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

Notes 255
147 In the Alberta charter school context, another problem has arisen in this regard. The Alberta
legislation was designed under the assumption that there would be cooperation between local
school boards and charter schools. Consequently, the legislation called on local school
boards to grant and renew charters. However, school boards have felt threatened by charter
schools and the Minister of Education in Alberta has had to step in to grant and renew
charters to all but one of the charter schools in the province. See Bosetti et al., supra note 53,
pp. 170, 113.
148 See United States Charter Schools, supra note 49. For another solution, consider David
M.Beatty, The Ultimate Rule of Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 177–
81. Beatty advocates a “proportional funding” approach, based on the Hungarian model. The
Hungarian constitutional courts have ruled that “the state must fund private schools ‘in
proportion to their undertaking the state’s programmes’.” This avoids forcing religious
citizens to subsidize public education they disdain, while supporting the goals of the state in
religious schools to the precise extent that state curricula is taught. Beatty further suggests,
following India’s Supreme Court, that the state may also regulate the quality of education in
religious schools and takes reasonable steps to prevent intolerance and bigotry. Such a
system would preserve fundamental state interests, while avoiding the differential treatment
of secular and religious communities—a “rule which calls on the church and state to cooperate
where their interests overlap.”
149 See Greene, in Hepburn, supra note 2, p. 137.
150 For example, the loss of a valuable school year to pupils, additional stress, disruption of
lifestyle, and dislocation from one’s peers and social group.
151 In Milwaukee, this sort of school failure actually took place, causing the students of the
Juanita Virgil Academy to lose a year’s education. Ernest L.Boyer, School Choice
(Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation, 1992), p. 67.
152 Jerome J.Hanus and Peter W.Cookson, Choosing Schools—Vouchers and American
Education (Washington, DC: American University Press, 1996), p. 160.
153 See Greene et al., “Lesson from the Cleveland scholarship programme,” in P.E. Peterson
and B.C.Hassel (eds) Learning from School Choice (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution,
1998), pp. 357–92.
154 To the extent that students’ learning is monitored, it will be advantageous to have gifted
children in attendance and to treat them as ordinary students. Thus, the moral hazard
problem involved here is not that schools will not want gifted students, but that they will not
provide specialized programs that would benefit the gifted.
155 Guido Calabresi and Philip Bobbitt, Tragic Choices (New York: W.W.Norton, 1978).
156 This arrangement would have the added benefit of ensuring that schools do not explicitly
cream-skim or engage in any overt forms of discrimination. There would not be any “fall
back” reasons, for instance, to explain covert racially or ethnically discriminating policies.
This mandatory pooling arrangement is what predominates in most charter schools. For an
example, see Bosetti et al., supra note 53, p. 10.
157 Bradford, David F., and Daniel Shaviro, “The economics of vouchers,” in C.Eugene
Steuerle, Van Doorn Ooms, George Peterson and Robert D.Reischauer (eds) Vouchers and
the Provision of Public Services (Washinton, DC: Brookings Institution Press, CED, Urban
Institute Press, 2000), p. 86.
158 Ibid., p. 53. As an illustration of this idea they suggest that donors, students and faculty of a
for-profit university would be suspicious that decisions might not be made to maximize the
quality of teaching or research, but instead to maximize payments to the shareholders. This
fear may not disappear, but would at least diminish if the university were a non-profit
institution.
159 Fly-by-night schools seeking to maximize profit in the short-run are more likely with
extremely lenient government ex ante accreditation. The greater the barriers to entry to
opening a school, the less likely such perverse behaviour by for-profit schools will be. There