to selling.

Long ago the flatulence of desire was scaled by researchers as a tool that worked in selling, distorting the critical ability. A feature much used by politicians, the clergy and entrepreneurs in general.

Brilliant article, Andrew.
Everything I have read about vouchers leads me to believe that they only offer more choice to those who already have choice.
If we really want to give all parents choice - not just a privileged few - then we have to take choice away from schools. Otherwise we will still end up with the private and selective schools choosing whose vouchers they will accept, and whose vouchers they will not, and the public schools being left with the kids the private and selective schools don't want.
Once upon a time, we had an excellent, efficient, inexpensive schooling system that was not particularly segregated along class, ability or socio economic lines. It was a free, secular, compulsory, public school system that 90% of kids attended. Then we started fiddling with it and, despite excellent work by many public schools, it is now a shadow of its former self.
What's that Joni Mitchell song say; "You only know what you lost when its gone." Indeed.

enaj,
If I understand your post, you suggest we abolish all private schools. If this is the case, I challenge you to name a single industry that has improved as a result of removing competition and enforcing a monopoly. If a child is in a public school that is failing, why shouldn't his parents be able to move him to a better school? At the moment, this option is only availible to those who can afford to pay significant fees; under a voucher system, each and every parent would have a choice as to where their child went to school.

As to your claim that everything you have read leads you to believe school choice is bad, please give the following a look:
http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=pb&id=215

As I pointed out in my earlier post, Scandinavian Social Democracies - long the idols of the Australian left - have wholeheartedly embraced school choice. Their experience has been that school choice does not undermine equality and egalitarianism but reinforces it.

I am becoming increasingly old fashioned about things like school funding. Whatever happened to public funds being used to provide public goods and services? Why is any non-government school receiving public funds?

If things continue the way they seem to be heading, our public schools will become schools of last resort, the worst kind of safety net. And I don't think that's in anyone's best interests.

I don't care who owns the schools, so much, they can be publicly or privately owned, preferably a mixture of both, but they should all have to abide by the same obligations if they accept public funding.
If they don't accept public money, then, obviously, they only need have obligations to their customers.

I find it incredible that in the discussion about school vouchers there are no comments about how school systems are different.

In the U.S. funding for schools comes from local councils, so you have to go to the school in your council area, which means there is no competition, and private schools, which have very few students, get negligible funding from any government.

In australia 1/3 of students go to private schools which get significant funding from the government and public schools are run by state governments.

In Australia you can switch between any school in the state, so there is competition and if you want to send your child to a private school the government will pay part of the fee, which is exactly the system the proponents of vouchers in the U.S. want to achieve.

using american arguments for vouchers in an Australian context makes very little sense, and seems to show little real engagement with this issues on the part of those that uncritically parrot them.

MonashLibertarian asked someone to identify a sector of the economy that had not been improved by competition. A few industries spring to mind

1. electricity generation and supply

2. gas supply

3. integrated public transport around Melbourne

4. the author on the government report into higher education said while he was visiting Monash in 2002 that he thought that the Australian university system was suffering from the inefficiencies of too much competition because universities competed against each other for scarce research and teaching funds.

Point 4 has lead to some unfortunate distortions of public perception. For example. interested parties spruik the ICT skills shortage to gain federal government research funding, to attract more students. The reality unfortunately is quite different and only 20% of ICT graduates can get jobs in ICT as the federal government continues to offshore the ICT industry.

I have no problem with private education systems, but they should be PRIVATE, their students shouldn't get more government money per capita than students in the state system.

MonashL, you are displaying the same types of selective research that is levelled at your "team" in the article.

The Swedish experience is exceptionally different to that in the USA. There is very tight government regulation and control, and every school receiving that funding HAS to accept any student who enrols (as long as there's room) no matter what. Starting to sound a lot more "lefty" to me. I have covered this issue in great depth here:

http://petaldavid.blogspot.com/2005/11/thanks-joel-joel-sent-us-terrific-post.html

So I won't bother to repeat myself.

Andrew, it's a wonderful article and I commend you on it. It's a sad fact that everything you have said has been said before - many times.

Incidentally, there is also a link on my site to a great article outlining why PPPs don't work.

I am a parent with 4 children whose needs have been seriously neglected in the Public school system. I don’t need any research, I know for a fact that had there have been a voucher system then I could have put my kids in a school better capable of meeting their identified educational needs.

Whatever money was allocated by the Government towards my children was wasted as the education they were presented with was not appropriate for their needs and nobody seemed to be required to care. The cost all fell on my husband and I emotionally and financially as we were the ones that had to pay all the psychologists bills and medical bills from the sickness and illnesses that school experiences have triggered.

There is no choice in Education at the moment. If you have a number of children you have to be mega-rich to go to Private schools and, whilst you can choose to apply to as many Public schools as you like, the only school that is obligated to take you is your local school. All other schools can refuse to take you, if they so desire, based on the area that you live in (out of area) or your child's level of accuracy and achievement ( marks in a selective school test).

Of course your level of accuracy and achievement is highly influenced by the area that you live and your social standing. The poor can't compete the way things are anyway.

Bring on the vouchers, research also says that the more involved the parents are the better the outcome for the student, let the parents choose, in consultation with their child, what is best for their child and then you will see progress.

Jolanda,
It is a great shame about your kids experience, but I could quote equally dreadful experiences from parents of kids in private schools (and they paid big bucks for the privilege) - a family has just settled out of court with an expensive private school in Victoria because of the lack of education their child received. There are good and bad schools across the systems, that is not the point.
The point is vouchers would not give you greater choice if you could not afford to top up the cost to the level a private school demanded, all it would do is remove the very last fo the children whose parents could afford it from the school your kids attended.
Its simple really, if schools receive money from tax payers, they should not be able to then choose which of those taxpayers kids they will or won't aaccept as students. let them be private, catholic, christian, muslim or zoroastrian, if they take public money they need to accept public obligations, vouchers or not.

Ena I appreciate that even Private schools can fail children but the point is that with vouchers we could have even chosen a different Public School, even if we couldn't afford private.

We couldn't even 'choose' a better public school because the Department of Education ruined my families reputation by discrediting us and vilifying us and no 'out of area' or other public school would take my children in, not even with requests for special consideration even on compassionate grounds and not even despite the fact that they were children with identified special eduational needs and were suffering serious psychological distress as a result of the neglect of their education and their treatment by the Department of Education.

Actually, I'm not sure that vouchers would have that effect, even on public schools, not unless we did a lot more than merely hand the money out to parents rather than schools. If a school is full, its full, and if a school - though it is usually private schools that do this - does not want to take your child, a voucher won't make them do so.
That's why we need to look at so much more than vouchers and methods of funding if we want to really increase all parents - not just the fortunate ones - choice.

petal,
Fundamentally a voucher school system means that the government funding follows the child whether the child attends a government or independent school. This is precisely what happens in Sweden and Denmark. The fact that the Swedish model precludes parental co-payments and obliges schools to accept all applicants does not make it any less of a voucher system. Your charge of dishonesty is bogus and is nothing more than a straw-man fallacy. As a side-note, the requirement that schools accept all applicants has been criticised on the basis that it prevents a school from developing a specific educational ethos. Whilst it is sensible to guarantee that a school place will always be availible to a child at the cost of the voucher, parents should be allowed to put more funding into their child's education if they so choose.

As for your suggestion that Sweden's independent schools are heavily regulated, approxiametly 40% of Sweden's independent schools are Montessori or Waldorf. The Swedish model gives schools enough flexibility in their cirriculum to allow for diversity and competition of ideas.

I found an entry on your blog particularly illuminating:
"Kids really don't respond well to being shifted from one location to another on a parents' whim (which is what it often is). And please don't quote your own experience to show me that it's not the case, Joel. The overwhelming majority of kids need stability. And WHY would parents exercise choice, anyway? What about a particular school causes them to choose that school over another? VCE / HSC results? We all know how accurate THEY can be ... School uniform? Facilities? Are these accurately showing what a school can offer to a child, or are they just showpieces?"
Clearly you are skeptical about the capacity of parents to make an informed decision on behalf of their own children but are quite happy to make prescriptions about what is best for vast majority of children. When a choice has to be made about a child's welfare and education, I would leave that choice with the parents rather than government bureaucrats and the teachers' union.

snow,
As you quite righly point out, in Australia, some government funding follows a child into independent education. However, not all funding follows the child. Australia is not the system that advocates of a US voucher system want because some of the public funding is lost when the child enters a private school.

If the amount of government funding afforded to a child is reduced when they enter a private school, the child is effectively being penalised for exercising a choice. Advocates of school choice, in the US and elsewhere, beleive that there should be no such penalty. Whilst the Australia education system fosters more choice that the US education system, it is a farcry from a pure voucher system.

ena how can a public school be too full to take in a student? Public schools have more land and space than any other schools. How can a school not be in a position to pull up a chair for an out of area child in need. They have to accept as many children that move into their catchment area so they can be that FULL.

What they do is that they control who they want to ostrasize and who they dont. Sure the Private school doesn't have to take in a child but that is a private school, the public school system should be obligated to take in a public school student if they cant attend thier local school and they have no school to go to.

I say bring on the vouchers. The system segregates and that is grossly unfair.

Why should they, Jolanda?
They are no longer supported by any government, in terms of reasonable funding for the heavy lifting they do ( taking on the vast majority of the hardest to educate kids) and many so-called private schools now get as much as 90% of their funding from the public purse, more,in percentage terms, than many public schools, with absolutely no similar public obligations. So why would they, and why should they?
Public schools are now punished for taking on difficult kids - because it lowers their results and means they rate badly on "league" tables ( and are then told they are failing), and that is then used as an excuse to remove all the kids they've been successful with at year 10, so they can make the local private school look like a winner.
The people who staff public schools are just human, if there are no rewards in taking the most difficult kids, if indeed all they get is despised and criticised, you can't exactly blame them for resisting. And of course public schools can be full, they have far more limited grounds, classrooms, chairs, desks, computers, text books than publicly subsidised private schools. What on earth do you expect them to do, suspend kids from the ceiling and, what, pass the few textbooks they can afford around?
Get real Jolanda, you can't s**t on public schools from a great height and then expect them to still be around to clean up after you. We either value them, and they work, or we don't and they don't. Public schools are just like anything else, either use them, or lose them.

Ena. The Education system has a duty of care to provide appropriate education to all children as children are required by law to attend school.

That’s fine if a Public School doesn't want to take my kids, but then give me the money that is due to my kids for their education so that we can pay for a better fit. We will see if the Private schools does not take them on when we have money to pay them. We have already had to put two in a non-government schools and that has forced us to have to work more than one job.

I can come down heavy on the Public System if I like as they have totally failed my kids and I know of many others, my kids are not alone.

The public system cannot be fixed because they refuse to acknowledge that there are problems and/or deal with issues before them.

I have a problem with valuing things if they are unfair and they dont work. My kids have always wanted to stay in the public system but the system has done everything in their power to push them out and away. A school doesn’t need money to teach a kid, they just need to want to do it and I don’t buy many of the excuses.

The Liberal Government is looking after their own when they fund the Private Schools. Can’t see the Labor Government doing anything much to fight for their own. The Labor Government just produces their own bureaucratic positions to play pass the papers and wait for their fat retirement.

My kids would not have dropped the schools marks, on the contrary and they do not have behavioural issues, they are very highly intellectually gifted, very sensitive and well behaved and they have suffered so much bias, bullying and neglect in the system caused by adults in the system. I think it is a joke when a school cannot provide appropriate education for an obviously gifted kid. It’s like the bank not knowing what to do with its money.

Yes, Jolanda, the education system does have a duty of care due to compulsory education, but we only ask one half of the publicly funded schools to take on that duty of care. There are not infinite resources - particularly when we give milions to already highly resourced, expensive schools that don't need it - and that is why a system has to organise distribution of kids somehow. Even the Catholic system will send kids to schools that have room for them, rather than crowd them into schools already stuffed to capacity - that's how "systems" work. And if you have compulsory education for every kid then you have to have a "system" of some kind, unfortunately.
Again, I am sorry their school failed your children, and I am a supporter of choice. I simply don't believe vouchers will give anymore choice to families like yours who cannot afford to top it up to meet private school fees.
I would like to see more choice within the public school system, as is the way in most other countries in the world.
And money cannot be ignored when it comes to teaching and learning. Sure, exceptional teachers may be able to overcome its absence to some extent, but teachers are like anyone else, exceptional teachers - like exceptional doctors, lawyers and engineers - are rare. And now, with so much more money going to private schools (and vouchers would be an absolute windfall of cash for them), they will (and are) able to offer such teachers higher pay and so take them from the kids who need them most.
The best way to improve public schools is not to punish them or wash your hands of them, but to help them gain the resources, the morale and the respect they need so they can do their job better. Constant abuse and criticism - much of it (though not all) unfair and ill informed will only bruise them further and reduce their capacity to properly perform their duty of care. Reform them, don't destroy them, in other words.

Ena. I agree that Public schools are being neglected and hard done by at all levels of Government. I also agree that teachers often cannot provide the services that they are expected to provide in the conditions that they are expected to function in.

Pretending everything is rosy when it isn’t doesn’t make things better. If teachers want positive feedback then they need to support and protect their students.

Teachers have a duty of care to their students and if a teacher stands by and watches students get systemically neglected, bullied, treated unfairly and psychologically harmed and they say and do nothing, then in my books they are as guilty as the abuser.

I understand that the system is set up so that those that speak out pay the price but if teachers supported each other and their students and spoke out to support an individual students right to an appropriate education presented in a safe environment, and shone the light on those that are failing in their duty of care as a result, then things might change.

My family has been trying to reform the system for 6 years and for our efforts we have been victimized, vilified, and treated unfairly. Those in higher positions in the education system have a problem with those that complain and they have a lot of influence and power. It isn’t as easy as you think!

Had there been a voucher system, instead of 2 of my children being in a non-government school it would be 4.

Even when I wrote to the President of the P&C association in relation to what was being done to my children they responded with – “Although we appreciate your concerns, it is beyond the scope of the P&C.” How can the welfare, education and well-being of students be beyond the scope of the P&C?

It seems that it’s not just the public schools that are failing students, it’s also the public school parent bodies.

I sincerely doubt Private school parents would have sat back and allowed what is being done to my children to continue unchecked

Jolanda,

Which secondary school did/are your children attending.?? If you look at any educational district in Melbourne you will find a number of govt. secondary schools that have enrolment ceilings. These schools have enrolment ceilings because they have more applications for Year 7 admission than they have places. These govt schools are FULL. The only kids they have to admit are kids that are in their local zone. These schools probably comprise at most 20% of all govt secondary schools in Melb. Vouchers would not help get your kids into these schools. In my experience many parents are paying for private education because they can not get a place in enrolment limited govt schools. Why do these few schools have more applicants than places- because they offer reasonable /good academic performance, good programs, etc. Most of these ceiling limited schools will not be in the outer or more economically disadvantaged suburbs-people with the means in these suburbs will almost always pay for private(usually cheaper Catholic schools) than send their kids to the local govt high school. This is the harsh reality. The govt system in Melb is basically a two tier one. Vouchers will not change this,

"The fact that the Swedish model precludes parental co-payments and obliges schools to accept all applicants does not make it any less of a voucher system."

I never said it wasn't. What I did say is that the Swedish system is definitely different to the intentions of voucher-advocates here and in the USA. Would you find Des Moore or Kevin Donnelly furiously advocating that the Swedish model be replicated here? If you're going to use Sweden as an example, then make sure you include ALL the facts - THAT is what I was saying.

"As a side-note, the requirement that schools accept all applicants has been criticised on the basis that it prevents a school from developing a specific educational ethos."

By whom? Kevin Donnelly again? Please provide quotes and links. And how many public schools have been able to develop a "specific educational ethos" yet are required to accept all applicants? I can think of a few here in Melbourne just to start with. How on earth does obligation to accept all students preclude a school from getting on with developing educational ethos and philosophy? What an arrogant claim.

"Whilst it is sensible to guarantee that a school place will always be availible to a child at the cost of the voucher, parents should be allowed to put more funding into their child's education if they so choose."

Well, Sweden has firmly stated that it's not on. I'm sure it's for a reason.

"As for your suggestion that Sweden's independent schools are heavily regulated, approximately 40% of Sweden's independent schools are Montessori or Waldorf. The Swedish model gives schools enough flexibility in their curriculum to allow for diversity and competition of ideas."

Are Waldorf schools not subject to regulatory rigour? Why would so many Australian public schools adopt a Steiner stream (or Reggio, for that matter) if it couldn't be regulated? Seems that I'm not the one creating the straw man, here.

Furthermore:

"I found an entry on your blog particularly illuminating:
"Kids really don't respond well to being shifted from one location to another on a parents' whim (which is what it often is). And please don't quote your own experience to show me that it's not the case, Joel. The overwhelming majority of kids need stability. And WHY would parents exercise choice, anyway? What about a particular school causes them to choose that school over another? VCE / HSC results? We all know how accurate THEY can be ... School uniform? Facilities? Are these accurately showing what a school can offer to a child, or are they just showpieces?"
Clearly you are skeptical about the capacity of parents to make an informed decision on behalf of their own children but are quite happy to make prescriptions about what is best for vast majority of children. When a choice has to be made about a child's welfare and education, I would leave that choice with the parents rather than government bureaucrats and the teachers' union."

Would you ALWAYS leave that choice with the parents, MonashL? ALWAYS? It doesn't take much for someone to become a parent (don't make me start with the birds and the bees, for goodness' sake) and just because it happens to you, doesn't mean you're suited to it. As a teacher I've met plenty of kids who were quite happy to let the state take over, for their own safety. Parental neglect can also occur in well-to-do families, for that matter - I've seen it for myself. Please don't give in to the neo-con rhetoric - parents (and yes, I am one) largely get it right, but often they don't. Making it just that little bit more difficult can mean the difference between a disrupted life or a more consistent one for a child.

I just want to say something about kids being shifted around from one place to another. For my children it was the only thing that helped them to cope and pass the time. My children have all changed schools around 5 times each. AT THEIR REQUEST. If they were in an environment where they were not learning, where they didn't feel validated or respected and where they were totally wasting their time they didn't want to be there and they didn't want to go. They made my life miserable refusing to attend school. Changing schools always gave them hope that maybe things will be better.

They enjoyed their friends but 6 hours a day 5 days a week of total boredom in the classroom and total lack of respect from the system was more than they could bear. Eating resess and lunch with their friends didn't make it better and you are not allowed to sit next to who you want to in class!. They made friends at every school that they went and they still keep in contact via the internet with many of their friends.

What kids need is to be in a school where they feel validated, respected and where there individual needs are being met. If they are being neglected and ignored, then to go to school just to spend time with your friends was not a good enough reason for my children to want to stay. Lots of nice children in lots of different schools with which to play

This is not about Sweden and it is not about schools letting students in or not. This is about greater choice: parents like Jolanda, in collaboration with their childrens wishes, would be able to choose the school that their children attended, be it public or private, and still be funded by the government regardless. This is about the Government giving every single student the same benefits in their schooling.
This would mean that parents who could not previously afford the 15,000 fees of the private school their child wished to attend (and which they would also like their child to attend/would be happy to see their child attend) may be able to afford such education for their child, as the voucher may make up enough of that sum, that the differnce becomes affordable.

Not only would this make the education system much fairer for all students, it may also help with poverty levels.
Unfortunatly the cycle of poverty and bad education levels are linked, as often young people who come from violent/disrupted backgrounds do not get a good education (maybe from parents who do not support them/cannot support them, etc.) and therefore cannot find work. this catapults them into poverty, where they can't get a job because they lack skills that would have been learnt through a better/higher education, and therefore cannot earn money to allow them to return to schooling/university, to get skills that would enable them to get a job. and so on and so forth.

Ena has been saying that vouchers would not mean that public schools outside Jolanda's area would take her children or make special considerations because of vouchers. but that is not the point. What Jolanda is saying is that it might allow her to send her children to private schools which do not have district living requirements because the differnce that would need to be paid between the voucher value and the fees would be much more affordable than what private school fees currently are.