蜜桃影视

It鈥檚 about time we put to bed the false claim that is better than a free market when it comes to school choice. Tulane University professor Doug Harris promoted this view in a , claiming that 鈥�,鈥� and therefore, we ought to have government heavily regulate the education market.

Harris declares 鈥渕arket failure鈥� in schooling because 鈥淓conomics tells us that markets work best when consumers have good information and many options to choose from, and when the decisions made by one family do not affect others,鈥� but (1) families do not have great information, (2) families do not have a lot of schooling options, and (3) schooling decisions affect the rest of society. In other words, because schooling does not mirror the model of perfect competition that we learned in Economics 101, government ought to step in.

Here鈥檚 why many economists disagree.

Imperfect information

Although it is true that families do not have perfect information about schools, it is likely that they have much better information about what their children need than government officials do. Parents have the local knowledge necessary to make informed schooling decisions; bureaucrats sitting in offices hundreds of miles away do not. Parents also have the incentive to make the best decisions possible for their children. Bureaucrats have the incentive to make the best decisions possible for special interests; after all, political profitability relies on maximizing votes, not on learning. Besides, we already allow rich parents to make schooling decisions. Why not let disadvantaged families do the same?

Parents choose schools based on a multitude of difficult-to-measure factors such as safety, culture, peer groups, and discipline policy. The decisions are based on each child鈥檚 unique situation. When parents are given school choice, on school quality and even . But bureaucrats employ crude measures 鈥� most often standardized test scores 鈥� to try to capture school quality.

There are two main problems with that. First, as the University of Arkansas鈥檚 Jay P. Greene frequently points out, there is a growing body of rigorous empirical evidence suggesting that such as graduation rates, college enrollment, earnings, and adult crime. Second, choosing one uniform measure assumes all children need the same type of education.

Let鈥檚 imagine a situation where a government official tries to shut down an oversubscribed charter school in a poor neighborhood based on subpar test scores. Shouldn鈥檛 we wonder why families in need are desperately banging on the doors of the school despite less-than-optimal standardized test scores? Could it be that their children are in a safe environment that teaches character and citizenship skills? After all, what good are test scores in a job interview? What good are they for a child who ends up in jail? Perhaps parents are on to something.

Imperfect information exists in all aspects of life. We are not nutrition experts, yet we are allowed to feed our children. We are not fashion designers, yet we are allowed to clothe our children. Do free-market skeptics think we should take away those basic liberties as well?

Finite options

It may be true that parents do not have a lot of options in the current system, but we shouldn鈥檛 expect that to be the case in a true education market. Currently, of the school-age population has access to a private school choice program; we shouldn鈥檛 expect a diverse array of private schooling options with government severely stifling competition. However, the public education budget is , more than three-quarters the size of the . We certainly don鈥檛 have a shortage of diverse options for restaurants in the U.S. Just imagine the diversity of educational options that would be available if all families could allocate education resources to best fit their children鈥檚 unique needs.

It鈥檚 exciting 鈥� yet depressing 鈥� to think about the wide array of high-quality education options that would be available in a system where all children could go to the school that worked best for them.

Even if we accepted the fragile argument that we wouldn鈥檛 have many options in a free market for education, managed competition wouldn鈥檛 solve the problem. It would make it worse. As we know from basic economics, regulation serves as a . It also makes the supply of schools . As shown below, the by Lindsey Burke and me suggest that Louisiana鈥檚 highly regulated voucher program significantly increased the likelihood that individual private schools identified as 鈥渞egular鈥� schools and decreased the likelihood that they identified as 鈥渟pecialized鈥� or 鈥渁lternative鈥� schools.

Obviously, when government tells private schools what to do, private schools begin to look a lot more like public schools. Why in the world would we want to make all schools similar to the failing ones that families are desperately trying to escape?

Economic externalities

Harris argues that we ought to have bureaucrats close 鈥渂ad鈥� schools because schooling has something economists call externalities 鈥� 鈥溾�� If my child gets a great education, others benefit from that because they get to interact with my child. If my child gets a poor education, others may not benefit from interacting with my child. The usual policy responses to economic externalities are taxation and subsidization, rather than heavy regulation. But even for those policy responses to work as theorized, bureaucrats would need to have accurate measures of education quality to determine how much subsidization (or fees) each school ought to receive.

Even the economist who developed the theory of externalities, , pointed out that society if we don鈥檛 know the socially optimal level of government intervention.

Of course, the externality argument can be made for any good or service. But that doesn鈥檛 mean government action ought to be taken for all goods and services. For example, automobiles have positive effects on others in society; if I can get from my home to my office rapidly by driving a fast car, others will benefit, because I can spend more time at work producing new research. And, of course, a nice car would make me feel happy, and we all know happy employees are more productive. But just because others would benefit from my additional research and presentations, should the rest of society subsidize my decision to buy a sports car? Of course not.

Harris is correct that schooling does not fit into the model of perfect competition. But his policy recommendations exacerbate all the problems he identifies. This is just bad economics.

Corey DeAngelis is an education policy analyst at the Cato Institute and a distinguished doctoral fellow at the University of Arkansas.

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