School funding: Who are the customers?
As of August 1, North Dakota no longer requires a license to carry a firearm, openly or concealed.
By now, this kind of thing is old news. The question is no longer 'Why wouldn't a state require a license to carry a gun?', but rather 'Why would a state require a license to carry a gun?' Or more precisely, 'What would give a state the idea that it could require a license to carry a gun?'
If you could go back 20 or 30 years to do some man-in-the-street interviews, how many people do you think would have predicted that by 2023, more than half of the states would operate this way?
As usual, the political change had to be preceded by a cultural change, a shift in perception. People had to stop looking at carrying a gun for self-defense as a privilege, and start viewing it as a right.
I just mention this because lately I've been having discussions with people who think of themselves as 'libertarian', but who balk at the idea that people would ever accept the following simple idea:
In the context of school funding, parents and students are not customers, as proponents of school choice programs like to proclaim. They are beneficiaries.
The distinction is crucial.
We collect taxes to pay for education because taxpayers are trying to purchase something that they need: A citizenry that can do things like read and understand a proposed statute or regulation; tell the difference between an insurance program and a Ponzi scheme; understand the difference, in a policy discussion, between millions and billions and trillions of dollars; recognize when an insidious proposal is being rationalized with a specious argument; and so on.
I’m not making this up. It’s right there in Article 83 of the state constitution, which says educated citizens are ‘essential to the preservation of a free government’ — in exactly the same way that Amendment 2 of the federal constitution says that armed citizens are ‘necessary to the security of a free state’.
Being educated, like being armed, isn’t an entitlement. It’s a responsibility.
Parents and children may benefit from this purchase, but it's the taxpayers who are making the purchase, for the reason cited above. As Confucius noted, the first step towards wisdom is to call things by their right names, and calling parents the customers in any school funding situation leads us 180 degrees away from wisdom.
A simple example can help illustrate the difference between customers and beneficiaries. Suppose I want my granddaughter to have the freedom to explore the area where she lives. She's not old enough to drive, so I'm going to buy her a bike. In this purchase, I'm the customer. She's the beneficiary. This purchase is about something that I want.
Which means that ultimately, I'm the one who is going to decide which bike gets purchased, and how much gets paid for it. I have a specific end in mind, and a specific plan for achieving that end.
In this situation, there are some things I'm not going to say to her:
Go pick out any bike you want, and I'll pay for it.
Here’s some money. I hope you’ll buy a bike with it.
Here’s a gift certificate that will be accepted by some nearby bike shops. Go buy a bike from one of them. If anything is left over, you can keep it, or spend it on something else at the shop.
Go pick out something you want, whether it's a bike or not, and I'll pay for it, up to a certain amount.
Each of them is analogous to some model of school choice as implemented in some state.
Now, she may have preferences, and I would encourage her to express those, and present her reasons for them. But ultimately, I'm the one making the decisions.
I (the customer) am buying something for her (the beneficiary) because I think it's important for her to have it.
Also, here's one thing I'm definitely not going to say:
Go pick out a bike, and I'll force other people to pay for it.
Note that as soon as we start thinking of parents as beneficiaries, and taxpayers as customers, a few things become obvious.
First, as beneficiaries, parents who can already afford to educate their children shouldn't be subsidized by people who can barely afford food, heat, and other essentials.
Second, as beneficiaries, parents don't get to call the shots about how the customers choose to spend their money. They can express their preferences, and argue for them, but ultimately, this purchase is being made by the taxpayers, for the taxpayers, for the benefit of the parents who can't afford to make the purchase on their own.
Third, the customers need to get what they’re paying for, which is not ‘what parents think is best for their kids’, but an educated citizenry, however they choose to define that. And if they don’t get what they paid for, then their money should be refunded — as it would be if they were purchasing other kinds of services.
Until we get this much straight — that taxpayers are the customers, and parents are the beneficiaries — nothing good or useful or sensible is going to happen with school funding, regardless of what kind of ‘school choice’ may get thrown into the mix.
In 20 or 30 years, will people look back at the idea that ‘parents are the customers’ when spending tax money taken by force from other people, the way they now look at the idea that you should have to beg permission from the state to be able to defend your own life? As a kind of temporary political insanity?
One thing is for sure. It won’t happen unless we start having that conversation now.