Aug 26 2009, 2:53PM
Do Private Schools Serve The Public Interest?
Felix Salmon and Matt Yglesias are both upset that all private schools are considered charities for tax purposes. And rightly so. Not only is it questionable whether some of them contribute to the public good, they might (as Matt says) actually detract from it by drawing "parents with resources and social capital out of the public school system and contributing to its neglect."
The one thing I would add is this: If you agree with the Yglesias/Salmon logic (as I do), there is no reason to halt that logic at the doors of the private schoolhouse. There is, for example, my favorite hobby horse: The tax deduction governing charitable contributions, which can be claimed for donations to a ludicrously broad variety of organizations. I've said this before, but the relevant portion of the tax code let's you claim it for donating to a...
corporation, trust, or community chest, fund, or foundation [...] organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition (but only if no part of its activities involve the provision of athletic facilities or equipment), or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals.
Which, to understate matter, covers a lot of organizations -- international amateur sports leagues? -- of questionable public value. (Now if only there were some powerful elected official interested in changing the rules governing charitable deductions...)
Anyway, the big questions here are "what is the public interest?" and "who gets to define it?" -- and they are both fairly intractable questions. What can be said? I'm of the opinion that a narrower definition would be a better expression of the public interest than the law that is currently on the books, and I think most people, when confronted with the current law, would agree. Or at least I hope so.
(Photo: Flickr User woodleywonderworks)
I guess the "public interest" is the continued pissing away of extravagant sums on our failed public school system.
All the liberals love to trot out the "we spend far more on health care than other developed nations and get little, if any more out of it" meme when it comes to Obamacare.
Yet the US pisses away far, far more on our public schools than any other developed nation and gets just about the worst results. The answer from liberals is always the same: PISS AWAY MORE!
At least those private schools actually manage to teach the kids something. My idea of "public interest" is actually accomplishing something.
on balance -- even accounting for the tax loss associated with donations to private schools -- private schools SAVE the public school system an enormous amount of money --
the kids who go to private schools dont cost the public system anything, yet their parent still pay into the system that funds the public system.
Is this really a system we want to discourage? It seems far more idealogical and rational.
Why? You certainly don't have science on your side.
The empirical evidence overwhelmingly shows that vouchers make nearby public schools better, with very small number of studies showing that, at worst, they have no impact. And while vouchers tend to save the public schools money (since the vouchers are less than per pupil spending), people using their own money entirely saves the school system even more.
Private schools save school systems money and make the surrounding schools better. Denying this is a clear case of ignoring overwhelming scientific evidence.
I'm of the opinion that a narrower definition would be a better expression of the public interest than the law that is currently on the books
I'm of the opinion that the best expression of public interest is expressed by the public expressing itself, instead of having legal limits on their expression imposed by Matty, Sparky and other like minded kids.
I think they are missing two big issue here, though. First, the number of people who give large charitable contributions to their private school alma mater is much much less than the people who went to the school. Tuition is not considered a "charitable donation" and so while my parents were paying $40k a year to send my brother and I to a private high school in Connecticut, they were still paying taxes to our home town that went to fund the public schools there. The argument that private schools are not only taking good students out of the public school system but then denying public schools funding because of tax rebates is strained at best, and fallacious in most circumstances. The public school system gets the same tax money it would if these parents sent their kids to public school.
Second, many private schools give superior educations to their students than their public school counterparts could, and so isn't it a good thing that there are institutions that provide great educations to smart children? Many of these schools give large amounts of financial aid (so they're not just educating the rich) and these students become the thinkers and inventors and economy drivers of the next generation. I'd say that's the goal of education, public and private, and so it's kind of silly to sit around and criticize private schools while we reap the benefits provided by the students they produced.