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Another “Reform School” Clip
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Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Correction, Jay. They are answerable to all taxpayers because they are taking federal money. And, you want federal money for a variety of reasons. Otherwise, kids from smaller and poorer states like South Dakota or Mississippi or … Arkansas could not receive the same education and opportunities as kids from more well funded and economically productive states like Massachusetts or California. And, in terms of accountability at the voting booth, you know the lack of turnout and heavy union representation in school board elections weakens that mythical magic of the ballot. And that would seem to be the type of situation you would like to avoid. And, of course, these “mobile populations” that can so easily “move into and out of school districts” certainly discounts the economic restrictions that limit such ease of movement. There are plenty of places with great schools that many people in this country simply cannot afford to move into.
Certainly, leaping to federal intervention wasn’t a bad idea when federal troops forcefully desegregated schools. However, I ultimately agree with you on criticizing much federal overreach. But you’re comments represent a lot of oversimplification in regards to vouchers fixing the problems because voters and parents would make much better decisions. That’s neither true on a widescale, or even verifiable. These days, I know many parents – as my kids are school age now – who complain about teachers a lot. You know where they complain? Ratemyteachers.com. Or they tell me. They never call the teacher or principal or school board. And they ultimately justify it by saying their schools are pretty good anyway or better than the others.
It’s just not a fact that vouchers are going to lead parents to force schools to improve by voting with their dollars.
Except that all the empirical research finds otherwise.
You have appeals to personal experience; we have the data.
The limited scope of that data doesn’t refute concerns about uninvolved parents or the inability of parents to vote by moving districts. Nor does it negate concerns about local school districts being able to refuse federal funds. Nor does it counter the argument that all taxpayers have interests in the way local school districts use federal funds. As I said, I support charters and school choice, but I am not naive enough to look at some small sample and conclude that vouchers lead invariably to better parenting choices or school outcomes.
Though I am intrigued by the repeated use of “empirical research” to describe your research. The excessive use of it leads me to question why that term is emphasized so much. Could you explain why your research is empirical and definitive. Because I don’t quite see it.
1) I see you’ve changed your position from “we know for sure that vouchers will NOT have this effect” to “we don’t know for sure what effect vouchers will have.” Progress! I agree that we don’t know for sure what effects future programs will have, because they’re in the future. And I agree that we don’t know everything we possibly could know about the programs we already have; we never do, because we’re not omniscient.
What I’ve been saying is that insofar as we do have systematically collected data analyzed in accordance with scientific procedures, it all points in one direction. Follow the link to see.
2) I call it empirical research because it relies upon systematically collected data analyzed in accordance with scientific procedures.