Florida on the March!

March 24, 2010

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

To go along with Florida’s great news from NAEP, comes this from Florida parental choice champion John Kirtley:

Today 5,500 low income parents and children travelled to the distant Florida capitol of Tallahassee to show their support of parental choice, and their support of our bill to dramatically expand the tax credit scholarship program for low income children.  Some of them took buses all night long to attend our rally, and their numbers set a national record for a parental choice rally. We conducted a headcount as they stepped off ninety eight 55-passenger buses this morning, and the total was 5,115. Another 406 arrived in cars for a grand total of 5,500. 
                                                                                                                                                                                       
But the numbers weren’t the only story. The lineup of speakers who endorsed our the bill included the acting president of the national Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization founded by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Also endorsing the bill was the President of the Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and a group of South Florida Hispanic public school teachers. This is far from the typical story line for a rally supporting parental choice, and shows that in Florida this learning option for low-income students has achieved critical levels of bipartisan support.

Here is what Rep. James Bush, representing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, told the crowd: 

It is no coincidence that the first African-American to live in the White House is a man with an Ivy League degree, and just last summer President Obama made a powerful point about our history. There’s a reason, our President said, the story of the civil rights movement was written in our schools.  There’s a reason, he said, that Thurgood Marshall took up the cause of Linda Brown.  There’s a reason, he said, why the Little Rock Nine defied a governor and a mob. It’s because, President Obama told us, there is no stronger weapon against inequality and no better path to opportunity than an education that can unlock a child’s God-given potential.

I say to you today that the Tax Credit Scholarship program is one of the keys we use to unlock that potential. It is one way we can reach some of those children who go to bed hungry at night. It is one way we show that an empty pocketbook doesn’t have to mean an empty bookshelf – that all our learning tools need to be on the table for all our children.

I am here today as a messenger of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and I am here to proudly proclaim that the organization created by Dr. King believes that a scholarship for low-income children is one way to break the cycle and close the gap. I am here, standing before this inspiring sea of hopeful faces, to announce that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference endorses Tax Credit Scholarships and endorses the bill this year that will expand them. This is our future. God bless you all.

Florida Senate approved a major expansion of the Step Up for Students tax credit by a vote of 27-11. One quarter of the Democrats voted in favor.

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Posted by matthewladner

Bean-counting Arizona Tax Credits

October 15, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Arizona Republic ran a complex story with an unfortunately simplistic headline: Tuition tax credits drain state money.

The reporter made a serious effort to bean-count the individual and corporate tax credit programs. The headline is all the more unfortunate given the fact that by the Republic’s own estimation the program results in a $3 million savings to taxpayers.

 I wish someone would “drain” my bank account in a similar fashion.

The corporate tax credit, which makes only those switching from public schools eligible, was designed to generate savings, and obviously does so. The individual credit does not have the same eligibility requirements, and thus is a good deal more complex.

The Republic reporter, Ronald Hansen, made a good faith attempt to estimate the potential costs and/or savings of the individual program by looking at the National Center for Education Statistics figures on private school enrollment from before and after the tax credit passed. Making the assumption that the increase can be attributed to the credit, Hansen then made estimates regarding the number of kids who would not have gone to private school without the credit (savings generators) versus the number benefiting from the program but who would have gone to private school anyway (cost generators from the state’s perspective).

In short, this is an incredibly complex task- an attempt to estimate the price elasticity of demand for private schools. Hansen has made a serious attempt at estimation, but it is fraught with peril.

For starters, there are more than one estimate of private school attendance in Arizona. The estimation technique is highly dependent on this, and the Arizona Private School Directory lists more than 3,000 more private school students than the NCES. It would not shock me if they both underestimate the true number, which would generate larger savings.

Second it is also important to note that several other things happened during the same period of history. Arizona, for instance, is closing in on 500 charter schools being in operation. Ron Zimmer of the RAND Corporation and two colleagues studied the impact of charters in Michigan and that private schools lost one student for every three students gained in the charter schools.

There are over 100,000 students attending Arizona charter schools. In the absence of the tax credit program, there would have been a substantial overall decline in private school enrollment. Whether those kids went to charter or district schools, they would have cost you money. More to the point, they will have led the Republic to seriously underestimate the number of private school children who would otherwise be attending public schools without the tax credit program.

If private choice opponents are scandalized by the thought that the credit might cost the state money, I’d like to call their bluff. Arizona lawmakers can create a personal use tax credit for students switching from public to private school (i.e. my kid switches to a private from a public school, I take a tax credit). We can set the maximum credit at $3,000, and taxpayers will save thousands upon thousands of dollars every time a kid switches. Such a program would help close the state’s yawning structural budget deficit.

Any STO critics willing to cut out the middle man for the next generation of parental choice reform and save big money in the process? Or is generating savings not the real issue? If not, let’s keep our focus on real issues. Email me at mladner@goldwaterinstitute.org and let me know.

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Posted by matthewladner

Marines vs. Schools and Culture

August 19, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Today is the 26th anniversary of the publication of the report A Military at Risk which decried the racial combat effectiveness gap in the armed forces. You will of course recall the stark rhetoric of the report: “We face a rising tide of mediocrity in our armed services” and “Despite military spending that would stagger the imaginations of generals from previous decades, our armed forces today are do better at fighting than forces in 1970.” And who can forget: “If a foreign power had imposed this military system on us, we would view it as an act of war. As it is, we have done this to ourselves.”

Oh, you don’t remember that report, do you? That’s because it was never written. The United States military of today chew up the United States military of 1970 and ask for a real challenge, despite the fact that we had far more men in uniform in the past. 

It’s called “progress.” It would be great if we had more of it in K-12.

Furthermore, the reason you’ve never heard of a racial/ethnic combat effectiveness gap is because it doesn’t exist. The integration of the military went much more smoothly than that of schools and universities, and people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds have served their country with distinction.

In my view, “race” is a cultural phenomenon, and one that does not handicap organizations with strong cultures. Diversity is not a problem in the United States Marine Corps because everyone signing up becomes a United States Marine.

The Marine Corps, of course, is not everyone’s cup of tea, precisely why the concept of parental choice is so crucial in schooling. Although there are many high quality traditional public schools, the task of maintaining a strong academic culture is complicated by consumers who may have little more in common than a zip code. Keeping a strong focus is difficult in any organization.

Like the Marines, KIPP charter schools are not for everyone. Parents must sign contracts requiring a high level of commitment. Half days on Saturdays will be viewed as a burden by some, an opportunity by others. KIPP isn’t for everyone, but it seems to serve the willing quite well indeed.

Inner city Catholic schools serve as another example, with profound and well documented benefits for students.

In the big picture, while we and others love fighting over the gory details (charters vs. vouchers, vouchers vs. tax credits, online vs. Jurassic, etc.) the truth is that a bipartisan consensus over the importance of choice in education has developed. Greatschools.net is a much better resource than real estate agent for judging schools.

The days of the vast majority of students being taught in zip code based schools by teachers who graduated from the bottom third of their university class are numbered. It’s almost certainly a big number, but it’s not going to last forever.

The sooner the better.

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Posted by matthewladner

New Study on Florida Tax Credit Scholarships

August 6, 2009

FL survey table

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Today the Friedman Foundation releases a new study I co-authored with Christian D’Andrea on the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program. You may recall that program as the subject of last month’s rush to judgment.

At the top of this post you can see what the parents participating in the program report about the services they previously received in public schools, and the services they are now receiving in the school choice program. The study conducted a survey of over 800 families randomly selected from the entire population participating in the program, excluding only those who had no prior public school experience (because their children entered the program in kindergarten).

The numbers tell the story. Public schools didn’t deliver for these kids, and school choice does – in spades.

Obviously this doesn’t answer all questions about the program. Indeed, as the first empirical study ever completed on a tax-credit scholarship program (that is, the first to empirically measure the outcomes of such a program measured against a relevant standard of comparison), it hardly could. We all look forward to the completion of the official evaluation when it’s ready. Until then, however, we have to take the information we have. And, if I do say so, I think this is some pretty important information.

Here’s the executive summary:

This study examines the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program, one of the nation’s largest school choice programs. It is the first ever completed empirical evaluation of a tax-credit scholarship program, a type of program that creates school choice through the tax code. Earlier reports, including a recent one on the Florida program, have not drawn comparisons between the educational results of public schools and tax-credit scholarships; this study is therefore the first step in evaluating the performance of this type of school choice.

The Florida program provides a tax credit on corporate income taxes for donations to scholarship-funding organizations, which use the funding to provide K-12 private school scholarships to low-income students. Over 23,000 Florida students are attending private schools this year using these scholarships. Similar programs exist in Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

Studying a tax-credit scholarship program using traditional empirical techniques presents a number of methodological challenges. To overcome these difficulties, the study used a telephone survey conducted by Marketing Informatics to interview 808 participating parents whose children attended public schools before entering the program. It asked them to compare the educational services they received in public and private schools.

The results provide the first ever direct comparison between the education participants received when they were in Florida public schools and the education they receive in the school choice program.

Key findings include:

• Participating parents report that they receive dramatically better educational services from their current private schools than they previously received in public schools.

• 80 percent are “very satisfied” with the academic progress their children are making in their current private schools, compared to 4 percent in their previous public schools.

• 80 percent are “very satisfied” with the individual attention their children now receive, compared to 4 percent in public schools.

• 76 percent are “very satisfied” with the teacher quality in their current schools, compared to 7 percent in public schools.

• 76 percent are “very satisfied” with their schools’ responsiveness to their needs, compared to 4 percent in public schools.

• 62 percent are “very satisfied” with the student behavior in their current schools, compared to 3 percent in public schools.

• Most participating parents were dissatisfied with their public school experiences on most measurements, and are overwhelmingly satisfied with their current private schools.

• 58 percent had been “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with the academic progress their children were making in public school, compared to 4 percent in their current private schools.

• 64 percent had been “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with the individual attention their children received in public schools, compared to 3 percent in their current schools.

• 44 percent had been “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with teacher quality in public schools, compared to 3 percent in their current schools.

• 59 percent had been “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with school responsiveness in public schools, compared to 3 percent in their current schools.

• 62 percent had been “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with student behavior in public schools, compared with 5 percent in their current schools.

• Asked to rate their schools on a scale from one to „„ ten, 94 percent of participants gave their current private schools at least a seven, and 54 percent gave them a ten. Only 18 percent of parents rated their public schools seven or higher, and just 2 percent rated them at the highest level.

• Of the 128 parents whose children are not likely to be in the program again next year, 81 percent said that dissatisfaction with the program played no role at all in their decision, and 100 percent – all 128 of them – said the program should continue to be available for others even though they were not likely to use it again next year themselves.

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Posted by Greg Forster

AZ Newspaper Lets Rip on Tax Credits

August 6, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

In the climax of the Branagh film Dead Again the protagonist struggles with the villain over a pair of scissors. The winner is all but certain to use them to knife the loser to death. Losing control of the scissors, the villain (played by Derek Jacobi) says in classic British understatement “I shall be very interested to see what happens next.”

The East Valley Tribune has a three part series titled Rigged Privilege on the Arizona tax credit system.  At the time of this writing, they are only through parts one and two.

A little background. In 1997, the Arizona legislature created the nation’s first scholarship tax-credit law. Donors were allowed to make a $500 donation to a non-profit group, which could then give scholarships for children. State oversight in the bill was limited to some reporting. The law specified that scholarship organizations had to give scholarships to more than one school, and that donors could not make a donation for the benefit of their own child. The law allows 10% of funds to be spent on administration.

The bill had been means-tested, but the sponsor reluctantly dropped the means test during the process. The bill had almost no support from Democrats, and the last vote needed to put the bill over the top agreed to support it only if it did not contain a means test. Over the years, the maximum amount that could be donated for a married couple filing jointly has been raised to parity at $1,000. Arizona lawmakers created a corporate credit in 2006 which included a means test.

Last year the credit raised about $55 million dollars.  For a bit of perspective, that is about 10% of the annual operating budget of Arizona’s largest school district. The credit created 28,234 scholarships last year. With more than ten times the money, the state’s largest school district serves less than three times as many students as the tax credit. 

Sound like a bargain so far? Don’t answer yet! This is not a program with a lottery, and thus it does not lend itself to a high quality test score evaluation with a proper control group. The Goldwater Institute has however surveyed Arizona public and private high school students and found substantially higher levels of student satisfaction, perceptions of academic rigor and school safety, and higher levels of political tolerance among private school students (forthcoming). The credit in short produces a better education at a lower cost according to the students.

A number of organizations employ means test for students. Even those that do not are aiding some as yet uncounted number of low-income families. I have personally met students whose academic careers and lives were changed by the opportunity that this program created.

Having said all of that, the EVT details what happens with a program containing minimal oversight and ultimately having no one, in either the private or public sphere, with the authority to police the program: abuse.

I encourage you to read the article for yourself. One of the stories focused on a scholarship group who somehow raised money for a few years but failed to provide any scholarships (the law requires you to spend 90% of your funds on scholarships). Federal law prohibits designating a beneficiary for a charitable donation, for obvious reasons. Some scholarship groups have engaged in “recommendations” for donations, and have appeared to engineer donation swaps among parents. Grey area material, at best.

Groups maintaining accounts for individual students seems like a bright-line violation of federal tax law. I don’t yet understand the workings of this “tax credit for fetuses” business, but let’s just say for now that it seems like a pretty clear perversion of the intent of the law, even if it is legal, which it may not be.

So I’m inclined to think that the Arizona tax credit system could use a clean up. Opponents of parental choice have predictably seized upon this report as proof that the whole idea of tax credits is some evil corporate plot to destroy Western civilization, etc. Such people could use some Valium sprinkled in their coffee. In the big picture, the tax credit is providing higher quality education opportunities than average at a dramatically lower cost.

Does the program need a referee with the power to throw a flag and assess a penalty, even eject a player from the game? Yes. The absence of such a referee is basically not only inviting, but begging for abuse.  Should lawmakers means test the program? It depends on your perspective, but I’d say no, or rather, only conditionally yes. I would readily agree to a means test if we can do the same for public schools. The average scholarship in this program is in the neighborhood of $2,000. Average public school spending in the state is just south of $10,000. As long as we are handing out $10,000 to the children of North Scottsdale millionaires, I can’t see a reasonable argument to deny them $2,000 instead to save the rest of us some money.

There are better ways to address equity concerns than a means test. When I worked at the Alliance for School Choice, we developed a set of model bills in cooperation with the Friedman Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council. In our tax credit bill, we included a requirement that scholarship organizations give a percentage of their funds to free and reduced lunch eligible children equal to the state average. Around half the children in Arizona public schools are free and reduced lunch eligible, and under this provision, STOs would have to give about half of their dollars raised to free and reduced lunch eligible students.

Groups would be free to do more than this (I serve on the board of a group which only gives scholarships to free and reduced lunch children) and such a requirement would obviously need to be phased in order to avoid serious disruption. Half the kids in Arizona public schools are free and reduced lunch eligible, but I wouldn’t count on them getting half the total K-12 money. Adoption of such a provision would likely make the tax credit more focused on equity than the public school system.

Carrie Lips Lukas, writing for the Goldwater Institute in 2003. called for a series of reforms. Last year, I fundamentally revamp the system by creating a personal use credit and means testing the scholarship credits at the free and reduced lunch level. This would expand parental choice, eliminate swapping, and create a universal system of choice with an advantage for the poor (who could benefit from both credits). Scholarship credits would still be vital, but would be purely charitable in nature.

When presented with this type of information, the first instinct of some will be to deny it, to hunker down, to accuse our enemies of far greater misdeeds, or to otherwise try to put lipstick on a pig. Good luck with that.  It is blindingly obvious to me that Arizona’s tax credit is system is a good program overall that suffers from specific weaknesses that can and must be addressed.  Otherwise, writing articles like this one will become the journalistic equivalent of using a shot gun to shoot fish in a bucket.

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Posted by matthewladner

PJM on School Choice’s Political Wins

July 8, 2009

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

This morning, Pajamas Media carries my column on the upside of the political picture for school choice:

Some people think it’s been all bad news for school choice this year. Well, it’s all bad news if you follow the standard procedure of only paying attention to the bad news. But last month, the movement scored a big win: Indiana enacted a $2.5 million choice program, the state’s first. And if you take a broader view, you’ll see there was other good news for school choice along with the bad in the 2009 legislative season.

This is important because we’ve seen some people occasionally seize on any piece of bad news as an excuse to declare vouchers politically dead. It’s an easy way to avoid taking a stand on the issue, and in some of the more egomaniacal cases, to show the world how amazingly cool and above it all you are.

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Posted by Greg Forster

Tampa Tribune Beats the Rush

July 1, 2009

Greetings from Tampa

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

The editors of the Tampa Tribune have decided not to join the misinformed rush to judgment on Florida’s tax-credit scholarship program:

It’s too early to accurately gauge the students’ academic progress, as the University of Florida economics professor who oversaw the report emphasized. It measured only first-year test gains. Researcher David Figlio was handicapped by incomplete data for a baseline.

I’m shocked to see that in print. A newspaper actually checked the facts!

I do have to quibble with the editorial’s assertion that the Figlio study shows students who select into the program are among the most “academically challenged.” We don’t, in fact, know that. We know that they are more likely to come from schools that are among the most academically challenged. But school characteristics and individual student characteristics can vary considerably.

This matters because choice opponents have relied upon unsupported assertions about selection bias to wave away the consistent empirical research consensus showing that school choice works. In fact, the Figlio study doesn’t allow us to address this question, as the study itself explicitly says. Other research that does examine this question has not turned up any serious evidence that vouchers either “cream” (selecting high performers) or “dredge” (selecting low performers).

But the editors are back on solid ground when it comes to finances:

The program is a good deal for taxpayers.

Attending public school costs more. When local, state and federal costs, plus capital costs, are factored in, the average cost per student in public school is $12,000.

In the voucher program, the maximum scholarship is $3,950, about 57 percent of the roughly $7,000 the state pays per public school student.

And a scholarship parent pays on average $1,000 a year for their child to attend the private school. The program requires the parents and child to be motivated.

By taking challenging students from poor-performing schools, the Tax Credit Scholarships are easing the burden on the public school system, not diverting resources.

Kudos to the Tribune for checking the facts rather than rushing to judgment!

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Posted by Greg Forster

Welcome to School Choice, Indiana!

July 1, 2009

Welcome to Indiana

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Yesterday, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed a budget bill that contained a $2.5 million school choice program. It’s a tax-credit scholarship program that will serve a couple thousand students.

So much for the negative nabobs who think school choice can’t win! No matter how many times it wins, they just keep sticking their fingers in their ears.

There are some eligibility restrictions, but they’re not as bad as the ones on the “legacy” programs in Milwaukee and DC that are restricted to the poor. This program is more in the mold of existing tax-credit scholarship programs in places like Pennsylvania, which include moderate-income families – in Indiana, the eligibility is set at 200% of the cutoff for free and reduced lunch programs. Also, like the program in Florida, Indiana’s program is limited to students who were in public school the previous year.

This means that the program isn’t ideal, but will be much easier to defend against union chicanery than the highly vulnerable “legacy” programs, which don’t provide much benefit to powerful constituencies able to mobilize and preserve the program. Indiana’s program isn’t leading us toward universal choice the way Georgia’s is, where a universal voucher bill is moving through the legislature. But it’s maintaining the gains school choice has made in the last five years, as the movement has moved toward more and more universal choice.

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Posted by Greg Forster

Arizona Corporate Tax Credit Prevails in Court

March 12, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

From the Institute for Justice:

Victory for School Choice: Arizona Court of Appeals Declares  Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program Constitutional

Arlington, Va.-The Arizona Court of Appeals today declared that tax credit programs that fund tuition scholarships for low- and middle-income children to attend private schools “pass constitutional muster.”  The decision follows the Arizona Supreme Court‘s 1999 decision in Kotterman v. Killian, which upheld the constitutionality of Arizona’s
Individual Tax Credit Scholarship Program from an identical legal attack.  

“Today’s real winners are the families who rely on Arizona’s Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program to attend high-performing private schools tailored to meet their children’s unique educational needs,” declared Tim Keller, executive director of the Institute for Justices Arizona Chapter.  “This decision affirms that the state and federal constitutions protect the right of parents, not bureaucrats, to make the educational decisions that will forever impact their children’s lives.” 

Passed in 2006, Arizona’s Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program encourages private companies to donate to charitable organizations that provide scholarships to low- and moderate-income families to attend private schools.  Companies receive a tax credit for their donations.  In 2008, the corporate contribution limit was capped
at $14.4 million.  That amount will increase by 20 percent in 2009. According to the most recent figures from the Arizona Department of Revenue, in 2007, funds donated to scholarship organizations enabled
1,947 students to attend 156 private schools. 

The scholarships are available only to children who transfer from a public to a private school, or those entering kindergarten.  With the average corporate scholarship totaling just under $2,400, the state saves money every time a child previously enrolled in a public school chooses to attend a private school.  

“The taxpayers of Arizona also won today because every time a child transfers from a public school to a private school, the state saves thousands of dollars that would otherwise have been used to pay for that child’s education in a public school,” Keller continued.  “The program is constitutional, and it is sound public policy.  It is time for the ACLU to drop its spurious legal claims.”

Judge Donn Kessler filed a dissent in the case suggesting that the program violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Judge Kessler’s reasoning misapplies the U.S. Supreme Court‘s 2002 decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, which upheld a state-funded voucher program for low-income children in Cleveland.  

IJ, the nation’s leading legal advocate for school choice, is currently defending Arizona’s state-funded scholarship programs for children with disabilities and children in foster care, as well as Arizona’s individual tax credit scholarship program, and helped secure the Kotterman victory for school choice.  The Institute also helped win
a victory in the U.S. Supreme Court for school choice in Cleveland and successfully defended vouchers in Milwaukee and tax credits in Illinois.

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Posted by matthewladner

Did Milton Friedman Support School Choice Tax Credits?

October 15, 2008

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Did Milton Friedman support school choice programs where the financing runs through the tax code rather than the treasury? He always made it clear that if he had a choice between them, he preferred vouchers (funded through the treasury) over either of the two alternatives forms of school choice that use the tax code (direct tax credits for families to offest thier tuition costs or scholarships distributed by charitable organizations and funded by donations that make the donor eligible for a tax credit). But that doesn’t mean he didn’t support the tax-code alternatives or didn’t consider them to be “true” school choice programs.

I bring this up because Robert Enlow of the Friedman Foundation has dug up a letter that Milton wrote in support of Florida’s tax-credit scholarship program. The letter was written on May 17, 2005 and was addressed to a Florida corporate leader who was considering whether or not to support the program.

Milton wrote:

I agree with you completely that the tax code should be used solely to raise revenue to fund necessary government spending and not to create social policy. Unfortunately, in schooling, the tax code is already being used to create social policy, by devoting tax funds to maintaining a socialist education system. If the state decides to subsidize the schooling of children, the straightforward way is to provide a voucher to each parent and let the parent choose the school that he believes is best for his or her children. Let the private market provide the schools. If the state wants to set up schools, let them charge tuition and compete with private schools on a level playing field.

Unfortunately, for reasons we are both well aware of, ranging from unions to school administrators and religious concerns, that ideal solution is not feasible.** Where it has been feasible to any significant extent, as in Milwaukee and the Florida Opportunity Scholarship Program, it has worked well. But again and again, as currently in Florida, an inferior tax credit program seems the only political option. Tax credits are an indirect, and I believe less efficient, way to do what vouchers do more directly. But they do promote the basic objective, of expanding parental choice and thereby introducing more competition into the educational industry. As a result, I have reluctantly supported tax credit programs in a number of states.

Let me just repeat, the tax system is being used for social purposes with both vouchers and tax credits.

**I think we may take it as given that he means “not currently feasible in Florida.” Any attmept to attribute to Milton Friedman the view that vouchers were “not feasible” in general would be absurd in light of his continuing active support for voucher efforts right up to the end of his life.

Milton was always completely open about his opinions, even to a fault. If he was thinking about whether to change his mind about something, but wasn’t yet sure whether to change his position, he would say so – and this would sometimes drive people to claim he had in fact changed his position.

We see that openness in this letter. He admits that his support for tax credits is only as a second-best option and even says the he supports them “reluctantly.” But if you knew Milton even a little bit – and I was only privileged to know him a little bit before he died – you know that he wouldn’t say he supported them at all unless he really supported them. The emphasis here is on the support, not the reluctance; the reluctance only comes in because (as the opening sentence makes clear) he’s addressing an audience that shares his concerns about tax credits.

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Posted by Greg Forster

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