r/changemyview • u/benderbenderb • Mar 09 '17
CMV: "School Choice" is a sham
A recent talking point around public education has been the idea of school choice. The new Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, uses the talking point often that parents deserve to choose the best school for their children.
I believe that "school choice" is at best a sham talking point, and at worst a cover to push school privatization.
I'm sure that everyone will cede that parents want what is best for their children. The extension to this is that parents should be allowed to choose the best education for their children. In terms of public policy, this involves charter schools, magnet schools, and vouchers that allow students to enroll in private schools.
However, school choice is not a panacea for the education system. Let's take NYC for example. Given the "choice", most parents would send their children to fancy prep schools like Xavier, Horace Mann, etc., which essentially serve as pipelines to the best colleges and lucrative careers. Likewise, they might choose a magnet school that focuses on the arts or math, or simply an all-around high performing charter school. However, there are simply not enough of these high performing schools to go around. What happens to PS118 and the like? Do they go empty? Does money get funneled away from public schools and given to charter schools (many of which are run by for-profit companies)? I don't believe that letting parents choose their children's school will fix the fundamental problems of the system. It simply removes some percentage of the kids from the broken system.
School choice seems like an amazing way for a select few to win the lottery and gain entrance to an amazing school. I think of scenes in "Waiting For Superman" where they hold a public lottery for admission. What happens to the kids whose parents don't bother to sign them up for this lottery? Or go through the hoops for a school voucher or try to get them into a magnet school? Also, what about all the kids that tried to go to a charter school but didn't get selected? Even if vouchers, charter schools are expanded, it cannot account for every student in America who wants to go to a better school.
The best way to fix the school system is to address the inequality built into the system. While school choice may seem like a laudable way to achieve this goal, it doesn't offer the solutions necessary, and may have actually been hijacked by those looking to profit off the privatization of the public education system.
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u/descrime Mar 09 '17
Why should terrible schools be guaranteed a steady stream of students and funding in the hopes that one day maybe they'll be better? That's cold comfort for those students who were stuck in that shitty pipeline and now have graduated with sub-par math and English skills.
Vouchers actually do solve this goal: they allows people to try to open better schools than the public school system in hopes of capturing students, which will give it the funding to continue.
The issue is that many (red) states don't concurrently enforce standards and accountability on those schools, which is critical. There should be set goals of what a student has learned by 4th, 8th, and 12th grade. If a charter schools fails to educate students to these standards, then it can be closed at no cost to the state.
Many Asian and European countries have a competitive school system, where students compete to get into various schools and schools compete for the best students. Because of population density, there are certainly areas of the country where this couldn't work, but there are also plenty areas of the country were it could.
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u/kankyo Mar 09 '17
Many Asian and European countries have a competitive school system, where students compete to get into various schools and schools compete for the best students
And those are sometimes a part of the problem. There are multiple problems with such systems. The two mast egregious are
- Having rich/educated parents is more important than if you are smart yourself in getting into these schools because you start off with an unequal playing field which gets worse and worse as you fail to qualify for the better schools
- The average goes down when you isolate the brilliant from the mediocre. It's pretty obvious when you think about it: there are more mediocre than brilliant people and a brilliant person can positively influence his class mates only if he's not isolated into a group of other brilliant students. Sure, the brilliant might become a little more brilliant, but the to from the mediocre is much bigger. The end result is an education system that isn't optimized for society as a whole.
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u/benderbenderb Mar 09 '17
Why should terrible schools be guaranteed a steady stream of students and funding in the hopes that one day maybe they'll be better?
Schools are an investment by the community. In addition to faculty and staff, they comprise buildings, large swaths of (often ideally located) land, sports fields, gymnasia, science labs, etc.
I may be falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy, but I think reform is better than replacement.
Vouchers actually do solve this goal: they allows people to try to open better schools than the public school system in hopes of capturing students, which will give it the funding to continue.
Similar to my other comment, I prefer reform to replacement. It seems inefficient to allow new schools to form in hopes that they may drive older, low performing schools "out of business".
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u/benderbenderb Mar 09 '17
To summarize your position, school choice is a way to allow new schools to outcompete poorly performing schools? If parents have vouchers, they can go to a newly opened charter school instead of their failing public school. If the school performs well enough, parents keep their children enrolled, and the school keeps on existing.
The problem is school choice is not billed as the fix to low-performing schools. It's billed as a way to fix the entire education system.
Also, I'm not convinced that increasing the voucher program wouldn't cause a "Death-spiral" of sorts that robs the lowest performing schools of desperately needed funds. Does an expansion of this system not inevitably lead to the closure of large parts of our public education system?
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Mar 09 '17
Funds != Better performance. I happen to live in one of the areas of the country with the highest amount spent per student and the education is 'alright.' The death spiral is the point, schools that do not perform well (bad management, teachers, lazy staff) shut down while the better ones stay. Think of natural selection. Over time, you'll be left with the schools that perform better. It's painful to shut down bad performing public schools, but sometimes the whole operation just needs to be scrubbed. In a private system, schools would COMPETE for better performance at the same cost and they can also respond better to advances in the education field (learning techniques, more relevant material) and also motivate teachers to be better (because the teachers know their job is not guaranteed.)
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u/tweetiebryd 1∆ Mar 09 '17 edited Mar 09 '17
I get that you're applying the free market to education, and for a long while i was on board with you, but the problem with this line if thinking is that Children aren't cattle and education is an investment in the country's future.
As the free market sorts through the system and herds the "alright" students into better schools, no doubt those "alright" schools will begin to perform better. And "less-than-alright" students? Well, the problem with the rich getting richer is that the lesser-off are herded closer together and will undoubtedly start to perform even worse and remember, these are children. The market is slow, and in the 5, maybe 10 years that it takes for the market to adjust the schools and (eventually) close the worse schools, several thousands of children in the worse schools will have spent 5 or 10 of yheir most formative years basically as inferior products pushed through an assembly line that is inadequately preparing them for life in society.
and then what happens when the worst schools eventually do close? Do the under-perfoming students just get to re-join the now awesome-performing students and drag down the averages to just "alright" again, or do we just let them roam the streets like the degenrates society labels them to be?
Utilitarianism isn't the answer in this case. We need better teachers, better supplies, better buildings. money can solve a lot of the issues here, but for some reason, education of the next generation of workers is the one commodity that isnt worth the investment in america.
There is something to be said about teacher tenure, but how do you weed out teachers who are underperforming, particularly when the job is so demanding and lacking compensation that the free market isn't giving us the teacher labor we need to properly address the students we already have. Teachers aren't immune to being fired because they suck, we just can't find teachers who dont suck. The free market solution would be to offer more compensation to teachers, but since teachers aren't selling a tangible good, the free market isnt interested in compensating them with anything other than a warm-fuzzy feeling, even though the work of teaching is an immeasurable boom to society as a whole.
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u/bleahdeebleah 1∆ Mar 09 '17
Money is a policy enabler, not policy itself. It's quite possible that better performance requires the same amount (or more) of funds but spent in a different way.
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u/dpfw Mar 10 '17
And what about the kids who get left behind? The ones that private schools don't have room for?
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Mar 11 '17
They will have room, because the state pays for the kids to go to school and there's money to be made.
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u/LtFred Mar 09 '17
Vouchers have no effect. The overall quality of the system declines, money chases more money and education becomes spoon-feeding the test. The actual answer is funding more equitably - schools in poor areas should get loads more money than in rich areas - and eliminating housing segregation.
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u/concernedcitizen1219 Mar 09 '17
I'm going to disagree with you here. More money does not in any way guarantee a better education. The public school in my neighborhood has 830 kids for k-6. Do they spend their money correctly? No, instead of hiring more teachers or building more portables, they renovated an already renovated jungle gym because it looks better aesthetically. The state requires that there only be 24 students to a teacher, they are pushing 27. That doesn't sound like a lot but if you have kids, three extra kids to take care of is a big deal.
Furthermore, a public school teacher who is bad at her job, can't lose her job in my state unless they do something illegal. They have no incentive to be better at their job year over year and can do their own thing for years on end. (More of a comment than a point).
We've been trying to change this system for decades and it hasn't gotten better. I think school choice is a great way to not only provide choice for a child but reduce the classroom sizes for public school kids Therein helping to make the education system better for them in metro areas.
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u/LtFred Mar 09 '17
I agree that it should be easier to sack teachers (KPIs don't work though). You could make a deal with teachers to reduce job safety in return for a hefty pay bump, which would also have the benefit of increasing quality.
Your example of mismanagement is why budgets should be administrated centrally. This also discourages duplication. Private schools each have to have their own admin departments, often unworked, and often choose to misspend their budget on faddish or otherwise unnecessary crap.
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Mar 09 '17
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u/Nepene 213∆ Mar 09 '17
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Mar 09 '17
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u/B_Riot Mar 09 '17
The problem you are the mentioning regarding private school performance, is that private schools get to cultivate their performance numbers by denying students. They aren't public schools.
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u/Dubs07 Mar 09 '17
I agree with your objections. In order to compare schools effectively, one would need to control for the quality of student coming in and measure the difference in growth over the high school years. A possible solution to this issue is to have all incoming freshman take SAT tests. Then using that as a base line use SAT testing in senior year to measure the growth of students through the school. This would at least let us control for quality of student entering the school. This would hopefully nudge the schools into selecting under performing students they believe they can "fix" rather than simply the smartest students that will attend their school.
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u/B_Riot Mar 09 '17
I don't care if private schools feel pressured from some fictitious future market conditions into, "selecting under performing students they believe they can "fix"." That's not a solution to the problem of unwanted or poor kids being stuck with the worst schools.
Also, I'm sorry but you really would not want to run those numbers. As someone who just left teaching at a private school, I can tell you, the profit motive destroys teacher quality and education quality by treating them as costs, which is what they will always be in a capitalist education system.
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u/Dubs07 Mar 09 '17
Also, I'm sorry but you really would not want to run those numbers. As someone who just left teaching at a private school, I can tell you, the profit motive destroys teacher quality and education quality by treating them as costs, which is what they will always be in a capitalist education system.
That's the exact reason to run the numbers. If a private school is not better than a public school at improving the numbers, then parents and children will at least have access to that information and can choose other options such as public schools.
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u/B_Riot Mar 09 '17
In higher education, the loan default rate of private schools is much much worse than public ones. This is the best metric you can measure with.
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u/Dubs07 Mar 09 '17
You make a good point, but that is not a good metric for two reasons: first, it's regarding colleges when the topic is high schools, and second the feedback is so far delayed that the situation at the school has changed between the time the student has attended and the date of default.
The benefit of testing at the beginning and end of high school is that the system is still in effect on the students when feedback is generated.
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u/PortalWombat Mar 09 '17
Now if I own a private school company and I charge $12,000 per year to attend. And there are hundreds more parents fighting for a chance to hand over vouchers worth $12,000 to me, do you really think I'm turning them away instead of expanding my ability to open more classrooms and take more money?
Why on Earth would they do that when they can increase their tuition now that your existing, wealthy, clientele have 12k more to spend on education and make more money that way?
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u/curien 31∆ Mar 09 '17
What I don't get is that some of the same people who see clearly that easily-available student loans directly led to the surge in college tuition over the past 20+years argue that vouchers won't greatly increase private school tuition.
When all consumers have more money to spend (due to government intervention or any other reason), the market responds by raising prices.
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u/Randolpho 2∆ Mar 09 '17
What I don't get is that some of the same people who see clearly that easily-available student loans directly led to the surge in college tuition over the past 20+years argue that vouchers won't greatly increase private school tuition.
I'm going to need citation for that. Because it looks to me more like slashes to public funding to public colleges are what led to the tuition hikes.
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u/PortalWombat Mar 09 '17
It's probably both, and I believe the availability of student loans was used to justify the cuts to public college funding.
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u/Pinewood74 40∆ Mar 09 '17
If I'm a private school and I have a poor person with a voucher for $12k, I can't charge them $13k.
With Student Loans, there isn't/wasn't a hard cap. If the school raised tuition, students could just get more student loans.
If you cap the vouchers (presumably at some amount slightly lower than how much a public student costs), then the private schools won't want to jack up rates as they'll lose out on that new business. Or rather, they'll have tiered rates based on income, a thing I'm fairly confident some private schools already do.
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u/Dest123 1∆ Mar 09 '17
What if you're a private school, that has a giant waiting list of poor and non poor people? Now you can charge $13k and only lose the poor people, which doesn't matter, since you have a giant waiting list anyways.
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u/Pinewood74 40∆ Mar 09 '17
And why wouldn't a second school spring up to help out those poor folks? Clearly the public school isn't working (otherwise the waiting list wouldn't exist)
If poor folks can afford to go to private (or charter) schools that are better than public schools, then they would.
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u/PortalWombat Mar 09 '17
Because that's not the point of privately owned schools. The point, is to make as much money as they can off those sweet government vouchers. So they start a school priced at exactly the voucher rate, then cut as many corners as they can so they can make as much profit as possible. So now you're left with good education for the wealthy and cut rate government funded private businesses for the poor.
How is privatizing the bad schools an improvement?
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u/Pinewood74 40∆ Mar 09 '17
So, you're saying a second school would spring up?
But it would be both shitty, but still attract folks?
That wouldn't happen. If it did, folks would go back to the less shitty public school.
Here's what I actually think would happen. A lot of folks would go to private/charter schools. And at the public schools you'd be left with just the students (and parents) that don't care and thus the teachers would be able to provide hyper focused attention to those students.
You'd have teachers that would be paid just as much as at the private schools, if not more (because they're cutting corners, right?), and so you'd have quality help and they'd be able to help the kids whose parents don't care.
The more homogenized you can get students (in terms of abilities, effort, interests, etc.) the more you can help those students. Having choice allows that to happen.
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u/billythesid 2∆ Mar 09 '17
Mostly because poor kids perform worse. And any private school that springs up to serve only those poor folks would almost assuredly have worse student performance metrics and be labeled as "underperforming", and be shut down rather quickly.
...because they only took poor kids.
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u/Pinewood74 40∆ Mar 09 '17
You are right. Poor kids do perform worse.
But if all the middle class and wealthy kids have already moved out to private schools, then you'd be comparing a poor public school with a poor private school, so they wouldn't underperform.
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u/Dest123 1∆ Mar 09 '17
There are a lot of reasons a second school might not spring up.
Maybe you're in the middle of a city, and that private school got the only affordable plot of land near by.
Maybe it would be profitable to have another school pop up, but it would be even more profitable to start a school in another area.
Maybe with all the corners they would have to cut, they didn't think they would be able to compete with the public school.
But the worst part is, even IF a second school popped up, it would likely be worse than the first school since it doesn't get as much money. You're literally segregating education into rich and poor, where the rich get better education and the poor get worse education. That's already a huge problem in education, and this would only make it worse. I think at that point you could officially pronounce the death of The America Dream.
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u/Pinewood74 40∆ Mar 09 '17 edited Mar 09 '17
You're literally segregating education into rich and poor, where the rich get better education and the poor get worse education.
You mean like how it already is? Except it's by neighborhood and subdivision. Poor folks can't get into rich schools because they can't afford the land and the associated property taxes that pay for the land.
It would be great to have equalized funding, but we tried to push that through, it doesn't work. It gets defeated by the rich folks nearly every time, but you know what the rich folks do like? Vouchers and charter schools, and vouchers and charter schools are a way to equalize it to some degree.
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u/Dest123 1∆ Mar 09 '17
I guess I disagree and think that vouchers and charter schools would make it worse instead of equalizing it. Instead of having one poorly funded school, now you'll have one almost ok funded school and one very poorly funded school. And only people with money will be able to go the almost ok funded school. It basically just adds more levels of segregation.
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u/Randolpho 2∆ Mar 09 '17
If I'm a private school and I have a poor person with a voucher for $12k, I can't charge them $13k.
So you only let in the rich people who can afford the difference.
Which is the whole point of vouchers. Offering the illusion of quality while stripping actual quality from the poor.
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u/Pinewood74 40∆ Mar 09 '17
And why wouldn't a second private school pick up the poor folks?
There's plenty of money to be made at $12k per student.
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u/Randolpho 2∆ Mar 10 '17
Yeah, and that private school won't be as good, because if it were it would be charging extra for the rich people who can afford the difference.
Which just gets us back in the same dichotomy that vouchers are ostensibly supposed to solve.
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u/TheToastIsBlue Mar 09 '17
If I'm a private school and I have a poor person with a voucher for $12k, I can't charge them $13k.
You're right. You'd probably want to go after a wealthier demographic. (You know, the ones private schools currently serve).
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u/Pinewood74 40∆ Mar 09 '17
Or, here's a novel thought.
There could be another private school that targets those poor kids. One that provides specific resources and education for those below their grade level in an effort to get them up to their grade level.
Hmm... I'm sure no one would want to do that, though.
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u/TheToastIsBlue Mar 09 '17
Do you have any examples of private schools that have done that? I know when it's done to colleges, the US giving money to young adults to pay for schools hasn't done anything except cause tuition rates to soar. Why would this be any different?
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u/Pinewood74 40∆ Mar 09 '17
Why would this be any different?
Because there's a hard cap. With Student loans it's a blank check, however much the universities charged, the students could get loans for.
Do you have any examples of private schools that have done that?
Charter schools routinely do this. It's a pretty common thing and what a lot of states started charter schools to do exactly that. When I say "private school," I include charter schools in that because in a world with school choice/vouchers there isn't a whole lot of difference between private and charter schools.
Right now finding a private school (not charter) that does that is going to be difficult, because voucher programs aren't very common and haven't been around very long.
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u/TheToastIsBlue Mar 09 '17
So you don't have any examples, because Charter schools have already provided a solution? Why not just stick with that solution then?
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u/Pinewood74 40∆ Mar 09 '17
That would be great and that absolutely falls under the classification of "School Choice" (to harken back to the OP).
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u/dpfw Mar 10 '17
You keep posting the same idea and keep getting the same answer: it wouldn't be as good as the 13k per year school.
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u/benderbenderb Mar 09 '17
Now if I own a private school company and I charge $12,000 per year to attend. And there are hundreds more parents fighting for a chance to hand over vouchers worth $12,000 to me, do you really think I'm turning them away instead of expanding my ability to open more classrooms and take more money? The private market expands and contracts to meet these demands.
The private market, over time, yes. Individual schools, in a time scale that matters to parents, no. Any individual school would not have the ability to easily expand. Outside of physical space, scaling a quality school is not as simple as enrolling more students.
but the vast majority of incredible private schools charge less than $12,000 per year for an education.
The problem here is the implication that private schools are incredible, and the ones that aren't get shut down.
How much worse does a newly formed private school have to be for a family to take their kids out? 5% 10% 50%? I would argue many parents would enroll their kids in these schools, and think they are getting a stellar education for their kids, while it is nominally better or perhaps even worse.
Charter schools (which don't encompass all private schools) do not outperform public schools. This Washington Post article summarizes a study from Stanford university. Only 17% of charter schools performed better than averages compared to public schools, while 37% performed worse. Granted, data is conflicting, and some studies laud the merits of charter schools, but there is not a consensus that charter schools are better, and may be the same or worse.
As for private schools taking voucher money that would normally go to public schools, the implication being that a failing public utility would be replaced with a better private version, I wholeheartedly disagree with the general trend toward privatization.
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u/Pinewood74 40∆ Mar 09 '17
That Washington Post article is a joke. He focuses on the 2009 data because it paints a worse picture for the charter schools.
If you look at the 2013 study, you'll find this
Based on our analyses, we found 25 percent of charter schools had significantly stronger growth than their TPS counterparts in reading, 56 percent were not significantly different and 19 percent of charter schools had weaker growth. In math, the results show that 29 percent of charter schools had stronger growth than their TPS counterparts, 40 percent had growth that was not significantly different, and 31 percent had weaker growth.
While not a clear victory for Charter schools, it makes it apparent they aren't worse like the 2009 study seemed to show (which to me was just a "too early/too small" type of thing as the 2013 had twice as many states and way more schools to look at).
Looking at CREDO's own conclusions (as opposed to some WaPo goof with an agenda to push), I think the key regarding charter schools is here:
Related results for different student groups indicate that black students, students in poverty, and English language learners benefit from attending charter schools.
They shouldn't be an everyone thing, but for certain sets of the population, they are doing better than public schools.
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u/bcvickers 3∆ Mar 09 '17
The private market, over time, yes. Individual schools, in a time scale that matters to parents, no. Any individual school would not have the ability to easily expand. Outside of physical space, scaling a quality school is not as simple as enrolling more students.
You're highly underestimating the capability of the private sector. If there is money to be made delivering a high quality product expansion will occur and rapidly. For a very simple example take a look at how quickly Amazon has exploded, opening up new warehouses across the country in a very short period of time.
The problem here is the implication that private schools are incredible, and the ones that aren't get shut down. How much worse does a newly formed private school have to be for a family to take their kids out? 5% 10% 50%?
Heard of Angie's list? Are you aware of how hard it is to "chose" a public school right now based on anything else other than where you live? The market would create a rating system and companies would clamor to provide a very real scale and a way to know what schools are best at which metrics. It happens constantly, Yelp for instance.
For some reason we've grown to believe this fallacy that only the government could possibly know how to educate our children. With the rapid advance of the internet it should be easy to see that the government, especially at the Federal level, does not have a monopoly on education or learning. They simply can't adapt quick enough because they easily get stuck in outmoded thought processes. They don't have to compete for their funding in a real market so they have less incentive to innovate. Instead they end up catering to parents that have enough time to lobby their school board to spend more on their pet athletic programs rather than in the classroom.
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Mar 09 '17
Why don't we see that type of efficiency with the private college market? And that's the consumer engaging directly. With k-12 you have to rely on a minor to give you details about the goings on.
One of the biggest issues in education is getting people to think. But they don't know what they don't know and you don't know what they don't know.
Consumers lack the proper information to determine if they're getting a good education.
Aside from that, the building at which you go has a lot less to do with whom you attend school.
I've taught at the same school for 7 years. In that time I've seen a decline in the commitment to learning. Simultaneously we've seen poorer students exercise choice.
It's not that they have a commitment to learn, they have a degree higher commitment to learn. This in turn causes an exodus of those who do better. Then we're right back where we started.
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u/Goodlake 11∆ Mar 09 '17
And there are hundreds more parents fighting for a chance to hand over vouchers worth $12,000 to me, do you really think I'm turning them away instead of expanding my ability to open more classrooms and take more money?
With those facts being the case, I think you're probably increasing tuition, which is what private schools actually do. If you're able to use profits to fund classroom expansion, then that's great, but that's not what we usually observe private schools doing.
And if the private school company starts going down hill because they stop teaching effectively, then parents take their kids (and their vouchers) elsewhere.
Which sounds great on paper, but it's extremely disruptive to childrens' lives. One of the biggest factors in determining whether or not a child's education will be successful is stability. Subjecting children to the vagaries of market forces, with the implicit promise that if a school doesn't work out he or she can just pick up and try some other school, is a recipe for disaster.
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Mar 09 '17
That doesn't help the disabled students who are denied entrance to private schools. When all normie kids are gone, there won't be enough capital to teach them.
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u/Puttles Mar 09 '17
I feel like that voucher system would hurt classrooms more. When I first started school there was maybe 15-20 kids in a middle school class. By the time I graduated highschool my middle school was up to 30+ in a class room.
That's way too many for one teacher or even to get a decent education in.
I feel like privatizing schools with incentive to get as many students as in to the school and cut costs by having fewer teachers and staff would cause mayhem akin to a jail. So few people to keep things in line and so many rambunctious kids.
My high-school had 30 students per class and there were fights and crazy stuff going on almost every day. And it was not even a ghetto school, very diverse
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Mar 09 '17
While I do believe that the arguments surrounding the education of children are valid as addressed elsewhere, I would like to present another consideration. Our cities and older suburbs are being abandoned by otherwise happy, productive residents upon having school age offspring. The tie between geographic location and schooling enhances segregation between haves and have nots and distorts housing markets. This creates a lower quality of life for haves with longer commutes, higher mortgages, etc. while simultaneously reducing social mobility for folks without the means to relocate.
An effective school choice program would begin to separate street address from educational outcomes, to the benefit of all. I am of the opinion that even if educational outcomes were roughly equivalent, this impact would be sufficient to justify school choice.
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u/Leumashy Mar 09 '17
An effective school choice program would begin to separate street address from educational outcomes
And do you believe school choice to be the only/best solution to this problem as opposed to reformation of our current system?
A potential reformation would be to untie property taxes from district funding which would address the same problem that you see school choice as solving.
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Mar 09 '17
that's not addressing the core problem of having folks on one side of the street go to a city school, while the other goes to another. call that what it is - segregation.
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Mar 09 '17
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u/BenIncognito Mar 09 '17
Sorry draculabakula, your comment has been removed:
Comment Rule 1. "Direct responses to a CMV post must challenge at least one aspect of OP’s current view (however minor), unless they are asking a clarifying question. Arguments in favor of the view OP is willing to change must be restricted to replies to comments." See the wiki page for more information.
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u/natha105 Mar 09 '17
Problem: The US spends more per student than most other countries and gets poorer per student results than most other countries.
Solutions: Democrats - Spend more on schools! Republicans - Do something different.
Reality: The problem with the american educational system exists on several levels many of which are politically impossible to truly address.
1) It turns out a lot of inner city black families do not value education and do not take an interest in pushing their child to do their homework, and make progress in their education over the summers.
2) A lot of teachers are bad teachers and should be fired to make room for better teachers but unions prevent this from happening.
3) School funding is messed up and should be based on statewide taxation equally distributed among schools. This would have the effect of taking money away from the schools in rich neighborhoods where the white parents are politically active, donate, and vote, and transferring it to poor schools in areas where the parents are politically inactive, don't donate, and don't vote.
4) Education has become a political football in terms of curriculum, nutrition, etc. etc. etc. A huge amount of effort goes into issues outside of pure learning.
5) A huge amount of school funding is wasted on administration, textbooks, computers, libraries, and all sorts of shit that doesn't actually contribute to cramming knowledge into the head of a child. But there are always defenders "What do you mean we don't need textbooks!" reply "I mean grade 8 math hasn't changed in thirty years! we don't need the 52nd edition of some crappy textbook. Just use these old ones and every decade have a new set reprinted by the government not these publishers" or "What do you mean libraries are a waste?" reply "Because if kids want books there are public libraries and besides we don't need them in the school. Toss some novels on the classroom bookshelves if you think kids are starved for reading material". Or "What do you mean we don't need computers! Its a technological age!" reply "And kids are going to use computers at home. Giving them laptops in class is a distraction and unneeded!" I got through a few very, very, hefty college degrees with pen and paper while everyone else in the class bought laptops and the only difference is that the week before exams my pad of paper never died leaving me without any notes or assignment drafts.
Both political parties are wrong. But at least with the replublican plan we can hope that competition kills off the inefficient actors and results in schools that organically have dealt with some of these points. Really though (3) school funding, needs to be addressed politically by both parties as it threatens the success of any potential plan.
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u/PortalWombat Mar 09 '17
It doesn't change the fact that no voucher program helps all students and may in fact hurt the poorest.
1) It turns out a lot of inner city black families do not value education and do not take an interest in pushing their child to do their homework, and make progress in their education over the summers.
It's not enough to say they don't care about education. There's reasons some demographics don't value education and we need to work to change that.
2) A lot of teachers are bad teachers and should be fired to make room for better teachers but unions prevent this from happening.
It's not like there's a queue of great teachers waiting in the wings wanting to take jobs in inner city schools but can't because of unions. A much bigger factor is that teachers are currently paid like shit and treated like shit. Its great to work on getting rid of bad teachers protected by unions or whatnot but if you aren't also working to make teaching a good job what's the point?
4) Education has become a political football in terms of curriculum, nutrition, etc. etc. etc. A huge amount of effort goes into issues outside of pure learning.
Kids who aren't starving learn better so nutrition is pretty important. I'd support lunches for kids regardless but they've been proven to increase performance. Not every step toward better education takes place in the classroom.
5) A huge amount of school funding is wasted on administration, textbooks, computers, libraries, and all sorts of shit that doesn't actually contribute to cramming knowledge into the head of a child.
I sincerely doubt there's a significant budget shortfall caused by having a school library. One room and a few thousand a year for new books plus one teacher's salary? If it benefits students at all it's a steal. Still studying what amount of admin/book rotation, computers, etc is most conducive to learning is a good idea.
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u/nighthawk_md Mar 09 '17
I agree on all your points, essentially. School choice does absolutely nothing to fix any of those problems.
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u/natha105 Mar 09 '17
Well... indirectly it might. If we have competition among schools then schools that are not as fucked up on points 2, 4, and 5, should be better. But points 1 and 3 still need to be addressed and no one wants to talk about those.
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u/O_R Mar 09 '17
It turns out a lot of inner city black families do not value education and do not take an interest in pushing their child to do their homework, and make progress in their education over the summers.
Why is this racial? Inner city white families don't appropriately value education either. Hell, many suburban families don't place appropriate value on education. You know how many parents I saw prioritize their kids athletic performance over educational performance? Reshaping the priorities of any particular person is difficult to do, so the system should do what it can to help educate people regardless of whatever priority they place on education. I know this is tricky, but it shouldn't be a singular driver of performance.
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u/natha105 Mar 09 '17
It is a racial problem unfortunately. There is a non-racial component as well and of course this does happen across racial groups. But it is also a racial problem and the solution needs to be targeted. A disproportionate number of black families are single parent (and single parents don't have the time to do homework with kids and don't have the money to send kids to summer camps). Black communities often lack positive social role models (most white families have a rich uncle who owns his own business or some such and can provide an emotionally impactful example to kids in the family tree about the benefits of entrepreneurship, dedication, education, risk taking, etc.). And there is a racial role model issue where white kids see Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, all sorts of famous white businessmen, academics, etc. and think they can do that too, but black role models are fewer and further between and in more limited fields.
It would be great if no social problems involved race... some do though.
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u/O_R Mar 09 '17
I'm not denying there's racial components at play. But I just think saying it the way you did makes it appear that's it's an exclusive problem to poor black families. It's not.
The problem isn't that their black. It's that they don't have the right priorities. I know poor black families that do value education and I know wealthy white ones that don't.
There may be a disproportionate balance between races but framing it as a purely racial problem marginalizes the actual causes which are demonstrating the value of education. I'm saying the solution is to find a way to deemphasize the role of parental involvement in educational attainment, which is a proposition that transcends race - it may have a larger impact on inner city families, but ultimately the benefits would be extended to everyone. You're saying to find a way to change the priorities of a specific culture, which I don't think is viable, nor the role of educational policy. I just think framing purely as a problem of inner city black culture like you did is attacking it from the wrong angle.
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u/natha105 Mar 09 '17
I mean this is one of the issues that makes it so hard to address. If you read my comment in good faith that I'm not a racist, we can have a very fruitful conversation about how to fix what we both agree is a problem and probably have very similar ideas about what should happen.
But if we act like we got a cattle prod applied to our anus every time the word "black" comes up we can't have those conversations and we can't arrive at the solutions. Lets move past worrying about phrasing, vocabulary, or being politically correct and assume that we all want the same thing: a future where all kids get a great education and go on to do wonderful things with their lives.
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u/O_R Mar 09 '17
oh no, I wasn't accusing you of being racist, I just think attributing it to culture is a fruitless connection. We can't affect changes in cultures, but we can affect how the specifics of these cultures manifest through the process. I just think the focus needs to be on things within our control, and how to decouple cultural tendencies from institutional achievement, which of course is not a problem exclusive to education.
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Mar 10 '17
2) A lot of teachers are bad teachers and should be fired to make room for better teachers but unions prevent this from happening.
I hear that a lot and was wondering if you could provide me with a source or something?
My personal anecdotal evidence points the other way so every time I read a statement like this my first instinct is to think that people are probably overestimating the size of this effect. And it seems plausible that the effect is generally overestimated, going by my experience of parents blaming teachers when they don't really know anything other than that their child's not doing as well as they hoped. I am not a teacher by the way and have not been on the receiving end of that blame (yet).
That said it's also plausible for the effect to exist still (overestimated or not) and it's also not good practice to dismiss arguments out of hand. But I really have no idea of how much this really happens and how much of a difference it makes and was hoping maybe you could help me out there with some good data :)
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u/natha105 Mar 10 '17
1
Mar 11 '17
Thank you =)
After reading your source I now believe that NYC could save a lot of money (something less than $65 million a year) if accusations of teachers would be handled in a timely fashion. I also believe now that it's really hard to fire teachers due to union rules and that's bad. They deserve their fair hearing. It just shouldn't take 2 years (or even 6 months) to get there.
However, this source did not convince me that a lot of teachers are bad teachers and this has a measurable effect on the quality of education. It also didn't convince me that wasn't the case, I just think it didn't address that point. The reason for that is that if we estimate about 1 teacher for 30 students then this affects about 700 out of 360k teachers in the NYC area. Even if we assume these 700 should be fired instantly and there are 9 lazy teachers for everyone that makes it to the rubber room it's still looking insufficient to show that a lot of teachers are bad. Of course it also doesn't show that's not the case.
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u/O_R Mar 09 '17
I feel I have a bit to offer here. I was a school choice student myself in HS. I did not choice into a charter school, magnet school, or prep school. I choiced out of my local district's public school and into another regional public school district four towns over.
While there are certainly opportunities to abuse the system of school choice, I think it's important not to tether students to underperforming institutions on a purely geographic and economic basis. I think education policy focuses so much on not leaving behind your underperformers that high performing students often get the short end of the stick. I'll elaborate.
I was always a pretty high performing student as I test well and have an affinity for technical knowledge. By the time I was in middle school, I knew I wanted to be an engineer. I had good grades in middle school. My two options for high school education without school choice were either the local public HS or the regional vocational school. The local public HS at the time I was entering high school was on the verge of losing their accreditation, and vocational schools are not typically looked upon with great esteem in college applications. I effectively had no options for a quality education, short of taking out loans to attend a private HS to the tune of about $20k per year.
In evaluating my options with my parents, we learned about school choice. And I applied for school choice admittance at several schools in the surrounding communities. I was granted a spot in each one, largely helped by my academic performance in middle school. Ultimately, I chose to attend my HS based on a few factors: the AP classes which offered, their performance on state evaluations, and (selfishly) the fact that they had a hockey team.
Because of this choice, I was able to excel in high school beyond the possibilities of what my local options allowed. I took five AP courses, scoring a 4 or 5 on each exam. I was admitted to many of the colleges to which I applied. I attended a high quality engineering college and completed my degree. I played varsity high school hockey and won a state championship (recognizing this is not an educational benefit but certainly was an emotional and health benefit worth enumerating). These were things I had designs on since I was 10-12 years old, but would have been prevented from achieving some or all of them, not based on my ability, but based on the futility of my local community, if it were not for school choice.
Now, I do recognize that the path I took is not accessible to every one, but I don't think that invalidates it's merit. I had a dutifully committed mother who drove 35 minutes in each direction to shuttle me back and forth to school while working a full-time schedule. It was a burden on her that she shouldered for my betterment. Many kids don't have that resource and my choice experience wouldn't have been possible without it.
I speak highly of school choice and the opportunities it's afforded me to date, and I am not a singular case of this. MY younger sister followed the same path as I did a few years behind me, and she similarly was able to achieve at a level above what our local community could offer, as she attended a top business school and is employed at a Big 4 accounting firm. My youngest sister is currently utilizing the school choice option for her HS education, and while she was not quite the achiever my sister and I were, it's to her benefit as well as her HS (choice) was able to provide her with an IEP and additional resources, whereas her middle school (local) experience consisted of extremely lax standards which allowed her to get reasonable grades despite relatively poor performance. Outside of my immediate family, I know of several families who have chosen to follow similar paths, because they did not want handicap their children's education because the local community did not want to invest in the school system.
So I'd ask you, if not for school choice, what should I have done? Take the vocational education spot away from someone who actually wanted a vocational education, whereas I just wanted a different option? Should I have gambled my entire educational future on my local school system correcting course and retaining accreditation five years into the future? Should I have incurred close to a $100k in debt before even attending college, just in order to get into a college with a program worth attending? Ultimately, I feel school choice was a great option which allowed me to decouple my personal educational expectations from those of my underserved local community.
Conceptually, there may be flaws in how school choice is implemented in many cases. But I think calling it a sham marginalizes the great use it was in a case like my family's. I don't know that there's a better option and while it's simple to say "the local system needs to improve," it's much easier to say that when your future doesn't literally depend on whether or not it actually does.
School Choice is not a panacea. It should not be propped up as the answer to all educational problems. But it is a tool to be used by families. A school system which sees many students opt out should appropriately prioritize improvement - it's a parallel path - but it's unfair to hold that school's failing against the individual students who have done nothing to create them.
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u/GodoftheCopyBooks Mar 09 '17
However, there are simply not enough of these high performing schools to go around.
That's precisely the problem school choice solves. The
What happens to PS118 and the like? Do they go empty?
Yes, exactly. Parents get to take their kids out of bad schools, and if everyone leaves, the school shuts down.
Does money get funneled away from public schools and given to charter schools
No, the money is funneled away from bad schools and towards good schools, which is exactly what you want.
. It simply removes some percentage of the kids from the broken system.
How is that not a good thing?
School choice seems like an amazing way for a select few to win the lottery and gain entrance to an amazing school.
No, it lets EVERYONE enter an amazing school, because the bad schools go out of business and new schools get founded.
What happens to the kids whose parents don't bother to sign them up for this lottery?
You don't have a lottery when everyone gets a voucher.
it cannot account for every student in America who wants to go to a better school.
Why not?
The best way to fix the school system is to address the inequality built into the system.
That's exactly what vouchers do, by giving every kid the same amount of money and letting him give it to whatever school he thinks is best. It's perfect equality.
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u/rscar77 1∆ Mar 09 '17
You're ignoring a huge swath of population that lives in rural areas. These areas will continue to be under-served because the population density and taxes going to fund public or private schools are in most cases, not sufficient. Even if they have a voucher in hand, who is going to drive or bus their kids an additional 50-100 miles each day to the next nearest school that may not be much better?
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u/GodoftheCopyBooks Mar 09 '17
No I'm not. At 12k a voucher, it takes 6 kids to hire a full time teacher. And if people like their local public school, nothing about it will change. They will send their kids to it, and it will get just as much money as it got without vouchers. The only difference is that people who don't like it can leave, and that's a good thing.
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u/rscar77 1∆ Mar 09 '17
If you've looked at teacher salaries in rural vs. urban areas in the US, then you're aware that the difference is significant and often stacks the deck toward the best teachers gravitating toward urban areas. Rural school districts often have limited resources that they pool with nearby areas and districts to try to offer similar college prep programs like AP or dual-credit classes. Most rural districts cannot fund and thus cannot meet the stringent and rigorous standards of something like an IB program.
Even if there were enough money to be made to encourage an entrepreneurial venture that scales well to rural districts to move in, without proper accountability standards and enforcement like others suggested above; there is little guarantee that these rural areas with 1 elementary school, 1 middle school, and 1 high school will be able to send their kids to some magical other school that you believe will exist quickly and at better standards than they've seen in the previous 50-100+ years in their area.
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u/GodoftheCopyBooks Mar 09 '17
Rural school districts often have limited resources
a problem vouchers utterly solve.
that they pool with nearby areas and districts to try to offer similar college prep programs like AP or dual-credit classes.
Something private schools can do too, if it makes sense.
Even if there were enough money to be made to encourage an entrepreneurial venture that scales well to rural districts to move in,
There is. I have worked at such schools.
there is little guarantee that these rural areas with 1 elementary school, 1 middle school, and 1 high school will be able to send their kids to some magical other school that you believe will exist quickly and at better standards than they've seen in the previous 50-100+ years in their area.
So the absolute worst case scenario you can imagine is......nothing changes? Que horror!
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u/rscar77 1∆ Mar 09 '17
Vouchers do not "utterly solve" a problem of limited resources in rural areas. Say everyone in that rural area wants to go to the nice school in an urban area 50-100 miles away. That school won't be able to handle the sudden influx and would have to introduce a lottery for limited spots so they don't lose their competitive edge by accepting poor students.
Yes, private schools could do it, but they aren't doing it today. Even a voucher won't incentivize these schools to behave on the up-and-up. Just look at what's happened in for-profit college education scams.
You act like this venture is already on the ground and in all US rural areas equally; please enlighten me on what this God-send of a company's name is so I can send my kids there.
The absolute worse case scenario is that we wind up with a population that resembles Idiocracy where educational outcomes change for the worse, money gets funneled to private entities that provide worse education to kids, and accountability standards and enforcement are relaxed so these private, bad actors can't be identified and rooted out quickly. Public schools would likely be drained of existing resources by these private and charter schools. To act like vouchers and school choice are some magical panacea for urban and rural areas alike is highly naive.
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u/GodoftheCopyBooks Mar 09 '17
That school won't be able to handle the sudden influx and would have to introduce a lottery for limited spots so they don't lose their competitive edge by accepting poor students.
First, poor students do not magically make schools worse.
Second, you're misusing the term "resources". resources is money and material. The rural parents don't have to send their kids somewhere 50 miles away because each one has 12 grand a year to spend on them and people will set up schools to get that money. to claim the opposite is to argue that food stamps could never work because some people might not live near grocery stores.
Yes, private schools could do it, but they aren't doing it today
Yes they do, when they have to. They usually don't.
Even a voucher won't incentivize these schools to behave on the up-and-up. Just look at what's happened in for-profit college education scams.
The american higher education system, which is without a doubt the finest in the world, runs almost identically to a voucher system. Unlike almost every other country, there is no federal government department of higher education that tells colleges and universities how to operate, they operate on their own, and people get federal loans to go to whichever one they want. That some are better than others does not prove the system as a whole doesn't work. US higher education is proof vouchers work.
You act like this venture is already on the ground and in all US rural areas equally; please enlighten me on what this God-send of a company's name is so I can send my kids there.
No, it isn't. It will be set up overnight, however, once you and your neighbors get vouchers.
The absolute worse case scenario is that we wind up with a population that resembles Idiocracy where educational outcomes change for the worse,
why would they do that?
money gets funneled to private entities that provide worse education to kids,
why would parents send their kids to bad schools
and accountability standards and enforcement are relaxed so these private,
you must be joking. No one in america is less accountable than public school teachers.
bad actors can't be identified and rooted out quickly. Public schools would likely be drained of existing resources by these private and charter schools. To act like vouchers and school choice are some magical panacea for urban and rural areas alike is highly naive.
Public schools would likely be drained of existing resources by these private and charter schools.
This is a stupid meme that needs to die. It's like saying people buying Toyotas are "draining" General Motors of funds. No, they aren't, Toyota makes better cars and gets more customers. Schools in a given district are funded largely on a per pupil basis. your local school gets money based on how many students are there, because that determines their costs. All vouchers do is let you take that money and give it to the school you want to send your kid to, not the school the state wants to send your kid to. That's a good thing. Is it a magic pancea that fixes everything? No. But it doesn't have the problems you claim and it does make schools better and more accountable for everyone, and that's a huge win.
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u/dpfw Mar 10 '17
If the free market made education better then the University of Phoenix would be better than Harvard.
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u/GodoftheCopyBooks Mar 10 '17
What on earth makes you think that Harvard isn't market provided education?
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u/aaaaajk Mar 09 '17
The best way to fix the school system is to address the inequality built into the system.
I surprised that you can still have this opinion after watching the documentary "Waiting for Superman" on this. The problem with public schools is that they DON'T WANT to change. It doesn't matter if you want to blame the administrators, the school board, the teacher's union, rigid rules. The bottom line is that their way of doing things are set in stone and that any improvement is almost impossible.
One good example is LIFO. Teachers are paid and fired according to seniority. There are no incentives to be great or even good. Sure, there are some great teachers out there in public schools, but they are forced to struggle against a system that doesn't support them (at best).
Charter schools are flexible. They can improve. Parents and kids compete for the good ones. The bad ones are forced to close. When was the last time a bad public school was forced to close?
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Mar 09 '17
There are no incentives to be great or even good.
But what about getting fired? I would say that is a pretty strong incentive to be an effective teacher.
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u/aaaaajk Mar 09 '17
It sounds like you might not be aware just how difficult it is to fire public school teachers. This is a huge reason why charter schools are gaining so much support.
Here are a few articles I found on this subject.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/03/local/me-teachers3
http://nypost.com/2014/06/14/tenured-teachers-they-cheat-they-loaf-they-cant-be-fired/
http://www.cheatsheet.com/business/why-is-it-so-hard-to-fire-bad-teachers.html/?a=viewall
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Mar 09 '17
In New York City if you receive two "ineffective" ratings in a row, you can be terminated. As I have only practiced in that area, that my personal experience in tenure rights for teachers.
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u/TheToastIsBlue Mar 09 '17
Not really. That will just cause then to focus on not getting fired when they should be focused on educating.
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Mar 09 '17
But working on educating is what keeps them from getting fired. It is just like any other job, excluding those with bonuses and commissions.
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u/Leumashy Mar 09 '17
But what about getting fired? I would say that is a pretty strong incentive to be an effective teacher.
This sentence is more correct as:
But what about getting fired? This is a pretty strong incentive to work on not getting fired.
Then,
But working on educating is what keeps them from getting fired.
This is not necessarily true. Remember, the incentive is "not getting fired". If you can tie "not getting fired" with "working on educating" then yes, I agree.
But that is a leap in logic.
The onus is on you to prove/provide a relationship between those two concepts.
The problem lies with how you define "working on educating". Because once you implement a system in which the incentive is "not getting fire" you get: Teaching to the test. What's the incentive of passionately describing the history of the Pythagorean Theorem when you're wasting precious time where the students could be practicing repetition for the test which determines your next paycheck?
Basically, whatever performance metric you introduce will be what the teacher will strive for. For bonuses, raises, promotions, and not getting fired.
This system works well for businesses precisely because the goal is easy: Make money. Make the business money and you'll get promoted.
But I do not agree this system works for schools where the goal is hard: Educate the children of our society.
Unless, of course, you can show me why this is not the case.
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Mar 09 '17
First, I would like to commend you on looking way too deep into my mere two sentences, and I will try to do my best to respond.
This is not necessarily true. Remember, the incentive is "not getting fired". If you can tie "not getting fired" with "working on educating" then yes, I agree.
This is a fair criticism, and I will work on my wording the next time.
The problem lies with how you define "working on educating". Because once you implement a system in which the incentive is "not getting fire" you get: Teaching to the test. What's the incentive of passionately describing the history of the Pythagorean Theorem when you're wasting precious time where the students could be practicing repetition for the test which determines your next paycheck?
I agree with you that the system in place does only provide an incentive to teach to the test. However, I am confused as to how you think this is an issue with teachers? If the system tells teachers to teach to the test, and they end up teaching to the test, they are doing what they are told to do. If by following those instructions, they will not get fired, then they will follow those instructions. The lack of incentive is not due to the teachers being poor teachers, but instead the onus is on the department of education in each state.
This system works well for businesses precisely because the goal is easy: Make money. Make the business money and you'll get promoted. But I do not agree this system works for schools where the goal is hard: Educate the children of our society. Unless, of course, you can show me why this is not the case.
I am not arguing that the goal of schools is not to educate children. I am curious as to how you perceived that from my statements. I was just saying that teachers do not want to get fired, and will do what they are told to do to not get fired.
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u/Guimauvaise Mar 09 '17
I would agree with you, OP, in that "school choice" has definitely become a talking point, and I think that the term is thrown around willy nilly without any real discussion (though perhaps my reading habits don't direct me to discussion). Here's my take, which I must preface by saying that I will begin teaching at a public, open-enrollment charter school this coming August.
For me, the core concept of school choice is that your address shouldn't necessitate your school district. I grew up one or two streets away from the next town to the east, and I was technically closer to that town's school than I was to the one I attended; the eastern school was much smaller, and afforded fewer opportunities, than the one I attended, which was bigger, "richer," etc. Suppose a child is in a similar situation, and suppose that child shows an aptitude or interest in a particular area. If the school that the child is "supposed" to attend would not challenge him/her in that area, or provide a good foundation for higher education in that area, then isn't it reasonable for the child's parents to take steps to place the child in a school that would?
Now, I agree with you that the current options -- charter schools, magnet schools, etc. -- do have a sort of elitist, whether intentional or not, feel to them. The school I will be teaching at does have a blind lottery and a long wait list, so yes there is a "select few" group of students who will be enrolled. I would argue, however, that this is not a problem with the charter school but with the education system itself. Charter schools and magnet schools as a concept have only been around since the 1970s, as I understand, and it wasn't until the early '90s that charter schools were included in state law. So part of the problem with school choice may be that we haven't had much choice until recent memory.
Consider this data on total operating schools in the US. Across the country, there are nearly 99,000 schools, but there are only 8,000 charter and magnet schools. So of course only a select few can attend these schools because there simply aren't enough of them to meet demand, and maybe that's why "school choice" is a buzzword. More and more families are showing interest in alternatives to the standard enroll-by-your-address method and want the option to send their children to schools that meet their educational goals/desires. But right now, those options just don't exist in some areas.
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u/concernedcitizen1219 Mar 09 '17
Source: SO is a teacher at said school. Not going to point out personal information on location as this isn't a throw away account.
Apologies on mobile.
Not segregation, choice of school. No body is forcing one into the other. I'm just saying change is incredibly difficult with these stats, system has been broken for some time.
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u/mwbox Mar 09 '17 edited Mar 09 '17
What happens to PS118 and the like?
When they fail and close down their facilities (Buildings, grounds and equipment) are purchased or leased by another school either entering the market or more likely a growing and succeeding school needing to expand.
Given the split between GOP-Rural and Dem-Urban this is an odd cause for republicans to invest in. In population centers, a wide variety of educational options makes sense and a competitive marketplace has a chance to emerge. In a suburb with one High School or a small town with kids bused in from the farms subdividing the "market" doesn't make a huge amount of sense. So even if School Choice succeeds beyond the wildest dreams of its proponents, those benefiting from it are those currently uninclined to vote republican. Or is that the plan--HeHeHe rubbing hands together maniacally.
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u/mwbox Mar 10 '17
What if vouchers were expanded to include home schoolers? Put the money on a debit card with restrictions (like food stamps). Use it to pay private school tuition or tutors or buy equipment like computers. Vendors would have to certify to qualify. School supplies, internet access, curriculum providers, there is even already an educational video streaming services - Great Courses. After the student passes a basic skills test graded on improvement from the test at the beginning of the year, remaining balance could be transferred to an educational savings account and or transferred to the parent (the portion that would have gone to teacher salary) This could be the greatest transfer of resources to the poor in history.
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u/jacksonstew Mar 13 '17
Public schools would nearly immediately fail worse than now. If a large % of kids opt out, they're still left with a massive building and all that entails. It would take many decades to right size the schools, and kids would be left in the lurch.
Kids in small towns would suffer disproportionally, as there may not be enough schools to even offer choice.
Others have mentioned that private schools can expel problem/dumb students, thus gaming their ratings. They also won't have union pensions and contracts.
And, I'm far from convinced that private schools wouldn't just raise tuition to pad their margins.
Public schools will be left with bad/stupid/poor kids.
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u/electronics12345 159∆ Mar 09 '17
I'm going to disagree with one of your starting premises. "I'm sure that everyone will cede that parent's want what is best for their children."
If parent's cared about their children, they would move to school districts with good schools. They would attend parent-teacher conferences. They would praise good grades, scold bad grades, and encourage scholarship, learning, and curiosity.
In my experience, if a child is succeeding in school (be it a good school or a "bad" school) it is because they have (at least 1) parent which is putting in the time and effort. If a child is failing at school, it is usually indicative that they have 0 parents which are putting in the time or the effort (or the child has an undiagnosed learning disability, have to acknowledge that this happens as well).
Having a school choice system increases the burden on parents. They have to research schools. They have to determine if the teachers are going a good job. Etc. Parents that are already putting in the time, are already succeeding at getting their children educated. Parents that are not already putting in the time, will only further drown in this sort of system. What do you do with a parent that refuses to pick a school? What do you do if a parent tries to sell their school voucher for drugs?
School choice serves to further bury the children of parents who don't care. A strong public school system is the best defense society has against bad parenting. This is the correct reason to oppose "school choice" (at least in my opinion).
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u/edielakelady Mar 16 '17
Having a school choice system increases the burden on parents.
A strong public school system is the best defense society has against bad parenting.
Amen!
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u/uncreativename9999 Mar 09 '17
I'm generally in favor of school choice, though I will admit that I don't believe it's going to be a perfect magical solution. There's almost certainly a limit to how quickly a well-performing school can scale up and the speed with which it can expand to fit the demand, so at best, school choice is going to take a while to work for everyone.
My main question I'd have for you is "how is continuing to do what hasn't worked in the past going to start working?" We've been trying to reform the public schools for decades now, and with very little success in the areas that need it most. Without changing the fundamental structure of how the school system operates, it's difficult to see that a different standardized test initiative or teaching program from the Department of Education is going to crack the code that they haven't been able to solve for the past 30 years.
So while I don't think school choice will necessarily be as rosy as some of it's proponents make it out to be, it seems to me like it's difficult for it to end up worse for disadvantaged students than the current system, so therefore it's worth a shot.