3 ms·

I guess it depends on what you all vouchers, most people advocate backpack funding. The same amount of money per student is spent, but the parents get to choos

I guess it depends on what you all vouchers, most people advocate backpack funding. The same amount of money per student is spent, but the parents get to choose the school their kid goes to. Instead of being forced to send their kid to failing schools, new schools can be created to cater to the desires of the parents/children. So it doesn't defund public schools, but it does break the public school monopoly and allows competition among schools - they can cater to the needs of the community and experiment.

ansible 5y ago
> Instead of being forced to send their kid to failing schools, ... The real issue is: Why are schools failing? When I was growing up, the vast majority of kids were educated in public schools. They weren't perfect, but they worked at least decently for the large majority of students, and did so for decades. Across the entire region. And they did that as a monopoly system you seen to despise so much. So we had a system that worked, was scalable, replicable, and maintainable. What happened? I don't have all the answers there, but at least once thing is clear, there is now an over-emphasis on testing. We had a system that was designed to give citizens important life skills, and turned it into a system that tries to produce drones that can pass tests. This is exactly the kind of thing we used to criticize Asian school systems about. And now we are trying to replicate their failings. WTF That's the thing that frustrates me about this debate. People seem to think that educating children well it's such a difficult problem, that it requires constant innovation. That it requires the "power of the free market" to solve. No, it doesn't. We have known how to do it for a long time. It just requires political will. And that brings us to another factor, one political party is actively anti-science and actively anti-education. This was definitely not the case 30 - 40 years ago. Back then, they were both pro-public education.

ansible 5y ago

> Instead of being forced to send their kid to failing schools, ... The real issue is: Why are schools failing? When I was growing up, the vast majority of kids were educated in public schools. They weren't perfect, but they worked at least decently for the large majority of students, and did so for decades. Across the entire region. And they did that as a monopoly system you seen to despise so much. So we had a system that worked, was scalable, replicable, and maintainable. What happened? I don't have all the answers there, but at least once thing is clear, there is now an over-emphasis on testing. We had a system that was designed to give citizens important life skills, and turned it into a system that tries to produce drones that can pass tests. This is exactly the kind of thing we used to criticize Asian school systems about. And now we are trying to replicate their failings. WTF That's the thing that frustrates me about this debate. People seem to think that educating children well it's such a difficult problem, that it requires constant innovation. That it requires the "power of the free market" to solve. No, it doesn't. We have known how to do it for a long time. It just requires political will. And that brings us to another factor, one political party is actively anti-science and actively anti-education. This was definitely not the case 30 - 40 years ago. Back then, they were both pro-public education.