Well, there is nothing magic about competition. To understand how competition improves the marketplace and its products and services, an economics expert would do a better job than I. But I’ll try.
The most defintite, concrete example, relative to the discussion, would be colleges who compete with each other. The ones with the better facilities, reputation, teachers, curriculum, etc, get all the students. You want more students? Offer more and charge less. How do you do that? I’m not a businessman.
Basically, more students = more money (the “cup is half full” obverse of stuffinb’s statement). So, from the business’ point of view, attract more students. If a school is not able to do this, then perhaps that school needs an overhaul. If it’s performing so poorly, why are we sending our children there in the first place? Is it perhaps because there are no alternatives? Well, let an entreprenuer provide one (please!).
The net result of open competition results in better product for less price; the consumer always wins. Look at our hotbed airline industry, with fares that rival what we paid 15 years ago, and startups like JetBlue where you hop on like it was a bus, no reservations or ticketing. Sure, it took 15 years for some companies to actually startup, but sometimes the forces of the free market are indeed slow. Watch the electronics market for snappier competiton, as computer power improves while prices actually drop (given inflation), and every new gadget may start at a premium price but drops quickly when competitors vie for the all powerful consumer dollar.
Akin to the fears of the people who were unjustly terrified over NAFTA, there will be no sucking sound as students flee the “beloved” urban neighborhood schools, because there won’t be any competition yet, and that will give plenty of time for schools to shape up while the competition builds.
In the meantime, let’s require all sorts of standards that we expect from our schools, and require them of any school wishing to put a hand in the voucher pot. Install means testing and minimum requirements and teacher licensing. Offer federal grant incentives for schools that perfom exceptionally (which will make ALL schools wish to perform exceptionally). Offer grants for schools who take on extra burdens such as difficult kids, challenged children, adult literacy, and family planning.
I can’t see how giving parents a choice can be a bad thing. The free market works if you let it.
[/Runaway crass rhetoric]
I will quest for better examples of free market competiton and post links if something relevant turns up. Man! I wish a hard-lined Libertarian would post here.
The problem is that there is already a lot of motivation for improvement but no one has made it happen. Upping the pressure won’t change that. What, you think the current administrators and teachers at the failing schools are evil minions intentionally handicapping their students? They hate the fact that their students aren’t learning, but they are powerless to do anything about it.
I’m gonna chime in here as someone who has attended both private and public schools in my life. Satan, though he meant well, was incorrect to say I’m a product of the public schools - I’ve spent all of a year and a half in the public schools in the suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio. I have to go to lunch now, but let me say this. I don’t like the idea of vouchers, myself. The private schools already have financial aid programs, and we can’t maintain the quality we have without small class sizes, something we’re trying very hard to maintain as it is, and constant funding. I can also attest to the fact that when I did attend public schools, they did teach to the test for the 6th grade Ohio proficiency test, even though they were required not to.
Sorry, I should have made this more clear - I meant specific topics within a subject. For example, most standardized history tests concentrate on European history, but do little if any Asian, African, etc. Therefore, the teacher has to forget about those topics even if they are just as valid and important.
It’s one thing to teach how to stay calm and evaluate answers, but it’s another thing to teach techniques specific to a test. I don’t see how knowing the scoring scheme of the SAT’s will help you in a job interview.
You’ve also hit on one of the problems inherent in standardized testing - some people test badly. Tests often do not show how much students know, just how well they test.
Practice exams can be helpful, it’s the degree that can be a problem.
This IS how the schools are evaluated. This is what YOU are advocating. If schools live or die by a test, this is what will happen. Sheesh.
You don’t understand - this was a common practice, not restricted to my school. Remember, those practice books were everywhere. It is decided by the schools, not the teachers. If standardized testing were used to decide vouchers, schools will be forced to do this to survive. That’s the problem.
On to Wrath:
I didn’t ask how free enterprise works, I asked how it would help SCHOOLS. The problem with your argument is it assumes that schools don’t want to do well now. Are you really saying that schools want to be lousy now? If not, how would competition change that?
You obviously haven’t priced colleges lately. The ones with more generally charge more. They do offer financial aid, but they have resources public schools don’t - rich alums, research contracts, outside investments. Finally, they get to choose their students, public schools don’t.
By definite, concrete examples I meant what would the school do to make it better. Pay teachers more? Get rid of administration? Well?
Didn’t a lot of companies go out of business? That wouldn’t be very good for schools. What about phone service - did deregulation help that? I was pretty young when that happened, but many people seem to agree that the commercials, cold calls, and lack of service aren’t great. And you might want to check out power deregulation in Northern Calif.
In other words, make those private schools into public schools?
Again, you assume that schools want to be lousy now.
As I’ve pointed out before, some parents are bad parents. They won’t take advantage of the vouchers. Their kids will be double-screwed because their parents don’t care AND all the good parents will be gone. How do vouchers help them?
Most teachers emphasize European history now, it is of most relevance to the creation of our country. (not necessarily it’s people, but the nation’s existence is based largely on European tradition) Voucher programs wouldn’t change that. On the other hand, the voucher program could force an introduction of topics that are not being taught in some schools today.
The SAT and ACT are key to getting into college. Professional licensing examination prep courses are dedicated solely to the format of the test, practice exams based on historic questions, and reviewing. College courses that prepare you for professional licensing will discuss the licensing examinations and how the test is broken up, i.e. multiple choice, grading on essays, etc. It is a very wide, accepted and necessary practice.
I believe your logic against teaching the specific format of a test is flawed. For one thing, it doesn’t take much time and could do the student and school a great deal of benefit. If children, through their scholastic careers, will be tested, as they always will be, they should be prepped on the testing methods. As you stated, this is done now and wouldn’t be a new thing based on vouchers.
This argument lends itself to the position that we should abolish testing altogether. It speaks to just putting the information out there and not being concerned with their grasp on the subject matter. Testing is a very valuable tool in educating, feedback. It can further be used to evaluate schools and teachers as well as students.
Furthermore, teachers prep their students for standardized tests and SATs TODAY. This is nothing new or unique to a voucher program.
You assume that the voucher program will destroy the public school system… it can’t… I’m not just guessing that it won’t, I am telling you that by the way it is presented, it is 100% incapable of replacing public schools. You have cited examples, preceeding any voucher program, that some teachers teach-to-the-test now, thus it is not a problem inherent to the voucher program. Thus, the voucher program would change nothing, except that more schools might take up the practices of other schools that are passing the test.
Put in another way, learning is mostly memorization, would you agree? Even in the ability to rationalize an answer, the basis is on experience or learning from your memory. If nothing else, these children will have learned the material on the test. If current methods of teaching are working, they won’t change their curriculum around, they have no reason to do so. However, if their current curriculum is not teaching the necessary skills to pass the test, better they should at least learn those things on the test than to learn nothing.
Some private schools will always cost more than others. However, colleges are acredited. You can get a grade A college education at public colleges and universities for a reasonable cost. Some private institutions INTENTIONALLY price themselves high. Is a BS from Harvard really better than a BS from University of [your state’s name here]? They could both be teaching the same exact material from the same exact books and the Univ of XX could have even better teachers. You are paying for the school name, not necessarily the quality of education. Please think about what I am saying before jumping out that Harvard is a better education than Univ of XX, it possibly is, it probably is, but it isn’t necessarily. Put another way, is English 101 at a two-year community college much different that English 101 at Harvard? If it were, two-year college credits would not be transferrable to four-year colleges. The classes in colleges are universal in the basics that they teach.
Public schools take in more per student than most colleges charge, it probably evens out. Private and Public elementary and secondary schools also get donations, though not as much or as often as colleges. In addition, colleges have campuses, public schools usually have a single building with significantly less cost.
Please direct me to any public college that is discriminating against some of their students and I will call the ACLU. The only way a student is eliminated is by virtue of their poor SAT or ACT scores. Another strong argument for teaching to the test, to a universally accepted minimum of education.
[quote]
By definite, concrete examples I meant what would the school do to make it better. Pay teachers more? Get rid of administration? Well?[\quote]
Three years to turn the worst schools around…
What I would do if I were the Governor…
-At the State level, redirect funds to fully supply the worst-financed schools.
-Invest in sufficient security to get better teachers in the schools in the worst neighborhoods and pay them enough to get them there.
-Check curriculums that work and the ones that aren’t working and make recommendations to the schools.
-Create programs to eliminate trouble students from all schools, including, if necessary, the creation of a juvenile facility just for these problem students. The cost will be far more than any other school, but it will enable the teachers to teach without disruption.
-Post police officers full time at any public school with recurring reports of violence or drug traffic within a two block radius. Clean it up with as many officers as necessary.
-A grading system for teachers based upon their student’s grasp of the knowledge. A state-provided, or assisted training course will be ‘recommended’ (required) for those not meeting minimal success rates.
-Require teachers to be licensed throughout the State in such a way that they are required to take continuing education classes.
-Offer intensive summer schooling and evening programs for students that need the extra work to pass to the next grade. No more social progression through grades.
Don’t assume there isn’t competition in schools now. The competition now is that schools are fighting each other for the precious financial resources of their local government or their State. The State has to stop playing favorites or soaking the squeaky wheels with oil and send funding where it is needed most.
The assets and the customers of the companies that went out of business were picked up by the succeeding companies that could properly manage them. So if a school administration ‘goes out of business’ it doesn’t mean that school will close down. Perhaps temporarily, but the asset is surely valuable to a successor. As are the experienced employees and the clients.
Perhaps you can explain why commercials and cold calls are a problem with phone service, because I don’t get that part. As for lack of service, the phone lines and the electric lines are all still handled by the former monopolies. It is only the service and energy source that are competitive. Thus the basics, the public school system would stay around forever, a monopoly continuing to be paid for with a base fee by tax payers. The service portion would be paid by the vouchers.
[quote]
In other words, make those private schools into public schools?[\quote]
If they want to participate in the voucher program. It will remain an optional program, no private school will be forced to participate.
I fail to see how you read that assumption in what Wrath wrote.
And other students will take advantage of the vouchers. They won’t be double-screwed because there is no change in the public school that is servicing them today. They won’t be better off or worse off, they will be the same. If there were enough ‘good parents’ there now, then wouldn’t it make enough of a difference so that the school would not fail? Further, the student:teacher ratio will drop, a problem that has been highlighted and bannered throughout the education debate. So, in fact, the child with the non-caring parent(s) will have a better chance at learning with more direct teacher:student contact.
Much comment has been made above about private schools being able to accept only those students they want. As I see it,
vouchers would only work if the government forces them to
accept anybody. So it’s just as much a case of “Publicizing” the private school system as it is of privatizing public education. In fact, it’s a zero sum proposition.
Over the years, it’s true, competition may raise the quality of all schools. But that doesn’t really help the kids who are there right now.
I still don’t see anybody addressing the issue I raised about how moving a poor student into an advanced school is going to cause problems. Do you propoase that a 10th grader from the innner city be placed in the 5th grade in a private school? What do you think will happen to the 10th grader who can barely read? Will vouchers help? I still say that those few kids who are self motivated enough to do well and who are held back by their surroundings will benefit from the voucher program. But, the number of kids who find themselves completely lost and the number of kids held back by teachers having to backtrack for the new students will do harm that far outweighs the benefits.
The problem with schools as I see it is the parents. Creating competition between schools will have little or no affect on the parents. I’d rather see parents with kids getting good grades get a tax break. Think of all the money I saved the government by skipping three years of school. Why shouldn’t my family be rewarded for helping me accomplish that. I remember that one kid in my class used to get $100 for every ‘A’ on his report card. My folks couldn’t afford that, but I still got better grades than he did because my parents made time to help me with my homework when I needed it. If the parents are not doing their job voluntarilty, lets pay them to do it.
BTW, I don’t see where any non-extreme change will save the students that are currently in the system. If we can’t make a much bigger change than any currently proposed, I think we should concentrate on improving things for the next generation. Kids with good parents will do fine regardless of what school they are in, so this is not a total abandonment of these kids. The ones with bad parents are in big trouble but I don’t know what we can do to help. We failed them when we failed their grandparents, it’s too late to do anything now. The idea of paying the parents MAY do some good for these kids, but I’m a bit nervous that I haven’t thought that idea all the way through yet. There may be ramifications that I haven’t considered.
I’ve skimmed through this massive thread, and it seems to me that the debaters break down into two camps:
[ul]
[li]Those that fundamentally distrust free enterprise, and[/li][li]Those that fundamentally distrust government[/li][/ul]
Put me firmly in the second camp, which is why I support vouchers. We have tons of empirical evidence that private industry does things more efficiently and with higher quality than the government. Explain to me why schools are excluded from this.
If I came to you with a proposal that we turn the shoe industry over the government, what would your reaction be? do you think the government would ultimately do a better job of distributing shoes than does the private market? If not, why are you so blindly willing to trust the government with something as important as educating your children?
The ‘problems’ with the voucher system that have been presented here are all easily solvable, and WILL be solved by the private market if there is a need. That’s one of the fundamental rules of the marketplace.
Don’t want the teachers teaching to the test? I’m sure there are lots of other parents who feel the same way. That means private schools will have an incentive to assure you that they are better than their competition. This means they will voluntarily submit to rating systems, standardization perhaps, whatever. Whatever is needed to solve that competitive deficiency. What’s to stop a school from churning out kids who can’t read but can pass a test? Simple. Word of mouth. The experience of previous parents and children. A bad review in “Private School Review” magazine.
Just as other industries have spawned oversight mechanisms like Underwriter’s Labs, Consumer Reports, countless consumer probe shows, standards agencies like the IEEE and W3C, etc. I fail to see why this would not happen in education. Indeed, one of the most appealing aspects of a voucher system is that it will create a flood of information about various schools, allowing parents to make smarter choices and engaging them further in their children’s educations.
What about handicapped kids, or kids with learning disabilities? Won’t they drag the average down? Why would a private school want them? Again, the answer is because they are customers with cash. If the market is under-representing the needs of disabled kids, someone will come up with a unique solution that will make them a profit and help the kids out tremendously.
What about the public schools? Won’t they lose funding? Well, not if we set the voucher to be, say, 75% of the public cost of education of that child. I have faith that the market can educate better and cheaper than the government can, and I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is. Don’t give me the full amount, just 75% of it. Then if I take my kid out of public school, the school saves 100% of the cost, but only loses 75% of the funding. That leaves even more for the other kids. If the public schools lose so many kids that economies of scale start to hurt them, well, that would be a sign that the private schools are working pretty damned well, don’t you think?
What about constitutional freedoms, mandatory curriculums, etc? This is a separate issue from the basic voucher issue. Once we agree to let private schools accept vouchers, we can have a whole new debate over what kind of controls the government should establish over them.
What if the schools can’t teach for the amount of the voucher? Doesn’t that mean that only rich kids, who can subsidize the voucher, will be going to private schools? Not at all. I believe in the power of innovation in a free market. I don’t believe it is necessary to pay $9000 to educate a child for 9 months. But if it turns out to be the case, we’ll find out pretty quickly and THEN we can consider cancelling the voucher system.
The school system has all the earmarks of a socialist construct. Heavy in bureaucracy, heavy on rules to restrict the movement of students and innovation in the schools, strong union control over teachers, and terrible performance. You know, we have a school board here in Alberta that has NO SCHOOLS. The schools were slowly closed because of demographic shifts, but the school board staff didn’t decrease. Finally, the last school closed, but the school board stays open. God knows what they do, but the beaurocracy allows them to exist. What a great system we have.
You know, every time we privatize something, the same people come out with the same lame arguments. We can’t let the market do it! They’ll be greedy and screw it all up! How will we control them? What if they cheat? What if they produce shoddy stuff? Yet it’s almost universally true that privatization turns out to be a good thing, at least after the pain of redistribution has ended. It’s accepted as a truism that private industry produces safer, better, cheaper goods than does the government. Unless it’s a new industry, in which case all the market-haters come out screaming that THIS industry is special and different and must not be removed from the clutches of government.
For example, look at the airline industry. When it was de-regulated we heard all the same arguments. Only the rich would be able to fly, planes would fall out of the sky due to shoddy maintenance, out-of-the-way airports would be abandoned, etc. But what happened? Ticket prices are a third of what they used to be, the airlines set new safety records every year, and there are more flights and more access than ever before. Until the era of de-regulation the airline industry as a whole had lost money over its entire existance. Now it’s profitable. Our economy is much stronger as a result.
Time to let the market have a shot at education. Vouchers are a way to ease into this experiment without throwing out the whole system.
Granted that a 10th grader who cannot read requires more one-on-one attention than any school can offer. That student has been failed by the system that passed them. The only solution I could see for that child is to stay in the current school and use the federal side of the voucher for one-on-one tutoring. At $1,500 it won’t amount to a great deal of supplementary education, but it would at least be something and perhaps some States will match it to assist in that provision. IMO the State should pick up the tab and provide the small ratio teaching that these students need and stop giving out corporate tax benes for a couple of years to pay for it. (and I call myself a Republican)
To me, it would make sense that having higher educated people in your State will bring more businesses without the tax breaks. But that is just me.
Your idea of paying parents for good grades sounds interesting. The immediate draw back I would envision is that it will fund the families that are already doing well instead of the ones that need the most help. I think the problem is more than caring, it is also the inability of a parent that just doesn’t know how to help their children.
I used to teach test skills. I gave prep classes for the GRE and GMAT tests. Post graduate tests. I taught one time at Morgan State and one time at Coppin State. I didn’t go back to these schools because I couldn’t help them much. A very high percentage of their students come from inner city schools (Mostly black, I wasn’t going to mention that for fear of racist labeling but I think it’s relevant in that the Black inner city culture has been ostracized for so many generations that they have their own language, sort of).
First, let me say that I think these schools do an amazing job. The students I taught were motivated and interested in learning. They had college graduate level skills in their chosen field. This is impressive because in at least one case, and I believe many cases, the students arrive as freshman with an extremely inferior high school education.
The case I know was a girl who graduated on top of her class from an inner city school in Philadelphia. She was accepted to Johns Hopkins Medical School on a special scholarship for minority students. She droppped out of Hopkins withing two weeks because she quickly realized that she was years behind everyone else in her classes. I know this because she told me herself. She went to Coppin because she had friends there who encouraged her not to give up on college. But, when she came to my class and found out that I couldn’t increase her vocabulary significantly in the three day class, she decided against grad school. She had worked extremely hard for a college degree only to learn that she still had less vocabulary than is expected of a high school senior.
I don’t think you can put a student with no parental support into a school where that support is expected and even required and expect the student to be able to handle it. I really don’t think that there are many students who have the parental support who aren’t performing well already. To give these unsupported children any help we’d have to set up a lot of remedial classes and tutoring and all the stuff that should be taken care of by parents. Because the parents came from a failed system, they are not capable of supplying this need so we must do it for them. School vouchers will not do this. The only students this will help are the student who DO have support but are in a school where the other students do not and are therefore in a disruptive atmosphere. There is no provision in the voucher plan to filter out the unsupported children.
Imagine telling a mother, “You are not giving your child enough help and support for her to perform well in school.” How would she respond? She’d certainly be offended. Instead I propose we say, “Your child has a lot of potential, but the current system has not been able to delve into it. We would like to give your child some additional attention. Would you please encourage your child to take advantage of this opportunity to better prepare themselves for adulthood?” The school voucher system, as I see it, says the following, “Is your child hard to deal with? Would you like to blame this on the school? Would you like the opportunity to blame later problems on racial or class prejudice? If so, you can take advantage of our limited offer.”
The problems are a given. No change of school is going to solve them. Actually I see very little hope for the inner city blacks who have developed a tradition of ignorance. This is not their fault. Society forced it on them. As much as governmental candidates babble about education being a priority I don’t see anyone proposing a budget for education that is radically larger than the current budget. I don’t see them proposing radical changes. Small changes are NOT going to have large effects. We need to be surragate parents for this generation of socio-economically handicapped children, anything less will have only minor effects much of which will be negative effects. Stop playing around with tweaking the current system and come up with something new. This system was designed for a largely farming community, which we no longer are. It was designed for a community where lots of practical knowledge was learned at work all summer on the farm, or in the factory, or in their father’s office, or at an apprenticeship. What do children learn in the summer now? We need a complete redesign here. It’s been way too long. Many aspects of this system have become ingrained in our culture and many people would fight a change merely because it would be against tradition. It will be a hard expensive to change the system. I don’t think it will happen at all.
Now, having said that, I think attempts at small improvements for the better are valient and worthwhile. I just think vouchers will do more harm than good. At best, it will be close to the same. At worst, it will be close to the same. I don’t have any real strong opposition to the experiment, but I’d rather examine some other, more likely positive, tweaks to the system.
One more thing. If the private schools are allowed to maintain strict academic requirements fore admission, I don’t see where the voucher system will do anything at all. Students from poor schools will never be able to get admitted. Except maybe 1st graders, but I said before that this MIGHT work for 1st graders. I think that a few years down the road with no tutoring from parents most of the underpriviledged will fall behind their advantaged classmates. It is possible that friendships would be made such that advantaged students and parents would take over the tutoring of the disadvantaged. This would be the VERY best possible result of the voucher program. Let’s hope that it happens. It would still be a complete bust for older students.
Wow, a lot of gramatical errors in that last post but I think you can figure out what I was trying to say. I had already put too much time into writing it and didn’t feel I had time for a full proofread, so I posted. And then I started reading it again and got interested. I guess I like my own writing style.
I guess you missed my point. If there are tons of kids running around waving $7500 cheques and trying to get into a private school, I GUARANTEE that someone will open a school up just for them.
Think like an entrepreneur for a second. Let’s say you are passionate about teaching. You have a Ph.D in Education. You’re sick and tired of the bureaucracy, and you’re tired of working your ass off only to be compensated exactly the same as the doofus who doesn’t care, because you’re in a teacher’s union.
So, you decide to strike out on your own, and open a school. But all the top students are already in private schools. But look - here are all these ‘problem’ kids with low scores. No one wants them. But they are customers with money. You’ve just found yourself a niche in a competitive market.
So, how can you help them? You decide that it would be fascinating work, trying to build a new school that caters just to kids like this. You recognize that parental involvement is lacking, the kids are behind others, etc. You go about trying to build a school that can deal with this, without having to deal with the public school bureaucracy.
What form would such a school take? I have no idea. I don’t have a degree in education, and wouldn’t hazard a guess. But I guarantee you that people WILL try. And some will be successes, and some will be failures. The successes will be copied, others will enter the market once they see that it can be done, innovation will continue, the system will evolve, and one day it will be world class.
I can’t prove this to you, other than to point to EVERY OTHER industry in a capitalist economy. This progression towards efficiency and quality is the norm. Exceptions are extremely rare.
So I’d maintain that the burden of proof is on YOU to explain to me why the market can’t work for education. Give me fundamental reasons that we can debate.
“It is ironic that those who are for a woman’s right to choose are against a parent’s right to choose. So is choice a good thing or not?”
Parents DO have freedom of choice. No one is trying to deny them a choice by committing murder, firebombing buildings, etc. No one is trying to enact laws taking away their freedom of choice. If they don’t like the school their kids are enrolled in, they can send the kids to private school, or move to a neighborhood with a better school. If they can’t afford it, too bad.
If I decide to have an abortion, the government doesn’t give me a voucher to pay for it. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have freedom of choice, though.
Same thing with cars. I drive a Sentra, but would LOVE to have a BMW. I can’t afford one, though. Should the government give me a voucher so I can buy the Beemer of my dreams? Does it mean that I don’t have a choice because I can’t afford said car???
Then there’s that little matter of separation of church and state…NO tax money should be used to support private religious schools for grades K-12.
Personally, I don’t want my tax dollars being spent on Catholic schools (mainly because I know firsthand how abusive they can be).
No, I’m not against your right to choose a school for your kids. I AM against you taking my tax money to pay for it. If you think your kids are entitled to free private schooling, then shouldn’t women be entitled to free abortions???
As I pointed out previously, it does take a long time. You said that was a bad thing until you realized you were arguing against yourself. The amount of studying I mentioned before was done for one specific test. If vouchers do pass, there will be more standardized testing, which means a similar period for each test.
The key word here is standardized. It’s a very important word. In the classroom a teacher has multiple sources of assessment - homework, behavior in class, etc. Standardized testing doesn’t have that, it just evaluates schools on one test, and changes their status accordingly.
Please show me where I said that vouchers will destroy or replace public schools. I said that they are a lousy solution and will make matters worse.
You didn’t know what teaching to the test meant, so I explained it to you. The concern is that with more, higher stakes tests, the problem will become more rampant.
Nope. As an engineer, I can look up any numbers or formulas. Critical thinking and problem solving beat memorization any time.
You and Wrath have argued that competition will give you more for less. You just provided an apt counterexample. Is that what you meant to do?
In many cases, that may be true - but it has nothing to do with my point. Oh, and they aren’t that easy to transfer.
Cites? The number that’s been brought up for public schools is $8K. IIRC, a decent public university is more than this for in-state students, the cheapest option. Private ones go north of 30K.
Where the hell did I say anything about discrimination? Try re-reading previous posts to understand why choosing is important.
Sorry to snip your suggestions, but I realized after I posted, I should have added, how will vouchers help this to happen?
So competition now is bad, but with vouchers it will be good?
What does it mean? And what will happen in the mean time?
Wrath said that competition would give schools an incentive to improve. This assumes they have no incentive to improve now.
For the points I’ve skipped, I’m sorry we can’t see eye to eye. Reread my earlier posts for more info.
VileOrb - I hear you. In college, even with mentoring and tutoring, there were some kids who just didn’t have the background.
Sam Stone
Gee, I didn’t know vouchers would take government out of public schools. The arguments for free enterprise assume that competition will provide the presently absent incentive, and that industry can do things better than government. The thing is schools already have an incentive - they want to be better, for the most part. And there will still be just as much bureaucracy in public schools, with less money.
Combining the bad parent argument with the shoe analogy: Some parents are so bad, they won’t even buy their own kids shoes. Should the government ignore their shoe needs, or should it give shoes to the needy shoe kids?
And keep in mind the argument isn’t that private schools shouldn’t exist, just that the government shouldn’t pay for them.
That’s very interesting, but the teaching to the test bit refers to public schools, which will lose students and funding if they do badly on tests.
These schools exist now. They ain’t cheap. Many people wouldn’t be able to afford them even with vouchers. As for making them cheaper, you get what you pay for.
IF.
Right - spend millions and millions then figure out if it works. Shouldn’t the free market system work just as well now, without vouchers, to drive prices down? If your model is correct, why aren’t prices already lower?
You can’t look at the market now because it is not a free market with competition. Choices are few and far between, because there aren’t many customers with money (yet). And no voucher system proposed means spending “millions and millions,” it means taking the money we are currently spending and handing it back to the parents in a form that can only be given back to an accredited school. Comments like this make me realize that you have not thoroughly given effort to see if the system might actually work, and it’s too bad because you are so intelligent and I feel gipped that you and the others really haven’t considered the option and although you have brought up fine points (all of which can be resolved) it appears you only argue for status quo.
To Trixie: yes, parents may move someplace where the educational system is better, in fact it happens all the time, and that is currently the only way to invoke choice (and it is simply not an option for so many families). What the voucher camp is proposing is to open up the market to ALL entrepreneurs (religious or otherwise) by making available the money we spend now on educating our children to any school with the hopes that private industry can do the job better than the government (as has been proven in every other market you can name). BTW, he government does not now provide money to people for uses like buying cars or having abortions, so there is no comparison there.
And I sympathize with you not wanting public money going to a Catholic school (scares me too), but we are talking about educating our children for the betterment of the country, which is why we’ve instituted a national education program in the first place. So, IMO, if the neighborhood parochial school can do a better job at educating children, I’d rather give more neighborhood children an opportunity to go there, an opportunity they would not ordinarily have.
And when there is, as Sam Stone points out, a customer with money, new schools will appear, providing even more choice.
To the anti-voucher camp, what do you propose to help the situation of poor school performance? I’m not aware of a single compelling new idea.
I wasn’t talking about taking practice exams for three weeks, I agree with you that is wasteful and should be prohibited (is prohibited by some) at the State level. I was referring to your reference to telling students how SAT exams are graded, 1 pt per correct answer and 1/4 pt per incorrect answer. That took me about 10 seconds. It is a smart thing to do.
The curriculum should be based, geared at standardized, minimum requirements. I fail to see the problem with that. If the teacher is teaching the wrong information, they should be stopped, don’t you agree?
I will assume for a moment that your school did well on the State standardized tests and you received a decent education. The teach-to-the-test method would not imbed itself further at that school. It is already done with successful results. If other schools pick up on that teaching method, they too will do well on the test. Maybe even provide a ‘decent education.’
But you have to have a basis for your problem solving. And I don’t recall any open book exams in elementary or high school. Elementary and secondary schools are to provide a basis of knowledge. Those other skills are developed in either advanced high school classes or in college or in the expensive private schools. If it was all just a matter of looking up numbers or formulas anyone could be an engineer, they would just need to carry around the right books. There has to be some memorized basis in the subject matter to make you good at what you do, otherwise librarians would be the most valued profession in the country.
I did no such thing. There will continue to be private schools and colleges that intentionally price themselves to the rich. It is a niche market, a part of the whole private industry capitalism that has built our country. I’ll date myself a bit here but do you remember designer jeans? A few extra stitches and you could get four times as much money as the other brand. No more quality, just a name.
What I did say was that you can get the same basic education at a State University as you can at a private college. Public schools are failing to do the same because there are no standards.
That has everything to do with the point that schooling in higher education is standardized. There are standard norms of acceptance for the content of classes. My question is why should elementary and secondary schooling be any different? It is essential for these students to get the basics so they can move on to a higher education.
Pick a state on that link page and find your favorite public college/university. Tuition only, keep it fair.
Unless I misunderstood you, ‘they’ referred to colleges, including public colleges. I am saying the only way a college can choose their students is based on financial means (including financial aid and GSLs) and SAT/ACT scores. Anything else is discrimination. That is… illegal discrimination. If I misunderstood the reference, I apologize.
Okay, put yourself in your State Governor’s shoes for a second. A mandate has been issued from the federal government that any schools that fail to meet minimal standards will become eligible for the voucher program. You discuss this with your Board of Education, your school leadership, your teachers, the parents… everyone will prefer to figure out a way to fix what isn’t working than to loose not only State and Local, but Federal funds for the public school system. They have three years to get it straight.
I told you exactly what I would do if I were Governor. What would you do?
Now, the schools that are incapable of correcting themselves in three years… give someone else a shot at it, you f–d up, stop screwing these kids with your ineffective methods.
I am saying that schools are cutting deals behind the scenes to get money out of the system. You do believe that happens don’t you? A voucher system will give the folks without the political pull the opportunity to flex their arms a bit, maybe get the attention their schools need.
You do see the inherent value in a school building I assume. It means that if a school administration fails the students to the point that an entire school closed down (very unlikely) then there will, during that very summer, be about 20 bids on the Mayor’s and Governor’s desks from companies vying to take over that school. Think about it… a free building to operate your voucher school out of. Where is the downside to such an opportunity?
There is a simple reason why there are no low-cost private schools - because the government subsidizes that sector of the marketplace.
To continue the shoe analogy - if the government gave out free, low-cost shoes to everyone, and you wanted to go into the shoe business, would you attempt to sell low-cost shoes? Probably not. You might be able to make them a bit better than the government’s, and make them much cheaper, but the consumer doesn’t care because his government shoes are FREE. It doesn’t matter that the government pays $50 to make a pair of shoes that you can make for $10, because they subsidize that cost with tax money. So you can’t compete.
If we had a free government shoe handout, most shoe manufacturers would aim for the high end. Just as private schools do. But if the government sent everyone a shoe voucher instead of shoes, redeemable for either a free pair of government shoes or $25 off a pair of commercial shoes, you’d see a gigantic rush into the cheap-shoe market by shoe-makers, because they would suddenly have millions of potential customers.
BTW, the cost of education CAN be lower in the private sector. Here in Canada, day cares are governed by the free market. The government sets regulations, but other than that the day cares are free to operate as they see fit, and people pay for them with their own money.
Our day care has a child-staff ratio of FOUR. The staff is reasonably well paid, and the facilities are very nice. It’s in a private building, and there are about 30 kids there. They have a couple of computers, a TV and VCR, a library, all kinds of toys, craft tables, you name it. They go on a field trip once a month, and have their own private playground.
We pay about $4200 per year for our child to attend this facility. It has everything you could need for a grade 1-5 classroom. Sure, if you had to hire degreed teachers your staffing costs might go up by 30%-50%, but remember I said that the ratio of students to teachers is currently 4-1. Even at 8-1 or 15-1 it would be a big improvement over public schools.
My grandmother got a great education. When she graduated high school she could speak Latin, German, do Algebra, she had a deep knowledge of world history, etc. Her school? A one-room building with a young teacher. This was the model for rural education in the early 1900’s. A town would pitch together and build a schoolhouse and hire a teacher, and the kids would go there. No federal mandates, standardized curriculums, school boards, etc. Just a teacher who had a good job and knew she’d be fired if she screwed up (and who probably loved her work), and a town that paid close attention to the quality of education their kids were getting because the money was coming directly out of THEIR pockets to the teacher THEY hired.
You know, training in the corporate world has changed dramatically. There has innovation galore. I can now take college-level courses from my desktop computer at work through various computer-aided instruction programs. There are travelling seminars, all kinds of cool things. Yet schools haven’t really changed the way they’ve done things for the past 50 years.
Time to give someone else a shot. Let the market work for education like it’s worked for everything else around us.
If you think that the voucher program will make it possible and likely that people will open schools designed to help the socio-economicaaly disadvantaged students, then I see that you would think they would be a good thing. Personally, I don’t believe it will happen, mostly because I don’t think there is enough money offered. Giving these students the kind of attention they need to catch up to the rest of their peers would cost significantly more than a normal education. Before they can even start learning on the accelerated pace they need to, they need to learn discipline and they need to learn that education is important. Many of them plan to live lives modeled after their parents, who are uneducated. So, they are not personally motivated to learn. I see no easy way to accomplish this, and certainly no inexpensive way. The thing is, cities have been trying this with little success for a long time. Do you think they weren’t motivated enough? Teaching advantaged students is often easy, cheap, and fun. Teaching disadvantaged students is often hard, expensive, traumatic, and dangerous. $7500 a year won’t do it.
I worked at a camp for abused kids for 10 years. We had one adult for every child PLUS a reguler camp staff. Sometimes comments at the end of camp would indicate the the adults felt that they needed more help. We needed more staff. Now, I’m not saying that the kids we’re talking about in the failing school would all be this difficult, but a significant number would be. The others would be incapable of handling the amount of responsibility you give to normal students. This means you’re going to need double or more the number of teachers all with special training. You’re going to need them all for longer than normal school hours and probably all summer. $7500 a student won’t be enough.
That reminds me. Did you see this Bush ad?
Bush: “You might ask why it the government takes so long to get the hard things done. Well, it’s because they’re HARD.”
VileOrb: ROFL, so that I never hear the rest of what he has to say. Did he say anything else of note?