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School choice means competition among schools. Which leads to winner and losers. So you will get bad schools. The only way to avoid this is, to have only good s

by tehabe 10y ago

School choice means competition among schools. Which leads to winner and losers. So you will get bad schools. The only way to avoid this is, to have only good schools, nation wide. So that the best school is the one in your district.

Mathnerd314 10y ago
> School choice means competition among schools. Which leads to winner and losers. This doesn't follow at all. Consider e.g. a company that sells different flavors of spaghetti sauce (https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauc...). The flavors are competing, but only on a per-person basis; overall the flavors are optimized to satisfy everyone's (different) preferences. It's quite easy to imagine a similar concept in education, where people learn better from a particular teaching style or are better served by a particular curriculum. There's no obvious reason to expect that one "good" school would be sufficient for everyone's needs; the ideal situation would instead be that one could choose from several schools, of which at least one is "good".
- tehabe 10y ago
  But spaghetti sauce can be switched for your next meal if it taste bad. A school not so much, if attended a bad school for a while you might not be able to catch up on a good school, or you have to start over again, or they don't even let you into the better school. I remember the case of private school in Germany, which failed to prepare their pupils for the final exam of the state and all students failed. After that it turned out their curriculum was wrong. The pupils paid the price for the failure of the school. The school closed and the pupils had to repeat the year.
  - unescape 10y ago
    People switch schools all the time. It's a non-argument. This is like saying, what if you eat bad spaghetti sauce once, and then your taste is ruined and you can never enjoy good spaghetti sauce again? Guess we better end spaghetti sauce choice, can't risk it.
unescape 10y ago
Doesn't the same logic say: School choice means competition among schools. Which leads to losers and winners. So you will get good schools. The only way to avoid this is, to have only bad schools, nation wide. So that the worst school is the one in your district.

by tehabe 10y ago

Mathnerd314 10y ago

> School choice means competition among schools. Which leads to winner and losers. This doesn't follow at all. Consider e.g. a company that sells different flavors of spaghetti sauce (https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauc...). The flavors are competing, but only on a per-person basis; overall the flavors are optimized to satisfy everyone's (different) preferences. It's quite easy to imagine a similar concept in education, where people learn better from a particular teaching style or are better served by a particular curriculum. There's no obvious reason to expect that one "good" school would be sufficient for everyone's needs; the ideal situation would instead be that one could choose from several schools, of which at least one is "good".

tehabe 10y ago
But spaghetti sauce can be switched for your next meal if it taste bad. A school not so much, if attended a bad school for a while you might not be able to catch up on a good school, or you have to start over again, or they don't even let you into the better school. I remember the case of private school in Germany, which failed to prepare their pupils for the final exam of the state and all students failed. After that it turned out their curriculum was wrong. The pupils paid the price for the failure of the school. The school closed and the pupils had to repeat the year.
- unescape 10y ago
  People switch schools all the time. It's a non-argument. This is like saying, what if you eat bad spaghetti sauce once, and then your taste is ruined and you can never enjoy good spaghetti sauce again? Guess we better end spaghetti sauce choice, can't risk it.

unescape 10y ago

Doesn't the same logic say: School choice means competition among schools. Which leads to losers and winners. So you will get good schools. The only way to avoid this is, to have only bad schools, nation wide. So that the worst school is the one in your district.