Thursday, February 01, 2007

Study Proves Vouchers would save Millions

I took the title of this post from an email press release I recieved.

The study was funded by The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy and the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, (founded by Nobel laureate in economics, Dr. Milton Friedman) and Parents for Choice in Education (PCE). It would be like Hostess funding a study that says Twinkees cure baldness. Or the Holladay 29th Young Single Adult Ward funding a study saying that being Mormon and Single is a great way to reduce stress. Or Dave Checketts funding a study that says if you build it, they will come.

OK, on to my favorite line in the story:

"The detailed analysis completed by Dr. Susan Aud, senior researcher, and professor teaching Quantitative Methods in Political Science Research at the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University shows that a statewide choice program won't hurt schools financially. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

“Local schools would receive more money to educate fewer students—bottom line" said, ________________ of The Josiah Bartlett Center.


Unfortunately, ________________ was not able to verify his comment.

The study pointed out that schools get "$6,325 in revenue per student, including $3,508 from the state, $2,220 from local sources, and $597 from federal sources....Because not all school revenue varies with enrollment levels, local Utah school districts would retain about $2,674 in revenue for each student who left with a voucher — a financial windfall that would total about $26 million per year." Somehow, I think more of that "per student" funding goes away when the student disappears.

Furthermore, it costs the same to heat a school building whether it has 700 or 714 students. Light bills will not significantly decrease if the school has 1540 students versus 1509. Principals to run the schools, nor the janitors to clean things up, are going to get paid less.

I'm still waiting for the math to add up on vouchers. Please, someone enlighten me.

-Bob

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

An excellent point, and one I was going to blog about, but no need to now. Just about all non-medical research is inherently biased because they are funded by special interest groups. Hence everything that comes out of policy-making think tanks is skewed. To use your own analogy, to expect them to be unbiased is about as likely as Hostess releasing a study that said Twinkies are bad for you. This, by the way, goes for both liberal and conservative causes.