School choice supporters marked the 103rd birthday of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman Friday, celebrating the legacy of the “the father of school choice.” I took the opportunity to interview David Friedman, one of Milton’s two children, who is an economist and law professor at Santa Clara University.
David said his father would have been impressed with the progress being made on school choice. “There are now partial voucher programs in many states, and, while I don’t know the details, I believe the new Nevada program is pretty close to a full voucher,” David told the Washington Examiner. “I think the foundation my parents established has been one of the important influences, as has my father’s writing.” Milton and Rose Friedman founded the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice in 1996.
Nevada created educational savings accounts earlier this year, which are similar to school vouchers but allow for even more flexibility. Using the accounts, families can spend their tax dollars on private school or university tuition, textbooks, tutoring, transportation and other educational needs. More than 90 percent of Nevada students will be eligible for the accounts. The program “set the standard of Milton’s vision of school choice,” a spokeswoman from the Friedman Foundation told the Examiner.
David also spoke about what the perfect form of school choice would look like. “I think the ideal version is one in which any child can get a voucher for the average amount spent in the public schools, creating direct competition between private and governmental schools. Any voucher system is going to have some government involvement in determining what counts as a school. My own view is that the least damaging form for that is some outcome measure, such as performance on standardized tests, where a school qualifies to accept vouchers if it does as well as (say) the 30th percentile of public schools.”
There is some concern that voucher programs will raise the cost of tuition at K-12 private schools until the system is similar to the university system and schools use money to buy amenities instead of improving education. David countered those concerns, saying, “The real question is what parents want. If parents care more about status symbols than education, some of the money will go to status symbols — polished marble buildings and the like. But I suspect most parents will care more about what sort of education their children get.”
David predicts that vouchers may cause tuition to rise at some elite private schools, but that new private schools would open and be more affordable. “Vouchers might raise the cost of tuition at elite private schools, which have some degree of market power due to their reputation,” he said. “But although a lot of people think of private schools in those terms, they are a small part of the market. If anything, I would expect a voucher system, by creating a large market for private schools at about the expenditure level of the public schools, to lower costs due to economies of scale, specialized firms producing inputs to such schools, and the like.”
Milton Friedman passed away in 2006 at the age of 94.
