A whitepaper was published earlier this year by five researchers from five universities called “A Framework for Evaluating and Reforming School Vouchers.” It’s fair to ask critical questions about recent private-school choice bills. But this paper misses the point of the current moment in school choice, and of education broadly.
Baker et al. also selectively present high tuition rates as their hypotheticals, implying a rate of inefficiency that may not exist. They write, “Assume a private school operating cost per pupil is $20,000” and then lay out an argument by which the schools simply absorb more profit rather than providing access to new families when public subsidies become available. While Fontana and Jennings’s 2024 paper does suggest that Iowa private schools are raising tuition in response to the state’s ESA program, average tuition remained under $7,000. Catholic elementary schools, one of the largest providers of private education across the country, have an average annual tuition of less than $5,000. Stewardship of public funds is important, and government programs should ensure appropriate use of those funds. But to purposefully paint the private-school sector as operating at tuition levels closer to those associated with expensive prep schools is to willfully ignore the true private-school landscape and thus mischaracterize any potential inefficiencies.