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That's nice, except you're ignoring the economics of schooling. It's expensive to pay teachers, to make schools work they need to be nearly at capacity (per-pup
by krakensden 17y ago
That's nice, except you're ignoring the economics of schooling. It's expensive to pay teachers, to make schools work they need to be nearly at capacity (per-pupil funding, student to teacher ratios, finite amount of space, etc). If you have two schools, one competently run, one incompetently run, you wind up with a good school that's impossible to get into and a school where you're screwed.
In other words, there is never an incentive to to do better because your competitors can't take your customers.
This could be solved by having lots and lots of mostly empty schools, but... no one is going to pay for that.
It's a lot like the last mile- it's a natural monopoly.
- anamax 17y agoNot at all. In most urban and suburban regions, there are already several schools that are "close enough", and they typically have several classes for each grade. > If you have two schools, one competently run, one incompetently run, you wind up with a good school that's impossible to get into and a school where you're screwed. Nope. Someone says, "hey demand, here's some supply" and opens a new school. They start small, a couple of classes is "big enough", and the crappy school starts losing students. When they lose enough, the space that they were occupying becomes empty at exactly the same time as a new school needs more space. (No, you don't need all of the standard "big school" facilities to start a school.) Yes, someone goes out of biz. That's a feature. Drive by "Downtown Prep" on San Fernando, almost under the overpass on the Alameda side in San Jose. It looks like a boring office building on the outside.
- anamax 17y agoI note that people actually do open schools, especially when money comes with the students, aka vouchers. Any theory that predicts otherwise is wrong.