My wife and I moved into our house on Capitol Hill almost seven years ago. At first, we got a lot of mail addressed to the previous residents. But over time, people figured out that the old owners had moved to Bethesda so their kids could go to school in Montgomery County (this drives roughly [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'School Vouchers'
Vouchers R.I.P.?
The Century Foundation’s Greg Anrig, author of the recently-published The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing, has good piece in this month’s Washington Monthly declaring the decline and fall of school vouchers. Whether they’re quite as dead as Greg suggests is probably a matter of legitimate debate, but his essential points are [...]
Everyone is Wrong About Vouchers
Both Ezra Klein and Megan McCardle post about vouchers today, and both are wrong, albeit in completely different ways. Megan says:
I very rarely get angry about politics. But every time I see some middle class parent prattling about vouchers “destroying” the public schools by “cherry picking” the best students, when they’ve made damn sure that [...]
Godless Educrats?
The Atlantic’s 150th Anniversary issue arrived at my house last week, and I’ve been leafing through the selection of short essays at the front about “The Future of the American Idea.” The quality varies a lot–Edward O. Wilson’s 400 words are a model of economy and clarity, the policiticians, not so much. One of the [...]
More arguing with libertarians!
I’m pleased that Cato’s Adam Schaeffer agrees with me that special education voucher programs, like Florida’s McKay program, are a bad idea. Still he feels compelled to make a few feeble defenses of the program: there are already perverse incentives for overidentification in the current system (my response: yes, but programs like McKay exacerbate those [...]
More On Why Having a Hammer Doesn’t Make Everything a Nail
Cato’s Adam Schaeffer takes issue with my post earlier this week about the incredible tediousness of pro-voucher groups’ assertion that choice is the solution to every imaginable educational problem.
He actually has a somewhat reasonable point. To the extent that increased choice and customization in education can make the entire educational system more [...]
Vouchers: Building New Opportunities or Just Shuffling Students?
Andrew Coulson responds to my post below about the limitations of the vouchers-based market approach for improving the education of disadvantaged students. Coulson asserts I’m overlooking important evidence that vouchers can substantially expand the supply of quality schools serving disadvantaged students. I’m not unaware of this research, but I do not think it shows what [...]
I Should Know Better than to Argue with Libertarians About Vouchers, But I Don’t
I’ve resisted commenting on Megan McArdle’s recent foray into pro-voucher blogging, because Matt Yglesias and Kevin Drum have been doing an admirable job making the basic relevant points, but I wanted to highlight a few points from a slightly different angle. Referring to poor performance of schools serving disadvantaged urban students, Megan writes:
I have a [...]
The Myth of Conservative Love for NCLB
Kevin and Matt and Andy have done a good job explaining why claims that NCLB is a secret plot to privatize public educaiton reflect paranoia more than reality. I want to tackle one piece of the argument neither has adressed yet: The perception that hardcore conservatives and the religious right support NCLB. This is wrong. [...]
Free to Be, You and Me (Vouchers, evolution, and other stuff edition)
In a fascinating example of appropriating the arguments of one’s opponents and subverting them to his own aims, Cato’s Neal McCluskey posits vouchers as a solution to the evolution vs. creationism/intelligent design brouhaha that’s been getting so many panties in a twist in states (esp. Kansas) and school districts lately. Matthew Yglesias (from whose blog [...]
Voucher Madness
The most important thing to know about the new $100 million voucher proposal trotted out by Republicans in the House and Senate earlier this week is that it fails the accountability litmus test.
If you’re willing to propose a voucher plan that requires private schools accepting voucher students to be held accountable for their success in [...]
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
03/19/10 | Linda Perlstein links to Education Sector's "College- and Career-Ready" event.
03/17/10 | Ben Miller's column on graduation rates and NCAA Tournament eligibility is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal's The Daily Fix.
03/17/10 | Kevin Carey's critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book is quoted in Doublethink's Conventional Folly blog.
03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.