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sedonaman
Guest
Don’t forget that public schools will still be getting half the per student funding of those who opt for a voucher. That’s money they can use to instruct the disadvantaged.
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Luna_Lovecraft
Guest
I’m not the person you’re asking, but I can think of some subgroups who are routinely rejected by private and charter schools because of the costs attached to their education:There MUST be a public school system to educate the kids that are too expensive to educate with the voucher money alone.
Medically fragile children, who need home health teachers to travel to where they are - hospital rooms or their homes - for one-on-one instruction. Public school districts are required to accommodate these families, whereas private and charter schools oftentimes don’t have the capacity.
Certain special education populations, who need one-on-one aides for hygiene care (e.g., diaper changes, stent drainage, help with toileting issues, etc.), and emotionally disturbed children, some of whom require one-on-one aides to help deal with outbursts and behaviors that might get very disruptive or even violent, can drive their education costs beyond what’s offered by vouchers. If a child’s least restrictive environment is determined to be the school site, public schools are mandated to provide these accommodations. Private schools that offer similar services are prohibitively expensive for all but the wealthiest families.
Anecdotal but nevertheless compelling situation: I have a friend whose teenage niece has both mental retardation and oppositional defiant disorder. Her least restrictive environment as determined by her Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is the mainstream classroom. In order for this accommodation to happen, she needs a social/emotion aide (a credentialed teacher with specialized training in working with emotionally disturbed adolescents) with her at all times while she is on her school campus. She sits in all of her classes with her, eats lunch with her, shadows her in the restroom and gym locker, etc. The aide meets her as soon as she steps off the school bus in the morning and stays with her until she puts her back on the school bus after school. The private and charter schools in this girl’s area simply don’t have the capacity for this kind of accommodation because of the costs associated with it.
Luna
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ACCT
Guest
In a universal voucher system everyone gets a school voucher. A 100% voucher means that if it costs the state $9,000 to educate a child, each voucher will be worth $9,000Don’t forget that public schools will still be getting half the per student funding of those who opt for a voucher. That’s money they can use to instruct the disadvantaged.
Parents will vote with their vouchers. Only the best public schools will survive, and many new schools will open to take the place of the failed public schools. Competitioin will see to that.
Everyone will benefit, including the state’s pocketbook.
You have had some very good posts. Thanks!
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ACCT
Guest
Competition and price are the most efficient way to allocate scarce resources. ** "An individual who intends only to serve the public interest by fostering government intervention is led by an invisible hand to promote private interest, which was no part of his intention (Friedman).”**Could you venture into the realm of specifics? There MUST be a public school system to educate the kids that are too expensive to educate with the voucher money alone. How will that school system exist when all of the other money is siphoned off?
Economics is, “the study of choice under conditions of scarcity.” This condition of scarcity leads to the three problems of resource allocation: 1) which goods and services should be produced, 2) how should they be produced, and 3) who should get these goodies. Deciding on how to accomplish these tasks, is where human behavior (choices) comes into play.
Definitions of economics also focus on the concept of scarcity. **In economics, scarcity does not necessarily imply poverty, instead it means limited, that is, people have limited (or scarce) resources, but unlimited wants. **
In a market economy, the forces of supply and demand rule. **Price is the mechanism that regulates resource allocation. Prices are a signal, which directs the behavior of suppliers (sellers) and demanders (buyers). **In market capitalism most of society’s resources are privately owned, and the owners of these resources can use them as they please within legal limits. Incentive is the key difference between capitalism (private ownership of resources) and socialism (state ownership of resources). Private ownership boosts incentive, while public ownership retards it.
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ACCT
Guest
**I think the fact that you refer to them as urban slums is telling… The parlance used by those who serve these populations is low-income neighborhoods. The terms mean the same thing, but the citizens of low-income areas tend to get offended when you refer to their neighborhoods as slums. They’re funny about protecting their dignity like that.
I am anything but a fan of NCLB, but one good thing that has come out of this legislation is that it forces schools to release disaggregated data on their subgroups. When you compare charter, private, and public schools that operate in the same neighborhoods (urban, rural, suburban, etc.), one pattern emerges quickly: the single largest predictor of academic performance predictor isn’t which school the child is enrolled in, it’s parental education level. Kids whose parents did not graduate from high school perform lower both academically and socially (e.g., grades and discipline issues) than children whose parents have at least a high school degree, and the children who tend to perform the best have parents who are college graduates. Again, this is across the board.
Parent education levels, family income levels, how many people share square footage in a household, the average noise level in a house between 5:00 p.m. and 10 p.m., how many adults live in a household, and if parents are immigrants all factor higher in predicting a child’s academic success before what kind of school the child attends does.
In other words, schools are like mirrors: they reflect what they face.
Ceteris paribus** is a Latin phrase, literally translated as “with other things the same,” or “all other things being equal or held constant.” There has been tons of research showing that when all things are equal, school voucher schools outperform their public school counterparts.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
I know what you’re saying, but does that really add significantly to the cost? I have a daughter with autism. The public school did not have adequately trained people, but it did throw some people at her. As I recall, there were no more than four students in the program out of a total student body of over a thousand. There is no possibility at all that those additional people accounted for the difference in costs between public and private schools.I’m not the person you’re asking, but I can think of some subgroups who are routinely rejected by private and charter schools because of the costs attached to their education:
Medically fragile children, who need home health teachers to travel to where they are - hospital rooms or their homes - for one-on-one instruction. Public school districts are required to accommodate these families, whereas private and charter schools oftentimes don’t have the capacity.
Certain special education populations, who need one-on-one aides for hygiene care (e.g., diaper changes, stent drainage, help with toileting issues, etc.), and emotionally disturbed children, some of whom require one-on-one aides to help deal with outbursts and behaviors that might get very disruptive or even violent, can drive their education costs beyond what’s offered by vouchers. If a child’s least restrictive environment is determined to be the school site, public schools are mandated to provide these accommodations. Private schools that offer similar services are prohibitively expensive for all but the wealthiest families.
Anecdotal but nevertheless compelling situation: I have a friend whose teenage niece has both mental retardation and oppositional defiant disorder. Her least restrictive environment as determined by her Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is the mainstream classroom. In order for this accommodation to happen, she needs a social/emotion aide (a credentialed teacher with specialized training in working with emotionally disturbed adolescents) with her at all times while she is on her school campus. She sits in all of her classes with her, eats lunch with her, shadows her in the restroom and gym locker, etc. The aide meets her as soon as she steps off the school bus in the morning and stays with her until she puts her back on the school bus after school. The private and charter schools in this girl’s area simply don’t have the capacity for this kind of accommodation because of the costs associated with it.
Luna
In my opinion, whatever it might be worth, the teachers’ unions are a big part of the cost problem. The unions fight for smaller class sizes (they prefer numbers over the size of salaries) and aides to do all kinds of things. When I was in Catholic grade school, there were 50 or more in a single classroom. My wife went to a Catholic high school in which it was not unusual to have 60 in a single classroom at a time. But it worked.
Back then, the teaching aids were textbooks, a blackboard and chalk. Now in the local public school every student has a laptop that’s connected to the school’s server. The teachers all have a large screen in each classroom and projects things onto it. And yet, in English class they do things like cut out mobiles to hang in the room to express “who they are”, and things like that. This is not a poverty-stricken district, yet the education itself is terrible because the objective seems to be to entertain the students rather than to teach them anything.
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PaulinVA
Guest
None of your posts have addressed the issue of government mandates for educating certain classes of disadvantaged kids.**
Ceteris paribus** is a Latin phrase, literally translated as “with other things the same,” or “all other things being equal or held constant.” There has been tons of research showing that when all things are equal, school voucher schools outperform their public school counterparts.
And, now I don’t know the answer to this, have you any examples of an entire school district or entire city that went fully voucher?
A
ACCT
Guest
Check out the **Milton Friedman Foundation For Educational Choice **at edchoice.org/None of your posts have addressed the issue of government mandates for educating certain classes of disadvantaged kids.
And, now I don’t know the answer to this, have you any examples of an entire school district or entire city that went fully voucher?
No state has gone for 100% universal school vouchers because of opposition from the educational bureaucracy and the teachers’ unions. However, there are many examples of school vouchers for the poor, etc. in many cities. If you go to the website, you will also see that our governor of Louisianahas signed into law an expansion of our school voucher system. However, the goal is 100% universal school vouchers for everyone. It works!
Louisiana Governor Signs School Choice Expansion Into Law
“Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has signed into law an expansion of Louisiana’s school voucher program, making it one of the largest such programs nationwide. The program will allow low- and middle-income students statewide to receive vouchers if they are enrolled in public schools graded “C,” “D,” or “F” by Louisiana’s accountability system.”
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jmcrae
Guest
The cost of that particular child’s education would be in the tens of thousands of dollars per year, simply for the salary of the professional care-giver. Add on top of that, books, school supplies, locker rental, bussing, and the rest of it.I know what you’re saying, but does that really add significantly to the cost? I have a daughter with autism. The public school did not have adequately trained people, but it did throw some people at her. As I recall, there were no more than four students in the program out of a total student body of over a thousand. There is no possibility at all that those additional people accounted for the difference in costs between public and private schools.
Remember, once you’re on the voucher system, your voucher has to cover the whole cost of your child’s individual education - we are no longer dealing with extra pennies here and there to spread around the edges for the special needs kids.
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ACCT
Guest
“Just as the breakup of the Ma Bell monopoly led to a revolution in communications, a breakup of the **school monopoly **would lead to a revolution in schooling.”
—The School Choice Advocate, November 2005
“Governments never learn. Only people learn.”
—Milton Friedman
“If you end up with a population that doesn’t know how to read, doesn’t know how to write, knows nothing about history, knows nothing about geography, who’s going to conduct the affairs of the country?”
—Rose D. Friedman
“Competition would force the government schools to shape up or close down.”
—Rose D. Friedman
—The School Choice Advocate, November 2005
“Governments never learn. Only people learn.”
—Milton Friedman
“If you end up with a population that doesn’t know how to read, doesn’t know how to write, knows nothing about history, knows nothing about geography, who’s going to conduct the affairs of the country?”
—Rose D. Friedman
“Competition would force the government schools to shape up or close down.”
—Rose D. Friedman
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ACCT
Guest
*Real world experience and evidence show that states and cities with school choice programs have not seen their public school budgets go down.None of your posts have addressed the issue of government mandates for educating certain classes of disadvantaged kids.
And, now I don’t know the answer to this, have you any examples of an entire school district or entire city that went fully voucher?
When students leave public schools using voucher programs, they free up more money for the students who remain. Taking a student out of public school removes the cost of educating that student. Most of these savings re¬main in local school budgets where they benefit other students; the rest of the savings go into state budgets. States and cities with school choice programs have all increased their per-student instructional spending in the years since the programs began.
Two examples may help for consideration. By 1992, Milwaukee’s school choice program had been in place for two years, and according to the U.S. Census, the city’s public schools spent $9,038 per student; by 2007 that figure had swelled to $11,725 – a 30 percent increase in real dollars. Cleveland’s school choice program launched in 1997, when the city was spending $9,293 per student. Cleveland was spending $11,383 per student in 2007 – a 22 per¬cent increase in real dollars over eleven school years.
The cost of a voucher or scholarship for a participant in a school choice program is less than what would have been spent on that student if he or she had remained in public schools. While the average public school spends about $10,000 per student, the average private school charges about $6,000 in tuition. That difference is the fundamental reason school choice policies will save money.* - Milton Friedman Fooundation
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ACCT
Guest
***Providing school choice to special-education students **allows families unhappy with their assigned public school to find a program that meets their child’s individual needs.Someone please explain how a totally voucher system would actually work with the totally unengaged parents, the unmotivated students, the learning disabled, the profoundly retarded, and the ESL kids. In that case, the public schools, which are required by law to educate everyone, would become the educator of last resort with a budget shrunken to nothing.
As of 2010, after ten years of operation, Florida’s McKay program has more than 20,000 participating students, which is the largest program of its kind in the country.
Private schools are not highly selective, and offer better educational opportunities for students who are difficult to teach, including students with disabilities. They are often better equipped to handle students with disabilities or other challenging students than public schools.* - Friedman Educational Foundation
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ACCT
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*Studies conducted since the late 1990s convincingly show that school choice is an effective intervention and public policy for boosting student achievement and graduation rates.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.
Nine studies using a method called random assignment, the gold standard in the social sciences, have found statistically significant gains in academic achievement from school vouchers, one study found improved graduation rates. No such study has ever found negative effects. One study’s findings were inconclusive.
Random-assignment methods allow researchers to isolate the effects of vouchers from other student characteristics. Students who applied for vouchers were entered into random lotteries to determine who would receive the voucher and who would remain in public schools; this allowed researchers to track very similar “treatment” and “control” groups, just like in medical trials.
Highly respected random-assignment research has been conducted in five large cities: Milwaukee, Charlotte, Wash¬ington, D.C., New York City, and Dayton.* - Friedman Educational Foundation
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sedonaman
Guest
“The Economic Organization of a P.O.W. Camp” by R.A. Radford, from Economica, November, 1945, facstaff.uww.edu/kashianr/POWCampRadford.pdf , provides us a look at how markets emerge as a result of human need. What it illustrates is that people do not want equality, for that is how they start out when the Red Cross packages are distributed. What followed is the emergence of a trading system [including middlemen] that raised the overall well-being of the inmates in general. IOW, wealth in the form of Red Cross goodies was used to create more wealth [enhanced quality of life], even though the amount of goods remained the same. A socialist injected into this picture would immediately, if not sooner, decry the inequality of one prisoner having, say two candy bars and no cigarettes, and another having two packs of cigarettes and no candy bars. He would then set out to capitalize [no pun intended] on the envy of both and work to return the whole camp back to the way it was originally, thus reducing wealth by lowering its over-all well being. This is what socialism does; it lowers the quality of life by making the arrangement “fair”, thus illustrating what Pareto observed: “If incomes are equalized, they will be equalized at a low level.”…In a market economy, the forces of supply and demand rule. **Price is the mechanism that regulates resource allocation. Prices are a signal, which directs the behavior of suppliers (sellers) and demanders (buyers). **In market capitalism most of society’s resources are privately owned, and the owners of these resources can use them as they please within legal limits. Incentive is the key difference between capitalism (private ownership of resources) and socialism (state ownership of resources). Private ownership boosts incentive, while public ownership retards it.
Another example closer to home was the shortage of motel rooms during Hurricane Katrina. People [and the media] were highly critical of the surge in the cost of a motel room needed by the victims. They demanded that the government step in and force the motel owners to lower the prices back to non-emergency conditions. But what would happen? A businessman would get his normal room [with two beds] while a family went without. Raising the prices would encourage singles to share a room, freeing up rooms for others with greater needs.
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sedonaman
Guest
OK, have it your way:Define ineffective when it comes to educating all children.
Define inefficient when it comes to educating all children.
…
ineffectiveness = dTestScores/d$ = 0.
inefficiency = dTestScores/d$ < 0.
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Luna_Lovecraft
Guest
So you’re total measure for K-12 education is standardized test scores? Is that how your parents defined your primary and secondary education? If you had children, is that how you defined their education?OK, have it your way:
ineffectiveness = dTestScores/d$ = 0.
inefficiency = dTestScores/d$ < 0.
I graduated from high school in 1978, and the only standardized tests besides the SAT I took were the Stanford reading and math tests in the 4th and 7th grades. And the purpose of those was to generate a national snapshot of student performance. Compare that to today, when all kids (ELLs, SPED, GATE, everybody) not only take same high stakes tests annually, they take any number of formative “practice tests” - in some schools fortnightly - to gear them up for the annual tests. And schools and districts are turning themselves inside out to make themselves look as good as possible on them.
There are so many educational experiences, what are called habits of mind and behavior, that are not reflected on test scores that nevertheless are valued by employers:
the ability to finish a project on time;
the ability to work meaningfully in a group;
the ability to manage time;
the ability to be self-directed;
the ability to control emotions, not to have outbursts continuously;
the ability to prioritize tasks;
the ability to follow oral directions;
the ability to work for people you don’t particularly like;
the ability to work with people you don’t particularly like;
honest;
creativity;
linear and lateral thinking skills;
so many more.
Now that “education” has been pared down to standardized, multiple-choice tests, all of these life and employment skills are being minimized. When the NCLB, high stakes testing generation begins to enter the workforce - in 5-6 years - I predict we’re going to see a massive backlash at the schools from the business community when they start getting employees who only have a minimal notion of the above-listed traits. Once again schools will be labeled as failures and wastes of taxpayer money; once again the pendulum will swing in the other direction, and the schools will be criticized for not responding fast enough.
Luna
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Luna_Lovecraft
Guest
I can’t speak to your daughter’s experience, but generally SPED students are far and away the most expensive group of students on a school campus. Between their teachers, aides, therapists, nurses, physical accommodations (like adapted playground equipment), adapted learning equipment (audio-taped textbooks, large print textbooks, Braille textbooks, etc.), speech and language therapists, and psychologists, their education comes with a price tag unmatched by any other population.I know what you’re saying, but does that really add significantly to the cost? I have a daughter with autism. The public school did not have adequately trained people, but it did throw some people at her. As I recall, there were no more than four students in the program out of a total student body of over a thousand. There is no possibility at all that those additional people accounted for the difference in costs between public and private schools.
And SPED parents tend to be very vocal when it comes to ensuring their students get every single accommodation and modification they’re legally entitled to. There is subgroup of lawyers who specialize in SPED law who work with parents to ensure this happens.
I went to Catholic school, too. My classmates and I went to school every day except if we were sick or school was cancelled because of the weather. We knew if we disrespected our teachers our parents would have killed us. We and our parents knew how to stay in a chair for more than 10 minutes at a time. Our and our parents’ attention spans were longer than three minutes. We and our parents could read silently for more than five minutes without needing to be re-directed. We and our parents had at least a modicum of self-control. We did homework, and we and our parents understood its importance. We and our parents understood the importance of academic knowledge. We and our parents had goals for the future. We and our parents could imagine the future. We and our parents understood cause-effect relationships (e.g., “If I fail this class I might not graduate. If I don’t graduate I might not get to college.”). We and our parents were literate. We and our parents were numerate. We knew we weren’t going to school every day to socialize with our friends for eight hours.In my opinion, whatever it might be worth, the teachers’ unions are a big part of the cost problem. The unions fight for smaller class sizes (they prefer numbers over the size of salaries) and aides to do all kinds of things. When I was in Catholic grade school, there were 50 or more in a single classroom. My wife went to a Catholic high school in which it was not unusual to have 60 in a single classroom at a time. But it worked.
Few at-risk students and their parents understand any of this at a meaningful level. Plenty of them can play lip service to it, but when asked to demonstrate what it means can’t.
Our parents didn’t send us to school for eight hours to get us out from underfoot, and they didn’t pull us out of school on a whim to babysit younger siblings, help grandma move to a new apartment, or help an uncle move some merchandise he’s selling from another state. They knew how to be parents and didn’t honestly believe they were our “friends.” They set boundaries and had behavior expectations for us. They were more than 13 or 14 years older than we were.
Put 50 of my Catholic school classmates in a room, and a teacher could get something done. Put 50 of today’s at-risk kids in a room and you might as well install an armed guard with a first aide kit at the door and call it a day because nothing is going to happen except fights and vandalism and socializing. This is why urban public school teachers push for smaller class sizes.
And this is why the washout rate for first-year teachers hovers right around 50%.
About the technology…
Do you know what would happen if public schools pulled out their Smartboards from classrooms and went back to a paper grading system?
For one thing, the business community would come down like a ton of bricks and accuse schools of - once again - failing to prepare students for a technology-driven future. The vocal, more affluent parents would lose their minds because they wouldn’t be able to check their student’s grades and attendance in real time. NCAA would go batty because they’ve come to depend on being able to check an athlete’s eligibility online, 24/7.
And - done right - there’s nothing wrong with a kids making a mobile about themselves. It requires imagination and planning on the kid’s part. It’s a way of recognizing kids as being a part of a larger group, which is very important socially and emotionally. It can be a language-development tool. Kids love seeing something they’ve done on display, and finishing a project holds them accountable for their use of time. And it can be fun. I know f-u-n is a dirty word in many circle, but kids need time to enjoy and play, even the teenagers. Especially the teenagers, I think. One can’t do fun craft projects all day, every day, but done right they can be some of the most meaningful and memorable experience kids have in school. I can still remember the huge Declaration of Independence mural I did in 11th grade US history class at my Catholic high school, and this was in the late 1970s. I remember the time of year I worked on it (spring) as well the the sister’s name who taught the class. If I close my eyes I can still see what it looked like. Most importantly, that creative, crafty mural is one of the reasons that today I love reading and learning about history.
Luna
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sedonaman
Guest
Are you saying that the focus is on these areas? I don’t know how I ever made it through K-12 and four years of college after taking a lot of tests along the way. I graduated from HS in 1959 when schools had a lot less money per pupil than now, even allowing for inflation, and we did just fine, thank you. With all the extra money, you could have hired some teachers’ aids to observe if Johnny squirmed “too” much or if Mary was quiet “enough”. So what are you doing with the money? Having the students search for the latent lesbianism in Moby Dick?…
the ability to finish a project on time;
the ability to work meaningfully in a group;
the ability to manage time;
the ability to be self-directed;
the ability to control emotions, not to have outbursts continuously;
the ability to prioritize tasks;
the ability to follow oral directions;
the ability to work for people you don’t particularly like;
the ability to work with people you don’t particularly like;
honest;
creativity;
linear and lateral thinking skills;
so many more.
Now that “education” has been pared down to standardized, multiple-choice tests, all of these life and employment skills are being minimized. When the NCLB, high stakes testing generation begins to enter the workforce - in 5-6 years - I predict we’re going to see a massive backlash at the schools from the business community when they start getting employees who only have a minimal notion of the above-listed traits. Once again schools will be labeled as failures and wastes of taxpayer money; once again the pendulum will swing in the other direction, and the schools will be criticized for not responding fast enough.
Luna
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ACCT
Guest
School was much more difficult in the 1950s. The public schools are now graduating more functional illeterates. Universities have dumbed down their courses because the public schools are graduating functional illeterates.Are you saying that the focus is on these areas? I don’t know how I ever made it through K-12 and four years of college after taking a lot of tests along the way. I graduated from HS in 1959 when schools had a lot less money per pupil than now, even allowing for inflation, and we did just fine, thank you. With all the extra money, you could have hired some teachers’ aids to observe if Johnny squirmed “too” much or if Mary was quiet “enough”. So what are you doing with the money? Having the students search for the latent lesbianism in Moby Dick?
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ACCT
Guest
Dr… Friedman: * The amount of money spent per child adjusted for inflation has something like doubled or tripled over the last 20 years. Twenty years ago we had this report A Nation at Risk that pointed out all of the difficulties I just referred to and which pointed out this was a first generation that was going to be less schooled then its parents.** We are now in the next generation and will be even less well schooled**. We have had every possible effort you could have from reform from within. It is not just in schools it is in any area** reform has to come from outside it has to come from competition**. Let me illustrate that from within the school system. the united states from all accounts ranks #1 in higher education people from all over the world regard the United States colleges and universities the best and most varied. On the other hand **in every other international comparison we rank near the bottom in elementary and secondary education *why the difference?..one word…choice. The elementary and secondary education the school picks the child it picks its customer. In higher education the customer picks its school, you have choice that makes all the difference in the world. It means competition forces product. Look over the rest of the economy is there any area in the u.s. in which progress has not required progress from the outside. Look at the telephone industry when it was broken down into the little bells and opened up the competition it started a period of rapid innovation and development the key word is competition and the question is how can you get competition. only by having the customer choosing.
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