So everyone in your town is starving? What do they do for food?
What do you think they do? They buy limited stuff at inflated prices from the couple convenience stores/gas stations that are still open. If they have a car they drive several miles to the store. They bum rides from people with cars. They pay a jitney to take them to the store. They ride the bus to get to the store. Imagine how much fun it is to do that when you’re elderly! IOW, going to the grocery store isn’t a spur of the moment, casual thing for a substantial part of the population.
Is there a perfect solution out there that is going to educate every child to be a doctor? No. You can only work with what you have, and the fact is there are some children, for whatever reason, who are not going to care about education as well as others. Unless you advocate taking children away from parents who are not as invested in their education as they should be, some kids are going to fall through the cracks. I just think the private sector will have less “cracks” than the public sector.
Another thought…Oprah Winfrey opened up a free (?) school for girls in Africa. Girls came from miles around to apply. What makes you think that can’t happen here? That Bill Gates or Warren Buffet won’t open free schools if given the opportunity? Right now, there’s no need…the government handles lower education. But if the government got out of it, and allowed the private sector to step in, who knows what philanthropic opportunities might arise?
Yes, who knows? Imagine our discomfiture if none do.
So, instead of all of us paying for every child’s education, you want the rich to pay for it.
Because you want to emulate Africa.
This thread, it’s all topsy-turvy.
I don’t have time to read this whole post, but for anyone interested in a good look at this problem I highly recommend The Imperfect Panacea by Henry Perkinson. Back when I was going through teacher education we had to take a class on issues in education. I wrote a paper on this book for the class. It does a good job analyzing the issues in public schools. I think in the most recent edition Perkinson has argued for private school vouchers, but for the most part, its an unbiased look at the problems with public schools today.
As I understood it, the money for vouchers would come out of the public schools’ budget. Families who are already sending their kids to private schools will be the first in line for vouchers and will thus pull a massive chunk of funding out of education as a whole. Given the natural resistance to tax increases, it seems unlikely that the taxpayers would completely make up for it.
And if they–we–did, it would mean a massive shifting of the burden onto childless households. Property owners can be considered responsible for supporting the public schools as part of the infrastructure, but vouchers would transform that into a transfer of wealth to childbearing families–to pay for what is best for themselves at the expense of all those students who will remain in the public schools for any number of reasons.
It would appear that there are some students to whom it is more expensive to give a barely adequate education. I think that these students, and the programs designed for them, should be judged–and funded–on a separate track.
So you don’t think that there are any non-failing public schools who will subsequently become failing schools as a result of much of the funding, good students, and parental support being pulled out of them?
I could go along with that too, so long as that means more schools, more classrooms, more teachers overall to serve the same number of students. And so long as it’s understood that Bad Schools are inevitably going to be worse-performing and yet at least as expensive, and thus are not subject to further budget cuts as punishment.
There are some here who imply that a public school education couldn’t get any worse and this is no better than no education at all. So closing some public schools and throwing their students out on the street and relegating the rest to under-funded dumping grounds (but there will still be many good students left behind!) will have no negative effect? I’m concerned about a vicious spiral, an academic black hole.
I still don’t get it.
As I mentioned, we sent our children to private schools for several years. Thus we spent $X on private school tuition. We still paid the same amount ($Y) in property taxes as we would have if our kids went to public school. So the amount we spent on education ($X+Y) was larger than it was for our neighbors who sent their kids to public school.
Now suppose there were a voucher system in place, and so we don’t have to spend $X. We will continue to spend $Y, as will our neighbors. So the total amount of tax money available for education is constant.
Certainly the tax money spent on public schools will be reduced by the amount of tuition going to private schools. But, as previously mentioned, so what? The public schools have fewer students to educate, and therefore (in theory, and disregarding economies of scale) need less money. And, if public or private schools cannot attract enough students to survive, they have the choice of innovating/reforming/whatever to attract students, or close their doors.
Again, this bothers me not at all, since the only factor to be considered is that the maximum practical number of students are getting the best education available, regardless of its impacts on teachers unions, unsuccessful schools, etc.
This is an interesting point, but it touches on another of my politically incorrect ideas, so it may be best left to another thread.
There certainly could be, but providing the good students still get a decent education - better, presumably, than they would receive at their marginal schools where they suffered from the disadvantage of being held back by the slacker parents/students - no problem.
This strikes me as the wrong emphasis. The purpose of the educational system is not to provide employment to teachers and administrators. A system of whatever form that provides, overall, a better education for the majority of students, is preferable to one that has “more schools, more classrooms, more teachers overall to serve the same number of students”. In fact, a system that provides the same education with fewer teachers, classrooms, and overhead, is preferable to another with more - it costs less.
Yes, providing that by “budget cuts as punishment” you are not referring to allowing students to transfer to a better-performing school and taking their vouchers with them.
But you are entirely correct - schools that have to accept the lowest common denominator of students who can’t be accepted anywhere else is not going to produce a generation of scholars, and are going to cost at least as much as a school that can require “no criminal convictions” and drug tests as a condition of matriculation.
But I am thinking of schools as being roughly equivalent to colleges and universities. Not everyone can get into Princeton. For those folks, we have state universities. For the next tier down, Podunk U., or trade schools.
But the idea of a voucher system is that everybody gets $5000 (or whatever the per capita figure is). You can send your kid to the public school, who gets the $5K as a voucher. Or, if your kid can pass the entrance exam, he goes to Snooty Prep. If Snooty Prep costs $10K, and you can’t afford it, you send him to Brainiac High, where the entrance exam is nearly as tough but they don’t offer polo classes. If he can get in, but then gets arrested for smoking crack in the rest rooms, then he goes to public school. Sure, he messes up the education for everyone else at public school. But he would do that anyway, and then at least the brainiacs and preppies don’t get dragged down too.
Regards,
Shodan
Private schools do do so (that reads funny). My dyslexic son goes to a private school in a different town. They bus him. I have first hand experience in what it’s like to get a kid into a private school, and yes the ritzier ones do cherry pick even in this instance, but there were 3-4 others in the NYC approved list that we got into and they all would have bussed him (from north bronx to teaneck, nj in one case)
On edit: The private schools on the list are ones that cater to variously-functioning disabled kids
First of all, why in the world wouldn’t there be competition? There’s already competition in the sphere of private education – how could adding tens of millions of potential paying students do anything but increase the level that competition?
As to the substance of your point, it would be reasonable to expect that the best schools would raise prices to one degree or another with so much more tuition money in the hands of parents, but the best schools (with occasional exceptions) are already too expensive for most families. While there may or may not be some lower/middle class families that are priced out of the best schools, there would be far more families that could afford not to send their kids to terrible schools. Seems like a net gain.
On that note, keep in mind that education quality is not zero-sum – there’s no reason we can’t increase the mean and median competence of schools, and vouchers figure to do that. Horrible public schools virtualy never get shut down and replaced with better schools that are good enough to stay open – that’s insane. In contrast, terrible private institutions get replaced with superior competitors all the time. If you have to compete for the money you need to survive, you will tend to be much better and more efficient than if your survival is not tied to your competence. This is undeniable, and given the stakes and scope involved in this issue, you need to point out some very serious and realistic downsides in order to counterbalance the expected improvement in mean education quality that would come about from privatization. I haven’t seen anything like that so far in this thread.
there are tons of philanthropic organizations out there for music and arts. Neither are focused on in the PS that 2 of my kids go to. How could they handle an entire school? That’s an awful lot of stepping up to do.
The entire public education system is a subsidies program! What do you think it does to prices (bearing in mind that public schools are not free)?
But public education costs are what they are - we can anticipate what they will be with the subsidies (i.e. taxes) that have been in place. The question is, what will happen to private school tuition if we subsidize that. That’s a different question - you can’t take education as a whole because public and private education are two very different things.
Private school per capita spending isn’t less than public school per capita spending around here - though where the money comes from and where it goes to can be very different. Now subsidize private schools and you think they are going to get cheaper?
On average, it will decline. At present there are relatively few private schools (as public schools dampen their pool of prospective students), and they mostly cater to the well-off, as lower/middle class parents aren’t in the market for their services. With an extensive voucher program there would be a flood of new private schools, most of which would necessarily be within the means of voucher-bearing parents.
Private school spending varies widely around here. The ones that cost $30K per year probably spend considerably more, but there are lots of private schools here that spend nearly the same amount as public schools, which is remarkable given the superior quality and additional frills that come with these schools.
New York City public schools spent $13,755 per student in 2005. Multiply that by the number of students in the system (about one million), divide by the total number of school age children in the city (1.4 million), and New York City parents would be getting roughly $9,800 per child to spend on tuition. My prestigious private high school still costs less than that (it’s partially subsidised by alumni donations [though not the archdiocese], but it’s not like that would change in a voucher system). Significantly, it’s as good or better than any NYC public school, with the probable exceptions of Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.
The point is that there are plenty of private schools that would be within the reach of the vast majority of parents under a comprehensive voucher program, and the number of such schools would rise dramatically if such a program were initiated.
If by “taking their vouchers with them” you mean getting the money from somewhere else and letting the public schools bloody well keep the same funding with fewer students. Losing all those good students and the parental support that comes with them slams them hard enough.
But you’re not getting my point that if families who already have kids in private school can from now on keep much of the money they’ve been spending, all this money has to come from somewhere before we even begin moving kids out of public schools. And once we do, is there really going to be dollar-for-student reduction in the cost of running the public schools?
Another question I have is, how many students–good students–live in areas where there are no private schools nearby and not likely to be, or who otherwise won’t have access, vouchers or no?
No, I don’t mean that. The idea of a voucher system is that parents get to choose which schools their children will attend, and the state pays for it.
It’s the idea of the market. Schools that are doing a poor job (relatively speaking) of education lose students, and therefore funding, to schools that are doing a better one. If they lose enough funding, they have to close or change. They are not allowed to simply continue to do a poor job and collect the funds.
As I mentioned, I care nothing about what slams the schools, if students benefit.
You’re right, I’m not getting your point.
The money that is currently being spent on private schools would be replaced by voucher money. The total amount of spending by parents will go down, no doubt about that. But the total amount spent per student will not be reduced - it will just be spent on different schools.
I don’t see why money has to come from somewhere. If we can spend money more efficiently, then we can achieve equivalent results with less cost. That’s a good thing, don’t you agree? I don’t think proponents of voucher systems are proposing that we reduce the total amount of public money spent on education. That remains the same - if a district is spending $5,000 per student, then whatever school the parents choose continues to receive the $5K. It may be a private school, in which case the public school gets $5,000 less, but that doesn’t harm the student’s education, and therefore my only concern is addressed.
You are correct that total amount spent by the parents is going to be reduced by whatever they were paying in tuition to send their kid to private school. So, overall, spending on education goes down. Tax money available for education, however, does not.
I don’t know about cost, but there will be dollar-for-student reduction in what they have available for running a given school. That reduction is offset by a corresponding increase in available funds for the school the parents pick.
As I understand it, if current per-capita is $5,000 per student, and 100 students pick a school, then that school has $500,000 to run a school. Little Jimmy’s parents pull him out to go to a private school. Under a voucher system, the school has to run on $495,000.
You are right that the cost of running a school is subject to things like economies of scale, and irreducible costs. It is not likely that a school could run with two students, since $10K is not enough to cover a building and a teacher and electricity and so forth. That is true of any business - you need a certain critical mass of customers before you can make your nut. But businesses seem to behave better if they are subject to the discipline of the bottom line. Things tend to deteriorate if you are guaranteed a certain level of revenue, regardless of whether your customers buy your product or not.
I think this was addressed by ivylass’ point that people tend not to starve to death even if there are no grocery stores close to home.
I don’t think it is quite true that “if you build it, they will come”. But it does tend to be true that if there is enough of a need, then a free market will supply someone willing to try to meet that need. If the only game in town rips you off, then often enough another game opens. And if they do a better job, and the government doesn’t subsidize the rip-off artists or the unions try to enforce a monopoly, the competition either gains market share, or the rip-off artists have to clean up their act.
It always sounds easier for the government to fix everything. But what sounds easy isn’t always as easy as it sounds.
Regards,
Shodan
No, they’re not. But they are also not mentioning either tax increases or spending less per child, and one or the other will have to go along with vouchers, if all children will be eligible
Even if that’s the way it works (and I’m not so sure it is *), the problem is not so much that you can’t run a two student school with $10,000. Of course you can’t- the school would be closed and those two students transferred to another school. The problem is that a school with 95 or even 90 students isn’t significantly less expensive to run than one with 100 students. Lets say it’s K-4 school, and 10 children leave. That’s a $50,000 budget cut. You can’t eliminate a teacher (saving the salary and benefits), because even in the unlikely event that all 10 are in the same grade, there will still be others left in that grade.In a school that small, there won’t be more than one clerical staff person, so that won’t be cut. You won’t save on heat or electricity or maintainence About the only savings would be on consumable supplies- which isn’t going to come near $50,000 for 10 kids.
- My kid’s private grade school calculated the cost in almost the opposite way- the total budget was a fixed number calculated before the end of he prior schol year, and the cost per student would go up or down based on the number of students. And my city calculates the cost per student by dividing the whole budget ( including the costs for some very expensive special ed students) by the total number of students. A school wih 500 students doesn’t get more money than an identical school with only 499
Have proponents of the voucher system addressed how long it will take for private schools to be able to handle the influx of new students? If a certain public school system in Podunk, TN is notoriously bad, and all the parents are given the option of sending their kids to private schools, how will the private schools in the areas around Podunk be able to accommodate them? How long will it take for them to build more classrooms, hire more teachers, work out bus schedules, etc? How much will that cost?
If public schools are already equipped to handle those students, I say the money is better spent on ensuring you have the highest quality teachers, administrators, and technology; instead of trying to squeeze more students into schools that already have high quality teachers, administrators, and technology, try to figure out how to get that in the public schools.
Unless…
-“Hi there, Gloria.”
-“Well, hello, Bob. How’s enrollment for next year?”
-“Pretty low, actually. Only about 300 hundred students. I don’t know what to do with all the empty classrooms, honestly.”
-“300? Wow. Really? Seems to me our school rejected about that number of applicants outright. Trouble makers and drooling idiots, you see. We’ll have to reject another thousand unless we can find somewhere to keep them all.”
-“Gee, sounds like your enrollment for next term’s about as high as ours was last year. We finally finished adding another building to accommodate them all only last summer.”
Bob and Gloria both frown, deep in thought
Simultaneously holding out keys to their schools “Here, let’s switch.”
Now, that might work. 
How so?
Regards,
Shodan
Let’s say my public school district currently educates 1,000 students at a cost of $5000 per student, for a total cost of 5,000,000. A voucher system is started. Those 1000 students each get a voucher, so they account for the whole school district budget. But vouchers also have to be given to the students in the district who already attend private schools. Suppose there are 20. That’s an additional $100,000 that wasn’t previously in the public school budget. The money has to come from somewhere. There are limited options. Some school districts don’t depend on dedicated taxes, but are funded by income or property taxes imposed by a city or town which has its own public school system. In those cases, the money could be obtained through other budget cuts ( a possibility I left out earlier). But it seems that most people pay taxes to a school district unconnected to any other taxing entity. That type of district will either have to raise taxes to cover the the extra $100,000 or else lower spending to about $4902 per pupil.
Raise it to 200 current private school students, and you have to either make up
$1,000,000 or lower per pupil spending to about $4166.
If you’re spending the same amount on public education, but dividing it among more kids, the per pupil spending goes down. If you keep per pupil spending the same, but pay for more kids (those who are already in private schools), you’ll be spending more on public education.