Since the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, to mixed reviews and with mixed success, I have been thinking about how the Republican Party should promote its education agenda of more choice and less control by teacher unions and other non-parental groups. This is an agenda that I support. I think the best idea for the Party to espouse, particularly at the Federal level, would be something that moved away from federal control (like NCLB exerted) and that does not get stuck in the details of how education is provided, which is where debates about vouchers and charter schools eventually end up.
What I have in mind is much simpler -- modify the federal tax code to give families that remove their children from public schools and place them in an accredited private school a tax benefit from having done so. The tax benefit should be that the families get to claim as an income tax deduction the lesser of what they pay to the private school and the average per-pupil expenditures in the district where they would be entitled to enroll their children. This is the financial burden they are removing from the state or locality.
If a school district had 2000 families, and 200 of them decided to pay a private school to educate their children, then the school district only has to finance public schools that are 90% as large as they would have been. Relieving a burden on a public entity like that strikes me as comparable to a charitable donation. So treat that lower burden the same way as all charitable deductions are treated on the tax form.
Importantly, the benefit is not tied to how much the family pays in state and local taxes that are dedicated to public education. People without children have to pay those taxes as well, and they get nothing directly for it. The benefit is also not tied to the amount the family pays to the private school (unless it is to reduce the benefit relative to that based on average per-pupil expenditures). That number can be as high as families want it to be, but only the amount up to the average per-pupil expenditure in their district should be considered budget relieving and thus comparable to a charitable contribution.
The advantages for the Republicans are pretty clear -- they get to promote alternatives to public education and school choice from the federal level without having to get into the weeds of arguing that one type of school is better than another. They can legitimately claim to be adding some fairness back into the tax code. They simply have to be willing to increase some other general tax to pay for the lost revenue to the federal government. (Some states that piggyback on the federal income tax formula might have to do the same thing.)
When you look at the nature
When you look at the nature of US education I completely fail to see how this would work.
We have three school systems.
A very bad system for poor people. But very, very few of the parents that send their kids to these schools pay any federal taxes do a tax deduction is not worth anything to them.
An OK system for lower middle class and/or blue collar types. Your proposal might work Ok for them. But I doubt that too many of them are so dissatisfied with their schools that they will pay a lot more for private schools even if some of the added costs are offset by a tax break.
To a great extent the ones that would be attracted to your proposal are already sending their kids to church schools.
A very good system for affluent parents. These people would find your tax break of interest. But for the most part they are already voluntarily living in high tax communities to pay for their good school systems. But good schools are not all they get from living in communities with good schools, so unless they are willing to move to a poorer community and send their kids to private schools they are unlikely to want to change the system. Remember, they already get a federal tax deduction for the high taxes they pay for the good schools they already experience.
Don't you pay any attention to the message Bruce Bartlett is sending, tax cuts are not the magic pixie dust that solves all problems.
Ok, enough snark. But tell me what is wrong with my analysis.
Well, consider our experience
I wouldn't say that your analysis is wrong, but you are asking it to achieve objectives for which it is not intended.
We live in one of those affluent areas with good schools, paying plenty of taxes for them, but still send our son (and eventually our daughter) to a private school. The local public schools are good but not as well suited for our son as the private school. So I think that your analysis leaves out the fact that we value the choice that is available by having the private option available. Even within affluent communities, there is variety in what people want. More variety than what a single school system will typically choose to offer.
The suggestion is not designed to systematically improve the outcomes for poor people who endure a very bad system. Having grown up in Florida, where the school district is the county, I have seen this occur within the same district as the better schools serving more affluent families. The school that our son attends has financial aid, and we make additional contributions beyond our tuition payments to it each year to help support it. So at least some of the benefits of having that choice available do accrue to others who are not affluent.
You also do not acknowledge that I am giving something back to the community by sending my son to a private school. Everyone else's property taxes are a bit lower because I am not imposing the financial burden on the school of educating my kids. What I am asking is for that gift to be treated equivalently to any other charitable gift for tax purposes. That's what should appeal to the Republicans, an equity argument for private schools, provided (as I note in the post) that they find a way to pay for it.
I'm not sure what your
I'm not sure what your proposal would accomplish from a public policy standpoint. It wouldn't provide an alternative for students in bad schools, since hardly any of them would be able to afford private schools with the tax break they would get by sending them there.
The marginal (in the economic, not scholastic, sense) students, those who would not attend private school but for this tax break, would come from relatively affluent families; more importantly, they would probably be few, as in numbering in the dozens, and would probably not come at the expense of the schools that were most in need of reform.
When you asume...
I suppose those without school age children wouldn't be paying any school related taxes in the first place, right? Or are they simply the unwilling and voiceless financiers of the whole scheme?
While this sounds good in
While this sounds good in theory, I think it falls apart when you make equate the "average cost per pupil" to the "financial burden they are removing from the state or locality". The costs removed from the municipality would be the marginal cost of an additional student and, although I've never studied the financial statements of a school district, I'm guessing this is something reasonably close to zero.
ugh, no
A thousand times no. The public school system is mostly broken already, and you want to break it *more*? Who has better educational systems in the developed world than the US? Everyone. Who among them does this? Nobody.
I thought Republicans respected markets and the wisdom of crowds.
In other words, you want a
In other words, you want a tax break for something you are already doing as an incentive to do it.
Marginal cost of a student
It's not zero, but most of the costs of a school are completely unaffected by the departure (or arrival) of a single student. If a school suddenly lost 20% of its students, it would still take years to adjust, as teaching staffs, etc., could not be immediately trimmed, and some staff cannot be downsized by 20% (if there's one principal, you're not going to see schools trim their time by 20% within the length of their contracts). The building would not suddenly get smaller or much cheaper to run, even if you cleared out a room or two and didn't heat them.
Andrew, we don't have a deduction for personal bodyguards, or our own snow plows...we can't deduct creating our own parks or putting up weather satellites...we have public schools because we want a minimum level of education available to everyone so that we continue some minor semblance of meritocracy...you're welcome to spend extra on different or extra schooling, but please don't ask me to subsidize it. We all pay taxes for public institutions, which are by definition a compromise.
What about other users of public schools?
People don't pay taxes to send their kids to public school. They pay taxes so that they can benefit from the public school system. That's why even people, like me, who do not have children have to pay for the system just the way people without cars have to pay for roads.
I'll admit that our public school system isn't the envy of the world, but our society relies on most people having some basic ability to read, write, reckon and share a basic body of information. Our society relies on accessible technologies, like cars, signage, and computers, that require some level of literacy. These technologies are pervasive. There just aren't all that many jobs that let you opt out all the way. Think about the people who do things for you, deliver your mail, fill your order at MacDonald's, run the gas station, stock the groceries, and so on, and try to imagine them all unable to read or write or do simple math or being unfamiliar with our familiar world.
It's easy to take our level of education for granted, but if we abandoned our public school system, we'd have to seriously change the way our society works. It wouldn't be pretty, and it wouldn't be efficient. We'd all take a big lifestyle hit. You may not need the public school system for your kids. I sure don't use it for mine, having none. But, we and every other American relies on its existence and effectivenes, such as it is.
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