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In Steve Chapman's August 29 editorial, "A judge's tunnel vision on school vouchers," he claims that Cleveland's voucher program, which provides a grant of up to $2,250 for low-income students to attend private schools, actually saves the local taxpayers money since the average per-pupil spending in the Cleveland public schools is $7,969. Chapman follows the logic that the Cleveland schools end up saving $7,969 in expenses for a cost of only $2,250, a net savings of $5,719 per student. Unfortunately, Mr. Chapman makes two serious errors in making this claim. First, he confuses the concept of "average spending" and "marginal spending." "Average spending" the simply the total amount of spending done in the school district divided by the number of students, the $7,969 figure quoted by Mr. Chapman. "Marginal spending" is the amount of additional spending required to educate one more student. Since existing schools can usually accommodate a few extra students at very little extra cost, the marginal cost per student is much lower than the average cost per student. When estimating savings from students entering private schools, one must consider the marginal savings from these students leaving the public school system rather than the average cost per student in the district. Therefore, the savings to the Cleveland taxpayers for each student accepting the vouchers is likely to be much smaller than advertised. Second, Mr. Chapman's claim assumes that all of the students receiving the grant will otherwise attend public schools. If the students would have attended private schools even without the vouchers, then the voucher is simply a net cost to the taxpayer since the savings in public school costs would have been realized with or without the voucher program. While vouchers may provide significant benefits to certain students and
have the potential to promote improvement in public schools through
increased competition, it is unlikely that they will lead to lower
taxpayer spending on education.
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