Private Rights and Public Responsibilities: the Case of Private School Vouchers

We Must All Support Our Public Institutions and Programs

 

It is a basic principle of our democratic political system that we are all responsible to provide financial support through our taxes for our public institutions and their programs.  This responsibility does not depend on the policies of those institutions. If my government pursues policies that I disagree with (and it often does), I still have to pay my taxes.  This is important because, our government cannot survive if we do not support it financially, and if it does not survive, we will all lose the benefits of living in a healthy, prosperous country.

Why must I support government programs from which I do not benefit directly? Why cannot I instead use my money for my own benefit? The answer is that we all benefit from having strong, healthy public institutions and programs. A healthy, free-enterprise economy can function only within a context provided by effective public institutions and programs. For example:

• Our courts make possible the rule of law without which commercial contracts would be unenforceable.
• Our state and local governments provide safe streets and roads that are well-designed and well maintained.  Without them, workers could not go to work, and products could not go to market.
• Our schools provide an educated work force that sustains a strong, modern economy.

Thus, we all benefit from the system itself. The benefits of being American come not from the word “American” but from our strong, effective, public institutions.

We Must Support Programs from Which We do not Benefit Directly

 

My responsibility to support the institutions and programs of my national, state and local governments includes supporting programs from which I do not benefit directly. For example:

• I am not a dairy farmer, and in fact, I would benefit from lower prices for milk, but I cannot refuse to pay my share of my government’s support for milk prices.

• My children did not attend the University of Wisconsin, but I must still pay my share of the cost of our state university.

Sometimes, the benefits I receive from a particular public program are indirect as may be seen in the case of the price supports for milk. Those supports are costly for me because they force me to pay more for milk than I would without price supports. However, the health of the dairy industry helps to sustain a healthy economy in the state of Wisconsin, where I live, and I benefit from the health of my state’s economy in many ways. 

We Must Support Our Public Schools Even if We Send Our Children to Private Schools

 

The issue of support for our public institutions has recently become important in the controversy over private school vouchers. Our state gives money to private schools to pay for the tuition of students who attend those schools. The argument for doing this phrased as an issue of individual freedom: parents should be free to send their children to private schools if that is what they wish to do.

In itself, this argument seems strong. No one argues that parents should not have this freedom, but that is not and never has been the issue. The issue is whether a parent’s choice to send his/her children to a private school should allow him/her to avoid his/her responsibility to support our public schools.

Historically, our answer to that question has always been, “No.” We have always agreed that parents are free to send their children to private schools, but we have never subsidized that choice by diverting a part of their taxes to pay their students’ tuition. We have insisted that every citizen must support our public schools because supporting them is a basic responsibility of citizenship.

We cannot abandon that principle because if we do, we will be accepting the idea that citizens are free to refuse to support institutions that do not benefit them directly, and if we do that, we will weaken and ultimately destroy our political system and our society.  If we say that American taxpayers are required to support only those institutions and programs that they approve of or that they benefit from, we will nullify the power of our representatives to set the priorities of our governments. We will weaken our public institutions to the point where they will become unable to provide the programs and services that undergird the prosperity on which we all depend, and we will all suffer the consequences. We must uphold the principle that all of us must support our public institutions and programs whether or not we benefit directly from them.

This is especially true of our public schools. They are among our most important institutions, and the health of our economy and society depends on the health of our public schools. Private schools will never educate more than a small fraction of our country’s children, and we do not want the majority of our children to be educated in schools with teachers or facilities that are inferior because we have failed to fund the schools adequately. 

How do vouchers damage our public schools? First, many of the facilities of a school are used by all or most of the students, and such facilities can be provided only if the number of students is large enough to support them.  Such facilities include laboratories and libraries as well as arts and athletics programs and facilities. Moreover, schools compete for a limited number of excellent, experienced teachers. If we want to have first rate math or music teachers, we have to pay them adequately. 

In short, if we want to have first rate public schools, we have to be prepared to pay for them, and we cannot divert the funds intended for their support to private school vouchers. Parents who wish to send their children to private schools will always be free to do so, but we must not destroy our public schools to subsidize their choice.