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Remember, this is in comparison to public schools, which are regional gerrymandered monopolies. This system isn't perfect, but sets incentives in place to make

Remember, this is in comparison to public schools, which are regional gerrymandered monopolies. This system isn't perfect, but sets incentives in place to make it better. I grew up near some sketchy neighborhoods, and although I went to an average school, I know a lot of people who fared worse. I'm not going to write a response to everything you said, but the tl;dr falls into a few categories 1. Privatization does not mean deregulation. Imagine Obamacare style regulations to a private marketplace for schooling (price caps, cannot turn away certain sets of people, etc). 2. If we can't agree on some measure for effective education, then there's no way to improve this, since we have no bar to go by. Everything is empirical and mileage may vary from person to person. You can create a seperate class of high school education (will flesh out in next point). 3. Property values are strongly correlated with the quality of the public schools (since all states help pay for public school with property taxes[1], and you are locked into a public school depending on where you live). My main motivation for supporting this is to help poor people have access to the same quality education as everybody else, and maybe even allowing specialized tracks that bias towards vocational schooling that funnels into direct employment after school (universities can boast about employment post graduation, why not high schools?) 4. There is nuance with the specific numbers here, and if it is systemically impossible for reasonable competition, then this price will go up. [1]: http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/funding-approaches-the-property-tax-and-public-ed.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/funding-approaches-th...

eesmith 7y ago
It's precisely because they are monopolies that they can be forced to accept a wide range of students. Otherwise there will be schools which pick the best/easily taught students, and leave the others behind. Those who fared worse in the current system may fare far worse in an all-private system. 1. In the current charter school system, privatization often does mean deregulation. So while I can imagine it, I assert that it's a dream. 2. If we pick wrong measures - and standardized tests are wrong measures - then we end up trying to improve the wrong thing. Eg, we end up with two weeks dedicated to test prep, instead of teaching; we end up dropping art, music, and foreign language classes in order to focus only on those topics which are tested. The regional gerrymandering is in part so that the local communities get to decide what the right measures are. Mileage absolutely varies from person to person .. people and communities vary too. It's not like we didn't have a decent sense of what a good education meant back in the 1970s, before high-stakes testing. 3. Again, how do private schools get to decide which students to accept? Can they make policies which end up rejecting most poor people? If the private school education costs $10,000 and the state's check is for $5,000 then poor students aren't going to afford it. While the parents of middle class students can, subsidized by the state. Which means poor people won't have access to the same quality education as everyone else.

eesmith 7y ago

It's precisely because they are monopolies that they can be forced to accept a wide range of students. Otherwise there will be schools which pick the best/easily taught students, and leave the others behind. Those who fared worse in the current system may fare far worse in an all-private system. 1. In the current charter school system, privatization often does mean deregulation. So while I can imagine it, I assert that it's a dream. 2. If we pick wrong measures - and standardized tests are wrong measures - then we end up trying to improve the wrong thing. Eg, we end up with two weeks dedicated to test prep, instead of teaching; we end up dropping art, music, and foreign language classes in order to focus only on those topics which are tested. The regional gerrymandering is in part so that the local communities get to decide what the right measures are. Mileage absolutely varies from person to person .. people and communities vary too. It's not like we didn't have a decent sense of what a good education meant back in the 1970s, before high-stakes testing. 3. Again, how do private schools get to decide which students to accept? Can they make policies which end up rejecting most poor people? If the private school education costs $10,000 and the state's check is for $5,000 then poor students aren't going to afford it. While the parents of middle class students can, subsidized by the state. Which means poor people won't have access to the same quality education as everyone else.