Milton Friedman on Schools and vouchers
The 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.
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Milton Friedman, “Free to Choose” (The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2005; reprinted in Hoover Digest 2005 No. 3 under the title “Free to Choose”, 2005). https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/universal-voucher-competitive-market-revolutionize-schooling-2005
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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 bookA Nation at Risk stimulated much soul-searching and a whole series of major attempts to reform the government educational system. These reforms, however extensive or bold, have, it is widely agreed, had a negligible effect on the quality of the public school system. Although spending per pupil has more than doubled since 1970 after allowing for inflation, U.S. students continue to rank low in international comparisons; dropout rates are high; scores on SATs and the like have fallen and remain flat. Simple literacy, let alone functional literacy, in the United States is almost surely lower at the beginning of the twenty-first century than it was a century earlier—and all this despite a major increase in real spending per student since A Nation at Risk was published.
Context. From an essay written fifty years after his 1955 article “The Role of Government in Education,” in which he first proposed school vouchers. A Nation at Risk, the 1983 report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, quoted Paul Copperman’s warning that the educational skills of one generation would not equal those of their parents.
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 sourceThroughout this long period, we have been repeatedly frustrated by the gulf between the clear and present need—the burning desire of parents to have more control over the schooling of their children—on the one hand, and the adamant and effective opposition of trade union leaders and educational administrators to any change that would in any way reduce their control of the educational system.
Context. From an essay written fifty years after his 1955 article “The Role of Government in Education,” in which he first proposed school vouchers. “We” is he and his wife, with whom, he writes, he set up a foundation to promote parental choice. Just before, he lists the limited voucher and tax-credit programs then in effect.
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 source
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