Something New Under the School-Choice Sun

Harry Brighouse at Crooked Timber is enthusiastic about something that appears to be that rarest of rarities, a new idea in the education funding debate: instead of giving the best students money to move to different schools, let schools bid for the best students.

Betts suggests this: first fund the schools equally on a per-student basis. Then distribute trade-able rights to admit highly advantaged students; and allow schools to auction those rights. Schools would then be forced to figure out how much they valued the money they were spending relative to the highly advantaged children they wanted. We don't know what the outcome would be. At one end of the spectrum you'd have schools with high concentrations of advantage and not much money; at the other end of the spectrum high concentrations of disadvantage and loads of money. It would probably take a few years for administrators to work out what the real costs of disadvantaged children were; but they would have a powerful incentive to work it out.

I'm not sold on this, but you probably knew that. Still, it's nice to hear something that hasn't been proposed a million times before.

I should also note that there's probably a vague analogy to be made between this plan and the issue of "merit aid" in higher education, where schools will offer their top applicants exceptionally generous financial aid packages in an attempt to lure them away from more prestigious institutions that don't offer as much money. This is often derided as "buying students," but it does work-- Kate went to Northeastern because they offered her a full scholarship, turning down less generous offers from better-known schools.

It's not a perfect analogy, because the funding isn't equal across all schools, and because not all schools play the "merit aid" game, but it's probably something to look at in thinking about the proposal.

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