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> Teacher’s unions don’t opposes “school competition.” They oppose school privatization, How would one have meaningful 'competition' without privatization?

by darawk 7y ago

Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Though I doubt it would work very well in practice, students could be free to enroll in school in another school district with their home district paying a tuition fee to the host district.
claudeganon 7y ago
It’s entirely possible within a publicly funded framework to have different models and observation of outcomes. Schools just have to be allowed the leeway to experiment without threat of privatization. State universities and community colleges do this across the country. And it’s not as if high-performing countries arrived at their (almost exclusively public) systems without this kind of iteration.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  Teachers on the whole aren't particularly threatened by the funding model of a school. Unions, school boards, and administration certainly are.
- darawk 7y ago
  > It’s entirely possible within a publicly funded framework to have different models and observation of outcomes. Possible, yes. Practical? No. Democratic bureaucracies are effectively incapable of learning and adapting. Schooling is basically implemented identically today as it was 100 years ago. > Schools just have to be allowed the leeway to experiment without threat of privatization This is a strange statement to me. In what sense is privatization a threat to public schools? If public schools were so great and privatization were so bad, why would people want to send their kids to privately run schools? Wouldn't public schools invite the challenge if they believed their model was superior? The fact that they even view it as such an existential threat tells you basically all you need to know. Even they believe they'd be outcompeted almost immediately. > And it’s not as if high-performing countries arrived at their (almost exclusively public) systems without this kind of iteration. Firstly, the idea of differential country performance of schools is largely a myth. When you disaggregate by ethnicity, most of that disappears. Japanese kids in the US do about as well here as they do in Japan. Which is to say that differential performance between countries is more about who is in those countries than how it is those countries educate.
  - Faark 7y ago
    > If public schools were so great and privatization were so bad, why would people want to send their kids to privately run schools? A good old prisoners dilemma. If you got more resources to spend on education, you don't want to sit in the same class as someone who can only contribute little to the course. Just like worse graduates will ruin the prestige of the school and thus value of your degree. Outcome-base exclusion can be fine, unless it ends up as proxy to select for socio-economic factors and thus make society offer less equal opportunity. Just looking at "existential threat" -> "outcompeted" only works in a highly simplified world with no market failures and other issues. > differential performance between countries is more about who is in those countries than how it is those countries educate I'd like a source on that. I do understand culture will have a significant influence, especially on what value people place on education. But your statement seems to go a lot further into "school doesn't matter" territory. This directly contradicts with earlier statements and e.g. many chines studying in the US.
    - darawk 7y ago
      > A good old prisoners dilemma. If you got more resources to spend on education, you don't want to sit in the same class as someone who can only contribute little to the course. Just like worse graduates will ruin the prestige of the school and thus value of your degree. Outcome-base exclusion can be fine, unless it ends up as proxy to select for socio-economic factors and thus make society offer less equal opportunity. Let's trace that out a little more. Are you implying that private/charter schools have more dollars to spend per student? Because that's certainly not true for Charter schools. It's probably true for some private schools, but also not all. And if that's not what you're saying, then i'm not sure I understand your argument. > I'd like a source on that. I do understand culture will have a significant influence, especially on what value people place on education. But your statement seems to go a lot further into "school doesn't matter" territory. This directly contradicts with earlier statements and e.g. many chines studying in the US. I can no longer find the source where I originally read it, but we can reconstruct the data. I'm going to show it for math, but the results are similar for other subjects. PISA Rankings by country: https://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-math-science-reading-skills-2016-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-ma... As you can see, the US looks pretty abysmal, given how rich it is. However, if you look at the math PISA scores for whites and asians, you see this: https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2015/pisa2015highlights_5e.asp https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2015/pisa2015highlights... Now, the US doesn't jump to the very top, but it does jump to just below Norway and right above Austria. Certainly a solidly high quality education. You'll see the same results across other subjects too. Of course, that doesn't mean our educational system doesn't have room for improvement. It most certainly does. But the idea that we're severely lagging the rest of the developed world is mostly false, when you adjust for this confound.

> Teacher’s unions don’t opposes “school competition.” They oppose school privatization, How would one have meaningful 'competition' without privatization?

by darawk 7y ago

> Teacher’s unions don’t opposes “school competition.” They oppose school privatization, How would one have meaningful 'competition' without privatization?

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

Though I doubt it would work very well in practice, students could be free to enroll in school in another school district with their home district paying a tuition fee to the host district.

claudeganon 7y ago

It’s entirely possible within a publicly funded framework to have different models and observation of outcomes. Schools just have to be allowed the leeway to experiment without threat of privatization. State universities and community colleges do this across the country. And it’s not as if high-performing countries arrived at their (almost exclusively public) systems without this kind of iteration.

humanrebar 7y ago
Teachers on the whole aren't particularly threatened by the funding model of a school. Unions, school boards, and administration certainly are.
darawk 7y ago
> It’s entirely possible within a publicly funded framework to have different models and observation of outcomes. Possible, yes. Practical? No. Democratic bureaucracies are effectively incapable of learning and adapting. Schooling is basically implemented identically today as it was 100 years ago. > Schools just have to be allowed the leeway to experiment without threat of privatization This is a strange statement to me. In what sense is privatization a threat to public schools? If public schools were so great and privatization were so bad, why would people want to send their kids to privately run schools? Wouldn't public schools invite the challenge if they believed their model was superior? The fact that they even view it as such an existential threat tells you basically all you need to know. Even they believe they'd be outcompeted almost immediately. > And it’s not as if high-performing countries arrived at their (almost exclusively public) systems without this kind of iteration. Firstly, the idea of differential country performance of schools is largely a myth. When you disaggregate by ethnicity, most of that disappears. Japanese kids in the US do about as well here as they do in Japan. Which is to say that differential performance between countries is more about who is in those countries than how it is those countries educate.
- Faark 7y ago
  > If public schools were so great and privatization were so bad, why would people want to send their kids to privately run schools? A good old prisoners dilemma. If you got more resources to spend on education, you don't want to sit in the same class as someone who can only contribute little to the course. Just like worse graduates will ruin the prestige of the school and thus value of your degree. Outcome-base exclusion can be fine, unless it ends up as proxy to select for socio-economic factors and thus make society offer less equal opportunity. Just looking at "existential threat" -> "outcompeted" only works in a highly simplified world with no market failures and other issues. > differential performance between countries is more about who is in those countries than how it is those countries educate I'd like a source on that. I do understand culture will have a significant influence, especially on what value people place on education. But your statement seems to go a lot further into "school doesn't matter" territory. This directly contradicts with earlier statements and e.g. many chines studying in the US.
  - darawk 7y ago
    > A good old prisoners dilemma. If you got more resources to spend on education, you don't want to sit in the same class as someone who can only contribute little to the course. Just like worse graduates will ruin the prestige of the school and thus value of your degree. Outcome-base exclusion can be fine, unless it ends up as proxy to select for socio-economic factors and thus make society offer less equal opportunity. Let's trace that out a little more. Are you implying that private/charter schools have more dollars to spend per student? Because that's certainly not true for Charter schools. It's probably true for some private schools, but also not all. And if that's not what you're saying, then i'm not sure I understand your argument. > I'd like a source on that. I do understand culture will have a significant influence, especially on what value people place on education. But your statement seems to go a lot further into "school doesn't matter" territory. This directly contradicts with earlier statements and e.g. many chines studying in the US. I can no longer find the source where I originally read it, but we can reconstruct the data. I'm going to show it for math, but the results are similar for other subjects. PISA Rankings by country: https://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-math-science-reading-skills-2016-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-ma... As you can see, the US looks pretty abysmal, given how rich it is. However, if you look at the math PISA scores for whites and asians, you see this: https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2015/pisa2015highlights_5e.asp https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2015/pisa2015highlights... Now, the US doesn't jump to the very top, but it does jump to just below Norway and right above Austria. Certainly a solidly high quality education. You'll see the same results across other subjects too. Of course, that doesn't mean our educational system doesn't have room for improvement. It most certainly does. But the idea that we're severely lagging the rest of the developed world is mostly false, when you adjust for this confound.