Agree fully. Good schools are good schools, whether they are public or private. The focus should be on transforming the bad schools into good ones, and there is no simple or easy way to do that.
What you usually get for reduced cost are long waits, reduced service, short supplies, old product and damaged goods.
Which is a primary factor in how those children perform in school.
Equal opportunity is what we are talking about yes?
Is some student or other given less an opportunity to succeed in any school?
Why? Are the teachers in poor performing schools less of a teacher?
Are students in private schools somehow given more/better opportunity, how and why?
I’ve always posited that students with a lack of parental support are going to do spectacularly worse than those with parental involvement.
How is that less opportunity (that the state can provide) to the student?
Lots of human activity takes place outside the sphere of economic activity - social interactions, for one thing - we are arguably as interested in sex as we are in the other 3. And even brute subsistence wasn’t really an “economic” activity before trade developed, unless you define all activity as economic, as economists do.
A non-industrial economic enterprise. Just because it involves money doesn’t make it an industry. Industries produce tangible outputs.
It’s not just the elected political representatives who need to be given incentive, is it? It’s a whole class of people.
I’ve already said how I think that’s not the case.
Nice strawman - no, I’d rather everyone got an opportunity for decent education.
That was sarcasm. I did the :rolleyes: and everything…
Lobby the government to up the education budget. Donate his own money to that effort. Send his kids to public schools where they can mix with gasp non-wealthy kids.
Still better than no teacher’s unions. You might prefer a Walmart-level of education for your kids, I wouldn’t.
There’s still an upper limit. That limit might hypothetically be 300 million (but it’s not)
I’d say the same for your everything-is-commodity approach.
So why not open it up to competition?
We also deny them the ability to supplement their income by dealing crack to their pupils - what’s your point? If private schools are illegal, they’re illegal. They’re not being denied anything because the high paying (in your head) jobs don’t exist.
Because my concern isn’t just for the teachers, but the students as well, and society as a whole, not just the wealthy bits of it.. Nor am I that convinced the same would happen in the US, where people like you would hobble the teacher’s unions and they wouldn’t be better off.
Because it’s the right thing to do? Teachers should make as much as any essential profession, regardless of whether you can get away with stiffing them.
MrDribble
"Because it’s the right thing to do? Teachers should make as much as any essential profession, regardless of whether you can get away with stiffing them. "
What in your mind is non-essential?
Are the bus drivers? How about the ditch diggers? How about the PD, Fire Dept?
Just about any job that has to do with public service would be included. What about the private enterprise stuff that bids and builds roads? Essential?
Let’s define essential please.
Not all, but nearly all, yes.
Industries produce economic goods or services. The tangibility is irrelevant. Is there a particular reason you reject all post-19th century economics?
Including the ones who are unable to achieve what you want them to. You’re incentivizing them to send their children out of the nation, or just hire tutors to make up some of the difference in quality of education.
Phase 1 of which is destroy the part of the system that’s working just fine, in the vain hope that it will postively influence the part that isn’t working as well. Net effect: worse education.
Or, use tax revenue for the education budget, instead of this indirect pseudo-volunteer effort.
Are you under the impression that private schools are exclusively attended by the wealthy? They are not. Many offer scholarships, many aren’t all that expensive, and a few districts use vouchers to offset the cost.
Are you asserting that unionized teachers outperform nonunion teachers at the actual task of education children?
There’s no meaningful upper limit. Public schools will never run out of teachers or administrators because of private schools.
I start from the assumption that all children deserve the best education we can give them. You’re wrapped up in class warfare and “parasites”.
If you can think of a workable model to do so, propose away.
They existed until you banned them, you understand. A teacher who made $100,000 at a private academy is more likely to leave the industry for something like corporate training than they are to take a lower-paying job at the public school that transfers them around every couple of years.
Teacher’s unions in the U.S. are not remotely “hobbled”.
So you’d pay teachers as much as other professions, without any regard for supply and demand or the equilibrium wage? You are actively hostile to economics, I must conclude. Which is a problem, because its fundamentals are very real.
You seem to be confusing “want” with “be able to.” Yes, most parents of special needs kids would want to pay more for their kids to have the special tuition they need, but it’s preposterous to act as if that also means all those parents would be able to.
Your solution is sending all kids with special needs to the only schools funded by the state - yeah, that’d work out well. That wouldn’t mark them out as difficult, nosiree! Colleges and workplaces would treat them just the same as the 95% of kids at private schools!
[QUOTE=SciFiSam]
You seem to be confusing “want” with “be able to.” Yes, most parents of special needs kids would want to pay more for their kids to have the special tuition they need, but it’s preposterous to act as if that also means all those parents would be able to.
[/QUOTE]
Except that’s not what I said. And FTR, I had a special needs child, so I’m well aware of what it takes…and what the current system does.
Again, that’s not what I said (you are mixing sarcastic comments I was making with a misunderstanding of the vague proposals I was just tossing out, and coming up with something that isn’t close to what I said), but ok…what’s your solution then?
Wrong.
Better to define non-essential: entertainment, sport, stockbroking, some branches of law, most of the military, lots of manufacturing.
I disagree
Because most economics isn’t really scientific and fails at making usable predictions. It’s a pseudoscience.
Unwilling =/= unable
You think I’m going to allow the loophole of private tutoring in my setup (without diagnosed special needs?)
Who said the changeover has to be that drastic? I’d favour gradual movement from one system to the other.
Did you miss where I said “lobby for increased education budget”?
Not exclusively, just dominantly. The rest is window-dressing.
No, I’m saying that not having unions removes any incentive for fair pay of workers on the part of employers, making the schools exactly the sort of minimum-wage employer you think I advocate for state schools.
I contend that there is, in fact, a limited pool of people interested in, and talented at, being teachers, and anything that draws away from that pool is detrimental.
I’m really, really not seeing the “all”.
Because that’s what it is, and that’s who they are.
You’re the one arguing that competition is better. I think the state should be in charge of the military, just like the schools.
And people were free to deal cocaine until it was banned. Your point? Is it that you privilege only the current status-quo, but not that of 1900?
Unless what they care about is teaching kids, not money.
And do private school teachers really make that much more than state teachers? From what I can find, not so much:
and here
But you would have them be, which is what I said.
Yes. Essential services.
Yes, I am.
Its fundamentals are, to use a technical term, bullshit.
Line-by-line is too tedious. I’m going to do my best to avoid further tangents into whether economics is a science, or whether the wealthy are parasites that society is better off without, and such. Those discussions belong in their own threads.
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If public school teachers make more, then private schools are no threat to the pool available for public schools. You’d have your pick of the best teachers.
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If you have the political power to ban private schools, just raise the education budget. Which will be eased by private school students’ parents paying the tax while not requiring any outlay of funds. Trying to browbeat donations is ass-backwards, you have the power to tax.
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There are two private schools where I live. One charges $7,125 per year, the other $5,066. They are not the exclusive domain of the wealthy; far from it, they are the domain of the middle class.
ETA: We have no voucher program or anything like it.
- What, precisely, is the mechanism by which banning private schools improves public ones? Again, if you have control of government to do the former, just do the latter.
Fair enough
I don’t just want the best teachers. I want all the teachers.
This might work if funding was the only goal. It’s not.
Well, those parts of the middle class that can afford an average of $10 000 per year per child. But I see your point. Fair enough, not all private schools are the domain of the rich.
Most, in fact, are the domain of the religious. I don’t like that, either.
It’s social engineering - if everyone goes to public school, there’s incentive to improve them, there’s no religious echo chambers, there’s no class barriers. There’s equality of opportunity (I don’t expect equality of outcome, that’s naive in the extreme) and society benefits. I believe the children would benefit under such a system too.
I look to Finnish education as a model for how things should work - they have very few private schools, and they’re nothing like an America private school - they’re still state funded and can’t charge tuition fees. They’re more like charter schools in that they’re for alternative models of education like Waldorf, or the odd religious school. But even there, they can’t discriminate in admissions and pupils must have the same social entitlements as in public school.
Finnish public schools are exactly the model I would use for education - egalitarian and comprehensive. No tuition. Free lunches. Small classes (that’s what a good teacher’s union gets you) No streaming until 16. No gifted classes. Emphasis on all-round education. Students encouraged to help those classmates who are struggling. And their teachers - wow! The cream of the crop - respected and well-paid. Given relative autonomy in applying the state-set curriculum. You need a Masters even to teach primary school. All unionized, of course.
Nothing wrong with Finnish education…they are the number one in the world after all with South Korea, IIRC, taking the number 2 slot (the US is 17th). Seems unrealistic to compare a system in a country that has a population of under 6 million, is over 90% one ethnic group (namely, Fins) and religion (Lutheran Church of Finland), and spends between 6-7% of the GDP on education to a continental sized nation nearly 2 orders of magnitude different in population size and much more diverse in its ethnic composition, but one can dream. Personally, I think that considering we ARE a continental sized nation with such a diverse population it’s incredible that we are able to rank so high in relative terms, since we are averaging the best and worst schools in the country (just a fun fact…there are more K-12 students in California than there are citizens in Finland :p).
To the extend that education affects class barriers, it’s in the quality of the education, and whether it is even completed.
The greatest school system in the world does no good to someone who drops out. The major problems with our school system mirror the problems with our society, rather than causing them. It’s the same with Finland, the school system is reflective of their society, rather than dictating it. For instance, UNICEF reports that the United States has the second-highest rate of child poverty in a sample of 35 developed countries. Finland’s was the second lowest. When starting with a wealthy, homogenous, small population will very little poverty, the exact structure of the school system is almost irrelevant, you are almost guaranteed excellent results. Similarly, in areas of the U.S. with similar starting conditions, you get excellent results, like Massachusetts produces with a mix of public and private schools.
Where structural problems do exist, the teacher’s unions more often than not are their cause. The sort of testing system you propose to evaluate teachers is exactly what they fight against, along with keeping teachers with seniority over ones who perform better. Example: Teacher of the Year Gets Lay-Off Notice.
Progress is being made in some areas, but if you want to examine the issue realistically, you need to accept that teachers have their own incentives that do not perfectly (or even decently) match up with the ideal of delivering the best education possible.
You’d also have to accept that Americans are a very religious people, and will demand the option of a religious education, which need not be inferior to a wholly secular one.
Somalia? It seems to be the go-to example of libertarianism gone mad.
I just want to point out again that the idea that charter school = freedom from traditional shackles = educational innovation = better results just doesn’t work out in the real world. Some charter schools work out better than the traditional public schools, some work out the same, and some fail spectacularly. In addition to my previous cite about St. Louis, it looks like Baltimore is seeing the same results.
Ain’t no magic bullet, folks.
We have all three in Australia and it seems to work out OK. There is the argument of privilege that comes up every election cycle but if the government run schools are funded properly with common curriculum across ALL schools (state and private) then it seems to me to be OK.
We even have selective state schools that pick the cream of the crop.
All schools get funding from the government with some means testing of parents for uber-rich schools.
Just to illustrate my kids go to a mid level private school but have friends from expensive top of the range schools through to state schools. Maybe we don’t have such a wide difference between the rich and the poor in Australia?
IMO education should not be about profit and loss it should be about what is in the best interests of the country
I keep hearing this “It’d never work outside Finland, everywhere else is sooo different” argument, and I don’t buy it. It’s never been tried outside Finland, with a similar focus on learning not testing, a similar expectation of teacher excellence and concomitant teacher compensation, and (most importantly) a similar commitment to egalitarianism between and within schools.
Except public schools do pay their teachers more than private schools, even the elite ones like Exeter and Andover. However, that hasn’t caused Exeter, Andover, St. Georges, St. Paul’s etc. from getting really good, high quality teachers.
There are lots of reasons for this, but the main one is that in many ways teaching at public school is vastly tougher.
My uncle went from teaching at a private school to public school and in his words, “at a private school you get to actually teach, while at a public school it’s far more about crowd control.”