Milton Friedman on Schools and vouchers
The desperate search by many parents for alternatives to public schools is persuasive evidence of the difference that a voucher system could make. Among other results, that search has led many non-Catholic parents to enroll their children in Catholic parochial schools—the only private schools they could afford because the parochial schools are heavily subsidized by the Catholic Church. It has also led to a rise in the percentage of all students enrolled in private schools, despite rising fees.
Context. From the book’s chapter on education, after the Friedmans have described the voucher plan, under which the government money spent on a child’s schooling would go with the child to a school the parents choose, public or private.
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Milton Friedman, “Tyranny of the Status Quo” (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), Ch. 8 “Education”, p. 156 (with Rose D. Friedman). https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/desperate-search-parents-alternatives-public-schools-voucher-1984
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The key difference, and it is crucial, is that parents—and not government bureaucrats—would decide what schools their children attend. In the process, they would also decide which schools got more funds and which less, and parents who chose private schools would be relieved, at least in part, from having to pay twice for schooling their children—once through taxes, once through school fees. The result would be to give teachers and administrators a strong incentive to meet the wants of their real customers—the students. “The customer is the boss” is the characteristic slogan of a competitive market. Vouchers would make that slogan apply to schooling.
Context. From the book’s chapter on education. Just before, the Friedmans describe versions of a school voucher plan and say that none of them changes where the money for schooling comes from: all citizens, with children or without, would still pay taxes to finance it. “The key difference” is the difference from the present system.
Tyranny of the Status QuoBook, 1984, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Ch. 8 “Education”, p. 156 (with Rose D. Friedman)Checked against the sourceFind the bookThe good news is that, despite these setbacks, public interest in and support for vouchers and tax credits continue to grow. Legislative proposals to channel government funds directly to students rather than to schools are under consideration in something like 20 states. Sooner or later there will be a breakthrough; we shall get a universal voucher plan in one or more states. When we do, a competitive private educational market serving parents who are free to choose the school they believe best for each child will demonstrate how that market can revolutionize schooling.
Context. From an essay written fifty years after his 1955 article “The Role of Government in Education,” in which he first proposed school vouchers. Just before, he describes two statewide voucher initiatives in California, in 1993 and 2000, both of which led in the polls nine months before the vote and were defeated after a well-financed campaign against them.
Free to ChooseColumn, 2005, The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2005; reprinted in Hoover Digest 2005 No. 3 under the title “Free to Choose”Checked against the sourceRead the sourceThere is enormous room for improvement in our educational system. Hardly any activity in the United States is technically more backward. We essentially teach children in the same way that we did 200 years ago: one teacher in front of a bunch of kids in a closed room.
Context. From a February 1995 Washington Post article arguing that American elementary and secondary schooling must be radically reconstructed by privatizing much of it, through a universal voucher that lets parents choose their children’s schools, a plan he first proposed in 1955. He goes on to say that only competition from private enterprise, as in other industries, would bring real innovation in how children are taught.
Public Schools: Make Them PrivateColumn, 1995, The Washington Post, February 19, 1995; reprinted in full in the Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, March 28, 1995, pp. 9551 to 9552 (E703 to E704 in the daily edition), inserted by Representative Philip M. Crane., Congressional Record, March 28, 1995, p. 9552
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