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Related: 'Public Schools Are Causing Irreparable Harm to Themselves' published in Reason Magazine > It hardly matters if proponents of education choice want to

Related: 'Public Schools Are Causing Irreparable Harm to Themselves' published in Reason Magazine > It hardly matters if proponents of education choice want to kill public schools if those schools commit suicide in mid-argument. Choice advocates at least have alternatives to offer: anything families want that suits the needs of their children in achieving an education. That could include traditional public schools, but only if the staff of those institutions don't first reduce them to hollow shells. It certainly allows for private schools, charter schools, homeschooling of all sorts, microschools, learning pods, and whatever else the human imagination might conceive. > Unsurprisingly, public support for school choice is rising. EdChoice, which tracks opinion on a monthly basis, reports: Support for education savings accounts is at 70 percent in October, up five points from September; for school vouchers at 64 percent, up six points; and for charter schools at 67 percent, up six points. All of these approaches allow families flexibility in choosing how resources for education are used, rather than being taxed to fund take-it-or-leave-it district schools that just might decide to close their doors one day out of five without offering so much as a discount. https://reason.com/2021/12/06/public-schools-are-causing-irreparable-harm-to-themselves/ https://reason.com/2021/12/06/public-schools-are-causing-irr...

fakename11 5y ago
I can't wait for more states to adopt school vouchers.
- mentos 5y ago
  Hopefully we're still not debating this 25 years from now.. The Steve Jobs 95 Interview on Education - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-8JiOQOe6U&t=6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-8JiOQOe6U&t=6s
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  What happens after vouchers is interesting from a game theory standpoint. Do people scatter to the wind? Do they create ultra-specific schools? Etc.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    The elephant in the root is that the US already experimented heavily with a hybrid public/private model for educational delivery in its higher ed (colleges/universities) sector. Perverse competitive incentives on all fronts drive prices through the roof, quality stagnates/declines, and the downmarket options make impossible promises while offering curricula with such terrible outcomes as to be borderline fraudulent. When public funding is cut, it's replaced with debt, and people are deep under water to the investment class before they even start life. I'm not here to defend the status quo, but reformers should carefully consider "how do we prevent turning American K12 into American higher ed."
    - MengerSponge 5y ago
      Everyone who wants to understand this should read Tressie McMillan Cottom's Lower Ed: https://thenewpress.com/books/lower-ed https://thenewpress.com/books/lower-ed
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
      > Perverse competitive incentives on all fronts drive prices through the roof I don't think it's been established that competitive incentives are driving the price through the roof. There are other theories, e.g. that massive increases in subsidization via guaranteed loans and other mechanisms are driving the price from the demand-side.
      - brewdad 5y ago
        Sure, but if you are a private school charging $20k a year now, why wouldn't you charge $25k when every potential student gets a $5k voucher? Then we need to increase the size of the voucher to meet the original goals of the program. Rinse. Repeat.
        coffeecat 5y ago
        Every child must either meet some government-mandated educational standard, or enroll in a program which brings some threshold percentage of its students to said standard. $VOUCHER_AMOUNT is adjusted on a per-region basis based on the average tuition within each region. If the institution's tuition is higher than $VOUCHER_AMOUNT, the parents pay the difference out of pocket. If the tuition is less than $VOUCHER_AMOUNT, the parents keep the difference. Parents obviously want to minimize the amount they're paying out of pocket, and they'd like to keep some of the voucher money, so high-end schools as well as low-end schools are incentivized to keep their costs down.
- MengerSponge 5y ago
  Yes, I also enjoy watching states adopt policies that are expensive and harmful. I am very smart. Vouchers don't improve student achievement (Stanford): https://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-student-achievement-stanford-researcher-finds/ https://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-st... Students who received vouchers in Louisiana learned less than their peers: https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_3bd354cd-6fae-5fa1-a978-6908eb9f5395.html https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/artic...
  - bitshiftfaced 5y ago
    > Students who received vouchers in Louisiana learned less than their peers: https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/artic https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/artic... Looks like that study wasn't peer-reviewed, and compared voucher students with those of the general population. A later study compared voucher students with those who applied for vouchers but didn't win the vouchers, and the bad effects largely disappeared: https://www.chalkbeat.org/2017/6/26/21107301/students-given-vouchers-in-louisiana-do-worse-than-their-peers-but-new-research-shows-some-kids-catc https://www.chalkbeat.org/2017/6/26/21107301/students-given-... With school choice, bad schools are finally allowed to die and be replaced with good schools.
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fakename11 5y ago

I can't wait for more states to adopt school vouchers.

mentos 5y ago
Hopefully we're still not debating this 25 years from now.. The Steve Jobs 95 Interview on Education - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-8JiOQOe6U&t=6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-8JiOQOe6U&t=6s
mensetmanusman 5y ago
What happens after vouchers is interesting from a game theory standpoint. Do people scatter to the wind? Do they create ultra-specific schools? Etc.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  The elephant in the root is that the US already experimented heavily with a hybrid public/private model for educational delivery in its higher ed (colleges/universities) sector. Perverse competitive incentives on all fronts drive prices through the roof, quality stagnates/declines, and the downmarket options make impossible promises while offering curricula with such terrible outcomes as to be borderline fraudulent. When public funding is cut, it's replaced with debt, and people are deep under water to the investment class before they even start life. I'm not here to defend the status quo, but reformers should carefully consider "how do we prevent turning American K12 into American higher ed."
  - MengerSponge 5y ago
    Everyone who wants to understand this should read Tressie McMillan Cottom's Lower Ed: https://thenewpress.com/books/lower-ed https://thenewpress.com/books/lower-ed
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    > Perverse competitive incentives on all fronts drive prices through the roof I don't think it's been established that competitive incentives are driving the price through the roof. There are other theories, e.g. that massive increases in subsidization via guaranteed loans and other mechanisms are driving the price from the demand-side.
    - brewdad 5y ago
      Sure, but if you are a private school charging $20k a year now, why wouldn't you charge $25k when every potential student gets a $5k voucher? Then we need to increase the size of the voucher to meet the original goals of the program. Rinse. Repeat.
      - coffeecat 5y ago
        Every child must either meet some government-mandated educational standard, or enroll in a program which brings some threshold percentage of its students to said standard. $VOUCHER_AMOUNT is adjusted on a per-region basis based on the average tuition within each region. If the institution's tuition is higher than $VOUCHER_AMOUNT, the parents pay the difference out of pocket. If the tuition is less than $VOUCHER_AMOUNT, the parents keep the difference. Parents obviously want to minimize the amount they're paying out of pocket, and they'd like to keep some of the voucher money, so high-end schools as well as low-end schools are incentivized to keep their costs down.
MengerSponge 5y ago
Yes, I also enjoy watching states adopt policies that are expensive and harmful. I am very smart. Vouchers don't improve student achievement (Stanford): https://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-student-achievement-stanford-researcher-finds/ https://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-st... Students who received vouchers in Louisiana learned less than their peers: https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_3bd354cd-6fae-5fa1-a978-6908eb9f5395.html https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/artic...
- bitshiftfaced 5y ago
  > Students who received vouchers in Louisiana learned less than their peers: https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/artic https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/artic... Looks like that study wasn't peer-reviewed, and compared voucher students with those of the general population. A later study compared voucher students with those who applied for vouchers but didn't win the vouchers, and the bad effects largely disappeared: https://www.chalkbeat.org/2017/6/26/21107301/students-given-vouchers-in-louisiana-do-worse-than-their-peers-but-new-research-shows-some-kids-catc https://www.chalkbeat.org/2017/6/26/21107301/students-given-... With school choice, bad schools are finally allowed to die and be replaced with good schools.

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