4 ms·

How do you know the market price of education when we don't have a market for it? My take is that breaking the public school monopoly (possibly via a widesprea

How do you know the market price of education when we don't have a market for it? My take is that breaking the public school monopoly (possibly via a widespread voucher system) would result in more competition... this would have the familiar effects... better value, lower prices, etc.

stretchwithme 16y ago
absolutely. in most markets, many approaches to solving a problem are tried. and when evidence that something works appears, more and more people try it and find it useful. but thats not how collective decision making works. you've got to convince a majority that something works. you need a campaign and evidence is often ignored in politics. ok, often is being generous I remember when Spanish speaking parents in California wanted their kids taught in English. Educators opposed it. It took a state wide vote to make the change. Parents couldn't simply select this approach for their child. And lo and behold, kids did better and educators were surprised. Its a simple matter for folks to make dozens of decisions every day about their kids, selecting from many competing options. How could some dumbed-down centralized decision making system working with a tiny fraction of the information and a tiny fraction of anything personal at stake possibly make a better decision? Its pure group think in my opinion.
loewenskind 16y ago
How would this happen exactly? Teachers are vastly underpaid at present ($30k for a job that has such a major impact on the future of the country?). Classes are also overpopulated. Where would these savings come from?
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  and you know this how? and its not just about savings. its about better teaching, teaching what parents want and less of what the unionized want you to believe. And less using kids to promote your politics, such as dragging grade school kids to political protests as has been done here in California this whole system stifles independent thought. We need more independent thought and more questioning of the educational cliches incessantly repeated throughout schooling and in the media. If government and unions were in charge of our technology, we'd still be waiting for DOS 2.0.
  - loewenskind 16y ago
    >and you know this how? And I know what how? That teachers are underpaid? Do you really think such an important job is only worth a paltry $30k year? The kind of people we actually want teaching can make 3 times that by either going into technology teaching or staying out of teaching all together. That classes are overcrowded? Because I see reports in the various papers every other week about how the classes are overcrowded? The rest of your message seems to be against apologetics for the current system. I hate the current system, I think it's complete garbage. I was simply calling out the bizarre claim that making it better would make it cheaper.
    - pchristensen 16y ago
      No matter how important teaching is, teaching 20 kids per year is worth about $30K. If the goal of education is to produce 18 year olds with social adjustment, like and work skills, and the ability to work or get into college, let's be explicit about that! If there's a clear goal, a market, and competition, costs always go down. Web browsers are free because both companies and non-profits can build them, benefit from providing them, and can't charge more than free. Computing used to be done by hand by humans, now you can buy millions of person-equivalents of computing for less than the cost of coffee. Why is it so cheap? Because companies wanted the dollars people would give in exchange for fast computation. Horses aren't used as transportation because someone invented cars, people fly across the ocean instead of taking ocean liners, etc because companies wanted the money people would spend on fast travel. Pens exist because companies wanted the dollars people would spend on fast, clean writing. Look at anything around you and it's there because someone outperformed other people in the competition for the dollars you spent on it. Every time, you either got the same product for less money (think Dell laptops), a better product for the same money (think of how Apple provides the best product they can at basically fixed price points), or often a better product for less money. Schools districts spend between $5-15K/student/yr. We're doing it the same way we have for 100 years. Lack of competition or even an opt-out policy has given us a worse product for a higher cost (http://reason.com/archives/2010/09/16/money-is-not-what-schools-need http://reason.com/archives/2010/09/16/money-is-not-what-scho...). It is very, very, very reasonable to expect that open competition with well-defined expectations would be both cheaper and better.

stretchwithme 16y ago

absolutely. in most markets, many approaches to solving a problem are tried. and when evidence that something works appears, more and more people try it and find it useful. but thats not how collective decision making works. you've got to convince a majority that something works. you need a campaign and evidence is often ignored in politics. ok, often is being generous I remember when Spanish speaking parents in California wanted their kids taught in English. Educators opposed it. It took a state wide vote to make the change. Parents couldn't simply select this approach for their child. And lo and behold, kids did better and educators were surprised. Its a simple matter for folks to make dozens of decisions every day about their kids, selecting from many competing options. How could some dumbed-down centralized decision making system working with a tiny fraction of the information and a tiny fraction of anything personal at stake possibly make a better decision? Its pure group think in my opinion.

loewenskind 16y ago

How would this happen exactly? Teachers are vastly underpaid at present ($30k for a job that has such a major impact on the future of the country?). Classes are also overpopulated. Where would these savings come from?

stretchwithme 16y ago
and you know this how? and its not just about savings. its about better teaching, teaching what parents want and less of what the unionized want you to believe. And less using kids to promote your politics, such as dragging grade school kids to political protests as has been done here in California this whole system stifles independent thought. We need more independent thought and more questioning of the educational cliches incessantly repeated throughout schooling and in the media. If government and unions were in charge of our technology, we'd still be waiting for DOS 2.0.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  >and you know this how? And I know what how? That teachers are underpaid? Do you really think such an important job is only worth a paltry $30k year? The kind of people we actually want teaching can make 3 times that by either going into technology teaching or staying out of teaching all together. That classes are overcrowded? Because I see reports in the various papers every other week about how the classes are overcrowded? The rest of your message seems to be against apologetics for the current system. I hate the current system, I think it's complete garbage. I was simply calling out the bizarre claim that making it better would make it cheaper.
  - pchristensen 16y ago
    No matter how important teaching is, teaching 20 kids per year is worth about $30K. If the goal of education is to produce 18 year olds with social adjustment, like and work skills, and the ability to work or get into college, let's be explicit about that! If there's a clear goal, a market, and competition, costs always go down. Web browsers are free because both companies and non-profits can build them, benefit from providing them, and can't charge more than free. Computing used to be done by hand by humans, now you can buy millions of person-equivalents of computing for less than the cost of coffee. Why is it so cheap? Because companies wanted the dollars people would give in exchange for fast computation. Horses aren't used as transportation because someone invented cars, people fly across the ocean instead of taking ocean liners, etc because companies wanted the money people would spend on fast travel. Pens exist because companies wanted the dollars people would spend on fast, clean writing. Look at anything around you and it's there because someone outperformed other people in the competition for the dollars you spent on it. Every time, you either got the same product for less money (think Dell laptops), a better product for the same money (think of how Apple provides the best product they can at basically fixed price points), or often a better product for less money. Schools districts spend between $5-15K/student/yr. We're doing it the same way we have for 100 years. Lack of competition or even an opt-out policy has given us a worse product for a higher cost (http://reason.com/archives/2010/09/16/money-is-not-what-schools-need http://reason.com/archives/2010/09/16/money-is-not-what-scho...). It is very, very, very reasonable to expect that open competition with well-defined expectations would be both cheaper and better.