A reader emails this question:
How do you deal with the likelihood that the system would evolve into federal regulation of those schools?
In the United States, the government has the power to compel parents to send their children to government-provided schools. But parents who are wealthy enough have the ability to opt out by sending their children to private schools.
The libertarian approach would be to have the government not be in the business of providing schools. It would not tell parents what to do with their children. It would be to trust parents to do what is best for their children, and it would trust the market to provide educational (and day care) services that parents deem to be cost-effective.
The compassionate libertarian approach would be for the government to provide low-income families with enough money to afford high-quality services for their children.
But many people believe that government has a compelling interest in telling parents what schools may or may not do. That is, they want some of us, working through legislators, to dictate this to the rest of us.
Think of this in relation to the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
The power to control schools is arguably more important than the power to control religion. So I would say that it is in the spirit of the First Amendment to allow private schools to have considerable freedom from federal government regulation.
The First Amendment does not preclude the federal government from having any laws or regulations that affect religious groups. But it does create a presumption against the federal government interfering with the free exercise of religion.
Interestingly, the First Amendment does not apply to states. In theory, the state of Maryland could establish Catholicism as the official religion here without violating the U.S. Constitution. In practice, what I am calling “the spirit of the First Amendment” prevents this from happening.
In a libertarian world, the spirit of the First Amendment would lead to the abolition of government schools at the state and local level. It would also lead to minimal interference in how schools operate.
If the resources that the government provides low-income families for educational purposes are in the form of vouchers, then the government is likely to claim a right to regulate the choices that low-income families make. It would be better to provide the resources in the form of a Universal Basic Income, without any strings attached about how people use it.
But our political culture is much too paternalistic for that.
To be sure, political culture is” paternalistic” at times, perhaps more so in inherently in education politics. “Paternalism” has been defined as “the interference of a state or an individual with another person, against their will, and defended or motivated by a claim that the person interfered with will be better off or protected from harm.” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paternalism/ ) Why the paters get tagged with the label is beyond me: in education, it seems like “maternalism” would fit general patterns of gender bias in favor of interference more accurately But, nevertheless, it is political, first and foremost, and policy is only part of the picture, politicians also want to maximize office holding and votes as well. And if history teaches us anything, it is that the patron – client relationship is at the heart of policy trade-offs.
The reality of these trade-offs can best be illustrated by following the money. For the federal Department of Education a good place to get a start in understanding the resource flows and implications is to simply scroll through Table 26-1 “Federal Budget by Agency and Account” at https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/26-1_fy2025.pdf The Department of Education begins on page 111 and ends on page 121. Scrolling through the accounts gives one a good sense of how numerous are the clients and an idea of the enormous sums being controlled. Looking at page 121, we see the total proposed Department of Education budget authority is $278,488 million (yes, the op of the page says figures in millions) for FY2025. Does anyone seriously think that either the politicians gaining votes, campaign contributions, and patronage opportunities in return for dispensing that largesse or the recipients are simply going to roll over and give up such an arrangement because it would be what is best for the children, schools and the country? Contracts and grants are the mother’s milk of clientelism and it takes a Javier Milei to start the weaning process.
But lets say we want to play the good incremental conservative ground game. Wouldn’t the reasonable, intelligent, insider well-versed in the ways of Washington, work through the system to achieve better programmatic outcomes?
Well once upon a time, somebody got the brilliant idea that parental involvement in education might be constructive. So we find in Title 20 of the United States Code (If you want to have nightmares just go to https://uscode.house.gov/browse/prelim@title20&edition=prelim and click around the menagerie of horrors authorized therein) a subpart E “Family Engagement in Education Programs” in Subchapter IV “21st Century Schools” in Chapter 70 “Strengthening and Improvement of Elementary and Secondary Schools,” section 7274 of which, surprise, surprise, authorizes grants for “Statewide Family Engagement Centers” (https://uscode.house.gov/browse/prelim@title20/chapter70/subchapter4&edition=prelim )
And that these “Statewide Family Engagement Centers show up in the Department of Education budget justification document (https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget25/summary/25summary.pdf ) with a request for $20 million to fund the program, which “provides funding to statewide organizations to establish statewide centers that promote parent and family engagement in education and provide comprehensive training and technical assistance to SEAs, LEAs, schools, and organizations that support partnerships between families and schools. The Request would support continuation awards for approximately 20 centers that, by engaging parents and fostering partnerships between families and schools, particularly schools with concentrations of disadvantaged students, can help lay the groundwork for susained school improvement.”
It’s just $20 million, we are told. There are about 1,000 such programs, worth a total of
$500 billion or more per year and that number will only continue to grow. No policy reform, no matter how popular, will ever see the light of day unless it benefits a patron-client relationship. If you ask me, all of the policy talk and notions of paternalism are just red herrings that only distract from the foundational problems that must be addressed if we are not going to go the way of Argentina and others. It takes a Milei to raise a child right.
Let me offer two conjectures about impacts of political and fiscal 'path dependence' on any local or Federal UBI in the USA.
1) Local path dependence:
Half of school funding comes from local property taxes. The bulk of local government expenditures are for schools. Local property owners won't support a UBI because propertyless families will predictably spend much of their UBI on things they value more than school. A UBI, willy nilly, would reduce aggregate school expenditures (perhaps a negative externality for homeowners with children). In terms of political psychology, given path dependence, local property owners are willing to subsidize school for children of propertyless families, but not other family expenditures.
2) Federal path dependence:
In all likelihood, notwithstanding the intentions of theorists, a Universal Basic Income would be an addendum to — not a substitute for — extant government subsidies (welfare for food and shelter, healthcare; education; retirement). A UBI would backfire by increasing big government without really tackling the education establishment.
I don't have strong intuitions about path dependence at the State level.