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I think many would support private publicly-funded schools if private schools would adhere to being open to the general public. It's in the best interest of ma

I think many would support private publicly-funded schools if private schools would adhere to being open to the general public. It's in the best interest of many (if not most) private schools to push out special needs students. They're expensive and generally don't help the "reputation" of the school. We might be able to handle this by having private schools, but no school choice. That way private schools can't push students out -- if they live in your area, they're yours. Of course this destroys the free market dynamics, which many say is key. There is just real incentive in education to not have to deal with special needs children in a way that stores and farms have no real analog (the closest analog is farms working with certain easy crops -- which is one reason we see so much corn and soy crops, in addition to subsidies). The other thing that is interesting is you look at colleges, for-profit colleges seem to be almost universally reviled (especially relative to public and private-non-profit colleges). So far in the US private education of any peoples except the intellectual and/or economic elite has not yielded promising results. Jefferson most definitely supported public funding of schools, but made clear he opposed compulsory attendance. In the US today school attendence isn't compulsory. I think anyone could home school.

tokenadult 15y ago
Your suggestion is one possible policy. Another possible policy is to allow ANY provider to refuse service to any subsidized customer, on the reasoning that the refusal of the provider to provide service is essentially a statement that that provider cannot help that customer. If some category of customers appear to be unattractive to most providers, but there is a positive externality from providing service to those customers, increase the subsidies for customers in that category until you reach an equilibrium price at which some providers are willing to meet those customers' needs.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  I fear that creates an incentive to game the system. "This person is dislexic so we get the dislexic bonus", but they're really not, but parents work to get their child labeled as such so they can get into the top schools, and the top schools take this "not really dislexic" child, which they can interview or test to ensure they're perfectly capable students. I think this would actually be a case where the stick works better. A school can't reject anybody. And if a student leaves your school with a complaint about service you are severely punished. Maybe funding cut by a percentage of the size of the student body per complaint.
yummyfajitas 15y ago
If a private school is better than a public school at educating non-retarded children, then why shouldn't we allow it to do so? Normal children will receive a better education than at public schools. Retarded children will continue to attend public schools and receive the same education. I.e., some people get a better education, some continue to receive the same education. What's the harm?
- kenjackson 15y ago
  The problem is you probably can't reasonably fund a school for disenfranchised segments of the population without resorting to massive busing. So you'd literally end up with a system where normal students get a decent, but probably not vastly superior eduction, and other students get no education at all. This is why the current system is better that the one proposed. If you want to contribute to other people not getting an education, the govt shouldn't pay for it (hence private schools shouldn't be funded if they're going to select who they want to serve). The other alternative is that funding is commensurate with things like family income. So rich kids aren't funded at all. Poor kids are funded at 5x their cost, or something like that. This works a little better as its slightly harder to game.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    How does a private school teaching Student A prevent student B from getting the exact same education as before at the old public school?
    - kenjackson 15y ago
      Because of how funding works. It's similar to the reason why if you remove all healthy people off of insurance plans, you can no longer afford to cover the sick. I leave the rest as an exercise to the reader.
      - yummyfajitas 15y ago
        Huh? Insurance is about hedging against low probability, high cost events. I.e., 1 million people (each with a 5/1,000,000 chance of getting a medical condition costing $200k) pay $1, and in the future approximately 5 of them get sick and receive $200k. If one could see the future and determine who will become sick (as in Robert Heinlein's "Life Line"), it would indeed destroy the insurance business model. But I can't see what this has to do with education - near as I can tell, education is not about hedging risk in any way remotely comparable to insurance.

tokenadult 15y ago

Your suggestion is one possible policy. Another possible policy is to allow ANY provider to refuse service to any subsidized customer, on the reasoning that the refusal of the provider to provide service is essentially a statement that that provider cannot help that customer. If some category of customers appear to be unattractive to most providers, but there is a positive externality from providing service to those customers, increase the subsidies for customers in that category until you reach an equilibrium price at which some providers are willing to meet those customers' needs.

kenjackson 15y ago
I fear that creates an incentive to game the system. "This person is dislexic so we get the dislexic bonus", but they're really not, but parents work to get their child labeled as such so they can get into the top schools, and the top schools take this "not really dislexic" child, which they can interview or test to ensure they're perfectly capable students. I think this would actually be a case where the stick works better. A school can't reject anybody. And if a student leaves your school with a complaint about service you are severely punished. Maybe funding cut by a percentage of the size of the student body per complaint.

yummyfajitas 15y ago

If a private school is better than a public school at educating non-retarded children, then why shouldn't we allow it to do so? Normal children will receive a better education than at public schools. Retarded children will continue to attend public schools and receive the same education. I.e., some people get a better education, some continue to receive the same education. What's the harm?

kenjackson 15y ago
The problem is you probably can't reasonably fund a school for disenfranchised segments of the population without resorting to massive busing. So you'd literally end up with a system where normal students get a decent, but probably not vastly superior eduction, and other students get no education at all. This is why the current system is better that the one proposed. If you want to contribute to other people not getting an education, the govt shouldn't pay for it (hence private schools shouldn't be funded if they're going to select who they want to serve). The other alternative is that funding is commensurate with things like family income. So rich kids aren't funded at all. Poor kids are funded at 5x their cost, or something like that. This works a little better as its slightly harder to game.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  How does a private school teaching Student A prevent student B from getting the exact same education as before at the old public school?
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    Because of how funding works. It's similar to the reason why if you remove all healthy people off of insurance plans, you can no longer afford to cover the sick. I leave the rest as an exercise to the reader.
    - yummyfajitas 15y ago
      Huh? Insurance is about hedging against low probability, high cost events. I.e., 1 million people (each with a 5/1,000,000 chance of getting a medical condition costing $200k) pay $1, and in the future approximately 5 of them get sick and receive $200k. If one could see the future and determine who will become sick (as in Robert Heinlein's "Life Line"), it would indeed destroy the insurance business model. But I can't see what this has to do with education - near as I can tell, education is not about hedging risk in any way remotely comparable to insurance.