The Three Paper Solution, Part 3
But wouldn’t the private schools avoid ghetto areas?
That’s what your Third Sheet of paper is for – if private industry or non-profit organizations aren’t willing to open a school in a particular area for $5,000 per child, bid $5,100 – and keep bidding until you get a good school there. You have the money because you held back 10% of the funds, remember?
What about rural areas, or parents in areas where there are no alternative schools? How will these children get to school?
When the money accompanies the child, schools will be where they are needed – aren’t there gas stations and fast food joints wherever they are needed? In addition, there are many alternatives to the traditional method of schooling. A good example is the Arkansas Virtual School. This is now linked to the public school system, and currently offers a complete curriculum up thorough the eighth grade via the internet. This technology – already available throughout the state – will allow any child to attend a quality school.
But can it be done at the figures you use?
Absolutely! I have worked for a for-profit company as a training analyst, developer and program manager. I have costed out, bid on, and won contracts. In the commercial training industry, the “burden rate” – the cost of overhead, administration, benefits, profit, and so on – is about 100%. That means that for each dollar the company pays a professional (like myself) it must charge the customer two dollars to cover rent, salaries for administrative personnel, social security, benefits and the like, and still make a profit.
If we maintain one teacher for each 25-student classroom and assume $5,000 for each child (Arkansas currently spends about $6,200 per child), that teacher is generating $125,000 per year, and we can afford to pay the teacher about $62,500 a year in salary.
But in a competitive market, we can do innovative things. For example, instead of starting school once a year, we could start school every quarter. This would generate a one-third increase in efficiency, so now the teacher is generating a little over $165,000 a year.
We can do other things – for example, I mentioned the Arkansas Virtual School earlier. I have extensive experience with this type of technology. My company developed Computer-Based Instruction (CBI) programs in basic educational subjects for the Department of Defense. These programs were designed for military personnel who had graduated from the Public School System without the necessary reading, writing and math skills they needed.
We can use such programs combined with live classroom instruction to further increase the efficiency of the professional teacher, and raise the income generated to well over $200,000 per year – which means we could afford to pay teachers an average annual salary of about $100,000. Of course, starting teachers would receive less, while experienced, star-quality teachers would receive much more.
But what would happen to the public schools?
They would become part of the Public Education System – a system in which every child receives the same funding, and can attend any school the parents choose.
Bad public schools – and bad private schools – would fail. Good schools – public and private – would prosper.
What about rapidly-growing areas? How would they get schools?
Very easily. It typically takes the current bureaucracy-ridden system about five years to establish a new school.
But it doesn’t take private industry five years to put a shopping mall near a new subdivision, complete with fast food outlets, grocery and drug stores, video stores and gas stations. Private industry has shown that it can meet all the needs of the public, no matter how fast they change, if the profit is there.
Open up the Public Education System to private industry, and stand back and watch our schools improve.
