4 ms·

School privatization (charter schools) has shown a lot of success over traditional public schools. Im not really sure what hospital privatization refers to. N

by ende 11y ago

School privatization (charter schools) has shown a lot of success over traditional public schools. Im not really sure what hospital privatization refers to. Now prison privatization has come under recent scrutiny but that's more of a failure of oversight by the governing bodies employing private administration than of the concept of privatization itself.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
Private prisons have the perverse incentives that private companies will push for policies that incarcerate more people: https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/sep/18/justice-sells-whos-buying/ https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/sep/18/justice-s...
- kibibu 11y ago
  Do private schools have similar incentives to keep children from passing to extract more fees? If they are paid per graduating student, are they incentivized to pass (or ignore plagiarism, etc) for under-performing students? If they are paid based on standardized test results, are they incentivized to teach to the test only? If they are paid based on average grade score, are they incentivized to expel students for poor academic performance? (I've seen the last one happen, but I don't think the cause was quite as direct - possibly high average scores => high first year enrolments)
  - ams6110 11y ago
    Private schools are normally paid for by the parents, who have the most direct interest in a successful outcome, however they define that.
    - HarryHirsch 11y ago
      That's the theory. The practice as I can observe at my state school is that the administration asks "how many students did we graduate this year" when they should be asking "how rigorously were the students taught". It would be in the students' best interest if there was presssure for the faculty to do an acceptable job, but since tuition constitutes a substantial part of the university's operating income the focus is on recruitment and retention, where it really doesn't belong. There are some Young Turks protesting the status quo amongst the faculty, but none amongst the administration, the students or their parents. On the other hand, if the university was tax-funded, then the interests of faculty, administration and well-performing students would be aligned. At the moment they are not.
- ende 11y ago
  Yes, if the incentives are structured by the employing government as such. Governments shouldn't do that though. Nor should governments entertain the proposals pushed by these firms.
- tsotha 11y ago
  Public prisons have the same problem. Where I live the prison guards donate enough to politicians new prisons are always built in lieu of sentencing reform.
bandushrew 11y ago
To me the only sensible way to judge privatization is to look at the incentives that are created. Prisons - If we assume the corporation profit comes from prisoner rent, the private corporation is incentivized to encourage more prisoners and longer sentences. Im not convinced that is a healthy incentive, and the evidence seems to show it is not. School privatization - Where does the profit come? if it is based on children/hour then the corporation is incentivized to have more people attending school for longer periods. that again sounds like a problem to me - you COULD achieve it in positive ways, but you could also achieve it by not teaching anyone anything....or by teaching at a slower rate... Hospital privatization - This just sounds like a total cluster fuck to me, assuming the corporation makes its profit from rent/medical treatment then the incentives are there to keep patients as long as possible and undergoing as much treatment as possible, while actually curing as few problem as possible... Some things, are just not meant to be privatized IMO.
- Armisael16 11y ago
  I would assume that schools are paid by students/year and that someone other than the school gets to decide who goes there (in the real-world examples I've seen this is usually the parents and a lottery system to work out who picks first). The first criteria means the incentive is to get as many students enrolled as they can, but the second one means that no one will enroll if the school's quality falls off. Hospitals work for care when you have enough time to decide and can look up average costs and results. Certainly not appropriate for car accidents or gunshot victims, but it works if you're getting a early-stage tumor removed and can afford to wait a week. This does require enough extra space in the local system for people to be able to make a choice.
  - bandushrew 11y ago
    "The first criteria means the incentive is to get as many students enrolled as they can, " "but the second one means that no one will enroll if the school's quality falls off." that statement needs to be qualified, I think. something like "no one will enrol if the school's quality falls markedly below that of its (also private) competitors" It doesn't need to be the best, just good enough that parents who live in its catchment area have no incentive to travel further to a different school. "Hospitals work for care when you have enough time to decide and can look up average costs and results. Certainly not appropriate for car accidents or gunshot victims, but it works if you're getting a early-stage tumor removed and can afford to wait a week." heh. thats a pretty specific use case. On an almost entirely unrelated note, it would be interesting to see "hospitals" focused on single purpose delivery....literally birth, or early stage tumors etc.... I bet there would be savings available if certain kinds of treatments were treated along a production line.
acdha 11y ago
School privatization has some wicked confounds for any claims of success because it's almost impossible to do a true randomized trial. In many cases, the reported success is due to cherry-picking the best students; in others, the lead disappears over time as regression to the mean takes effect as a school's population grows large enough to average out a few stellar performers. The really positive news coverage almost universally neglects to make any attempt to do a demographically-matched comparison and in most cases the effect disappears once you control for poverty, family stability, etc. This isn't to say that charter schools are cheating, only that something this complicated is easy to misunderstand. It's also important to look at other trade offs: perhaps a school's performance is actually due entirely to attracting students who would be successful almost anywhere – a city is almost certainly better off if they stay there rather than moving to a nearby suburb, even if that doesn't directly help with the question of how to help disadvantaged kids.
- KMag 11y ago
  Set up a double-blind test, where there's a fake private school where the principal on down don't know that they're actually government-run. At the end of the school year, have Aston Kutcher show up to the school with a TV crew and tell everyone that they've been working at/attending a public school for the past year!

by ende 11y ago

toomuchtodo 11y ago

Private prisons have the perverse incentives that private companies will push for policies that incarcerate more people: https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/sep/18/justice-sells-whos-buying/ https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/sep/18/justice-s...

kibibu 11y ago
Do private schools have similar incentives to keep children from passing to extract more fees? If they are paid per graduating student, are they incentivized to pass (or ignore plagiarism, etc) for under-performing students? If they are paid based on standardized test results, are they incentivized to teach to the test only? If they are paid based on average grade score, are they incentivized to expel students for poor academic performance? (I've seen the last one happen, but I don't think the cause was quite as direct - possibly high average scores => high first year enrolments)
- ams6110 11y ago
  Private schools are normally paid for by the parents, who have the most direct interest in a successful outcome, however they define that.
  - HarryHirsch 11y ago
    That's the theory. The practice as I can observe at my state school is that the administration asks "how many students did we graduate this year" when they should be asking "how rigorously were the students taught". It would be in the students' best interest if there was presssure for the faculty to do an acceptable job, but since tuition constitutes a substantial part of the university's operating income the focus is on recruitment and retention, where it really doesn't belong. There are some Young Turks protesting the status quo amongst the faculty, but none amongst the administration, the students or their parents. On the other hand, if the university was tax-funded, then the interests of faculty, administration and well-performing students would be aligned. At the moment they are not.
ende 11y ago
Yes, if the incentives are structured by the employing government as such. Governments shouldn't do that though. Nor should governments entertain the proposals pushed by these firms.
tsotha 11y ago
Public prisons have the same problem. Where I live the prison guards donate enough to politicians new prisons are always built in lieu of sentencing reform.

bandushrew 11y ago

To me the only sensible way to judge privatization is to look at the incentives that are created. Prisons - If we assume the corporation profit comes from prisoner rent, the private corporation is incentivized to encourage more prisoners and longer sentences. Im not convinced that is a healthy incentive, and the evidence seems to show it is not. School privatization - Where does the profit come? if it is based on children/hour then the corporation is incentivized to have more people attending school for longer periods. that again sounds like a problem to me - you COULD achieve it in positive ways, but you could also achieve it by not teaching anyone anything....or by teaching at a slower rate... Hospital privatization - This just sounds like a total cluster fuck to me, assuming the corporation makes its profit from rent/medical treatment then the incentives are there to keep patients as long as possible and undergoing as much treatment as possible, while actually curing as few problem as possible... Some things, are just not meant to be privatized IMO.

Armisael16 11y ago
I would assume that schools are paid by students/year and that someone other than the school gets to decide who goes there (in the real-world examples I've seen this is usually the parents and a lottery system to work out who picks first). The first criteria means the incentive is to get as many students enrolled as they can, but the second one means that no one will enroll if the school's quality falls off. Hospitals work for care when you have enough time to decide and can look up average costs and results. Certainly not appropriate for car accidents or gunshot victims, but it works if you're getting a early-stage tumor removed and can afford to wait a week. This does require enough extra space in the local system for people to be able to make a choice.
- bandushrew 11y ago
  "The first criteria means the incentive is to get as many students enrolled as they can, " "but the second one means that no one will enroll if the school's quality falls off." that statement needs to be qualified, I think. something like "no one will enrol if the school's quality falls markedly below that of its (also private) competitors" It doesn't need to be the best, just good enough that parents who live in its catchment area have no incentive to travel further to a different school. "Hospitals work for care when you have enough time to decide and can look up average costs and results. Certainly not appropriate for car accidents or gunshot victims, but it works if you're getting a early-stage tumor removed and can afford to wait a week." heh. thats a pretty specific use case. On an almost entirely unrelated note, it would be interesting to see "hospitals" focused on single purpose delivery....literally birth, or early stage tumors etc.... I bet there would be savings available if certain kinds of treatments were treated along a production line.

acdha 11y ago

School privatization has some wicked confounds for any claims of success because it's almost impossible to do a true randomized trial. In many cases, the reported success is due to cherry-picking the best students; in others, the lead disappears over time as regression to the mean takes effect as a school's population grows large enough to average out a few stellar performers. The really positive news coverage almost universally neglects to make any attempt to do a demographically-matched comparison and in most cases the effect disappears once you control for poverty, family stability, etc. This isn't to say that charter schools are cheating, only that something this complicated is easy to misunderstand. It's also important to look at other trade offs: perhaps a school's performance is actually due entirely to attracting students who would be successful almost anywhere – a city is almost certainly better off if they stay there rather than moving to a nearby suburb, even if that doesn't directly help with the question of how to help disadvantaged kids.

KMag 11y ago
Set up a double-blind test, where there's a fake private school where the principal on down don't know that they're actually government-run. At the end of the school year, have Aston Kutcher show up to the school with a TV crew and tell everyone that they've been working at/attending a public school for the past year!