Want to Improve Diversity at Grace Church School? Vouchers Would Help.

29% of students at Grace Church School are on some form of financial aid. 33% are from “diverse cultural backgrounds.” 71% of students at Grace are from the top 5% of income earners and 67% are white, a group that comprises only one third of New York City.

I think calling this a “diversity crisis” is slightly hyperbolic, since Grace is more diverse than the average independent school and spends hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to bring in culturally and socioeconomically diverse students. However, these numbers are concerning; they mean that most of the people in our great city are shut-off from ever attending our great school.

To allay my concerns I decided to interview Mr. Davison. A meeting was arranged and I asked him about the above figures. He repeated my concerns, lamented the lack of “accessibility” for most families, and expressed his desire to make Grace accessible to all socioeconomic brackets. He explained that while the school may wish to “one day be accessible on a need blind basis,” the money simply isn’t there. While top-tier universities can afford to give many of their students a reduced burden or a free ride, only a single independent school in the nation operates on a need-blind basis.

Is there some solution to this issue, a way to make GCS more inclusive and representative without totally bankrupting the school? Mr. Davison gave me an unexpected answer: vouchers.

Before I dive into this controversial subject (especially here in New York), let me explain the basics of a voucher system. First proposed by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman in 1955, vouchers attempt to empower parents to direct their child’s education.

Every state in the union spends a certain amount per student on education. Some states spend as little as $8,000, while New York spends $20,000 dollars per student per year (and nets mediocre results in return). Public schools are funded by government money collected via taxes and parents have little choice over what school their child is enrolled in, unless they can afford to enroll in an independent school. In the voucher system, instead of creating and funding public schools, the state would direct funds to an educational institution of the parents’ choosing, including private schools and parochial schools. This would subsidize the cost of a private education for low-income families.

So what would vouchers mean for the Grace Community? More diversity! Currently, when the school offers a student aid to pay for their education, the full $44,000 dollar price tag comes out of the school’s budget. With a voucher system, $20,000 dollars would come from the school, effectively doubling the number of students on scholarships.

Instead of 29% of students coming from 95% of society, 58% of students could come from diverse financial backgrounds.This number might be even higher than 58% because $24,000 per year is affordable to many more middle- and upper-middle-class families than $44,000. And since race and class are often correlated in New York (though as Mr. Davison pointed out there are many rich people of color without aid and poor whites with aid at Grace Church School) an increase in students from diverse financial backgrounds would increase the number of students from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds as well.

However, there are several limitations that need to be placed on a voucher system in order to ensure fairness and equality.

Mr. Davison stressed the “multitude” of variations of vouchers that exist. He brought up the fact that charter schools themselves (which operate in New York and have met with success) are a form of a voucher system, just one step removed, and that different states have different requirements for school vouchers.

Mr. Davison also stressed the need for an income limit to prevent voucher money ending up in the hands of wealthy people who don’t need it (I personally prefer a sliding scale, which is slightly different but has a similar effect). Additionally, he favored vouchers in the form of [redeemable] tax credits, refunding the money low-income parents spend on education, instead of direct vouchers. At first I was skeptical of tax credits, until Mr, Davison mentioned the fact that the City still owes school money dating back to 2009 and that a tax credit would reduce the cost and bureaucracy of the system. I would also like to stress the importance of minimum standards for voucher schools, ensuring that money is not wasted on programs with unsatisfactory educational outcomes. With these three minor adjustments, I’m confident in the success of a voucher program for New York City.

With vouchers, families who are underserved by the state or the city (with failing public schools) could afford to send their kids to private or parochial schools with better educational outcomes. Despite good intentions and idealistic visions about the nature of public schooling, the fact remains that schools in poor neighborhoods are outperformed by those in rich ones. This even includes schools within the same school district. Low income families lack the means to relocate to a better school district, entrenching poverty and increasing inequality. The lack of a proper primary education is linked to far lower lifetime earnings and bars students from the possibility of going to college. Affirmative action cannot undo the fact that a disproportionate number of black and hispanic students are ineligible for higher education due to the inadequate state of public schools in their neighborhoods. Vouchers would give parents, especially those in poor communities and communities of color the opportunity to possibly secure a better education for their children and a more equitable chance of reaching higher education. And, yes, it will allow for more diversity at Grace Church School.

A recent study from Louisiana (which recently enacted a voucher system similar to the one described above) found that school vouchers were able to radically reduce racial and socioeconomic inequality within the deeply divided state and “analysis indicates that the vast majority (82%) of LSP transfers have reduced racial stratification in the voucher students’ former public schools.”

Vouchers (or an income-based, sliding-scale system of refundable educational tax credits) offer huge opportunities for a city as socially and economically divided as New York. They would allow independent schools such as Grace to continue pursuing increased diversity. Private schools would shift from mostly white and mostly wealthy to a more balanced and representative demographic composition. And vouchers would give working- and lower-middle-class parents the chance to escape schools that have failed their communities and break the cycle of poverty that has gripped large parts of our city.

These are goals that any self-described progressive, who seeks the betterment of society and the easing of social ills and inequality, could embrace.