Rethinking the Welfare State: The prospects for ... - e-Library

Primary and secondary education 157
incremental and pluralist nature of our system. […] It occurs slowly,
continuously taking advantage of the inattention and the inability of
opposing groups to maintain constant counter-pressure. […] I share the
view that it is duplicitous and fundamentally perverse for a democratic
process to enact a policy with the rationale of helping a population in
need, but ending with a policy that in all likelihood will do the opposite. 132
A practical concern that favours targeted vouchers is that of capacity Because of the
significant start-up time required to establish a new school or to significantly expand
existing schools, current capacity at private schools is unlikely to meet the enormous new
demand that a universal voucher would be likely to bring to such schools. 133 Of course,
under full implementation of a voucher scheme all public schools would be transformed
into quasi-private institutions, so system-wide capacity would not necessarily be
deficient. It is not unreasonable to expect, however, that many parents exercising choice
would prefer to send their children to private schools once this option become more
affordable. This practical concern with capacity, however, need not be determinative.
There are two alternatives one could use to implement a universal voucher to address this
problem. First and most simply, it may be that not every child would be able to attend the
first school of her choice—inevitably some students would be forced to attend a school
that was previously part of the public system. 134 Second, the voucher system could be
introduced in stages, with incremental expansion each year in the proportion of students
granted vouchers.
Despite the arguments that favour targeted school vouchers, there exist several strong
arguments for universality. One is that distributive justice concerns are already addressed
through the progressive tax system that exists in most industrialized democracies. It is
foreseeable that by forcing the well-off to pay tuition for primary and secondary
education, vouchers would become stigmatized as an instrument for the poor (such as
with food stamps). Because of the progressive nature of the taxation system, the well-off
indirectly currently pay more into the education system than they receive and the less
advantaged receive more than they pay. Consequently, we may not need to emphasize
further redistribution through targeted vouchers. To the extent that more redistribution is
favoured to increase equality, this is a goal that can be met through greater net tax
transfers from the well-off to the worse-off and does not need to be dealt with through the
deprivation of school vouchers to the well-off.
The second and stronger argument in favour of universality of vouchers is that it
creates a collective interest in maintaining the quality of voucher-assisted education by
ensuring that the value of the voucher is not degraded over time. With some families in
the voucher system and others not, effective political voice in favour of the protection of
the system may be attenuated and the values of equality of opportunity and equal
citizenship may be compromised through a tiered educational system. “It is better to have
the sharp elbows of the middle class on the inside pushing out than to have them on the
outside pushing in.” 135 However, it may well be the case that we need not fear the
diminution of voucher values over time with a targeted program through the loss of the
voice of articulate and politically salient citizens. It may be that powerful political forces
will lobby for expansion of the program to include the wealthy, not for the diminution of
the existing benefits of the program (to the manifest detriment of targeted