The Three-Paper Solution
(Continued from previous post)
Would parents be allowed to supplement the public funds?
Of course! Look at it this way – I open a school that gets $5,000 of public funds per child (the national average is closer to twice that, but we’ll use $5,000 in this example), and the parents kick in an extra $10,000 per child. I successfully recruit nine affluent children. But in your First Sheet of paper, you said that to receive public funds I have to have at least 10% poor minority enrollment. So now I have to recruit a poor minority child, or lose $45,000 in public funding.
How do I do that if the poor parents can’t afford to pay the extra $10,000?
I give the child a $10,000 scholarship, of course – and the public funds kick in another $5,000 for that child. So for a $10,000 scholarship, I get $50,000 in public funds.
Who loses?
Not me – I qualify for $50,000 in public funds in return for a $10,000 scholarship.
Not the public – they’re paying $5,000 per child, just as they would at any other school.
Not the students – they’re attending a first-class school (and if it weren’t first class, their parents wouldn’t be willing to kick in an extra $10,000 per pupil).
Not the poor minority students – they’re getting the same first-class education and making all the connections the children of the affluent are making, and it isn’t costing them a cent.
Nobody loses, everybody wins.
But wouldn’t the private schools “cherry pick” – take the best students and leave the problem students for the public schools?
Of course not! After all, you’re the one writing the rules. If you’re smart enough to figure they might do this, you’re also smart enough to write a standard to prevent them from doing it.
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 over $9,000 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.
(Continued in next post)
