Vouchers and Government Control

would government leave schools alone?

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.