The Failure of "Public" Education

[ACCT]

The impact on public schools: The threat to public schools arises from their defects, not their accomplishments. In small, closely knit communities where public schools, particularly elementary schools, are now reasonably satisfactory, not even the most comprehensive voucher plan would have much effect However, elsewhere, and particularly in the urban slums where the public schools are doing such a poor job, most parents would undoubtedly try to send their children to nonpublic schools.

 

[sedonaman]

And who are the troublemakers? Disabled children? children who don’t speak English well? children who are perhaps not so smart?

And where are these troublemakers, however they are defined, going to get an education? Because I assure you that and uneducated troublemakers is worse than the alternative.

Recalcitrant kids who make trouble.

 

[manualman]

How would you propose to get public school administrations, which you rightly claim seek a “monopoly control over education” to join an “alliance”? Kids dont belong in govt run goulags 5 days a week where they are indoctrinated with propaganda. Public schools ARE the enemy. You dont enter an “alliance” with somene who is trying to strangle you to death.

You underestimate the degree to which public school administrations loathe the teacher’s unions. Administrations are always having trouble meeting all the goals they’ve been assigned by their elected boards within the budget said board has provided them. Especially when the unions are always demanding more. I agree that such people are ideologically opposed to any sort of voucher, but the brutal hammer of economic reality is a powerful tool. If a partial voucher program is proposed to a board that has been told by its administration that the budget is inadequate to meet its goals (particularly in districts growing in population with overcrowded schools), it has the potential to create large budget surpluses due to reduced student population, but proportionately smaller reductions in total funding. (I admit that I base this on my area where District funding is overwhelmingly from local real estate taxes, not state funding).

 

[ACCT]

Charlotte, NC—After one year, voucher students had reading scores 8 percentile points higher than the control group and math scores 7 points higher.

 

[ACCT]

*This re-examination of the role of government in education suggests that the growth of governmental responsibility in this area has been unbalanced. Government has appropriately financed general education for citizenship, but in the process it has been led also to administer most of the schools that provide such education. Yet, as we have seen, **the administration of schools is neither required **by the financing of education, **nor justifiable in its own right in a predominantly free enterprise society. **Government has appropriately been concerned with widening the opportunity of young men and women to get professional and technical training, but it has sought to further this objective by the inappropriate means of subsidizing such education, largely in the form of making it available free or at a low price at governmentally operated schools. * - Milton Friedman

 

[manualman]

Charlotte, NC—After one year, voucher students had reading scores 8 percentile points higher than the control group and math scores 7 points higher.

Be careful now. Honesty demands that we examine such statistics and check if the correlation says anything about causation.

Are the private school voucher kids identical in every way to the public school kids, but did better because of better school performance? Or do the private school voucher kids tend to have parents that value education more and are more likely to shoulder the sacrifice of private transportation and after-school logistics than crummy parents who put no effort whatsoever into encouraging learning and achievement among their children (with the possible exception of sports in some cases)?

While I’m strongly commited to vouchers becoming a reality, I’m not willing to uncritically accept arguments on my side when the facts appear to be shaky at best. We won’t win unless we make a clear, unambiguous, honest and accurate argument about why our plan is better.

I’m honest enough to admit that I DO believe there are an awful lot of terrible parents out there these days and that there is precious little that any school can do to make up for that lack of good parenting. By all means offer those kids opportunity, give them the chance to succeed. But don’t allow them to set the tone and limit the pace of what every other kid in that class can achieve. No more culture of lowest common denominator. I suspect that one of the greatest benefits of private schools is that they have the freedom to expel the poisonous students who destroy the learning environment for the other kids. The fact that public schools cannot have that option does need to be taken into account, which is another reason vouchers should only be partial. The public schools DO need the resources to handle the kids nobody else will take.

 

[sedonaman]

Be careful now. Honesty demands that we examine such statistics and check if the correlation says anything about causation.

Are the private school voucher kids identical in every way to the public school kids, but did better because of better school performance? …

While this is the normal way to handle statistics, I think it would be impossible to accomplish. To be controlled, your student set would have to be examined under both circumstances, and it would have to be the same students in both cases. So the question becomes, did the private school students in the 5th grade, say, do better, the same, or worse than they did in public school. Obviously, we can’t run the same students through the 5th grade twice. Even if we could, they would know more at the beginning of the second time, thus negating your results.

While I’m strongly commited to vouchers becoming a reality, I’m not willing to uncritically accept arguments on my side when the facts appear to be shaky at best. We won’t win unless we make a clear, unambiguous, honest and accurate argument about why our plan is better.

Then you have to resign yourself to losing all the time. The pro-voucher side has been making “clear, unambiguous, honest and accurate argument about why our plan is better” for over 20 years that I am aware and has gotten nowhere. Back in the early '90s, there was a state ballot initiative in Ca that would have created vouchers. It had a huge margin of support in the beginning, but lost by a landslide in the final vote. Why? Because the anti-voucher element came out with their big guns putting fear in the hearts of the electorate in the end. Because voters are rationally ignorant, you can’t overcome emotion with logic. The pro-voucher folks should have said something like, “Vote against this. We don’t want your riff-raff in our schools.” Another reason to oppose vouchers is that the next thing you would see is government control of private schools, thus making them every bit like public ones are now.

 

[septimine]

Be careful now. Honesty demands that we examine such statistics and check if the correlation says anything about causation.

Are the private school voucher kids identical in every way to the public school kids, but did better because of better school performance? Or do the private school voucher kids tend to have parents that value education more and are more likely to shoulder the sacrifice of private transportation and after-school logistics than crummy parents who put no effort whatsoever into encouraging learning and achievement among their children (with the possible exception of sports in some cases)?

Being honest, they aren’t. Kids in private school in general have motivated parents. Parents who chose to spend money for that school and who believe that education is important. This isn’t true for a public school kid who might have his parents only involved to the point of making him attend school. It makes a difference.

While I’m strongly commited to vouchers becoming a reality, I’m not willing to uncritically accept arguments on my side when the facts appear to be shaky at best. We won’t win unless we make a clear, unambiguous, honest and accurate argument about why our plan is better.

Well, honestly, I don’t put most of the value in just “academics”, even though students do better in those schools. For me a big plus is that the school I choose for my child will not try to propagandize my child against my religion or my beliefs.

christocentric.com/main/?p=3043
theonomyresources.blogspot.com/2011/01/public-schools-tool-of-totalitarian.html
[(name removed by moderator)lainsite.org/html/christianity_and_public_school.html](http://www.(name removed by moderator)lainsite.org/html/christianity_and_public_school.html)
[(name removed by moderator)lainsite.org/html/the_war_on_christianity.html](http://www.(name removed by moderator)lainsite.org/html/the_war_on_christianity.html)

The record seems pretty clear on public education – the goal is secularism and indifferentism, dependence on government and acceptance of immorality. Yes reading and writing is important, but I don’t know that it’s so important that you should rather have a literate athiest over an illiterate Christian. But since private schools do better anyway, it’s sort of no-brainer as to where a Chistian should put his kids.

I’m honest enough to admit that I DO believe there are an awful lot of terrible parents out there these days and that there is precious little that any school can do to make up for that lack of good parenting. By all means offer those kids opportunity, give them the chance to succeed. But don’t allow them to set the tone and limit the pace of what every other kid in that class can achieve. No more culture of lowest common denominator. I suspect that one of the greatest benefits of private schools is that they have the freedom to expel the poisonous students who destroy the learning environment for the other kids. The fact that public schools cannot have that option does need to be taken into account, which is another reason vouchers should only be partial. The public schools DO need the resources to handle the kids nobody else will take.

 

[ACCT]

Be careful now. Honesty demands that we examine such statistics and check if the correlation says anything about causation.

A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on School Vouchers

Released: 3/23/2011

Author(s): Greg Forster, Ph.D.

Press Release

This report collects the results of all available empirical studies using the best available scientific methods to measure how school vouchers affect academic outcomes for participants, and all available studies on how vouchers affect outcomes in public schools. Contrary to the widespread claim that vouchers do not benefit participants and hurt public schools,** the empirical evidence consistently shows that vouchers improve outcomes for both participants and public schools. In addition to helping the participants by giving them more options, there are a variety of explanations for why vouchers might improve public schools as well. The most important is that competition from vouchers introduces healthy incentives for public schools to improve.
**

Key findings include:
•Ten empirical studies have used random assignment, the gold standard of social science, to examine how vouchers affect participants. Nine studies find that vouchers improve student outcomes, six that all students benefit and three that some benefit and some are not affected. One study finds no visible impact. None of these studies finds a negative impact.
•Nineteen empirical studies have examined how vouchers affect outcomes in public schools. Of these studies, 18 find that vouchers improved public schools and one finds no visible impact. No empirical studies find that vouchers harm public schools.•Every empirical study ever conducted in Milwaukee, Florida, Ohio, Texas, Maine and Vermont finds that voucher programs in those places improved public schools.
•Only one study, conducted in Washington D.C., found no visible impact from vouchers. This is not surprising, since the D.C. voucher program is the only one designed to shield public schools from the impact of competition. Thus, the D.C. study does not detract from the research consensus in favor of a positive effect from voucher competition.
•The benefits provided by existing voucher programs are sometimes large, but are usually more modest in size. This is not surprising since the programs themselves are modest — curtailed by strict limits on the students they can serve, the resources they provide, and the freedom to innovate. Only a universal voucher program could deliver the kind of dramatic improvement our public schools so desperately need.

 

[ACCT]

My hero is Milton Friedman. He said, **“Even in the earliest years of the Republic, not only the cities but almost every town and village and most rural districts had schools…Though schooling was neither compulsory or free, it was practically universal **(slaves of, course, excepted). In his report for 1836, the superintendent of common schools of the sate of New York asserted: ‘Under any view of the subject it is reasonable to believe, that in the common schools, private schools and academies, the number of children actually receiving instruction is equal to the whole number between five and sixteen years of age.’ Conditions doubtless varied from state to state, but by all accounts schooling was widely available to (white) children from families at all economic levels.”

“The first compulsory attendance law was enacted by Massachusetts in 1852, but attendance did not become compulsory in all states until 1918. Government control was primarily local well into the twentieth century (Friedman).”

“Our own view is that an unrestricted voucher would be the most effective way to reform an educational system that now helps to shape a life of misery, poverty, and crime for many children of the inner city; that it would undermine the foundations of much of such economic segregation as exists today (Friedman).”

“In our judgment the very poor would benefit the most from the voucher plan…The perceived self-interest of the educational bureaucracy is the key obstacle to the introduction of market competition in schooling (Friedman).”

References

Friedman, M., & Friedman, R. D. (1990). Free to Choose. New York: Harcourt, Inc.

 

[Mrs_Sally]

Recalcitrant kids who make trouble.

What definition of recalcitrant will be used and who gets to decide? If a child makes one mistake do they get thrown out of school forever? And then we have an uneducated troublemaker running around with no positive influence.

There has got to be a better solution. I am not convinced that private schools really want to take on the responsibility of educating every child. I know that not all public schools are horrible and that most school teachers do their best to help the students thay have. However, when those students don’t have support at home, aren’t very smart, have health issues like depression, ADD, or worse, the job is very hard.

In any company, someone responsible for 30 employees would be a director level and have appropriate compensation and support. Schoolteachers on the other hand are given little to work with, and are often not supported by either administration or parents. There are plenty of problems with education in the US, but they won’t all be solved by “market forces.”

 

[ACCT]

The racial issue: Discrimination under a voucher plan can be prevented at least as easily as in public schools by redeeming vouchers only from schools that do not discriminate.

 

[sedonaman]

The racial issue: Discrimination under a voucher plan can be prevented at least as easily as in public schools by redeeming vouchers only from schools that do not discriminate.

Well, the problem is, schools have to discriminate*, not only when assigning grades but when deciding whom to expel and whom not to. Then you will inevitably get into charges of discrimination when the statistics don’t reflect the population, like what this study lagriffedulion.f2s.com/discipline.htm addresses.

*Discriminate: to observe a difference.

 

[mitex]

The impact on public schools: The threat to public schools arises from their defects, not their accomplishments. In small, closely knit communities where public schools, particularly elementary schools, are now reasonably satisfactory, not even the most comprehensive voucher plan would have much effect However, elsewhere, and particularly in the urban slums where the public schools are doing such a poor job, most parents would undoubtedly try to send their children to nonpublic schools.

ACCT clearly you have an agenda here…

 

[ACCT]

ACCT clearly you have an agenda here…

My agenda is supporting school choice. All the research is in place. Look up school choice and Milton Friedman.

Common sense comes from God. We have lost common sense in all phases of our lives, including the the economy. We are blind in regards to educatiuon, the economy, etc. because we think that we can build a world without God.

We are in an epic spiritual battle between Jesus and Satan. There is no future without Jesus.

Global hyperinflation is on its way. Kiss your dollars and your wallet goodbye. We are in God’s judgment.

 

[sedonaman]

ACCT clearly you have an agenda here…

Like, that’s a crime? Who doesn’t have an agenda?

 

[mitex]

My agenda is supporting school choice. All the research is in place. Look up school choice and Milton Friedman.

Common sense comes from God. We have lost common sense in all phases of our lives, including the the economy. We are blind in regards to educatiuon, the economy, etc. because we think that we can build a world without God.

We are in an epic spiritual battle between Jesus and Satan. There is no future without Jesus.

Global hyperinflation is on its way. Kiss your dollars and your wallet goodbye. We are in God’s judgment.

So now your one of those apocalyptic doomsday people lol. Nvm carry on.

 

[BillP]

The voucher wars have been fought here many times with good points made on all sides.

My summary of the best ideas on the matter is that vouchers should only be offered in a small amount, probably half or less of what is actually spent on a normal kid’s education. If private school vouchers in the amount of $1,500 per kid, there would be ZERO downside compared to the status quo. The public schools would end up with MORE money per student to spend and more families would have options in where to send their kids.

What voucher opponents fail to address is the consequences of doing nothing. Fewer and fewer people can afford private schools every year. As the number of public school students increases, but the TAX base for them doesn’t, what results? Tax increases. So remember that: anyone opposed to any level of vouchers for private schooling is secretly attempting to raise your taxes in the long run.

P.S. Many have challenged my math skills in asserting that a partial voucher would INCREASE the per student funding of public schools. Here’s the sample math:

School district has 10,000 kids and spends $13,000 each per year for $130million budget. Same district currently has 700 private school students and those schools could squeeze another 500 kids in if there was that much interest.

New public district budget = (9,500*$13,000) + (1,200 * $1,500) = $125.3 million. Since they already tax at a rate of $130million, they can take the extra $4.7million and now spend $13,495 per student. Sounds like enough to restore music class to the budget to me, maybe art too? Win - win.

But no, the teacher’s union lobby wins and no vouchers go through. One private school is forced to close and 200 kids move to the public school. The District now has 10,200 kids to educate, so they need to raise your taxes by $2.6million. Enjoy.

I would whole-heartedly approve of a voucher system that required private schools who wished to accept the voucher to accept them as full payment (like medicare requires physicians to accept the reimbursement as full payment for care). Otherwise it just becomes a subsidy for middle/upper class parents to take their kids out of public schools without giving lower class parents access to the same opportunity.

I wonder why you never see voucher programs like that?

 

[BillP]

I am not advocating shutting the doors of public education, just opening more doors of private education.

The** parents will vote with their school vouchers**. They will decide which public schools will stay open and which public schools will close. Additionally,** many new private schools will open.** New schools will give parents even more choices. Why should the state have a monopoly on education?

You keep sayign the state has a monopoly on education, do you know the actual menaing of the term monopoly? They are FAR from the only provider, there are 33,000 private schools (25% of all schools) educating 5.5 million kids (10% of all students) so please quit saying “the state has a monopoly on education” because it isn’t true.

capenet.org/facts.html

 

[ACCT]

“Providing education for everyone benefits society as a whole.” That is a true statement. Education is needed for economic growth. However, using the social benefit of education to justify using tax money to finance public education is not valid. It is just bad economics. “Adam Smith’s invisible hand makes a student’s private interest (higher earnings) serve the social interest (economic growth) (Friedman).” People will go to school anyway, even without “free schooling.” If the marginal benefit is greater than the marginal cost, people will continue to go to school. This country had universal education long before there was “public education.” ** The real question is, should we have a protected public monopoly (public schools) or market competition? I vote for market competition by the use of school vouchers. **

Dr. Max Gammon has a theory of bureaucratic displacement. He says that in a bureaucratic system an increase in expenditure will be matched by a fall in production…such systems act like black holes in the economic universe.

Look at any school district over a period of time. You will see the number of staff and supervisors exploding. “From 1968 – 1974 students were up 1%, staff was up 15%, teachers were up 14%, and supervisors were up 44% (Friedman).” It costs between $7,000 and $8,000 per child for nine months of public schooling. It costs 1/3 that amount in private Catholic schools. SAT scores are also higher in private schools. Who needs a protected public monopoly such as the public school system? I vote for vouchers for parents. ** Let the parents decide, not the teachers’ unions and government!**