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"School-choice" is great for optimizing local maximums at the expense of just about everyone else. Public education should focus on the lowest common denominato

"School-choice" is great for optimizing local maximums at the expense of just about everyone else. Public education should focus on the lowest common denominators to maximize education per tax dollar. It's not the smart people with lack of opportunity that drag down society, it's the massive amount of undereducated adults that become dangerously suceptable to manipulation.

fallingknife 5y ago
If you want to maximize education per tax dollar then you need to separate out the smart kids into their own schools. Benefits of education are not evenly distributed. It is heavily weighted towards the right tail.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Pretending that the outcome for everyone should be college and a degree is part of the problem - admitting that outcomes may be different allows you to create different paths adjusted for abilities (think trade school instead of high school, etc). Forcing everyone into the same mold results in a broken mold.
sxg 5y ago
That may be true—the system may be better served by raising the floor on education. But voters are individuals, and the most passionate are likely the type of people who prioritize maximizing their own (smart) kids’ opportunities over raising the floor for everyone.
JackFr 5y ago
Not clear what your argument against school choice is. Not sure what you mean by “optimizing local maximums at the expense of everything else”. It almost sounds like an argument but there’s no substance. You claim that public education should focus on the lowest common denominator so we can avoid an underclass susceptible to manipulation. That’s both a weak justification to purposely damage public education and condescension shown by elites when poor people don’t vote the way “they should”.
mobilefriendly 5y ago
School choice is still universal public education. It is just the government providers of education have to compete with private providers.

fallingknife 5y ago

If you want to maximize education per tax dollar then you need to separate out the smart kids into their own schools. Benefits of education are not evenly distributed. It is heavily weighted towards the right tail.

bombcar 5y ago
Pretending that the outcome for everyone should be college and a degree is part of the problem - admitting that outcomes may be different allows you to create different paths adjusted for abilities (think trade school instead of high school, etc). Forcing everyone into the same mold results in a broken mold.

sxg 5y ago

That may be true—the system may be better served by raising the floor on education. But voters are individuals, and the most passionate are likely the type of people who prioritize maximizing their own (smart) kids’ opportunities over raising the floor for everyone.

JackFr 5y ago

Not clear what your argument against school choice is. Not sure what you mean by “optimizing local maximums at the expense of everything else”. It almost sounds like an argument but there’s no substance. You claim that public education should focus on the lowest common denominator so we can avoid an underclass susceptible to manipulation. That’s both a weak justification to purposely damage public education and condescension shown by elites when poor people don’t vote the way “they should”.

mobilefriendly 5y ago

School choice is still universal public education. It is just the government providers of education have to compete with private providers.