Typical libertarian clap-trap. Wanting all the benefits of society without having to contribute to it. And yes, the justification for the public funding of armies and roads can be exactly the same as that for public education: the furtherance of that society’s goals and the protection of its continued existence. A society that fails to educate its children isn’t long for this world, and a publically funded educational system is the most efficient and most equitable system of doing so. Is it perfect? Oh, fuck no. I’ve spent 60 years in the public schools, boy and man. I’ve seen it from both sides, from poor districts in bankrupt cities to top-flight districts in suburbia. I have yet to see a private school do near as good a job of educating students without costing twice as much and being four times more exclusive.
I’d totally send my kid to a school run by Gerard Way.
Which works great, if you get to control the success criteria. In this case you’ve set them broad enough that everything deserves public funding. There would be no meaningful limit if that were the criteria employed which you may be supportive of but I on the other hand would not be.
Not society’s children, but individuals, the children of whomever parent(s) they have.
This assumes that without publically funded education society and individual parents would fail to educate children. That’s a large assumption and not supportable. It also assumes that publically funded education is the most efficient which if true, those parents that choose non-public education are somehow making a worse choice for their children, that the government knows better than the individual parent. Is that what you’re saying?
I should define acronyms, sorry. Education Management Organization. But to your post, yes.
A society’s goal is (or should be) to educate all of that society’s children, not just the children of a few select individuals. A system that improves the education of 5% of the kids, worsens the education of 25%, and leaves the remainder in the same situation is a society in which the average levels of education are declining, which poses a long-term threat to that society’s survival.
If there were no public schools, yes, there would be a lot of children that did not receive an education, because their parents would not be able to afford to educate them. (Look around the world at countries that don’t have, or until recently didn’t have, readily available free public education systems–primary school enrollment, for example, increased in Malawi by 51 percent in the year after they abolished school fees. You think the Malawian parents who didn’t send their kids in the school in the previous year were people who just didn’t want to bother?)
Publicly-funded education is the best and most efficient way to deliver education to society’s children as a whole. For an individual child, there may be better choices–we’re certainly not saying that an individual parent is necessarily making a worse choice. The public goal is to make the best choices for the public at large.
We are talking past each other, I suppose. There are schools that are set up specifically for profit, but you are right, in that they are a small minority. A much larger issue is schools set up as non-profit, but that are managed by a for-profit company. While this may be a legal distinction, it is not a distinction that I care about, as the results are the same, my tax dollars going into the hands of for-profit companies, and not only lowering the quality of education at the public schools that I pay to fund, but also not giving better results.
While I am against vouchers for many reasons, if voucher legislation required private schools taking them to be entirely non-profit, and to not be managed by a for-profit corporation, then one of my objections would be addressed. What do you think the chances of those advocating for vouchers to ensure that they are only taken by these schools that have no profit motive?
But I don’t care about your child, I care about the children in my community. And I do feel that I know what is better for the children in my community than a parent who is only concerned about their own child.
By voting for levies and electing my school board, the community has declared how much it values the education of the children it represents. If you value the education of your child more than that, then you are welcome to spend your own resources to achieve that. You are not welcome to take the resources that we have allocated for the community, and use them for your own personal gain.
And you know what, I am more than happy to pay taxes or give to foundations, so that, should your child need more help than the average student, or your child is exceptional and is not challenged by the public school system, then scholarships and grants will be available to help your child receive a good education.
Yes, without publicly funded education, most parents would be unable to educate their children. I’ve never worked anywhere that would let me bring my kids to work and spend any noticeable time educating them. My income is currently high enough to send someone to school. But back when my kids were young, coughing up after school care was difficult.
Play that out - for the individual child where there is a better choice but they are prevented from doing so due to lack of means, aren’t they getting a worse alternative so that others may benefit? What’s may be a net good for the public at large may be a net negative at an individual level. Look at the early responses in this thread. Many focused on the idea of wanting to not make public schools worse. In the case of those individuals where there is a better choice than public schools, the kids that are prevented from making that choice are sacrificing so that others may be better off. That idea is abhorrent to me.
A tremendous amount of social good involves personal sacrifice in order to make things better for everyone. When you obey traffic laws at the cost of being late for an appointment; when you pay taxes; when you contribute to charity; when you register for the draft; when you vote; in all these cases, you’re sacrificing in orer to increase the net public good.
Is this sort of personal sacrifice to ensure that others are better off always abhorrent to you? If so, you’re well outside the mainstream of American thought.
If not, what is it about this case that makes it different? Is it that the sacrifice is too great? If that’s it, let’s figure out how to lessen the sacrifice. Is it that it’s kids involved? If so, let’s make sure that kids are exempt from paying sales tax and are exempt from being vaccinated and from any other measure that requires them to sacrifice for the public good.
In this, you seem to be thinking that a voucher system would allow a child that lacks the means to afford a good private school would be able to afford a good private school with the voucher. I question your premise on several levels.
First, you do absolutely nothing to address the individual children who would not be able to afford a good private school with the vouchers, leaving them behind i a public school system that you are gutting.
Second, the good private schools can raise their tuitions. Just like any other free market service, if there is higher demand, then there will be higher prices. So, if there are spaces for 2000 students in private schools in a public district of 10000, and suddenly everyone gets a voucher, do you think that the private schools will keep their tuition the same, and accept another 2-3 thousands students? No, they are going to raise their tuitions, and maybe expand their capacity by a few percent while they are at it. People like yourself won’t mind, you are already paying private tuition, so when tuition goes up by the same amount as the voucher, you are no worse off, even though the community in which you live in is.
Third, if you have special needs, or even just a below average kid, you are not going to get into a private school. They have no incentive to take anyone who is not well above average, so unless your kid is above average, vouchers will not help you get out of public school.
Finally, there is nothing stopping you from sending your kid to a private school. Your claim is false that the community is preventing you from making that choice. The community is not responsible for promoting one kid at the expense of others. It is not a sacrifice that one child is treated the same as others when you want that child to get special treatment. What is abhorrent to me is that you want the community to sacrifice so that your kid gets special treatment.
Then why are you still here? Shouldn’t you be a hermit somewhere, living off (other people’s) land?
I have to tell you, right now you look like a very large hypocrite. You want only the things that benefit you and you expect everybody else to pay for them, but you are totally unwilling to pay a cent for anything you don’t personally approve of. Societies don’t work that way. Never have, never will.
This seems to be trying to advance the argument that vouchers are a good thing because they allow the public school system to exist yet give (or theoretically, at least, they might give) families the otherwise inaccessible option of sending their children to a better private school.
The fault with this argument, in my view, is a rather nuanced one, because in point of fact as I may have mentioned, some other countries do have multiple school systems including private schools and some even have voucher systems, and they do just fine. So why oppose a voucher system in the US?
The simple answer: for the same reason that other countries have two-tier public/private health care systems, and Canada does not. Germany has often been said to have a US-like health insurance system, in that there is a public tier and a private tier, and even the public tier is a network of multiple payers. True, but the systems are not at all the same and likely never could be. The German system is truly universal and its intrinsic quality is never premised on ability to pay; it is also influenced by a historical culture of social solidarity and close government regulation of the health care system, while the American culture is heavily influenced by the dogma of capitalist supremacy and worship of the almighty dollar as the ultimate arbiter of all rights.
The simple answer to why Canada has learned by experience to enforce single-payer and outlaw extra-billing practices is that it’s so close to the US, both geographically and culturally, that the clamor of private insurance and for-profit health centers has been insidiously creeping across the border and threatening to undermine the integrity and financial stability of the public health care system, something that does not happen in Europe. Unless protected by the explicit social principles of the Canada Health Act, the system would be vulnerable to the inexorable pressures of the profiteering commercial marketplace south of the border.
This, in a nutshell, is the essence of the concern about voucher programs. The reasoned arguments about how it can work to the benefit of all overlook the cultural and socioeconomic factors that would further undermine an already substandard public education system, becoming simply an excuse for everyone who could afford it to abandon the public system. It would simply amount to handing out coupons to parents to do whatever the hell they want in some arbitrary mishmash of disconnected school systems, all with their own cliques and values and cultural and economic-class distinctions, while the community public school system crumbles into a shambles. What is abhorrent to people in civilized societies is the kind of economically driven social stratification that this would engender.
“Sacrificing so that others may be better off” is pretty much the FOUNDATION of a functioning society. It’s not even what separates humans from lower animals, because you can see examples of sacrifice for the greater good in wolves and whales, lions and lemurs, and pretty much any other group of critters with social interactions. If that idea is “abhorrent” to you, what are you doing living in a society, rather than as a loner in the wilds somewhere?
If framed like that (which could be disputed), the choice is between those who have more (in financial wherewithal and/or familial support) are sacrificing so that those who have less may benefit and those who have less sacrificing the little they have so that those who have more may benefit. If the former is abhorrent, the latter should be unconscionable.
Here is a wild idea. If the goal is to improve educational outcomes, then…
we should act to improve educational outcomes. Vouchers do not do that. They improve educational outcomes for some people at the expense of others. They improve the bottom lines of some private operators. They turn school children into commodities who vote with their feet/dollars. Education becomes a marketplace and the marketplace is dominated by marketing. It’s not who can offer the best education that wins. It’s who can offer what is perceived to be the best education that wins. This is accomplished, not through innovative educational practices, but through innovative marketing.
So, you want to improve the educational outcomes in certain disadvantaged areas? The first thing you do is address poverty. The rest can wait. Until the students and their parents are not dealing with survival, education won’t matter. Make sure everyone has access to enough healthy food, clean water, and accessible, affordable healthcare. (Odd how the people who oppose universal access to healthy food, clean water, and affordable healthcare are the SAME people who push for vouchers.)
Address poverty and educational outcomes will skyrocket. And you didn’t have to do a thing to the schools.
Earlier in this thread, someone made a remark about how poor people don’t give a damn about their kids’ education. Pardon my frankness, but that is bullshit. Poor people who are parents want their children to succeed in school. They care. A lot. They know the consequences if the children don’t succeed. However, their perspective is far more complicated than “don’t care”. First, some financially insecure parents are too preoccupied with simple survival. They want the kids to do well in school, but they also need to find a way to feed them in a world where minimum wage won’t put food on the table. (Get more than minimum skills to get more than minimum wage. From where?) Second, poor parents may not have good models to draw from. Did your mom read to you when you were a child? Good for you. What if mom can’t read? Well, she obviously doesn’t give a damn about her kids’ education.
I could go on, but my blood is boiling already. If vouchers are the answer, then you’re asking the wrong question. Don’t play shell games with how schools are funded. Actually do something to fix the community a school serves and you will see the school improve.
I agree entirely, but I do feel that poverty can be addressed through the educational system to some extent as well.
Free lunches (and breakfasts and dinners would be nice) help to get at least some nutrition going. Educating the kids can allow the kids to educate the parents. Even in my middle class suburban school district, we were never taught anything about finance or other household economic literacy, we were more or less just supposed to learn that from our parents. If your parents are not economically savvy, and the school doesn’t give you much either, then where are you going to learn? Bricker points out economic errors that poor people make that seem obvious to us, but we have a privileged background in having parents and community that taught us better.
I am for a complete overhaul of the public education system, but I would like to see more resources, not less going to educating our children in not just rote memorization and behavioral training, but various life skills they will need, and not just assume they will pick them up somewhere.
Not always, no. We as a society decide what the acceptable level of sacrifice is. When we talk about things that we agree are needed but are impossible to be done individually, that is a perfect case to be made that there should be individual sacrifice for societal benefit. Infrastructure, defense, environment - those are some things that fall under that criteria. Most in this thread believe that education does as well. Maybe it does, maybe not.
And when we do in fact make this choice, we should be clear about it - we are forcing some kids to suffer so that other kids’ suffering may be mitigated. The argument for publically funded, government provided education is one of authoritarianism - that the government knows better than the parent.
As for lessening the sacrifice, as I said in post #74: If we must fund education, we should do so in a way that preserves the most choice in how that funding is used. I want my kids to have the best opportunities possible, and I think I am better at making those choices than the government. The opposition believes that the government is better at making that choice. That’s the divide.
Requiring all schools to meet certain minimum curriculum standards before accepting public dollars, that’s great. Require reporting of results, audits, etc. that’s great too. Make it means tested, sure. But at least give kids and parents a choice so if the school that they are assigned to cannot or does not meet their needs, then they have options even if they don’t have means. That could take the form of vouchers, but it could also take the form of charters, or magnets, or free flow of students intra and inter district. Trapping students who would want to leave in an underperforming school is bad. And long term efforts to improve poverty, improve outreach and parental involvement - that may help in the long run, but it shackles the kid right now.
I send my kids to public school. I like the public school they go to and it’s one of the reasons I chose to live where I do. I’m involved - I donate, I’m in the classroom, I volunteer. But I’d pull them out in a heartbeat if I thought it wasn’t a good environment for them, either by sending them to private, or moving. But that’s a luxury that some people don’t have and for those kids, I think they should have options available to them. Vouchers are just one of those options, but choice is what is important.
We’re not a purely utilitarian society. Where to draw the line at sacrificing for the greater good is a policy choice anytime there is inequity of outcome.
I am not at all saying that private schools employ substandard labor and cut corners on safety. If you have any evidence that private schools are less safe than public schools in terms of construction, I’ll be happy to look at it.
What I’m saying is this: if the government is building anything, it costs more than for the private sector to build the exact same thing. If the government builds a brick wall, it costs more than for a private company to build an identical brick wall. And the cost of a public school building is more than for an identical private school building.
But that has nothing to do with the question of how to best provide K-12 education to poor students. Public schools waste money building massive sports fields and auditoriums and so forth, things that a school can function perfectly well without. I attended a Montessori School for four years in elementary school. We had no cafeteria. We ate lunch in our classrooms. We had no auditorium. When we put on a play or performed music, we did it in our classrooms. Public schools are needlessly large and wasteful. They have huge rooms that sit empty most of the day, and it costs money to heat those rooms in winter and air condition them in the summer.
Thales Academy is a group of private schools in North Carolina, built by a philanthropist and bring a superior education to thousands of poor and middle class children. Costs are about $6,000 per year per student, while costs at surrounding public schools are thousands of dollars higher.
I actually agree with you. However, what you are talking about is basically the newest form of socialism/communism called “universal basic income”. That certainly would eliminate poverty, by paying everyone just enough money to be above the poverty line. There would still be an incentive to work, though not as large a one, but if automation really is about to eat 1/3 of all jobs, that wouldn’t really be a problem. Essentially, the taxes to fund UBI would need to come from the capital gains/capital returns of shareholders in the now highly automated companies operating in the USA.
In essence, it would mean that these armadas of robots would de facto be taxed for some of their output to provide the lower classes with essentials.
However. What you are talking about is a gigantic step to the left. School vouchers is a tiny step to the right. Hence, in the plausible near future, school vouchers are far more practical an idea (and already in existence in many places) than UBI. For UBI to happen, what would first have to happen is the robots would actually have to unemploy tens of millions of Americans. Right now, officially the unemployment rate is 5%. Once it’s 40%, maybe the next time there’s a set of mass protests, people will actually join them.
Sorry, not believing you.