8 ms·

Give everyone vouchers and education will be 10 times better.

natch 6y ago
That will just splinter society further into divisive religious and other ideological tribes who can’t understand each other or even get along. We have some of this now but vouchers make it worse and drain the budgets of public schools. The money has to come from somewhere and it ends up coming from taxpayers. So then less taxpayer money is available to do actual helpful things.
- primrose 6y ago
  Denmark ties education funds to each student, not the school district. They seem to be doing fine.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Denmark ties education funds to each student, not the school district. They seem to be doing fine. Lots of places don't, and are also doing fine. That's because that particular feature is orthogonal to any real issue.
    - primrose 6y ago
      Or they have better governments. When the problems in Detroit and LA subside maybe I would be with you on this point.
  - natch 6y ago
    How does that work?
  - natch 6y ago
    crickets...
barney54 6y ago
I support vouchers because I support competition. However, even I’m skeptical things will get 10 times better.
- primrose 6y ago
  Detroit LA Baltimore Chicago ect... There's so much room for improvement.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    That there is room for improvement does not prove that a particular method would cause the desired improvement. There is considerable reason to believe almost all variability in school performance is due to factors unrelated to the actual school itself (predominantly, the socioeconomic background and environment of the students and degree of parental involvement), which explains why limited scale efforts which require active parental choice to engage always perform better than the baseline, but scaling those up to be the baseline usually fails to have the same results. Better schools are just the schools attended by the students that would do best whatever school they were in. So, if you aren't directing the solution at the things outside of schools that drive school outcomes, I don't expect you are going to solve any problem with the schools.
    - primrose 6y ago
      "unrelated to the actual school itself" Like corrupt administrations that siphon funds needed to fix buildings teaming with cockroaches. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/03/29/feds-charge-9-current-and-former-detroit-school-principals/82375712/ https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016... We can postulate how a top down approach might work but these students will still be suffering while we sort and continually monitor (we won't) the system. Involving market forces and allowing parents to have say in where their children will be educated puts the power in the most effective hands for change.
    - surge 6y ago
      The inflexibility of the current system is an issue, at least the ability to try different schools/home school options allows people to try everything until they find what works, more so they can find a school that works best for their child. Just like remote learning, if I don't like K12, I can try another online school, same as I dump Netflix for Hulu. I'm not even geographically limited. If there is a teacher that specializes in teaching dyslexic students and I have a child that's dyslexic, I'm no longer limited that the teacher isn't in a school within 5-10 miles. The teacher can be in another state even technically as long as she's board certified in my state. There is also a geographic arbitrage advantage, if my school system doesn't pay teachers enough to live comfortably in my city, maybe the teachers can be hired where its cheaper to live. Or teach for NYC and live in rural NY state.
TeaDrunk 6y ago
There was an interesting issue with the voucher system- most specifically, in areas with the voucher system, private schools are not held to the same standards as public schools. Ie. They are not tested the same for quality and they are not expected to have the same programs for special needs children.
- pibechorro 6y ago
  Private and home schooled kids consistently outperform public schools by a GIANT margin. The quality of education, by say a Montessori school, compared to public is drastically different; from building self esteem, independence, critical thinking, creativity, socialization, etc. Public schools, are derived from the Prussian system, its optimized to create obedient workers, its the lowest common denominator in education. Arguements of equality in public schools are out the window too when you compare the funding and quality between poor counties and wealthy ones. Its especially unjust that parents paying for private education pay twice, for public and private.
  - bigfudge 6y ago
    First, there is a massive selection effect going on here (motivated parents). Second, let's see what happens if we fund private and public schools equivalently. Class sizes of 10 don't happen by accident. Paying for private education "twice" is just part of rich people paying for the society that enabled them to become and stay rich.
    - dpratt71 6y ago
      It's really too bad that the only way we can be sure rich folk pay their fair share is to charge them twice for private education. Otherwise, my mother may not have felt it necessary to work the overnight shift at the local factory for decades in order to provide us with the basic necessities and a private school education.
    - primrose 6y ago
      Motivated Parents is everything. Focus your programs on that instead? "Second, let's see what happens if we fund private and public schools equivalently." Detroit get's $14k per student. Cost of living in Detroit is low and barely anyone who graduates is literate. I don't think funding's the problem.
ebiester 6y ago
With your vouchers, is any school required to take a voucher required to take a student? What if the student has a learning disability? In a smaller school, that will certainly take down the test scores - will three LD students ruin the school's reputation? How about people with down syndrome, for example? What if the student requires major accommodations - for example, the student is quadriplegic? The big school systems currently take money from all students to help out with these expensive cases. Will these private schools with vouchers be required to maintain the same standards as the public schools? For example, can a school discriminate via race or religion? Most voucher advocates are really looking to take the easy students and dump the hard cases on a backstop underfunded public system. Then everyone will look at the public system and say, "see how much better the private system is!" Because the private system does not take the hard cases.
- primrose 6y ago
  You have a lot of questions. Denmark has money tied to the child and not the school district. Look into their system for more answers. Everything is a process of improvement overtime. The reality is, we don't have all the answers ever. What matter's is how much things are improving overtime. I don't see that with public schools. I could easily ask you a ton of questions on how to fix Detroit or LA schools. Allowing competition fixes a lot of problems.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Give everyone vouchers and education will be 10 times better. This claim could desparately use evidence.
- primrose 6y ago
  Denmark.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    Denmark proves that vouchers are not incompatible, when combined with the other conditions which exist in Denmark, with good outcomes, but the other places that don't do it and also have good outcomes show that it is not necessary for good outcomes.
    - primrose 6y ago
      Good points. We just don't have that vacuum to test as gov's differ. Market forces improve conditions. Motivations are realigned to the incentive of the parent's satisfaction with their kid's education. Service improves when you have competition.

That will just splinter society further into divisive religious and other ideological tribes who can’t understand each other or even get along. We have some of this now but vouchers make it worse and drain the budgets of public schools. The money has to come from somewhere and it ends up coming from taxpayers. So then less taxpayer money is available to do actual helpful things.

primrose 6y ago
Denmark ties education funds to each student, not the school district. They seem to be doing fine.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Denmark ties education funds to each student, not the school district. They seem to be doing fine. Lots of places don't, and are also doing fine. That's because that particular feature is orthogonal to any real issue.
  - primrose 6y ago
    Or they have better governments. When the problems in Detroit and LA subside maybe I would be with you on this point.
- natch 6y ago
  How does that work?
- natch 6y ago
  crickets...

barney54 6y ago

I support vouchers because I support competition. However, even I’m skeptical things will get 10 times better.

primrose 6y ago
Detroit LA Baltimore Chicago ect... There's so much room for improvement.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  That there is room for improvement does not prove that a particular method would cause the desired improvement. There is considerable reason to believe almost all variability in school performance is due to factors unrelated to the actual school itself (predominantly, the socioeconomic background and environment of the students and degree of parental involvement), which explains why limited scale efforts which require active parental choice to engage always perform better than the baseline, but scaling those up to be the baseline usually fails to have the same results. Better schools are just the schools attended by the students that would do best whatever school they were in. So, if you aren't directing the solution at the things outside of schools that drive school outcomes, I don't expect you are going to solve any problem with the schools.
  - primrose 6y ago
    "unrelated to the actual school itself" Like corrupt administrations that siphon funds needed to fix buildings teaming with cockroaches. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/03/29/feds-charge-9-current-and-former-detroit-school-principals/82375712/ https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016... We can postulate how a top down approach might work but these students will still be suffering while we sort and continually monitor (we won't) the system. Involving market forces and allowing parents to have say in where their children will be educated puts the power in the most effective hands for change.
  - surge 6y ago
    The inflexibility of the current system is an issue, at least the ability to try different schools/home school options allows people to try everything until they find what works, more so they can find a school that works best for their child. Just like remote learning, if I don't like K12, I can try another online school, same as I dump Netflix for Hulu. I'm not even geographically limited. If there is a teacher that specializes in teaching dyslexic students and I have a child that's dyslexic, I'm no longer limited that the teacher isn't in a school within 5-10 miles. The teacher can be in another state even technically as long as she's board certified in my state. There is also a geographic arbitrage advantage, if my school system doesn't pay teachers enough to live comfortably in my city, maybe the teachers can be hired where its cheaper to live. Or teach for NYC and live in rural NY state.

TeaDrunk 6y ago

There was an interesting issue with the voucher system- most specifically, in areas with the voucher system, private schools are not held to the same standards as public schools. Ie. They are not tested the same for quality and they are not expected to have the same programs for special needs children.

pibechorro 6y ago
Private and home schooled kids consistently outperform public schools by a GIANT margin. The quality of education, by say a Montessori school, compared to public is drastically different; from building self esteem, independence, critical thinking, creativity, socialization, etc. Public schools, are derived from the Prussian system, its optimized to create obedient workers, its the lowest common denominator in education. Arguements of equality in public schools are out the window too when you compare the funding and quality between poor counties and wealthy ones. Its especially unjust that parents paying for private education pay twice, for public and private.
- bigfudge 6y ago
  First, there is a massive selection effect going on here (motivated parents). Second, let's see what happens if we fund private and public schools equivalently. Class sizes of 10 don't happen by accident. Paying for private education "twice" is just part of rich people paying for the society that enabled them to become and stay rich.
  - dpratt71 6y ago
    It's really too bad that the only way we can be sure rich folk pay their fair share is to charge them twice for private education. Otherwise, my mother may not have felt it necessary to work the overnight shift at the local factory for decades in order to provide us with the basic necessities and a private school education.
  - primrose 6y ago
    Motivated Parents is everything. Focus your programs on that instead? "Second, let's see what happens if we fund private and public schools equivalently." Detroit get's $14k per student. Cost of living in Detroit is low and barely anyone who graduates is literate. I don't think funding's the problem.

ebiester 6y ago

With your vouchers, is any school required to take a voucher required to take a student? What if the student has a learning disability? In a smaller school, that will certainly take down the test scores - will three LD students ruin the school's reputation? How about people with down syndrome, for example? What if the student requires major accommodations - for example, the student is quadriplegic? The big school systems currently take money from all students to help out with these expensive cases. Will these private schools with vouchers be required to maintain the same standards as the public schools? For example, can a school discriminate via race or religion? Most voucher advocates are really looking to take the easy students and dump the hard cases on a backstop underfunded public system. Then everyone will look at the public system and say, "see how much better the private system is!" Because the private system does not take the hard cases.

primrose 6y ago
You have a lot of questions. Denmark has money tied to the child and not the school district. Look into their system for more answers. Everything is a process of improvement overtime. The reality is, we don't have all the answers ever. What matter's is how much things are improving overtime. I don't see that with public schools. I could easily ask you a ton of questions on how to fix Detroit or LA schools. Allowing competition fixes a lot of problems.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Give everyone vouchers and education will be 10 times better. This claim could desparately use evidence.

primrose 6y ago
Denmark.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  Denmark proves that vouchers are not incompatible, when combined with the other conditions which exist in Denmark, with good outcomes, but the other places that don't do it and also have good outcomes show that it is not necessary for good outcomes.
  - primrose 6y ago
    Good points. We just don't have that vacuum to test as gov's differ. Market forces improve conditions. Motivations are realigned to the incentive of the parent's satisfaction with their kid's education. Service improves when you have competition.