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ACCT
Guest
What competition do government schools have? They provide “free” education. Would you like to open a school and compete with “free” government schools?
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jmcrae
Guest
I’m confused, too. “Public” to me means, “taxpayer funded.” Taxes go to the government; therefore, public schools are those that are funded by the government, using public tax dollars.
If we get rid of education taxes and government funding of schools, then who establishes “public” schools, and how are they paid for?
It seems as if people want a system of private schools that are funded with vouchers, presumably purchased by the families of school aged children, in replacement of the education portion of your government tax bill.
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ACCT
Guest
The government funds school vouchers. However, the government will not administer the schools.I’m confused, too. “Public” to me means, “taxpayer funded.” Taxes go to the government; therefore, public schools are those that are funded by the government, using public tax dollars.
If we get rid of education taxes and government funding of schools, then who establishes “public” schools, and how are they paid for?
It seems as if people want a system of private schools that are funded with vouchers, presumably purchased by the families of school aged children, in replacement of the education portion of your government tax bill.
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Luna_Lovecraft
Guest
So you want a private companies making profits from the government trough? Companies that will put profit over community. That may or may not pay living wages to their employees. That will close schools if they’re no longer profitable. That will be accountable to shareholders instead of the people in the community.
Public schools are far, far from perfect. But if you look at what profit-driven charter schools have done to destabilize communities, especially poor ones, after they’ve taken over the neighborhood public schools and then pulled out in search of more/easier money, it’s atrocious. LA Unified is coping with a mess created when a handful of charters announced they were closing in the middle of the school year and dumped a couple of thousand kids back into public schools in a massive budget-cuts year. Bussing. School site staffing. Even food services has all been struggling to cope with it. Even the worst superintendant in the worst school didtrict doesn’t announce, “We’re not making enough from this community. We’re moving to Scotsdale.”
The education of children should not be controlled by profit-driven people. Eli Broad can keep his McAcademies.
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sedonaman
Guest
The profit motive works when both sides win. If the consumer loses, he goes elsewhere. If the public school system were an automobile, would you buy it?
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Luna_Lovecraft
Guest
Kids aren’t products. Schools aren’t manufacturing facilities/factories. K-12 education shouldn’t be for sale.
And people who have the wherewithal move. The poor and marginalized suck it up and cope. I’m highly suspicious of any profit-driven corporation coming into a poor comunity with something to sell because it’s oftentimes the community that ends up on the short end. Landfills don’t get installed on the right side of the tracks. And if you look at some of the shenanigans private companies have gotten up to in order to get their schools chartered in poor communities (fake petitions, lies told to parents, read up on the LAUSD debacle), it all makes me doubt their true intentions.
Luna
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Mrs_Sally
Guest
So you are still advocating using government funds. Funds raised through taxes. History has shown us that funds given without oversight or adminsistration are often squandered. Not that specific school districts today don’t waste money, but overall I’d be leery of handing over funds without any oversight. I don’t think you’d be too happy with the results either.
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sedonaman
Guest
But people are people, and they respond to the profit motive. You want everyone in education to be altruistic. That just ain’t gonna happen.
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ACCT
Guest
The failure of “public” education is because there are “no profits.” The philosophy of socialism is** failure**. The creed of socialism is** ignorance. The gospel of socialism is envy.** What we have in government is very high prices and an educational system that is both inefficient and ineffective. That is also true for all monopolies. ** If you ignore the laws of economics, you are doomed to failure!**
Supply and Demand: An all-purpose tool to answer any economic question
If I paid you $5.00 per hour, how many hours would you work per week? What if I paid you $50 per hour, how many hours would you work? How about $500/hr.? The law of supply says you would work more hours at $500/hr. than at $50/hr and you would work more hours at $50/hr. than at $5/hr.
A research firm conducted a survey to identify labor shortages in Northern New York. Among other things, the firm asked employers to list their job openings, their starting wages, and if the openings were difficult to fill. Nurses, for example, were in short supply in Northern New York, as in most areas of the U.S. Our survey found that employers who paid nurses less than $15 per hour had a difficult time filling their openings, while employers who paid more than $15 had no difficulty. Typically, employers who paid higher wages had less difficulty filling their job openings than employers who paid lower wages. Of course, no one needs a survey to tell them that --it’s plain common sense, but it does support the law of supply. Finally, note that the supply curve is upward sloping.
Markets are not always in equilibrium. Sometimes there are shortages and surpluses. When there is a shortage, prices rise; when there is a surplus prices fall. For example, after the attack on the World Trade Towers, hotels in New York City had a surplus of rooms. Why a surplus? People were afraid to travel and cancelled their reservations. To eliminate a surplus, hotels and other businesses who cater to travelers reduce prices, which induces travelers (demanders) to buy more of their services. After the surplus is gone, the market moves to a new equilibrium.
The minimum wage is a price floor. Currently, employers may not pay wages lower than $5.15 per hour for most jobs. This floor has little effect on the overall job market because the average hourly wage in the U.S. is over $14 per hour. Price floors can create surpluses if the floor is above the market’s equilibrium price (where supply and demand intersect). (The market equilibrium wage (or price) is also known as the market clearing wage (or price).) Imagine what would happen if the minimum wage was raised to $500 per hour. Almost everyone would be willing to work long hours, but employers would hire few workers. Consequently, a large surplus of labor would arise. Now imagine what would happen if the government imposed a maximum wage law on overtime hours – a wage (price) ceiling. For instance, if the wage for overtime was restricted to no more
than $1.00 per hour, scarcely anyone would work overtime, but employers would beg for workers at $1.00/hr. Consequently, a large shortage of overtime workers would arise.
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sedonaman
Guest
But according to Luna, the problems with education shouldn’t be an economic question.
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Luna_Lovecraft
Guest
Define ineffective when it comes to educating all children.
Define inefficient when it comes to educating all children.
K-12 education is not a monopoly.
To think of K-12 education in purely economic terms belies a fundamental lack of understanding of the purpose of doing it. Kids are not commodeties.
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Luna_Lovecraft
Guest
Then they need to stay out of K-12 education.
For-profit companies have done more to destroy K-12 education for poor and marginalized kids get in the last ten years than all the innept politicians and school boards and district administrators and classroom teachers put together. One phrase: No Child Left Behind. There is a direct, measured, documented correlation between family income level and how much a child spends every school day on standardized test prep. We spend billions and billions of our tax money every year on NCLB junk, and kids from low-income communities can spend up to three hours every day on non-enriching, skill-drill-kill worksheets in the hopes they’ll look good on a battery of multiple-choice tests for the politicians and business community. Public schools or charter schools, doesn’t matter. If a kid is poor chances are very good her school has done away with art, music, and physical education and huge chunks of social studies and science time to give extended time to canned reading and math programs. No matter what the neuroscience says about how kids learn, the canned programs are profitable for the companies that produce them and they enable administrators to show the politicians and business leaders that they’re “doing something” to bring up test scores. No one even cares anymore that these test scores are both unreliable and invalid measures of what children know and can do. Never mind the kids seldmon learning anything meaningful of these scripted, canned programs. If they test well that’s all the counts anymore.
Luna
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sedonaman
Guest
Don’t have a reasoned response? No problemo; just ask for definitions.
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sedonaman
Guest
You are all over the map with this. There is no coherent thought here.
What I think we have here, though, is what Sowell calls A Conflict of Visions. Please don’t ask me to define “A”, “Conflict”, “of”, and “Visions”. You can get them in his book.
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jmcrae
Guest
Why would they want to fund something that they wouldn’t be allowed to control? I’m sure their first reaction will be, who is accountable for how the money is spent, and who gets to do the auditing?
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sedonaman
Guest
The idea [at least the ones I’ve heard of] is to make the voucher redeemable amount equal to only half of what the public schools spend per pupil. Whether the schools who receive them want to teach readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic, or the oppression of peoples of color, the works of Nikki Giovani, Marxist-Leninist claptrap, some other subjects that do not result in students’ ability to produce a useful social product in the economy, or even buy sandals for lesbian students with a foot-fetish, is immaterial. If that’s what parents want, then let them have it. Those who opt for the pursuit of truth will go elsewhere. So control will fall in the hands of the parents, and this is where the rub is: Leftist ideologues will lose control. Conservatives don’t see this as a problem because they trust free people to make the right decision. Leftists do because the will of the unwashed masses is likely to prevail, and this must be avoided at all costs.Why would they want to fund something that they wouldn’t be allowed to control? I’m sure their first reaction will be, who is accountable for how the money is spent, and who gets to do the auditing?
P.S. The money belongs to the people, not the government.
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jmcrae
Guest
True, but the government is tasked with ensuring that it is spent wisely on public projects for the common good; otherwise, why bother to pay taxes?
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JimG
Guest
I’m just wondering. Schools seem to have done quite well when their chief concern was to educate. When they have to be parents as well as teachers, that poses nearly insoluble problems. Of course it is more expensive to take over all the functions of a mom and a dad and also try to teach.
So the question gets down to, how did the schools get into the parenting business? And can the schools ever get out of the parenting business?
So the question gets down to, how did the schools get into the parenting business? And can the schools ever get out of the parenting business?
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sedonaman
Guest
That has been the subject of considerable debate in government circles. One govt. class of upper managers got into a real knock-down drag-out between those in the DoD and those in the Welfare side. The former took your position; the latter maintained that govt. agencies were tasked to “shovel money into the streets.”
“Nø, they can’t.”
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sedonaman
Guest
I’m not sure about “parenting” but it’s good for lack of a better word. I would have said when they stopped pursuing truth in favor of indoctrination into the “correct” things to believe in and the “wrong” things to avoid.
“Nø, they can’t.”
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