THE MARKET APPROACH TO EDUCATION

The official evaluator of the country’s first private-school voucher program reports on his provocative but often inconclusive findings. Proposed more than a generation ago by Milton Friedman as market-based and therefore efficient, the voucher approach to public education has taken a while to become a hot public-policy issue. Conflicting values—freedom of choice versus equality of opportunity—are engaged. Voucher funding is frequently made problematic by First Amendment barriers and local politics. Witte (Political Science and Public Affairs/Univ. of Wisconsin) has monitored the program that made Milwaukee famous in educational circles since the early ’90s, when that city instituted its system of school choice, bringing all its political currents bubbling to the surface. In studied professorial tones and with weighty statistics, Witte discusses Milwaukee’s statutory constraints, inner-city’school problems, voucher costs, and constitutional limits. He cautiously concludes that choice can be useful in poor inner-city communities. But, he adds, if choice extends beyond such sites, the poor will once again be disfavored. Inner-city private schools must be rigorously evaluated; they are not a universal panacea. Witte finds that the Milwaukee program had mixed, yet generally positive, effects on the private schools that participated. There were also positive results for parents. Student outcomes were harder to assess; achievement tests seemed to prove nothing in particular. Applauding the decision to target the program using income and geographic parameters, Witte expresses his preference for targeted systems over universal voucher programs, though he declines to generalize about wider market approaches. Whether local politics clouded the issues or sharply defined answers and clear prescriptions were beyond the scope of this report, the text seems, despite its technical approach and professional style, to carry a strong whiff of frustration, even discouragement. Less a polemic than a tool to foster closer consideration of an idea whose time may or may not have come. (Tables, maps, and charts throughout)