Recently, someone forwarded me a letter to the editor, submitted by one of my ‘representatives‘ (Linda Tanner) in Concord, regarding school choice. She asked for my thoughts on it, which you can find (point by point) below.
I believe that free public education is a public good and part of our social contract.
First, Ms. Tanner doesn’t appear to understand that ‘subsidized’ is different from ‘free’. If something is free — like the air you breathe, or the thoughts you think — then no one else is affected by your consumption of it. In contrast, if something is subsidized, then someone else must pay for something that you want but don’t want to pay for. Those could hardly be more different.
Second, she doesn’t realize that in our founding documents, arms and education are placed on an equal footing by the nearly identical language used to refer to their importance:
A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, …
[United States Constitution, Amendment 2]
Knowledge and learning, generally diffused through a community, being essential to the preservation of a free government, …
[New Hampshire Constitution, Part 2, Article 83]
In each case, the same idea is being expressed in the same way: If you want to remain free, you’d better be armed and educated.
There is no argument that can be made about subsidizing education that does not apply equally to arms, and vice versa. If education is so important that we must tax each other to provide it, then so are arms.
So imagine that some of us were to say: ‘We believe that subsidized guns and ammunition are a public good and part of our social contract.’ You’ve just seen the terms of the contract. If you buy her statement, you must buy ours. If you deny ours, you must deny hers.
But of course, we wouldn’t make that statement, because we understand that what the social contract requires isn’t that anyone be given arms or education at the expense of others, but that in order for a citizen to live up to his side of the bargain, it is his responsibility to be armed and educated.
It is a public service that can be utilized by everyone, governed by a democratic process of an elected school board accountable to the community.
Nor does Ms. Tanner appear to understand the definition of a ‘public good’. Here is a common definition of that term:
In economics, a public good is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous. For such utilities, users cannot be barred from accessing and/or using them for failing to pay for them. Also, use by one person neither prevents access of other people nor does it reduce availability to others.
This is not true of so-called ‘public schools,’ at least in New Hampshire. If you don’t pay for the schools of a particular district, you can’t (except under unusual conditions) make use of them. (If you pay taxes in Newport, you can’t use Sunapee Schools.)
And even in something like a public charter school, there is a limit to the number of students who can attend, so use by one student does, in fact, reduce availability to other students.
Ironically, what Ms. Tanner is describing is exactly what school choice proponents are asking for — for each school to be open to every member of the public, regardless of where they can afford to live.
Nor does Ms. Tanner appear to understand what ‘accountability’ is, or how it works.
Here’s an example of accountability, as practiced in the markets that she so despises: A company consistently fails to live up to its promises. Its customers turn to other providers, and the company goes out of business.
In contrast, here’s how ‘accountability’ works in the current system that she so admires: A school district consistently fails to live up to its promises. Its school board, made up of citizens with no expertise in education or budgeting, rubber stamps the recommendations of superintendents and teacher’s unions to reward the schools with increased budgets (to be funded by ransoming the homes of the people in the district back to them).
If Ms. Tanner, or anyone else, preaches to you about ‘accountability’ for an institution that isn’t allowed to go out of business, no matter how poorly it performs, the only reasonable response is to laugh… or perhaps cry.
Public education offers equal opportunity and is a cornerstone of our democracy.
Someone should inform Ms. Tanner that we do not live in a ‘democracy’. In a democracy, majority rule is regarded as the source of government power, which means that a majority is not limited in the measures that it can impose on minorities. We live in a constitutional republic, where consent is the source of government power, and where the powers of the majority are consequently constrained by enumerated powers and protected rights.
Someone should also inform Ms. Tanner that proponents of school choice are interested primarily in overcoming the manifest inequalities that are inherent in the educational system she defends, where the opportunities offered to a student are determined by where their parents happen to live.
To be fair, Ms. Tanner is just engaging in the same double standard as nearly everyone who defends the status quo in education: Public schools are to be judged by their ideals, while any competing educational opportunities are to be judged by their worst possible outcomes.
But if Ms. Tanner thinks, for example, the opportunities afforded to students in the Sunapee school district are ‘equal’ to those offered to students in the Newport school district, she’s sadly — and demonstrably — mistaken.
The underlying principle is that all children, no matter the circumstances of their background or who they are, deserves a fair start in life.
Even if Ms. Tanner believes this idea — which is 180 degrees away from the principles of the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents — it’s not clear why she would also believe that a system where the opportunities available to students will necessarily depend on the relative wealth of their parents would be a reasonable way to try to implement the idea.
In fact, the only way to actually implement her ‘principle’ would be to take children away from their parents at birth, to prevent other kinds of ‘unfairness’ (like better housing and food and clothing, greater access to books and computers, more interesting experiences, greater parental interest in education, and so on) can creep into their upbringings. It would be interesting to hear her opinion on that.
The voucher system is the Libertarian dream scheme to privatize education by … placing the cost of education on the pocketbooks of parents and local taxpayers.
Where does Ms. Tanner think the current system places the cost of education, if not on parents and local taxpayers? One can only conclude that she’s parroting rhetoric provided by people in other states, without really understanding it, or considering how it applies to her own state.
Education will be a market commodity, not a public good.
Clearly Ms. Tanner intends this as a criticism, but it’s instructive to consider how other ‘market commodities’ — like cars, computers, food, clothing, energy, medical care, and pretty much everything except schools — continue to get both better and cheaper, year after year.
Apparently Ms. Tanner believes there is something to be gained by shielding education from the same processes of improvement to which market commodities are forced to respond.
New Hampshire is at that inflection point of this choice. Do we, as a state with one of the best public school systems in the nation, want to literally buy into vouchers for the education of our children? Do we want the money that the state pays into our public schools given to a third-party group whose headquarters are in New York City?
First, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), there are no states whose scores would be considered a passing grade. For Ms. Tanner to say that New Hampshire’s system is ‘one of the best’ in a collection of failures is misleading. It would be more accurate to say that New Hampshire is ‘one of the least worst’ states.
More accurate, but still not very accurate. Because there are other states that get nearly the same NAEP scores, while spending as little as 1/3 as much per student. So in terms of wasting resources, New Hampshire must be listed among the worst offenders.
Second, Ms. Tanner’s question about where voucher funds would go — along with pretty much the rest of her letter, in which she criticizes school choice without having taken the time to learn anything about it — is a non-sequitur. She seems not to understand that vouchers can be used for local schools, including local public schools, and for public schools in other districts.
Even if New Hampshire changed to a 100 percent voucher-based system, parents who like their local schools could continue to use their vouchers to support those schools. It’s only parents who feel that their children are trapped in under-performing (or poorly-matched) public schools who would use them to pursue less awful opportunities for those children.
It’s not clear whether Ms. Tanner doesn’t understand this, or merely hopes that her readers won’t.
Linda Tanner, of Georges Mills, represents the Sullivan 9 district in the New Hampshire House and is a member of the Education Committee.
The fact that Ms. Tanner — a former public school teacher — is willing to make such sweeping pronouncements — using terms like ‘social contract’, ‘public good’, ‘democracy’, and ‘accountability’, that she clearly doesn’t understand — is something that voters might want to take into account the next time she runs for public office.
They might be better off electing someone who knows how to use a dictionary.
