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> competition would force public schools to improve or shut down as every school vied for the vouchers. I don't know how to fairly evaluate a school's performa

> competition would force public schools to improve or shut down as every school vied for the vouchers. I don't know how to fairly evaluate a school's performance. I guess we could ask if the students perform better in the job market 10-20 years later, but that's not obviously not helpful or useful information on which to make a decision now. I get why the voucher system is appealing on first glance. After all, you often can evaluate the quality of goods and services. You can, say, estimate that a shirt you find at the mall will last a few years or that it will fall apart in a month. I just don't think you can do the same for schools. I have a feeling most people will evaluate education based on their beliefs (religious, etc) and the grades their kids "earn".

seibelj 4y ago
You don’t seem to know how to evaluate them, yet everyone agrees Harvard is better than your local community college, and there is literally a private school half a mile from my house that charges $60,000 per year. So clearly some people know how to distinguish a bad school from a good school and allocate their money appropriately.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Most importantly, everyone knows a very bad performing school when they see one. The role of vouchers is first and foremost to reward schools that don't screw things up too badly. Quality can then be a secondary factor.
- powerhour 4y ago
  College is pretty different than grade school. It's a lot easier for adults to understand whether or not they're learning well and to see where people end up following graduation. You'd have a hard time convincing me that the way an 8 year old is taught today will lead to better results in better outcomes decades later (after those that ran the schools have retired and have thus left the market). Further, how many Harvard-level grade schools do you think we can run as a society? Given that private school pay is substantially worse than public school pay on average, how could one say that private schools, again on average, would outperform public schools?

seibelj 4y ago

You don’t seem to know how to evaluate them, yet everyone agrees Harvard is better than your local community college, and there is literally a private school half a mile from my house that charges $60,000 per year. So clearly some people know how to distinguish a bad school from a good school and allocate their money appropriately.

zozbot234 4y ago
Most importantly, everyone knows a very bad performing school when they see one. The role of vouchers is first and foremost to reward schools that don't screw things up too badly. Quality can then be a secondary factor.
powerhour 4y ago
College is pretty different than grade school. It's a lot easier for adults to understand whether or not they're learning well and to see where people end up following graduation. You'd have a hard time convincing me that the way an 8 year old is taught today will lead to better results in better outcomes decades later (after those that ran the schools have retired and have thus left the market). Further, how many Harvard-level grade schools do you think we can run as a society? Given that private school pay is substantially worse than public school pay on average, how could one say that private schools, again on average, would outperform public schools?