Tuition and fees at [high school name] for an out-of-district, non-Catholic student are $6,700. And tuition at [elementary school name] for a non-parishioner is $4,195, plus fees. So your $7,000 voucher would cover either. A Catholic School in New York costs at least $7,000 per year. But then there's the cost of transportation to the school, lunches every day, and other misc. fees.
More important, think about [high school name]'s capacity to hold more students, for instance. They just expanded. Could they handle another 100 students per class? Another 500? And even if they could, what would happen to the quality of the education, which depends on intimate classrooms and one-on-one attention? What would happen if non-Catholic, urban students suddenly outnumbered the Catholic students from the suburbs? What would that do to [high school name]'s cultural ethos? How would that affect the amount of money that suburban parents pledge to [high school name] -- would they give more or less? Especially if they saw, for example, that the basketball team suddenly went from 100% white to 80% black? After all, many parents send their kids to [high school name], and donate money because of its athletics, not its academics. In other words, what if [high school name] went from a small school that depended on high tuition plus generous donations, to a large school that serviced the "market" for school vouchers? Wouldn't that fundamentally change the school?
In other words, I think you're mistaken or naive if you think that the private schools would remain unchanged, and simply transform all these incoming students, without the students transforming your beloved private schools (and not always for the better).
And assuming that [high school name] had the right to refuse students (more on that to follow ), what if a child in [city name] found that [high school name] nor any other private school would take him, either because he was too "dumb," or the school was already at capacity, or for some other reason? What could he do then? And yet a child of similar characteristics in [city name] did find a private school to take him. Wouldn't that be a violation of the 14th Amendment (equal protection under the law)? That would mean that two Americans who were basically the same were not given the same level of access to the publicly funded educational system. That would be even worse than "separate but equal" public schools for whites and blacks! Or, what if a child has to bused, at public expense, to a faraway private school because there are no private schools available where he lives?
This is not to mention all the legal and moral implications of what happens when autonomous private schools are suddenly receiving taxpayers' money: Will they have to alter their curriculum and dozens of other things to conform to the Constitution and civil rights legislation? For example, would [high school name] remain an all-boys school if a female student who was refused a spot at [high school name] realized that there was an open spot at [high school name], and sued to win admission there? Or, what if somebody simply counted up all the available spots in all the local boys' and girls' schools, and realized that there was an imbalance: wouldn't that be inherent sex discrimination? Or, could [high school name] still teach that homosexuality was sinful?
And would private schools have to take any student who wanted to matriculate, or could they refuse some students? If yes, on what basis would private schools be allowed to refuse? Just imagine all the discrimination suits! Alternatively, I can imagine a school like [high school name] simply refusing to grow or hire more teachers, even if it could find the money to do so, in order to refuse any more urban, out-of-district, or non-Catholic students with their vouchers.
(I know, [high school name] could have "voucher student Bingo night" in the gym, when underprivileged kids could compete in a lottery to win an admissions spot!)
Moreover, with a voucher system in place, then what would happen to the public schools? Would their funding decrease as funding for vouchers increased? How would school boards and principals be able to project their funding and expenses, and make decisions like issuing education bonds, and hiring teachers, cafeteria workers, and bus drivers based on that (lack of) information? Imagine if 50% of their students opted for vouchers and left the public school in the same year, then you'd have teachers sitting idle and resources wasted.
It seems to me that public schools would always be the fall-back "choice" of last resort; they would always have to be prepared to give up students or take them back; whereas private schools would have some say, "yea or nay," over whom they accepted. And what would be the total cost of educating our children then? In other words, what are the cost implications of funding two different educational systems, simultaneously?
Of course, what school voucher proponents really want -- and what most proponents of privatizing/outsourcing any government-provided service really want -- is for public schools to become dysfunctional, wither on the vine due to lack of funding, and eventually lose all public support until they disappear. Voucher proponents' long-term agenda is not about "school choice," but rather about replacing public schools with publicly-funded private schools. Moreover, I suspect that their hidden-hidden agenda is the establishment of a de facto tiered system of private schools, which would allow white privileged kids to remain separate and above.
I agree that it is tempting to try to replicate the results of a few students here and there, but just imagine the implications if you roll out a massive school voucher program nationwide. Have you really thought this through? How in the heck is it supposed to work? It would be chaos. Until school voucher proponents can answer convincingly these and a hundred other questions, they can't be taken seriously.
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