Supreme Court Rules Vouchers to Be Constitutional!

[Wraith]

Don't have time to respond in detail right now, just have a few comments to make.

I do want to thank Adam Smith for pointing out that less students also means less expenses, so the public schools aren't really losing by it.

Now, personally I'm not too fond of vouchers. They have a habit of tying more state-control strings to the private schools than the money is worth. The last thing we need to do is regulate all the private schools into public ones, and that's what I see as the most likely outcome of vouchers.
I say we just drop it all together.

The complaint about Teachers Unions is valid. They fight anything that promises actual reform. The union leadership is not at all promising (you'd think after this many years of falling results they'd rething their positions, but they don't). The individual teachers aren't all that promising, either, and I know what goes on in the university education courses. If they really wanted to improve the education, the unions would be pushing to end the colleges of education and just require a real degree in the subject the teacher is going to teach.

Too many people complain about private schools cherry-picking, but from what I've seen the main cherry-picking they do is that you have to have enough money to pay the tuition. Other than that about the only problem would be an actual criminal record, which isn't all that common even among US kids.

They are also not all as expensive as many here seem to think. My father was working as a rigger on oil platforms and was able to send me and my two siblings to a private school. Definitely not a high-paying job, you know?

There's also the little matter of capitalism. If private schools are in high demand, more of them will be started. That's generally how it works.

--"The American education system, despite all of its problems, is relatively very good compared to schools throughout the world."

Only when including all the third world countries. US education is repeatedly ranked at or near the bottom on the various international scholastic tests among developed nations. The only reasons so many brilliant people are coming out of the US are private schools and immigrants. You just have to look around the graduate schools in the US to see what I'm talking about, as most (or all) of the "hard" degrees are primiarily filled with foreigners and immigrants, rather than natural born citizens.

Wraith
"A tax supported, compulsary educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state."
-- Isabel Patterson

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Wraith
US education is repeatedly ranked at or near the bottom on the various international scholastic tests among developed nations.

A lot of those tests are skewed against the US, and Canada for that matter.

If you were to test the equivalent of Grade 12 students in the US and Hong Kong, the Hong Kong students would do better for two reasons.

First off, the Hong Kong educations is designed to prevent 90 per cent of high school students from reaching Form Six (Grade 12). So the Hong Kong Grade 12 students are the elite while the American Grade 12 students are an average representation of the population.

Secondly, many Asian countries focus on rote learning. As a result, students are very good on tests. But when it comes to creative, original thought, students in many Asian countries do poorly. This is not to say that all Asian students are uncreative. The education systems in Korea and Taiwan seem to produce creative people as seen by the high number of computer programmers coming from these countries.

[Adam Smith]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
My argument isn't against immediate impact of loss of asses in seats, but against eventual impact. Like I said: the parents whose kids have moved into private schools still get votes on how much cash the school gets. If this was guaranteed not to negatively impact on those left behind then I'd be fine with it...

My post was addressing the most commonly made argument, that vouchers will take money away from public schools. See, for example, the editorial in today's New York Times

Voucher programs like Cleveland's siphon off public dollars, leaving struggling urban systems with less money for skilled teachers, textbooks and computers.

This is a fallacious argument since public schools will have almost exactly the same decline in expenses.

What you raised was the longer-run argument that parents who do not have children in public schools will not care about the quality of the public schools, and will vote to reduce support. While this is certainly a legitimate point to consider, I dont think it will be much of a problem in practice. The reason is that the quality of public schools (at least in the US) affects property values, and so people have an economic incentive to maintain the quality of public schools even if their children don't go there. Various economic studies on the provision of public goods (none of which I have handy) show that people do in fact vote this way. This is above and beyond any truly public considerations about education making for more porductive workers or a better-informed electorate.

IIRC Katulya (sp?) was writing a dissertation on something related to this. He would know much more about this than I do, but I have not seen him around for a long time.

[Ned]

IIRC Katulya (sp?) was writing a dissertation on something related to this. He would know much more about this than I do, but I have not seen him around for a long time. [/QUOTE]

Actually, in a voucher system, public schools the way we know them today would eventually vanish. There would be no need to for the government to build and operate public schools if there were some other system that guaranteed every kid an education. I can think of a whole host of ways to do that, but money will usually do the trick. The poor should be given enough so that there would be no need for a co-payment.

One thing that does come from acceptance of public money would be an obligation to abide by our civil rights laws - no discrimination, etc.

Then there is the thorny question of affirmative action in a wholly private system.

[Ramo]

When students transfer out they take both their per capita funding and virtually all of their per capita expenses with them, so there is little or no net loss of resources to public schools.

Which voucher programs were in the study?

[Victor Galis]

With 3 kids 10 000$ p.a. adds up to 30 000$, which is just about the median income for the US, IIRC. I'm sure that this means reducing the cost to 22 500 via vouchers will really give the average American student the opportunity to go to school, leaving his parents with 7 500 $ to clothe, feed and shelter their entire family.

-You seem to forget taxes

Btw, guys... this ruling was dealing with Cleveland's voucher system and that city. This other voucher stuff are things that never will get passed, federally, because the Democrats are in the pockets of the Teachers' Unions.

-I honestly can't understand where you get these crazy ideas.

No matter what your views on vouchers, I think most would agree that the public school monopoly isn't doing too well and something needs to be done.

-Abandoning the monopoly would be stupid.

When students transfer out they take both their per capita funding and virtually all of their per capita expenses with them, so there is little or no net loss of resources to public schools.

-Except that schools are designed for a certain capacity, if they fall below that they lose certain economies of scale that allowed a certain variety in the classes they offered and even whether the school can operate at all.

Jeez, some people here have an odd concept of reality.

-Yes some of us do crazy things like experience it before talking.

Catholic schools are already filled with poor kids and they seem to do very well with them.

- Maybe where you live. I haven't heard about any private school around me that charges less than $10,000. If I haven't heard about it, it's either very small, or not academically significant. If it's small, it could soak up at most another 50 or so students at a big cost, if it's not academically significant, it's worse than the good public schools.

"The word gets around on the street that they are good schools, so a ton of poor parents bust their asses to put their kids in there."

- Riiight... they can just magically make money appear if they work harder. Does it occur to you that if they could make this kind of money they would already be making it?

They'll talk with the school and see if accomodations can be made (which they most often are).

-Yeah, but that's with individuals. If a massive influx of new students comes in...

Why would we see an explosion in the number of private school students? The inner city schools are just a small portion of the overall schools.

-Yeah... we're probably only talking about twice the (currently filled) capacity of the cheaper private schools

Not trusting the electorate in a democracy is just the stupidest thing in the world to do.

-Yeah... the electorate is brilliant, they are the ones who see to it that Atlanta will never have a decent public transportation system.

One last point that people should remember. The American education system, despite all of its problems, is relatively very good compared to schools throughout the world. The United States produces far more brilliant people per capita than most countries.

- Sure, if you compare them to countries like Somalia and say the Central African Republic.

First off, the Hong Kong educations is designed to prevent 90 per cent of high school students from reaching Form Six (Grade 12). So the Hong Kong Grade 12 students are the elite while the American Grade 12 students are an average representation of the population.

-In Georgia, 50% of high school freshmen will not graduate... sad.

Actually, in a voucher system, public schools the way we know them today would eventually vanish.

-And so the decline of the American Empire would begin.

[Adam Smith]

Ramo:

IIRC the studies included Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Dayton, OH.

Victor:

-Except that schools are designed for a certain capacity, if they fall below that they lose certain economies of scale that allowed a certain variety in the classes they offered and even whether the school can operate at all.

Not at all clear there are any significant economies of scale in the range of sizes we are talking about. As enrollment declines, school systems can and do close some schools, hire fewer teachers and jantiors, etc. School systems may incur some costs for transporting students to more distant schools, and some costs might not be fully divisible, such as the superintendant's salary, or that of highly specialized teachers for students with specific disabilities. Other than that, most decent sized systems are probably constant returns to scale.

[Victor Galis]

Not at all clear there are any significant economies of scale in the range of sizes we are talking about. As enrollment declines, school systems can and do close some schools,

-That is, however, a big problem. If you have to go to a school many miles away the quality of your education declines. (At least I found that to be the case).

[Wraith]

--"So the Hong Kong Grade 12 students are the elite while the American Grade 12 students are an average representation of the population."

Only if you're considering certain sets of results. Some of the tests (I'll look up the exact ones later) break the results down more, so you can see how US high-honors (elite) students compare with the elite from other countries. The results aren't a whole lot better.

(It's also interesting to note how much teachers unions resist the idea of testing prospective teachers... the results from when Massachusetts did this are very educational.)

--"Secondly, many Asian countries focus on rote learning."

Trust me, I understand this, but don't assume the problem is limited to Asian countries. Feynman wrote some interesting stories about his experiences teaching in Brazil, for instance. And have you been in a US school lately? The focus is either on a) rote memorization or b) touchy-feelyness (not sure how better to describe this one, but it's about making the student feel good rather than actually teaching them).
Sadly, even rote memorization would be a step up for a lot of the US public school system.

--" if they fall below that they lose certain economies of scale"

Schools, as they are run now, have very little economy of scale. There are huge budget problems that have nothing to do with the amount of money coming in and everything to do with a lack of concern about the money going out. (An example of this was when I found out how much money my high school had paid for their "new" computers... sufficie it to say that I could have built them almost four times as many with higher specs for what they paid.)
It's also interesting to note how much the support-staff budget has grown as a percentage of the whole over time. These days schools pay as much in administration and so forth as they do to teachers (in most cases, more).

Wraith
"Last week i culdnt even spel techer, now i are one."

[Victor Galis]

The administration of most schools is downright awful, and the county school board should be shot.

[- Groucho -]

Originally posted by Adam Smith
What you raised was the longer-run argument that parents who do not have children in public schools will not care about the quality of the public schools, and will vote to reduce support. While this is certainly a legitimate point to consider, I dont think it will be much of a problem in practice. The reason is that the quality of public schools (at least in the US) affects property values, and so people have an economic incentive to maintain the quality of public schools even if their children don't go there. Various economic studies on the provision of public goods (none of which I have handy) show that people do in fact vote this way. This is above and beyond any truly public considerations about education making for more porductive workers or a better-informed electorate.

I'm not sure I agree. Those studies were done in a non-voucher environment so their applicablilty to the current debate is suspect. If it is correct to assume that the adoption of vouchers will lead to a significant increase in middle and upper class parents sending their children to private schools then there should be a decrease in demand for neighbourhood public schools and an increase in demand for neighbourhood private schools. As demand for private schools increases, the value of property near private schools should also increase. As demand for public schools decreases, the value of property should become less reliant on public school proximity.

[DanS]

"I haven't heard about any private school around me that charges less than $10,000."

Victor: In Washington, K-8 in Southeast will cost about $3,000 a year. In some places, it goes as low as $2,450. Archbishop Carroll High School charges $5,700 for catholics and $5,965 for non-catholics. So in D.C., parochial schools get the job done for about half the public schools ($9,150, as alluded to earlier).

With a small voucher, this is very doable for anybody who has a job. If it cuts close, you might get an accommodation. You also get volume discounts on kids, if you have more than one in school at a time.

For Atlanta, I know the numbers and they are less than $10,000. For K-8, much, much less.

Do you ever do research before you pull opinions out of your ass?

[Victor Galis]

Do you ever do research before you pull opinions out of your ass?

-I know about the schools that matter in an academic sense.

[DanS]

You're so full of ****, it's coming out of your ears.

[Victor Galis]

Hey, it's not my fault my school was so much better than all the private schools around it.